principally carried on for a few days before and after the 5th of
November, and again at Christmas-tide. “Last November was good for
crackers,” said one man; “it was either Guy Faux day, or the day
before, I’m not sure which now, that I took 15_s._, and nearly all
of boys, for waterloo crackers and ball crackers (the common trade
names), ‘waterloo’ being the ‘pulling crackers.’ At least three parts
was ball crackers. I sold them from a barrow, wheeling it about as
if it was hearthstone, and just saying quietly when I could, ‘Six a
penny crackers.’ The boys soon tell one another. All sorts bought of
me; doctors’ boys, school boys, pages, boys as was dressed beautiful,
and boys as hadn’t neither shoes nor stockings. It’s sport for them
all.” The same man told me he did well at what he called “last Poram
fair,” clearing 13_s._ 6_d._ in three days, or rather evenings or
nights. “Poram fair, sir,” he said, “is a sort of feast among the Jews,
always three weeks I’ve heard, afore their Passover, and I then work
Whitechapel and all that way.”
I inquired of a man who had carried on this street trade for a good
many years, it might be ten or twelve, if he had noticed the uses to
which his boy-customers put his not very innocent wares, and he entered
readily into the subject.
“Why, sir,” he said, “they’re not all boy-customers, as you call them,
but they’re far the most. I’ve sold to men, and often to drunken men.
What larks there is with the ball-crackers! One man lost his eye at
Stepney Fair, but that’s 6 or 7 years ago, from a lark with crackers.
The rights of it I never exactly understood, but I know he lost his
eye, from the dry gravel in the ball-cracker bouncing into it. But it’s
the boys as is fondest of crackers. I sold ’em all last Christmas,
and made my 5_s._ and better on Boxing-day. I was sold out before 6
o’clock, as I had a regular run at last--just altogether. After that, I
saw one lad go quietly behind a poor lame old woman and pull a Waterloo
close behind her ear; he was a biggish boy and tidily dressed; and the
old body screamed, ‘I’m shot.’ She turned about, and the boy says, says
he, ‘Does your grandmother know you’re out? It’s a improper thing, so
it is, for you to be walking out by yourself.’ You should have seen her
passion! But as she was screaming out, ‘You saucy wagabone! You boys is
all wagabones. People can’t pass for you. I’ll give you in charge, I
will,” the lad was off like a shot.
“But one of the primest larks I ever saw that way was last winter,
in a street by Shoreditch. An old snob that had a bulk was making
it all right for the night, and a lad goes up. I don’t know what he
said to the old boy, but I saw him poke something, a last I think it
was, against the candle, put it out, and then run off. In a minute,
three or four lads that was ready, let fly at the bulk with their
ball-crackers, and there was a clatter as if the old snob had tumbled
down, and knocked his lasts down; but he soon had his head out--he was
Irish, I think--and he first set up a roar like a Smithfield bull, and
he shouts, ‘I’m kilt intirely wid the murthering pistols! Po-lice!
Po-o-lice!’ He seemed taken quite by surprise--for they was capital
crackers--I think he couldn’t have been used to bulks, or he would have
been used to pelting; but how he did bellow, surely.
“I think it was that same night too, I saw a large old man, buttoned
up, but seeming as if he was fine-dressed for a party, in a terrible
way in the Commercial-road. I lived near there then. There was
three boys afore me--and very well they did it--one of ’em throws a
ball-cracker bang at the old gent’s feet, just behind him, and makes
him jump stunning, and the boy walks on with his hands in his pocket,
as if he know’d nothing about it. Just after that another boy does
the same, and then the t’other boy; and the old gent--Lord, how he
swore! It was shocking in such a respectable man, as I told him, when
he said, _I’d_ crackered him! ‘Me cracker you,’ says I; ‘it ’ud look
better if you’d have offered to treat a poor fellow to a pint of beer
with ginger in it, and the chill off, than talk such nonsense.’ As we
was having this jaw, one of the boys comes back and lets fly again; and
the old gent saw how it was, and he says, ‘Now, if you’ll run after
that lad, and give him a d----d good hiding, you shall have the beer.’
‘Money down, sir,’ says I, ‘if you mean honour bright;’ but he grumbled
something, and walked away. I saw him soon after, talking to a Bobby,
so I made a short cut home.”
