“gutta-percha heads;” these, however, have no gutta-percha in their
composition, but consist solely of a composition made of glue and
treacle--the same as is used for printer’s rollers. The heads are
small coloured models of the human face, usually with projecting nose
and chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit of being squeezed
into a different form of features, their elasticity causing them to
return to the original caste. The trade carried on in the streets in
these toys was at one time extensive, but it seems now to be gradually
disappearing. On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there
was not one “head” exposed for sale in any of the four great street
markets of Leather-lane, the Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the
Hampstead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.
The trade became established in the streets upwards of two years ago.
At first, I am told by a street-seller, himself one of the first, there
were six “head-sellers,” who “worked” the parks and their vicinity.
My informant one day sold a gross of heads in and about Hyde-park,
and a more fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1-1/2 gross.
The heads were recommended, whenever opportunity offered, by a little
patter. “Here,” one man used to say, “here’s the Duke of Wellington’s
head for 1_d._ It’s modelled from the statty on horseback, but is a
improvement. His nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel’s only 1_d._
Anybody you please is 1_d._; a free choice and no favour. The Queen
and all the Royal Family 1_d._ apiece.” As the street-seller offered
to dispose of the model of any eminent man’s head and face, he held
up some one of the most grotesque of the number. Another man one
Saturday evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers and others
in the street markets “pattering” them off as the likenesses of any
policeman who might be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was when
the trade was new. The number of sellers was a dozen in the second
week; it was soon twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of
the heads; besides these the heads were offered to the street-buying
public by many of the stationary street-folk, whose stock partook of a
miscellaneous character. The men carrying on this traffic were of the
class of general street-sellers.
“The trade was spoiled, sir,” said an informant, “by so many going
into it, but I’ve heard that it’s not bad in parts of the country now.
The sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and Sundays was the
best days. I don’t pretend to be learned about religion, but I know
that many a time after I’d earned next to nothing in a wet week, it
came a fine Sunday morning, and I took as much as got me and my wife
and children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and sometimes, when
we could depend on it, smoking hot from the baker’s oven; and I then
felt I had something to thank God for. You see, sir, when a man’s been
out all the week, and often with nothing to call half a dinner, and
his wife’s earnings only a few pence by sewing at home, with three
young children to take care of, you’re nourished and comforted, and
your strength keeps up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in your
own room. But them as eats their dinner without having to earn it,
can’t understand about that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped,
the police drive us about like dogs, not gentlemen’s dogs, but stray
or mad dogs. And it seems there’s some sort of a new police. I can’t
understand a bit of it, and I don’t want to, for the old police is
trouble enough.”
The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the “English and German”
swag-shops. A few are made by the men who sell them in the streets.
The “swag” price is 1_s._ the gross; at one time the swag man demurred
to sell less than half a gross, but now when the demand is diminished,
a dozen is readily supplied for 8_d._ The street price retail, is and
always was 1_d._ a head. The principal purchasers in the street are
boys and young men, with a few tradesmen or working people, “such as
can afford a penny or two,” who buy the “gutta-percha” heads for their
children. There used to be a tolerable trade in public houses, where
persons enjoying themselves bought them “for a lark,” but this trade
has now dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the “larks,” an informant
knew to be practised, was to attach the head to a piece of paper or
card, write upon it some one’s name, make it up into a parcel, and send
it to the flattered individual. The same man had sold heads to young
women, not servant-maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid
employment, and he believed, from their manner when buying, for some
similar purpose of “larking.” When the heads were a novelty, he sold a
good many to women of the town.
There are now no street-folks who depend upon the sale of these
gutta-percha heads, but they sell them occasionally. The usual mode
is to display them on a tray, and now, generally with other things.
One man showed me his box, which, when the lid was raised, he carried
as a tray slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-percha heads,
exhibition medals, and rings and other penny articles of jewellery.
There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons selling gutta-percha
heads in the streets, some of them confining their business solely to
those articles. In this number, however, I do not include those who
are both makers and sellers. Their average receipts, I am assured, do
not exceed 5_s._ a week each, for, though some may take 15_s._ a week,
others, and generally the stationary head-sellers, do not take 1_s._
The profit to the street retailer is one third of his receipts. From
this calculation it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue,
390_l._ is spent yearly in these street toys. At one time it was far
more than twice the amount.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FLY-PAPERS AND BEETLE-WAFERS.
Fly-Papers came, generally, into street-traffic, I am informed, in the
summer of 1848.
The fly-papers are sold wholesale at many of the oil-shops, but the
principal shop for the supply of the street-traders is in Whitechapel.
The wholesale price is 2-1/4_d._ a dozen, and the (street) retail
charge 1/2_d._ a paper, or three 1_d._ A young man, to whom I was
referred, and whom I found selling, or rather bartering, crockery, gave
me the following account of his experience of the fly-paper trade. He
was a rosy-cheeked, strong-built young fellow, and said he thought
he was “getting on” in his present trade. He spoke merrily of his
troubles, as I have found common among his class, when they are over.
