for the conveyance of the goods from one district to another. Hence,
the pedlar was not only the original merchant, but the primitive
carrier--to whom, perhaps, we owe both our turnpike-roads and railways.
For, since the peculiar characteristic of the pedlar was the carrying
the produce to the consumer, rather than troubling the consumer to go
after the produce, of course it soon became necessary, as the practice
increased, and increased quantities of goods had to be conveyed from
one part of the country to another, that increased facilities of
transit should be effected. The first change was from the pack-_man_ to
the pack-_horse_: for the former a foot-way alone was required; while
the latter necessitated the formation of some kind of a road. Some of
these ancient pack-horse roads existed till within these few years.
Hagbush-lane, which was described by William Hone only twenty years
ago, but which has now vanished, was the ancient bridle or pack-horse
road from London to the North, and extended by the Holloway back road
as far as the City-road, near Old-street. “Some parts of Hagbush-lane,”
says Hone, “are much lower than the meadows on either side.” At one
time a terraced ridge, at another a deep rut, the pack-horse road must
have been to the unaccustomed traveller a somewhat perilous pass.
The historian of Craven, speaking of 1609, says, “At this time the
communication between the north of England and the Universities was
kept up by the carriers, who pursued their long but uniform route
with trains of pack-horses. To their care were consigned packages,
and not unfrequently the persons of young scholars. It was through
their medium, also, that epistolary correspondence was managed; and
as they always visited London, a letter could scarcely be exchanged
between Yorkshire and Oxford in less time than a month.” The General
Post Office was established by Act of Parliament in the year 1660, and
all letters were to be sent through this office, “except such letters
as shall be sent by coaches, common-known carriers of goods by carts,
waggons, and pack-horses, and shall be carried along with their carts,
waggons, and pack-horses respectively.”
“There is no such conveyance as a waggon in this country” (Scotland),
says Roderick Random, referring to the beginning of the last century,
“and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hiring a
horse. I determined therefore to set out with the carriers, who
transport goods from one place to another on horseback; and this scheme
I accordingly put in execution on the 1st day of November, 1739,
sitting on a pack-saddle between two baskets, one of which contained my
goods in a knapsack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed
with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of
my journey on foot, rather than proceed in such a disagreeable manner.”
The present mode of travelling, compared with that of the pack-horse
means of conveyance as pursued of old, forms one of the most striking
contrasts, perhaps, in all history.
Hence we see that the pedlar was originally both carrier and seller;
first conveying his pack on his back, and then, as it increased in
bulk, transferring it to the back of “the pack-horse.” But as soon
as the practice of conveying the commodities to the buyers, instead
of compelling the buyers to go to the commodities, was found to be
advantageous to both consumer and producer, it was deemed expedient
that the two distinct processes of carriage and sale, which are
included in the distribution of commodities, should be conducted by
distinct persons, and hence the carrying and selling of goods became
separate vocations in the State; and such is now the machinery by
which the commodities of different parts of this country, as well as
of others, are at present diffused over the greater portion of this
kingdom. In remote districts however, and the poorer neighbourhoods
of large towns, where there are either too few consumers, or too few
commodities required now to support a fixed distributor with a distinct
apparatus of transit, the pedlar still continues to be the sole means
of diffusing the produce of one locality among the inhabitants of
another; and it is in this light--as the poor man’s merchant--that we
must here consider him.
Among the more ancient of the trades, then, carried on in England
is that of the hawker or pedlar. It is generally considered, as I
said before, that hawking “is as ancient a mode of trade as that
carried on in fairs and markets, towns and villages, as well as at
the castles of the nobles or the cottages of their retainers.” To
fix the origin of fairs is impossible, for, in ancient and mediæval
times, every great gathering was necessarily a fair. Men--whom it
is no violence to language to call “hawkers”--resorted alike to the
Olympic games and to the festivals of the early Christian saints, to
sell or barter their wares. Of our English fairs Mr. Jacob says, in
his “Law Dictionary”--“Various privileges have been annexed to them,
and numerous facilities afforded to the disposal of property in them.
To give them a greater degree of solemnity, they were originally, both
in the ancient and modern world, associated with religious festivals.
In most places, indeed, they are still held on the same day with the
wake or feast of the saint to whom the church is dedicated; and till
the practice was prohibited, it was customary in England to hold them
in churchyards. This practice, I may add, was not fully prohibited
until the reign of Charles II., although it had long before fallen into
disuse. Thus the connection between church and market is shown to be of
venerable antiquity.”