At the fairs near London there is a considerable sale of these
combustibles; and they are often displayed on large stalls in the
fair. They furnish the means of practical jokes to the people on their
return. “After last Whitsun Greenwich Fair,” said a street-seller
to me, “I saw a gent in a white choker, like a parson, look in at a
pastry-cook’s shop, as is jist by the Elephant (and Castle), a-waiting
for a ’bus, I s’pose. There was an old ’oman with a red face standing
near him; and I saw a lad, very quick, pin something to one’s coat and
the t’other’s gown. They turned jist arter, and bang goes a Waterloo,
and they looks savage one at another; and hup comes that indentical
boy, and he says to the red faced ’oman, a pointing to the white
choker, ‘Marm, I seed him a twiddling with your gown. He done it for a
lark arter the fair, and ought to stand something.’ So the parson, if
he were a parson, walked away.”
There are eight makers, I am told, who supply the street-sellers and
the small shops with these crackers. The wholesale price is 4_d._
to 6_d._ a gross, the “cracker-balls” being the dearest. The retail
price in the streets is from six to twelve a penny, according to the
appearance and eagerness of the purchaser. Some street traders carry
these commodities on trays, and very few are stationary, except at
fairs. I am assured, that for a few days last November, from 50 to 60
men and women were selling crackers in the streets, of course “on the
sly.” In so irregular and surreptitious a trade, it is not possible
even to approximate to statistics. The most intelligent man that I met
with, acquainted, as he called it, “with all the ins and outs of the
trade,” calculated that in November and Christmas, 100_l._ at least
was expended in the streets in these combustibles, and another 100_l._
in the other parts of the year. About Tower-hill, Ratcliff-highway
(or “the Highway,” as street-sellers often call it), and in Wapping
and Shadwell, the sale of crackers is the best. The sellers are the
ordinary street-sellers, and no patter is required.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF LUCIFER-MATCHES.
Under this head I shall speak only of those who _sell_ the matches,
apart from those who, in proffering lucifer boxes, mix up trade with
mendicancy. The latter class I have spoken of, and shall treat of them
more fully under the head of “the London Poor.”
Until “lucifers” became cheap and in general use, the matches sold by
the street-folks, and there were numbers in the trade, were usually
prepared by themselves. The manufactures were simple enough. Wooden
splints, twice or thrice the length of the lucifer matches now in use,
were prepared, and dipped into brimstone, melted in an iron ladle. The
matches were never, as now, self-igniting, or rather ignitable by rapid
friction; but it was necessary to “strike a light” by the concussion of
a flint and steel, the sparks from which were communicated to tinder
kept in a “box.”
The brimstone match-sellers were of all ages, but principally, I
am told, old people. Many of them during, and for some years after
the war, wore tattered regimentals, or some remains of military
paraphernalia, and had been, or assumed to have been, soldiers, but not
entitled to a pension; the same with seamen. I inquired of some of the
present race of match-sellers what became of the “old brimstones,” as
I heard them called, but from them I could gain little information. An
old groundsel-gatherer told me that some went into his trade. Others,
I learned, “took to pins,” and others to song or tract selling. Indeed
the brimstone match-sellers not unfrequently carried a few songs to
vend with their matches. It must be borne in mind that, 15 years ago,
those street trades, into which any one who is master of a few pence
can now embark, were less numerous. Others of the match-sellers,
with rounds, or being known men, displaced their “brimstones” for
“lucifers,” and traded on as usual. I heard of one old man, now dead,
who made a living on brimstone-matches by selling a good quantity in
Hackney, Stoke Newington, and Islington, and who long refused to sell
lucifer-matches; “they was new-fangled rubbish,” he said, “and would
soon have their day.” He found his customers, however, fall off, and
in apprehension of losing them all, he was compelled to move with the
times.
“I believe, sir,” said one man, still a street-seller, but not having
sold matches of any kind for years,--“I believe I was the first who
hawked ‘Congreves,’ or ‘instantaneous lights;’ they weren’t called
‘lucifers’ for a good while after. I bought them at Mr. Jones’s
light-house in the Strand, and if I remember right, for it must be
more than 20 years ago, between 1820 and 1830, Mr. Jones had a patent
somehow about them. I bought them at 7_s._ a dozen boxes, and sold
them at 1_s._ a box. I’m not sure how many matches was in a box, but I
think it was 100. You’ll get as much for a farthing now, as you would
for a shilling then. The matches were lighted by being drawn quickly
through sand-paper. I sold them for a twelvemonth, and had the trade
all to myself. As far as I know, I had; for I never met with or heard
of anybody else in it all that time. I did decent at it. I suppose
I cleared my 15_s._ a week. The price kept the same while I was in
the business. I sold them at city offices. I supplied the Phœnix in
Lombard-street, I remember, and the better sort of shops. People
liked them when they wanted to light a candle in a hurry, in places
where there was no fire to seal a letter, or such like. There was no
envelopes in them days. The penny-postage brought _them_ in. I was
sometimes told not to carry such things there again, as they didn’t
want the house set on fire by keeping such dangerous things in it.