“My father had a milk-walk,” he said, “and when he died I was
without money and had nothing to do, but I soon got a place with a
single gentleman. He had a small house, and kept only me and a old
housekeeper. I was to make myself generally useful, but when I first
went, the most I had to do was to look after a horse that master had.
Master never was on horseback in his life, but he took Skipjack--that
was the horse’s name, he was rising six--for a debt, and kept him two
months, till he could sell him to his mind. Master took a largeish
garden--for he was fond of growing flowers and vegetables, and made
presents of them--just before poor Skipjack went, and I was set to work
in it, besides do my house-work. It was a easy place, and I was wery
comfable. But master, who was a good master and a friend to a poor man,
as I know, got into difficulties; he was something in the City; I never
understood what; and one night, when I’d been above a year and a-half
with him, he told me I must go, for he couldn’t afford to keep me any
longer. Next day he was arrested, quite sudden I believe, and sent to
prison for debt. I had a good character, but nobody cared for one from
a man in prison, and in a month my money was out, and my last 3_s._
6_d._ went for an advertisement, what was no good to me. I then took to
holding horses or anything that way, and used to sleep in the parks or
by the road-sides where it was quiet. I did that for a month and more.
I’ve sometimes never tasted food all day, and used to quench myself (so
he worded it) with cold water from the pumps. It took off the hunger
for a time. I got to know other boys that was living as I was, and when
I could afford it I slept at lodging-houses, the boys took me to or
told me about. One evening a gentleman gave me 1_s._ for catching his
horse that he’d left standing, but it had got frightened, and run off.
Next morning I went into the fly-paper trade,--it’s nearly two years
ago, I think--because a boy I slept with did tidy in it. We bought the
papers at the first shop as was open, and then got leave of the deputy
of the lodging-house to catch all the flies we could, and we stuck
them thick on the paper, and fastened the paper to our hats. I used to
think, when I was in service, how a smart livery hat, with a cockade to
it, would look, but instead of that I turned out, the first time in my
life that ever I sold anything, with my hat stuck round with flies. I
felt so ashamed I could have cried. I was miserable, I felt so awkerd.
But I spent my last 2_d._ in some gin and milk to give me courage, and
that brightened me up a bit, and I set to work. I went Mile-end way,
and got out of the main streets, and I suppose I’d gone into streets
and places where there hadn’t often been fly-papers before, and I soon
had a lot of boys following me, and I felt, almost, as if I’d picked a
pocket, or done something to be ’shamed of. I could hardly cry ‘Catch
’em alive, only a halfpenny!’ But I found I could sell my papers to
public-houses and shopkeepers, such as grocers and confectioners, and
that gave me pluck. The boys caught flies, and then came up to me, and
threw them against my hat, and if they stuck the lads set up a shout.
I stuck to the trade, however, and took 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ every day
that week, more than half of it profit, and on Saturday I took 5_s._
6_d._ The trade is all to housekeepers. I called at open shops and
looked up at the windows, or held up my hat at private houses, and was
sometimes beckoned to go in and sell my papers. Women bought most, I
think. ‘Nasty things,’ they used to say, ‘there’s no keeping nothing
clean for them.’ I stuck to the trade for near two months, and then I
was worth 13_s._ 6_d._, and had got a pair of good shoes, and a good
second-hand shirt, with one to change it; and next I did a little in
tins and hardware, at the places where I used to go my fly rounds, and
in the winter I got into the crock-trade, with another young fellow for
a mate, and I’m in it yet, and getting a tidy connection, I think.”
Some of the fly-paper sellers make their stock-in-trade, but
three-fourths of the number buy them ready-made. The street-sellers
make them of old newspapers or other waste-paper, no matter how dirty.
To the paper they apply turpentine and common coach varnish, some using
resin instead of varnish, and occasionally they dash a few grains of
sugar over the composition when spread upon the paper.
Last summer, I was informed, there were fifty or sixty persons selling
fly-papers and beetle wafers in the streets; some of them boys, and
all of them of the general class of street-sellers, who “take” to any
trade for which 1_s._ suffices as capital. Their average earnings may
be estimated at 2_s._ 6_d._ a day, about one-half being profit. This
gives a street outlay, say for a “season” of ten weeks, of 375_l._,
calculating fifty sellers.
A few of these street traders carried a side of a newspaper, black
with flies, attached to a stick, waving it like a flag. The cries
were “Catch ’em alive! Catch ’em alive for 1/2_d._!” “New method of
destroying thousands!”
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MISCELLANEOUS MANUFACTURED ARTICLES.
In addition to the more staple wares which form the street trade in
manufactured articles of a miscellaneous character, are many, as I
said before, which have been popular for a while and are now entirely
disused. In the course of my inquiry it was remarkable how oblivious I
found many of the street-sellers as to what they had sold at various
periods. “O dear, yes sir, I’ve sold all sorts of things in the streets
besides what I’m on now; first one and then another as promised a
few pence,” was the substance of a remark I frequently heard; but
_what_ was meant by the one and the other thing thus sold they had a
difficulty to call to mind, but on a hint being thrown out they could
usually give the necessary details. From the information I acquired I
select the following curious matter.
