I can get no sleep. Across my lines it feels as if I’d got some great
weight, and my knees are in a heat, and throb, and feel as if a knife
was running into them. When I go up-stairs I have to crawl upon the
back of my hands and my knees. I can’t lift nothing to my mouth. The
sinews of my hands is all contracted. I am obliged to have things held
to my lip for me to drink, like a child. I _can_ use a knife and fork
by leaning my arm on the table and then stooping my head to it. I can’t
wash nor ondress myself. Sometimes I think of my helplessness a great
deal. The thoughts of it used to throw me into fits at one time--very
bad. It’s the Almighty’s will that I am so, and I must abide by it.
People says, as they passes me in the streets, ‘Poor fellow, it’s a
shocking thing;’ but very seldom they does any more than pity me; some
lays out a halfpenny or a penny with me, but the most of ’em goes on
about their business. Persons looks at me a good bit when I go into
a strange place. I _do_ feel it very much, that I haven’t the power
to get my living or to do a thing for myself, but I never begged for
nothing. I’d sooner starve than I’d do that. I never thought that
people whom God had given the power to help theirselves ought to help
me. I _have_ thought that I’m as I am--obliged to go on my hands and
knees, from no fault of my own. Often I’ve done that, and I’ve over and
over again laid in bed and wondered why the Almighty should send
me into the world in such a state; often I’ve done that on a wet day,
with nothing to eat, and no friend to come a-nigh me. When I’ve gone
along the streets, too, and been in pain, I’ve thought, as I’ve seen
the people pass straight up, with all the use of their limbs, and some
of them the biggest blackguards, cussing and swearing, I’ve thought,
Why should I be deprived of the use of mine? and I’ve felt angry
like, and perhaps at that moment I couldn’t bring my mind to believe
the Almighty was so good and merciful as I’d heard say; but then in
a minute or two afterwards I’ve prayed to Him to make me better and
happier in the next world. I’ve always been led to think He’s afflicted
me as He has for some wise purpose or another that I can’t see. I think
as mine is so hard a life in this world, I shall be better off in the
next. Often when I couldn’t afford to pay a boy, I’ve not had my boots
off for four or five nights and days, nor my clothes neither. Give
me the world I couldn’t take them off myself, and then my feet has
swollen to that degree that I’ve been nearly mad with pain, and I’ve
been shivering and faint, but still I was obliged to go out with my
things; if I hadn’t I should have starved. Such as I am can’t afford to
be ill--it’s only rich folks as can lay up, not we; for us to take to
our beds is to go without food altogether. When I was without never a
boy, I used to tie the wet towel round the back of one of the chairs,
and wash myself by rubbing my face up against it. I’ve been two days
without a bit of anything passing between my lips. I couldn’t go and
beg for victuals--I’d rather go without. Then I used to feel faint, and
my head used to ache dreadful. I used then to drink a plenty of water.
The women sex is mostly more kinder to me than the men. Some of the
men fancies, as I goes along, that I can walk. They often says to me,
‘Why, the sole of your boot is as muddy as mine;’ and one on ’em is,
because I always rests myself on that foot--the other sole, you see, is
as clean as when it was first made. The women never seem frightened on
me. My trade is to sell brooms and brushes, and all kinds of cutlery
and tin-ware. I learnt it myself. I never was brought up to nothing,
because I couldn’t use my hands. Mother was a cook in a nobleman’s
family when I were born. They say as I was a love-child. I was not
brought up by mother, but by one of her fellow-servants. Mother’s
intellects was so weak, that she couldn’t have me with her. She used
to fret a great deal about me, so her fellow-servant took me when she
got married. After I were born, mother married a farmer in middling
circumstances. They tell me as my mother was frightened afore I was
born. I never knew my father. He went over to Buonos Ayres, and kept
an hotel there--I’ve heard mother say as much. No mother couldn’t love
a child more than mine did me, but her feelings was such she couldn’t
bear to see me. I never went to mother’s to live, but was brought up
by the fellow-servant as I’ve told you of. Mother allowed her 30_l._
a-year. I was with her till two years back. She was always very kind
to me--treated me like one of her own. Mother used to come and see me
about once a-year--sometimes not so often: she was very kind to me
then. Oh, yes; I used to like to see her very much. Whatever I wished
for she’d let me have; if I wrote to her, she always sent me what I
wanted. I was very comfortably then. Mother died four years ago; and
when I lost her I fell into a fit--I was told of it all of a sudden.