Now, I suppose, lucifers are in every house, and that there’s not a
tinder-box used in all London.” Such appears to have been the beginning
of the extensive street-trade in these chemical preparations now
carried on. At the twelvemonth’s end, my informant went into another
line of business.
The “German Congreves” were soon after introduced, and were at first
sold wholesale at the “English and German” swag-shops in Houndsditch,
at 2_s._ the dozen boxes, and were retailed at 3_d._, 4_d._, and
sometimes as high as 6_d._ the box. These matches, I am told, “kept
their hold” about five years, when they ceased to be a portion of the
street trade. The German Congreves were ignited by being drawn along a
slip of sand-paper, at the bottom of the box, as is done at present;
with some, however, a double piece of sand-paper was sold for purposes
of igniting.
After this time cheaper and cheaper matches were introduced, and were
sold in the streets immediately on their introduction. At first, the
cheaper matches had an unpleasant smell, and could hardly be kept in
a bed-room, but that was obviated, and the trade progressed to its
present extent.
The lucifer-match boxes, the most frequent in the street-trade,
are bought by the poor persons selling them in the streets, at the
manufacturers, or at oil-shops, for a number of oilmen buy largely
of the manufacturers, and can “supply the trade” at the same rate as
the manufacturer. The price is 2-1/4_d._ the dozen boxes, each box
containing 150 matches. Some of the boxes (German made) are round, and
many used to be of tin, but these are rarely seen now. The prices are
proportionate. The common price of a lucifer box in the streets is
1/2_d._, but many buyers, I am told, insist upon and obtain three a
penny, which they do generally of some one who supplies them regularly.
The trade is chiefly itinerant.
One feeble old man gave me the following account of his customers. He
had been in the employ of market-gardeners, carmen, and others, whose
business necessitated the use of carts and horses. In his old age
he was unable to do any hard work; he was assisted, however, by his
family, especially by one son living in the country; he had a room in
the house of a daughter, who was a widow, but his children were only
working people, with families, he said, and so he sold a few lucifers
“as a help,” and to have the comfort of a bit of tobacco, and buy an
old thing in the way of clothing without troubling any one. Out of his
earnings, too, he paid 6_d._ a week for the schooling of one of his
daughter’s children.
“I _sell_ these lucifers, sir,” he said, in answer to my inquiries, “I
never beg with them: I’d scorn it. My children help me, as I’ve told
you; I did my best for them when I was able, and so I have a just sort
of claim on them. Well, indeed, then, sir, as you ask me, if I had only
myself to depend upon, why I couldn’t live. I must beg or go into the
house, and I don’t know which I should take to worst at 72. I’ve been
selling lucifers about five years, for I was worn out with hard work
and rheumatics when I was 65 or 66. I go regular rounds, about 2 miles
in a day, or 2-1/2, or if it’s fine 3 miles or more from where I live,
and the same distance back, for I can sometimes walk middling if I can
do nothing else. I carry my boxes tied up in a handkerchief, and hold 2
or 3 in my hand. I’m ashamed to hold them out on any rail where I aint
known; and never do if there isn’t a good-humoured looking person to be
seen below, or through the kitchen window. But my eyesight aint good,
and I make mistakes, and get snapped up very short at times. Yesterday,
now, I was lucky in my small way. There’s a gentleman, that if I can
see him, I can always sell boxes to at 1_d._ a piece. That’s his price,
he says, and he takes no change if I offer it. I saw him yesterday at
his own door, and says he, ‘Well, old greybeard, I haven’t seen you for
a long time. Here’s 1_s._, leave a dozen boxes.’ I told him I had only
11 left; but he said, ‘O, it’s all the same,’ and he told a boy that
was crossing the hall to take them into the kitchen, and we soon could
hear the housekeeper grumbling quite loud--perhaps she didn’t know her
master could hear--about being bothered with rubbish that people took
in master with; and the gentleman shouts out, ‘Some of you stop that
old ---- mouth, will you? She wants a profit out of them in her bills.’