The hawker dealt, in the old times, more in textile fabrics than in
anything else. Indeed, Shakspere has dashed off a catalogue of his
wares, in the song of _Autolycus_:
“Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as e’er was crow.”
In the reigns succeeding the termination of the Wars of the Roses, and
down to the Commonwealth, the hawker’s pack was often stocked with
costly goods; for great magnificence in dress was then the custom of
the wealthy, and even the burgesses on public occasions wore velvet,
fine cambric ruffs, and furs. The hawker was thus often a man of
substance and frequently travelled on horseback, with his wares slung
in bags on his horse’s side, or fitted to the crupper or pommell of his
saddle. He was often, moreover, attended by a man, both for help in his
sales, and protection in travelling. In process of time an established
hawker became the medium of news and of gossip, and frequently the
bearer of communications from town to town. His profits were often
great, but no little trust seems to have been reposed in him as to
the quality and price of his goods; and, until the present century or
so, slop goods were little manufactured, so that he could not so well
practise deceptions. Neither, during the prosperity of the trade, does
it appear that any great degree of dishonesty characterized the hawker,
though to this there were of course plenty of minor exceptions as well
as one glaring contradiction. The wreckers of our southern coasts, who
sometimes became possessed of rich silks, velvets, laces, &c.--(not
unfrequently murdering all the mariners cast on shore, and there was
a convenient superstition among the wreckers, that it was unlucky to
offer help to a drowning man)--disposed of much of their plunder to
the hawkers; and as communication was slow, even down to Mr. Palmer’s
improvements in the Post Office in 1784, the goods thus rescued from
the deep, or obtained by the murder of the mariners, were disposed of
even before the loss of the vessel was known at her destination; for we
are told that there was generally a hawker awaiting a wreck on the most
dangerous shores of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Sussex.
During the last century, and for the first ten years of the present,
the hawker’s was a profitable calling. He usually in later times
travelled with horse and covered cart, visiting fairs, markets, and
private houses, more especially in the country. In some parts the
calling was somewhat hereditary, son succeeding to father after having
officiated as his assistant, and so becoming known to the customers.
The most successful of the class, alike on both sides of the border,
were Scotchmen.
In 1810 the prosperity of this trade experienced a check. In that
year “every hawker, pedlar, or petty chapman going from town to town,
or to other men’s houses, and travelling on foot, carrying to sell
or exposing for sale any goods” was required to pay a yearly licence
of 4_l._, with an additional 4_l._ for every horse, ass, or mule,
used in the business. Nothing, however, in the Act in question, 50
Geo. III. c. 41, as I have before intimated, “extended to prohibit”
the hawking for sale of “any fish, fruit, or victuals” without
licence. Neither is there any extension of the prohibition to the
unlicensed workers or makers of any goods or wares, or their children
or servants resident with them, hawking such goods, and selling them
“in every city, borough, town corporate, or market town,” but not in
villages or country places. “Tinkers, coopers, glaziers, plumbers,
and harness-menders,” are likewise permitted to carry about with them
the proper materials necessary for their business, no licence being
necessary.
The passing of this Act did not materially check the fraudulent
practices of which the hawkers were accused, and of which a portion
of them were doubtlessly guilty; indeed some of the manufacturers,
whose names were pirated by the hawkers, were of opinion that the
licensing for ten or twenty years facilitated fraud, as many people,
both in London and the country, thought they were safe in dealing with
a “licensed” hawker, since he could not procure a licence without a
certificate of his good character from the clergyman of his place of
residence, and from two “reputable inhabitants.” Linen of good quality
used to be extensively hawked, but from 1820 to 1825, or later in
some parts, the hawkers got to deal in an inferior quality, “unions”
(a mixture of linen and cotton), glazed and stiffened, and set off
with gaudy labels bearing sometimes the name of a well-known firm,
but altered in spelling or otherwise, and expressed so as to lead to
the belief that such a firm were the manufacturers of the article.
Jews, moreover, as we have seen, travelled in all parts with inferior
watches and jewellery, and sometimes “did well” by persuading the
possessors of old solid watches, or old seals or jewellery, that they
were ridiculously out of fashion, and so inducing them to give money
along with the old watch for a watch or other article of the newest
fashion, which yet was intrinsically valueless compared with the other.