She and the party as I was brought up with was the only friends as I
had in the world--the only persons as cared anything about a creature
like me. I was in a fit for hours, and when I came to, I thought what
would become of me: I knew I could do nothing for myself, and the
only friend as I had as could keep me was gone. The person as brought
me up was very good, and said, while she’d got a home I should never
want; but, two years after mother’s death, she was seized with the
cholera, and then I hadn’t a friend left in the world. When she died
I felt ready to kill myself; I was all alone then, and what could I
do--cripple as I was? She thought her sons and daughters as I’d been
brought up with--like brothers and sisters--would look after me; but it
was not in their power--they was only hard-working people. My mother
used to allow so much a year for my schooling, and I can read and write
pretty well.” (He wrote his name in my presence kneeling at the table;
holding the pen almost as one might fancy a bird would, and placing
the paper sideways instead of straight before him.) “While mother was
alive, I was always foraging about to learn something unbeknown to
her. I wanted to do so, in case mother should leave me without the
means of getting a living. I used to buy old bedsteads, and take them
to a man, and get him to repair them, and then I’d put the sacking on
myself; I can hold a hammer somehow in my right hand. I used to polish
them on my knees. I made a bench to my height out of two old chairs.
I used to know what I should get for the bedsteads, and so could tell
what I could afford to give the man to do up the parts as I couldn’t
manage. It was so I got to learn something like a business for myself.
When the person died as had brought me up, I _could_ do a little; I
had then got the means. Before her death I had opened a kind of shop
for things in the general line; I sold tin-ware, and brass-work, and
candlesticks, and fire-irons, and all old furniture, and gown-prints as
well. I went into the tally business, and that ruined me altogether. I
couldn’t get my money in; there’s a good deal owing to me now. Me and a
boy used to manage the whole. I used to make all my account-books and
everything. My lodgers didn’t pay me my rent, so I had to move from
the house, and live on what stock I had. In my new lodging I went on
as well as I could for a little while; but about eighteen months ago
I could hold on no longer. Then I borrowed a little, and went hawking
tin-ware and brushes in the country. I sold baking-dishes, Dutch ovens,
roasting-jacks, skewers and gridirons, teapots and saucepans, and
combs. I used to exchange sometimes for old clothes. I had a barrow and
a boy with me; I used to keep him, and give him 1_s._ a week. I managed
to get just a living that way. When the winter came on I gave it up;
it was too cold. After that I was took bad with a fever; my stock had
been all gone a little while before, and the boy had left because I
couldn’t keep him, and I had to do all for myself. All my friends was
dead, and I had no one to help me, so I was obligated to lay about all
night in my things, for I couldn’t get them off alone; and that and
want of food brought on a fever. Then I was took into the workhouse,
and there I stopped all the summer, as I told you. I can’t say they
treated me bad, but they certainly didn’t use me well. If I could have
worked after I got better, I could have had tea; but ’cause I couldn’t
do nothing, they gave me that beastly gruel morning and night. I had
meat three times a week. They would have kept me there till now, but I
would die in the streets rather than be a pauper. So I told them, if
they would give me the means of getting a stock, I would try and get
a living for myself. After refusing many times to let me have 10_s._,
they agreed to give me 5_s._ Then I came out, but I had no home, and so
I crawled about till I met with the people where I am now, and they let
me sit up there till I got a room of my own. Then some of my friends
collected for me about 15_s._ altogether, and I did pretty well for a
little while. I went to live close by the Blackfriars-road, but the
people where I lodged treated me very bad. There was a number of girls
of the town in the same street, but they was too fond of their selves
and their drink to give nothing. They used to buy things of me and
never pay me. They never made game of me, nor played me any tricks,
and if they saw the boys doing it they would protect me. They never
offered to give me no victuals; indeed, I shouldn’t have liked to have
eaten the food they got. After that I couldn’t pay my lodgings, and
the parties where I lodged turned me out, and I had to crawl about the
streets for four days and nights. This was only a month back. I was fit
to die with pain all that time. If I could get a penny I used to go