All was quiet then, and he says to me quite friendly, ‘If she wasn’t
the best cook in London I’d have quitted her long since, by G--.’” The
old man chuckled no little as he related this; he then went on, “He’s
a swearing man, but a good man, I’m sure, and I don’t know why he’s so
kind to me. Perhaps he is to others. I’m ashamed to hold my boxes to
the ary rails, ’cause so many does that to beg. I sell lucifers both to
mistresses and maids. Some will have 3 for a 1_d._, and though it’s a
poor profit, I do it, for they say, ‘O, if you come this way constant,
we’ll buy of you whenever we want. If you won’t give 3 a penny, there’s
plenty will.’ I sell, too, in some small streets, Lisson-grove way,
to women that see me from their windows, and come down to the door.
They’re needle-workers I think. They say sometimes, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen
you, for it saves me the trouble of running out.’
[Illustration: THE LUCIFER MATCH GIRL.
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
“Well, sir, I’m sure I hardly know how many boxes I sell. On a middling
good day I sell 2 dozen, on a good day 3 dozen, on a bad day not a
dozen, sometimes not half-a-dozen, and sometimes, but not often, not
more than a couple. Then in bad weather I don’t go out, and time hangs
very heavy if it isn’t a Monday; for every Monday I buy a threepenny
paper of a newsman for 2_d._, and read it as well as I can with my old
eyes and glasses, and get my daughter to read a bit to me in the
evening, and next day I send the paper to my son in the country, and so
save him buying one. As well as I can tell I sell about 9 dozen boxes a
week, one week with another, and clear from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ It’s
employment for me as well as a help.”
It is not easy to estimate the precise number of persons who really
sell lucifer matches as a means of subsistence, or as a principal
means. There are many, especially girls and women, the majority being
Irishwomen, who do not directly solicit charity, and do not even say,
“Buy a box of lucifers from a poor creature, to get her a ha’porth
of bread;” or, “please a bit of broken victuals, if it’s only cold
potatoes, for a box of the best lucifers.” Yet these match-sellers look
so imploringly down an area, or through a window, some “shouldering” a
young child the while, and remain there so pertinaciously that a box is
bought, or a halfpenny given, often merely to get rid of the applicant.
An intelligent man, a street-seller, and familiar with street-trading
generally, whom I questioned on the subject, said: “It’s really hard
to tell, sir, but I should calculate this way. It’s the real sellers
you ask about; them as tries to live on their selling lucifers, or as
their main support. I have worked London and the outside places--yes,
I mean the suburbs--in ten rounds, or districts, but six is better,
for you can then go the same round the same day next week, and so get
known. The real sellers, in my opinion, is old men and women out of
employ, or past work, and to beg they are ashamed. I’ve read the Bible
you see, sir, though I’ve had too much to do with gay persons even to
go to church. I should say that in each of those ten rounds, or at any
rate, splicing one with another, was twenty persons really selling
lucifers. Yes, and depending a good deal upon them, for they’re an
easy carriage for an infirm body, and as ready a sale as most things.
I don’t reckon them as begs, or whines, or sticks to a house for an
hour, but them as sells; in my opinion, they’re 200, and no more. All
the others dodges, in one way or other, on pity and charity. There’s
one lurk that’s getting common now. A man well dressed, and very clean,
and wearing gloves, knocks at a door, and asks to speak to the master
or mistress. If he succeeds, he looks about him as if he was ashamed,
and then he pulls out of his coat-pocket a lucifer box or two, and
asks, as a favour, to be allowed to sell one, as reduced circumstances
drive him to do so. He doesn’t beg, but I don’t reckon him a seller,
for he has always some story or other to tell, that’s all a fakement.”
Most dwellers in a suburb will have met with one of these well-dressed
match-sellers.
Adopting my informant’s calculation, and supposing that each of these
traders take, on lucifers alone, but 4_s._ weekly, selling nine dozen
(with a profit to the seller of from 1_s._ 9_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._),
we find 2080_l._ expended in this way. The matches are sold also at
stalls, with other articles, in the street markets, and elsewhere;
but this traffic, I am told, becomes smaller, and only amounts to
one-tenth of the amount I have specified as taken by itinerants.
These street-sellers reside in all parts of town which I have before
specified as the quarters of the poor.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CIGAR LIGHTS, OR FUZEES.
This is one of the employments to which boys, whom neglect,
ill-treatment, destitution, or a vagrant disposition, have driven or
lured to a street life, seem to resort to almost as readily as to the
offers, “Old your ’os, sir?” “Shall I carry your passel, marm?”