These and other practices, such as selling inferior lace under pretence
of its having been smuggled from France, and of the choicest quality,
tended to bring the hawker’s trade into disrepute, and the disrepute
affected the honest men in the business. Some sank from the possession
of a good horse and cart to travelling on foot, as of yore, forwarding
goods from place to place by the common carriers, and some relinquished
the itinerant trade altogether. The “cutting” and puffing shopkeepers
appeared next, and at once undersold the “slop” hawker, and foiled
him on his own ground of pushing off inferior wares for the best. The
numbers of the hawkers fell off considerably, but notwithstanding I
find, in the last census tables (1841), the following returns as to the
numbers of “hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars,” distributed throughout
Great Britain. The Government returns, however, admit of no comparison
being formed between these numbers and those of any previous time.
ENGLAND AND WALES.
Bedford 79
Berks 160
Bucks 129
Cambridge 139
Chester 362
Cornwall 175
Cumberland 217
Derby 427
Devon 230
Dorset 97
Durham 301
Essex 339
Gloucester 437
Hereford 44
Hertford 137
Huntingdon 45
Kent 284
Lancaster 1862
Leicester 292
Lincoln 435
Middlesex 1597
Monmouth 163
Norfolk 431
Northampton 214
Northumberland 426
Nottingham 267
Oxford 94
Rutland 23
Salop 240
Somerset 201
Southampton 226
Stafford 472
Suffolk 288
Surrey 609
Sussex 238
Warwick 476
Westmorland 44
Wilts 109
Worcester 247
City of York 63
East Riding of York 200
North Riding 187
West Riding 1039
------
14,038
WALES.
Anglesey 14
Brecon 63
Cardigan 38
Carmarthen 49
Carnarvon 32
Denbigh 69
Flint 35
Glamorgan 202
Merioneth 25
Montgomery 31
Pembroke 46
Radnor 20
---
624
Island in the
British Seas 47
SCOTLAND.
Aberdeen 105
Argyll 44
Ayr 144
Banff 33
Berwick 41
Bute 17
Caithness 4
Clackmannan 18
Dumbarton 29
Dumfries 72
Edinburgh 401
Elgin, or Moray 37
Fife 77
Forfar 108
Haddington 54
Inverness 33
Kincardine 27
Kinross 9
Kirkcudbright 46
Lanark 677
Linlithgow 33
Nairn 2
Orkney and Shetland 10
Peebles 13
Perth 119
Renfrew 107
Ross and Cromarty 11
Roxburgh 96
Selkirk 18
Stirling 95
Sutherland 5
Wigtown 36
----
2561
Thus we find that, in 1841, there were of these trades in
England 14,038
Wales 624
British Isles 47
Scotland 2,561
------
Total in Great Britain 17,270
The counties in which the hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars most abound
appear to be--1st, Lancaster; 2nd, Middlesex; 3rd, Yorkshire (West
Riding); 4th, Lanark; and 5th, Surrey.
What rule, if any rule, was observed in classing these “hawkers,
hucksters, and pedlars,” or what distinction was drawn between a hawker
and a huckster, I am unable to say, but it is certain that the number
of “licensed hawkers” was within one-half of the 17,270; for, in 1841,
the hawkers’ duty realized only 32,762_l._ gross revenue, and waiving
the amount paid for the employment of horses, &c., the official return,
reckoning so many persons paying 4_l._ each, shows only 8190 licensed
hawkers in 1841.
The hawker’s business has been prosecuted far more extensively in
country than in town, but he still continues to deal in London.
OF THE PACKMEN, OR HAWKERS OF SOFT WARES.
The packman, as he is termed, derives his name from carrying his
merchandise or pack upon his back. These itinerant distributors are
far less numerous than they were twenty or twenty-five years since.
A few years since, they were mostly Irishmen, and their principal
merchandise, Irish linens--a fabric not so generally worn now as it was
formerly.
The packmen are sometimes called Manchester-men. These are the men
whom I have described as the sellers of shirtings, sheetings, &c. One
man, who was lately an assistant in the trade, could reckon twenty men
who were possessed of good stocks, good connections, and who had saved
money. They traded in an honourable manner, were well known, and much
respected. The majority of them were natives of the north of Ireland,
and two had been linen manufacturers. It is common, indeed, for all the
Irishmen in this trade to represent themselves as having been connected
with the linen manufacture in Belfast.