into a coffee-shop for half-a-pint of coffee, and sit there till they
drove me out, and then I’d crawl about till it was time for me to go
out selling. Oh! dreadful, dreadful, it was to be all them hours--day
and night--on my knees. I couldn’t get along at all, I was forced to
sit down every minute, and then I used to fall asleep with my things
in my hand, and be woke up by the police to be pushed about and druv
on by them. It seemed like as if I was walking on the bare bones of my
knees. The pain in them was like the cramp, only much worse. At last I
could bear it no longer, so I went afore Mr. Secker, the magistrate, at
Union Hall, and told him I was destitute, and that the parties where I
had been living kept my bed and the few things I had, for 2_s._ 6_d._
rent, that I owed them. He said he couldn’t believe that anybody would
force me to crawl about the streets, for four days and nights, cripple
as I was, for such a sum. One of the officers told him I was a honest
and striving man, and the magistrate sent the officer, with the money,
to get my things, but the landlady wouldn’t give them till the officer
compelled her, and then she chucked my bed out into the middle of the
street. A neighbour took it in for me and took care of it till I found
out the tinman who had before let me sit up in his house. I should
have gone to him at first, but he lived farther than I could walk. I
am stopping with him now, and he is very kind to me. I have still some
relations living, and they are well to do, but, being a cripple, they
despise me. My aunt, my mother’s sister, is married to a builder, in
Petersham, near Richmond, and they are rich people--having some houses
of their own besides a good business. I have got a boy to wheel me down
on a barrow to them, and asked assistance of them, but they will have
nothing to do with me. They won’t look at me for my affliction. Six
months ago they gave me half-a-crown. I had no lodgings nor victuals
then; and _that_ I shouldn’t have had from them had I not said I was
starving and must go to the parish. This winter I went to them, and
they shut the door in my face. After leaving my aunt’s, I went down
to Ham Common, where my father-in-law lives, and there his daughter’s
husband sent for a policeman to drive me away from the place. I told
the husband I had no money nor food; but he advised me to go begging,
and said I shouldn’t have a penny of them. My father-in-law was ill
up-stairs at the time, but I don’t think he would have treated me a
bit better--and all this they do because the Almighty has made me
a cripple. I can, indeed, solemnly say, that there is nothing else
against me, and that I strive hard and crawl about till my limbs ache
enough to drive me mad, to get an honest livelihood. With a couple of
pounds I could, I think, manage to shift very well for myself. I’d get
a stock, and go into the country with a barrow, and buy old metal, and
exchange tin ware for old clothes, and, with that, I’m almost sure I
could get a decent living. I’m accounted a very good dealer.”
In answer to my inquiries concerning the character of this man, I
received the following written communication:
“I have known C---- A---- twelve years; the last six years he has
dealt with me for tinware. I have found him honest in all his dealings
with me, sober and industrious.
“C---- H----, Tinman.”
From the writer of the above testimonial I received the following
account of the poor cripple:--
“He is a man of generous a disposition, and very sensitive for the
afflictions of others. One day while passing down the Borough he saw
a man afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance shaking from head to foot, and
leaning on the arm of a woman who appeared to be his wife.” The cripple
told my informant that he should never forget what he felt when he
beheld that poor man. “I thought,” he said, “what a blessing it is I
am not like him.” Nor is the cripple, I am told, less independent than
he is generous. In all his sufferings and privations he never pleads
poverty to others; but bears up under the trials of life with the
greatest patience and fortitude. When in better circumstances he was
more independent than at present, having since, through illness and
poverty, been much humbled.
“His privations have been great,” adds my informant. “Only two months
back, being in a state of utter destitution and quite worn out with
fatigue, he called at the house of a person (where my informant
occupied a room) about ten o’clock at night, and begged them to let
him rest himself for a short while, but the inhuman landlady and her
son laid hold of the wretched man, the one taking him by the arms and
the other by the legs, and literally hurled him into the street. The
next morning,” my informant continued, “I saw the poor creature leaning
against a lamp-post, shivering with the cold, and my heart bled for
him; and since that he has been living with me.”