The trifling capital required to enter into the business is one cause
of its numbering many followers. The “fuzees,” as I most frequently
heard them called, are sold at the “Congreve shops,” and are chiefly
German made. At one time, indeed, they were announced as “German
tinder.” The wholesale charge is 4-1/2_d._ per 1000 “lights.” The 1000
lights are apportioned into fifty rows, each of twenty self-igniting
matches; and these “rows” are sold in the streets, one or two for
1/2_d._, and two, three, or four 1_d._ It is common enough for a
juvenile fuzee-seller to buy only 500; so that 2-1/4_d._ supplies his
stock in trade.
The boys (for the majority of the street-traders who sell _only_
fuzees, are boys) frequent the approaches to the steam-boat piers, the
omnibus stands, and whatever places are resorted to by persons who love
to smoke in the open air. Some of these young traders have neither
shoes nor stockings, more especially the Irish lads, who are at least
half the number, and their apology for a cap fully displays the large
red ears, and flat features, which seem to distinguish a class of the
Irish children in the streets of London. Some Irish boys hold out
their red-tipped fuzees with an appealing look, meant to be plaintive,
and say, in a whining tone, “Spend a halfpenny on a poor boy, your
honour.” Others offer them, without any appealing look or tone, either
in silence, or saying--“Buy a fuzee to light your pipe or cigar, sir; a
row of lights for a 1/2_d._”
I met with one Irish boy, of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who
was offering fuzees to the persons going to Chalk Farm fair on Easter
Tuesday, but the rain kept away many visitors, and the lad could hardly
find a customer. He was literally drenched, for his skin, shining with
the rain, could be seen about his arms and knees through the slits of
his thin corduroy jacket and trowsers, and he wore no shirt.
“It’s oranges I sell in ginral, your honour,” he said, “and it’s
on oranges I hopes to be next week, plaze God. But mother--it’s
orange-selling she is too--wanted to make a grand show for Aister wake,
and tuk the money to do it, and put me on the fuzees. It’s the thruth
I’m telling your honour. She thought I might be after making a male’s
mate” (meal’s meat) “out of them, intirely; but the sorra a male I’ll
make to day if it cost me a fardin, for I haven’t tuk one. I niver
remimber any fader; mother and me lives together somehow, glory be to
God; but it’s often knowin’ what it is to be hungry we are. I’ve sould
fuzees before, when ingans, and nuts, and oranges was dear and not for
the poor to buy, but I niver did so bad as to-day. A gintleman once
said to me: ‘Here, Pat, yer sowl, you look hungry. Here’s a thirteener
for yez; go and get drunk wid it.’ Och, no, your honour, he wasn’t an
Irish gintleman; it was afther mocking me he was, God save him.” On my
asking the boy if he felt hurt at this mockery, he answered, slily,
with all his air of simplicity, “Sure, thin, wasn’t there the shillin’?
For it was a shillin’ he gave me, glory be to God. No, I niver heard it
called a thirteener before, but mother has. Och, thin, sir, indeed, and
it’s could and wet I am. I have a new shirt, as was giv to mother for
me by a lady, but I wouldn’t put it on sich a day as this, your honour,
sir. I’ll go to mass in it ivery Sunday. I’ve made 6_d._ a day and
sometimes more a sellin’ fuzees, wid luck, God be praised, but the bad
wither’s put me out intirely this time.”
The fuzee-sellers frequently offer their wares at the bars of
public-houses in the daytime, and sometimes dispose of them to those
landlords who sell cigars. From the best information I can command
there are now upwards of 200 persons selling fuzees in the streets of
the metropolis. But the trade is often collateral. The cigar-seller
offers fuzees, play-bill sellers (boys) do so sometimes at the doors
of the theatres to persons coming out, the pipe-sellers also carry
them; they are sometimes sold along with lucifer matches, and at
miscellaneous stalls. It will, I believe, be accurate to state that in
the streets there are generally 100 persons subsisting, or endeavouring
to subsist, on the sale of fuzees alone. It may be estimated also that
each of these traders averages a receipt of 10_d._ a day (with a profit
exceeding 6_d._), so that 1300_l._ is yearly laid out in the streets in
this way.
Of the fuzee-selling lads, those who are parentless, or runaway, sleep
in the lodging-houses, in the better conducted of which the master or
deputy takes charge of the stock of fuzees or lucifer-matches during
the night to avert the risk of fire; in others these combustibles are
stowed anywhere at the discretion, or indiscretion, of the lodgers.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GUTTA-PERCHA HEADS.
There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find
their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively
brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually
disappear. These are usually things which are grotesque or amusing,
but of no utility, and they are supplanted by some more attractive
novelty--a main attraction being that it is a novelty.