This trade is now becoming almost entirely a country trade. There are
at present, I am told, only five pursuing it in London, none of them
having a very extensive connection, so that only a brief notice is
necessary. Their sale is of both cottons and linens for shirts. They
carry them in rolls of 36 yards, or in smaller rolls, each of a dozen
yards, and purchase them at the haberdashery swag-shops, at from 9_d._
to 18_d._ a yard. I now speak of good articles. Their profits are
not very large--as for the dozen yards, which cost them 9_s._, they
often have a difficulty in getting 12_s._--while in street-sale, or in
hawking from house to house, there is great delay. A well-furnished
pack weighs about one cwt., and so necessitates frequent stoppages.
Cotton, for sheetings, is sold in the same manner, costing the vendors
from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 3_d._ a yard.
Of the tricks of the trade, and of the tally system of one of these
chapmen, I had the following account from a man who had been, both as
principal and assistant, a travelling packman, but was best acquainted
with the trade in and about London.
“My master,” he said, “was an Irishman, and told everybody he had been
a manager of a linen factory in Belfast. I believe he was brought up to
be a shoemaker, and was never in the north of Ireland. Anyhow, he was
very shy of talking about Irish factories to Irish gentlemen. I heard
one say to him, ‘Don’t tell me, you have the Cork brogue.’ I know he’d
got some knowledge of linen weaving at Dundee, and could talk about
it very clever; indeed he was a clever fellow. Sometimes, to hear him
talk, you’d think he was quite a religious man, and at others that he
was a big blackguard. It wasn’t drink that made the difference, for he
was no drinker. It’s a great thing on a round to get a man or woman
into a cheerful talk, and put in a joke or two; and that he could do,
to rights. I had 12_s._ a week, standing wages, from him, and bits of
commissions on sales that brought me from 3_s._ to 5_s._ more. He was
a buyer of damaged goods, and we used to ‘doctor’ them. In some there
was perhaps damages by two or three threads being out all the way, so
the manufacturers wouldn’t send them to their regular customers. My
master pretended it was a secret where he got them, but, lord, I knew;
it was at a swag-shop. We used to cut up these in twelves (twelve
yards), sometimes less if they was very bad, and take a Congreve, and
just scorch them here and there, where the flaws was worst, and plaster
over other flaws with a little flour and dust, to look like a stain
from street water from the fire-engine. Then they were from the stock
of Mr. Anybody, the great draper, that had his premises burnt down--in
Manchester or Glasgow, or London--if there’d been a good fire at a
draper’s--or anywhere; we wasn’t particular. They was fine or strong
shirtings, he’d say--and so they was, the sound parts of them--and he’d
sell as cheap as common calico. I’ve heard him say, ‘Why, marm, sure
marm, with your eyes and scissors and needle, them burns--ah! fire’s a
dreadful judgment on a man--isn’t the least morsel of matter in life.
The stains is cured in a wash-tub in no time. It’s only _touched_ by
the fire, and you can humour it, I know, in cutting out as a shirt
ought to be cut; it should be as carefully done as a coat.’ Then we
had an Irish linen, an imitation, you know, a kind of ‘Union,’ which
we call double twist. It is made, I believe, in Manchester, and is a
mixture of linen and cotton. Some of it’s so good that it takes a judge
to tell the difference between it and real Irish. He got some beautiful
stuff at one time, and once sold to a fine-dressed young woman in
Brompton, a dozen yards, at 2_s._ 6_d._ a yard, and the dozen only
cost him 14_s._ Then we did something on tally, but he was dropping
that trade. The shopkeepers undersold him. ‘If you get 60_l._ out of
100_l._, in tally scores,’ he often said, ‘it’s good money, and a fair
living profit;’ but he got far more than that. What was worth 8_s._
was 18_s._ on tally, pay 1_s._ a week. He did most that way with the
masters of coffee-shops and the landlords of little public-houses.
Sometimes, if they couldn’t pay, we’d have dinner, and that went to
account, and he’d quarrel with me after it for what was my share.
There’s not much of this sort of trade now, sir. I believe my old
master got his money together and emigrated.”
“Do you want any ginuine Irish linin, ma’am?” uttered in unmistakable
brogue, seemed to authenticate the fact, that the inquirer (being an
Irishman) in all likelihood possessed the legitimate article; but as
to their obtaining their goods from Coleraine and other places in the
Emerald Isle, famed for the manufacture of linen, it was and is as pure
fiction as the Travels of Baron Munchausen.