OF THE SWAG-SHOPS OF THE METROPOLIS.
By those who are not connected with the street trade, the proprietors
of the swag-shops are often called “warehousemen” or “general dealers,”
and even “slaughterers.” These descriptions apply but partially.
“Warehousemen” or “general dealers” are vague terms, which I need not
further notice. The wretchedly under-paid and over-worked shoe-makers,
cabinet-makers and others call these places “slaughter-houses,” when
the establishment is in the hands of tradesmen who buy their goods
of poor workmen without having given orders for them. On Saturday
afternoons pale-looking men may be seen carrying a few chairs, or
bending under the weight of a cheffonier or a chest of drawers, in
Tottenham-court Road, and thoroughfares of a similar character in
all parts. These are “small masters,” who make or (as one man said
to me, “No, sir, I don’t make these drawers, I put them together, it
can’t be called making; it’s not workmanship”) who “put together”
in the hastiest manner, and in any way not positively offensive to
the eye, articles of household furniture. The “slaughterers” who
supply all the goods required for the furniture of a house, buy at
“starvation prices” (the common term), the artificer being often kept
waiting for hours, and treated with every indignity. One East-end
“slaughterer” (as I ascertained in a former inquiry) used habitually
to tell that he prayed for wet Saturday afternoons, because it put
20_l._ extra into his pocket! This was owing to the damage sustained
in the appearance of any painted, varnished, or polished article, by
exposure to the weather; or if it had been protected from the weather,
by the unwillingness of the small master to carry it to another
slaughter-house in the rain. Under such circumstances--and under most
of the circumstances of this unhappy trade--the poor workman is at the
mercy of the slaughterer.
I describe this matter more fully than I might have deemed necessary,
had I not found that both the “small masters” spoken of--for I called
upon some of them again--and the street-sellers, very frequently
confounded the “swag-shop” and the “slaughter-house.” The distinction
I hold to be this:--The slaughterer buys as a rule, with hardly an
exception, the furniture, or whatever it may be, made for the express
purpose of being offered to him on speculation of sale. The swag
shop-keeper _orders_ his goods as a rule, and buys, as an exception, in
the manner in which the slaughterer buys ordinarily. The slaughterer
sells by retail; the swag-shop keeper only by wholesale.
Most of the articles, of the class of which I now treat, are “Brummagem
made.” An experienced tradesman said to me: “All these low-priced
metal things, fancy goods and all, which you see about, are made in
Birmingham; in nineteen cases out of twenty at the least. They may
be marked London, or Sheffield, or Paris, or any place--you can have
them marked North Pole if you will--but they’re genuine Birmingham.
The carriage is lower from Birmingham than from Sheffield--that’s one
thing.”
The majority of the swag-shop proprietors are Jews. The wares
which they supply to the cheap shops, the cheap John’s, and the
street-sellers, in town and country, consist of every variety of
article, apart from what is eatable, drinkable, or wearable, in which
the trade class I have specified can deal. As regards what is wearable,
indeed, such things as braces, garters, &c., form a portion of the
stock of the swag-shop.
In one street (a thoroughfare at the east-end of London) are
twenty-three of these establishments. In the windows there is
little attempt at display; the design aimed at seems to be rather
to _crowd_ the window--as if to show the amplitude of the stores
within, “the wonderful resources of this most extensive and universal
establishment”--than to tempt purchasers by exhibiting tastefully what
may have been tastefully executed by the artificer, or what it is
desired should be held to be so executed.
In one of these windows the daylight is almost precluded from
the interior by what may be called a perfect wall of “pots.” A
street-seller who accompanied me called them merely “pots” (the trade
term), but they were all pot ornaments. Among them were great store
of shepherdesses, of greyhounds of a gamboge colour, of what I heard
called “figures” (allegorical nymphs with and without birds or wreaths
in their hands), very tall-looking Shaksperes (I did not see one of
these windows without its Shakspere, a sitting figure), and some “pots”
which seem to be either shepherds or musicians; from what I could
learn, at the pleasure of the seller, the buyer, or the inquirer.
The shepherd, or musician is usually seated under a tree; he wears a
light blue coat, and yellow breeches, and his limbs, more than his
body, are remarkable for their bulk; to call them merely fat does not
sufficiently express their character, and in some “pots,” they are
as short and stumpy as they are bulky. On my asking if the dogs were
intended for Italian greyhounds, I was told, “No, they are German.” I
alluded however to the species of the animal represented; my informant
to the place of manufacture, for the pots were chiefly German. A number
of mugs however, with the Crystal Palace very well depicted upon them,
were unmistakably English. In another window of the same establishment
was a conglomeration of pincushions, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps
(all in bone), cribbage-boards and boxes (including a pack of cards),
necklaces, and strings of beads.
The window of a neighbouring swag-shop presented, in the like crowding,
and in greater confusion, an array of brooches (some in coloured
glass to imitate rubies, topazes, &c., some containing portraits,
deeply coloured, in purple attire, and red cheeks, and some being very
large cameos), time-pieces (with and without glasses), French toys
with moveable figures, telescopes, American clocks, musical boxes,
shirt-studs, backgammon-boards, tea-trays (one with a nondescript
bird of most gorgeous green plumage forming a sort of centrepiece),
razor-strops writing-desks, sailors’ knives, hair-brushes, and
tobacco-boxes.
Another window presented even a more “miscellaneous assortment;” dirks
(apparently not very formidable weapons), a mess of steel pens, in
brown-paper packages and cases, and of black-lead pencils, pipe-heads,
cigar-cases, snuff-boxes, razors, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps,
metal tea-pots, metal tea-spoons, glass globes with artificial flowers
and leaves within the glass (an improvement one man thought on the
old ornament of a reel in a bottle), Peel medals, Exhibition medals,
roulette-boxes, scent bottles, quill pens with artificial flowers
in the feathery part, fans, side-combs, glass pen-holders, and pot
figures (caricatures) of Louis Philippe, carrying a very red umbrella,
Marshal Haynau, with some instrument of torture in his hand, while
over all boomed a huge English seaman, in yellow waistcoat and with a
brick-coloured face.
Sometimes the furniture of a swag-shop window is less plentiful, but
quite as heterogenous. In one were only American clocks, French toys
(large), opera-glasses, knives and forks, and powder-flasks.
In some windows the predominant character is jewellery. Ear-drops
(generally gilt), rings of all kinds, brooches of every size and shade
of coloured glass, shawl-pins, shirt-studs, necklaces, bead purses,
small paintings of the Crystal-palace, in “burnished ‘gold’ frames,”
watch-guards, watch-seals (each with three impressions or mottoes),
watch-chains and keys, “silver” tooth-picks, medals, and snuff-boxes.
It might be expected that the jewellery shops would present the most
imposing display of any; they are, on the contrary, among the dingiest,
as if it were not worth the trouble to put clean things in the window,
but merely what sufficed to characterise the nature of the trade
carried on.
Of the twenty-three swag-shops in question, five were confined to
the trade in all the branches of stationery. Of these I saw one, the
large window of which was perfectly packed from bottom to top with
note-paper, account and copy-books, steel-pens, pencils, sealing-wax,
enamelled wafers (in boxes), ink-stands, &c.
Of the other shops, two had cases of watches, with no attempt at
display, or even arrangement. “Poor things,” I was told by a person
familiar with the trade in them, “fit only to offer to countrymen when
they’ve been drinking at a fair, and think themselves clever.”
I have so far described the exterior of these street-dealers’ bazaars,
the swag-shops, in what may be called their head-quarters. Upon
entering some of these places of business, spacious rooms are seen to
extend behind the shop or warehouse which opens to the street. Some
are almost blocked up with what appears a litter of packing-cases,
packages, and bales--but which are no doubt ordered systematically
enough--while the shelves are crammed with goods in brown paper, or
in cases or boxes. This uniformity of package, so to speak, has the
effect of destroying the true character of these swag store-rooms;
for they present the appearance of only three or four different kinds
of merchandise being deposited on a range of shelves, when, perhaps,
there are a hundred. In some of these swag-shops it appears certain,
both from what fell under my own observation, and from what I learned
through my inquiries of persons long familiar with such places,
that the “litter” I have spoken of is disposed so as to present the
appearance of an affluence of goods without the reality of possession.