The majority of these packmen have discontinued dealing in linens
exclusively, and have added silks, ladies’ dresses, shawls and various
articles connected with the drapery business. The country, and small
towns and villages, remote from the neighbourhood of large and showy
shops, are the likeliest markets for the sale of their goods. In
London the Irish packmen have been completely driven out by the Scotch
tallymen, who indeed are the only class of packmen likely to succeed
in London. If the persevering Scotch tallyman can but set foot in a
decent-looking residence, and be permitted to display his tempting
finery to the “lady of the house,” he generally manages to talk her
into purchasing articles that perhaps she has no great occasion for,
and which serve often to involve her in difficulties for a considerable
period--causing her no little perplexity, and requiring much artifice
to keep the tallyman’s weekly visits a secret from her husband--to say
nothing of paying an enormous price for the goods; for the many risks
which the tallyman incurs, necessitates of course an exorbitant rate of
profit.
“The number of packmen or hawkers of shawls, silks, &c., I think”
(says one of their own body) “must have decreased full one-half
within the last few years. The itinerant haberdashery trade is far
from the profitable business that it used to be, and not unfrequently
do I travel a whole day without taking a shilling: still, perhaps,
one day’s good work will make up for half a dozen bad ones. All the
packmen have hawkers’ licences, as they have mostly too valuable a
stock to incur the risk of losing it for want of such a privilege.
Some of the fraternity” (says my informant) “do not always deal ‘upon
the square;’ they profess to have just come from India or China, and
to have invested all their capital in silks of a superior description
manufactured in those countries, and to have got them on shore
‘unbeknown to the Custom-house authorities.’ This is told in confidence
to the servant-man or woman who opens the door--‘be so good as tell the
lady as much,’ says the hawker, ‘for really I’m afraid to carry the
goods much longer, and I have already sold enough to pay me well enough
for my spec--go, there’s a good girl, tell your missus I have splendid
goods, and am willing almost to give them away, and if we makes a deal
of it, why I don’t mind giving you a handsome present for yourself.’”
This is a bait not to be resisted. Should the salesman succeed with the
mistress, he carries out his promise to the maid by presenting her with
a cap ribbon, or a cheap neckerchief.
The most primitive kind of packmen, or hawkers of soft-wares, who still
form part of the distributing machinery of the country, traverse the
highlands of Scotland. They have their regular rounds, and regular
days of visiting their customers; their arrival is looked for with
interest by the country people; and the inmates of the farm-house
where they locate for the night consider themselves fortunate in
having to entertain the packman; for he is their newsmonger, their
story-teller, their friend, and their acquaintance, and is always
made welcome. His wares consist of hose--linsey wolsey, for making
petticoats--muslins for caps--ribbons--an assortment of needles,
pins, and netting-pins--and all sorts of small wares. He always
travels on foot. It is suspected that he likewise does a little
in the “jigger line,” for many of these Highlanders have, or are
supposed to have, their illicit distilleries; and the packmen are
suspected of trafficking without excise interference. Glasgow, Dundee,
Galashiels, and Harwick are the principal manufacturing towns where
the packman replenishes his stock. “My own opinion,” says an informant
of considerable experience, “is that these men seldom grow rich; but
the prevailing idea in the country part of Scotland is, that the
pedlar has an unco lang stockin wi’ an awfu’ amount o goden guineas in
it, and that his pocket buik is plumped out wi’ a thick roll of bank
notes. Indeed there are many instances upon record of poor packmen
having been murdered--the assassins, doubtlessly, expecting a rich
booty.” It scarcely ever costs the packman of Scotland anything for
his bed and board. The Highlanders are a most hospitable people with
acquaintances--although with strangers at first they are invariably
shy and distant. In Ireland there is also the travelling pedlar, whose
habits and style of doing business are nearly similar to that of the
Scotchman. Some of the packmen of Scotland have risen to eminence and
distinction. A quondam lord provost of Glasgow, a gentleman still
living, and upon whom the honour of knighthood has been conferred,
was, according to common report, in his earlier days a packman; and
rumour also does the gentleman the credit to acknowledge that he is not
ashamed to own it.
I am told by a London hawker of soft goods, or packman, that the number
of his craft, hawking London and its vicinity, as far as he can judge,
is about 120 (the census of 1841 makes the London hawkers, hucksters
and pedlars amount to 2041). In the 120 are included the Irish linen
hawkers. I am also informed that the fair trader’s profits amount to
about 20 per cent., while those of the not over-particular trader
range from 80 to 200 per cent. In a fair way of business it is said
the hawker’s taking will amount, upon an average, to 7_l._ or 8_l._
per week; whereas the receipts of the “duffer,” or unfair hawker, will
sometimes reach to 50_l._ per week. Many, however, travel days, and do
not turn a penny.
STATEMENT OF A PACKMAN.