In no warehouses (properly “swag,” or wholesale traders) is there any
arranged display of the wares vended. “Ve don’t vant people here,”
one street-seller had often heard a swag-shopkeeper say, “as looks
about them, and says, ‘’Ow purty!--Vot nice things!’ Ve vants to sell,
and not to show. Ve is all for bisness, and be d----d.” All of these
places which I saw were dark, more or less so, in the interior, as if a
customer’s inspection were uncared for.
Some of the swag-shop people present cards, or “circulars with prices,”
to their street and other customers, calling attention to the variety
of their wares. These circulars are not given without inquiry, as if
it were felt that one must not be wasted. On one I find the following
enumeration:--
Shopkeepers and Dealers supplied with the following Articles:--
CLOCKS--American, French, German, and English eight-day dials.
WATCHES--Gold and Silver.
MUSICAL BOXES--Two, Four, Six, and Eight Airs.
WATCH-GLASSES--Common Flint, Geneva, and Lunettes.
MAIN-SPRINGS--Blue and Straw-colour, English and Geneva.
WATCH MATERIALS--Of every description.
JEWELLERY--A general assortment.
SPECTACLES--Gold, Silver, Steel, Horn, and Metal Frames, Concave,
Convex, Coloured, and Smoked Eyes.
TELESCOPES--One, two, and three draws.
MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS.
COMBS--Side, Dressing, Curl, Pocket, Ivory, Small-Tooth, &c.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--Violins, Violincellos, Bows, &c., Flutes,
Clarionets, Trombones, Ophoclides, Cornopeans, French-Horns,
Post-Horns, Trumpets, and Passes, Violin Tailboards, Pegs, and Bridges.
ACCORDIONS--French and German of every size and style.
It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of
“fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only
the “windows” and outward appearances of these places--the interior
being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more
useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In
the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the
useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following
extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give
each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe
themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers,
General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens,
and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”
_Table Cutlery._
_s._ _d._
Common knives and forks, per doz. 2 0
Ivory-handle table knives and fork, per set of fifty-pieces 30 0
Tables, per doz. 15 0
Desserts, per doz. 11 3
Carvers, per pair 4 0
_Fire-Irons._
Strong wrought-iron for kitchens, per set 2_s._ to 6 0
Ditto for parlours or libraries, bright pans, 4_s._ 6_d._ to 7 0
_Fenders._
Kitchen fenders, 3 ft. long, with sliding bar 3 0
Green ditto, brass tops, for bed rooms 1 8
“Britannia Metal Goods” (tea-pots, &c.), “German Silver Goods”
(tea-spoons, 1_s._ to 2_s._ per dozen, &c.).
_Bellows._
Kitchen, each 10_d._ to 2 0
Parlour ditto, brass pipes and nails 2_s._ 3_d._ to 3 0
Japanned goods, brass goods, iron saucepans, oval iron pots, iron
tea-kettles, &c., iron stew-pans, &c. The prices here run very
systematically:--
One quart 1 2
Three pints 1 8
Two quarts 2 0
Three quarts 3 0
Four quarts 3 9
Five quarts 4 0
Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans,
tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices
range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods
(kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood
workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove,
shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools,
plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical
instruments (accordions from 1_s._ to 5_s._, &c.). Then come dials
and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera
glasses, each 10_d._ to 10_s._, China ornaments, lamps, sundries
(these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping
and goffering-machines, from 14_s._, looking-glasses, pictures, &c.,
beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols,
powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6_d._ to 2_s._,
nut-cracks, 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, folding measures, each 2_s._ to
4_s._, silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2_s._ to 10_s._,
carpet bags, each 3_s._ to 10_s._, egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box
irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers,
tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras,
medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical
instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases
and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates,
metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves,
lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great
variety of articles too numerous to mention.
Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the
“Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop
proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices
are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount
is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest
“swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.