Six or seven years ago _Galvanic Rings_ were sold extensively by
the street-folk. These were clumsy lead-coloured things, which were
described by the puffing shop-keepers, and in due course by the
street-sellers, as a perfect amulet; a thing which by its mere contact
with the finger would not only cure but prevent “fits, rheumatics, and
cramps.” On my asking a man who had sold them if these were all the
ailments of which he and the others proclaimed the galvanic rings an
infallible cure, he answered: “Like the quack medicines you read about,
sir, in ’vertisements, we said they was good for anything anybody
complained of or was afraid was coming on them, but we went mostly for
rheumatics. A sight of tin some of the shopkeepers must have made,
for what we sold at 1_d._ they got 6_d._ a piece for. Then for gold
galvanics--and I’ve been told they was gilt--they had 10_s._ 6_d._
each. The streets is nothing to the shops on a dodge. I’ve been told by
people as I’d sold galvanics to, that they’d had benefit from them. I
suppose that was just superstitious. I think Hyams did the most of any
house in galvanics.”
The men selling these rings--for the business was carried on almost
entirely by men--were the regular street-traders, who sell “first
one thing and then another.” They were carried in boxes, as I have
shown medals are now, and they generally formed a portion of the
street-jeweller’s stock, whether he were itinerant or stationary. The
purchasers were labourers in the open air, such as those employed about
buildings, whose exposure to the alternations of heat and cold render
them desirous of a cure for, or preventive against rheumatism. The
costermongers were also purchasers, and in the course of my inquiries
among that numerous body, I occasionally saw a galvanic ring still worn
by a few, and those chiefly, I think, fish-sellers.
Nor was the street or shop trade in these galvanic rings confined to
amulets for the finger. I heard of one elderly woman, then a prosperous
street-seller in the New Cut, who slept with a galvanic ring on every
toe, she suffered so much from cramp and rheumatism! There were also
galvanic shields, which were to be tied round the waist, and warranted
“to cure all over.” They were retailed at 6_d._ each. Galvanic earrings
were likewise a portion of this manufacture. They were not “drops”
from the ear, but filled behind and around it as regards the back of
the skull, and were to avert rheumatic attacks, and even aching from
the head. The street price was 1_s._ the pair. Galvanic bracelets,
handsomely gilt, were 2_s._ 6_d._ the pair. But the sale of all these
higher-priced charms was a mere nonentity compared to that of the penny
rings.
Another trade--if it may be classed under this head--carried on by
great numbers and with great success for a while, was that of _cards
with the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a sixpence_. This was an
engraving--now and then offered in the streets still--strictly
fulfilling the announcement as to the compass in which the Prayer was
contained, with the addition of a drawing of the Bible, as part of the
engraving, “within the sixpence.” This trade was at first, I am told,
chiefly in the hands of the patterers: “Grand novelty!” they said;
“splendid engraving! The Lord’s Prayer, with a beautiful picture of
the Bible, all legible to the naked eye, in the compass of a sixpence.
Five hundred letters, all clear, on a sixpence.” One man said to me:
“I knew very well there wasn’t 500, but it was a neat number to cry. A
schoolmaster said to me once--‘Why, there isn’t above half that number
of letters.’ He was wrong though; for I believe there’s 280.” This
card was published six or seven years ago, and the success attending
the sale of the Lord’s Prayer, led to the publication of the Belief in
the same form. “When the trade was new,” said one man, “I could sell
a gross in a day without any very great trouble; but in a little time
there was hundreds in the trade, and one might patter hard to sell four
dozen.”
The wholesale price was 8_s._ the gross, and as thirteen cards went to
the dozen, the day’s profit when a gross was sold was 5_s._ When the
sale did not extend to beyond four dozen the profit was 1_s._ 8_d._
A few cards “in letters of gold” were vended in the streets at 6_d._
each. They had large margins and presented a handsome appearance. The
wholesale price was 3_s._ 6_d._ the dozen.
When this trade was at its height, there were, I am told, from 500 to
700 men, women and children engaged in it; selling the cards both with
and without other articles. The cards had also a very extensive sale in
the country.
_Pen-holders with glass or china handles_ are another commodity which
appeared suddenly, about six months ago, in street commerce, and at
once became the staple of a considerable traffic. These pens are eight
or nine inches long, the “body,” so to speak, being of solid round
glass, of almost all colours, green, blue, and black predominating,
with a seal (lacquered white or yellow) at the top, and a holder of
the usual kind, with a steel pen at the bottom. Some are made of white
pot and called “China pens,” and of these some are ornamented with
small paintings of flowers and leaves. These wares are German, and
were first charged 9_s._ 6_d._ the gross, without pens, which were an
additional 3_d._ at the swag-shops. The price is now 5_s._ the gross,
the pens being the same. The street-sellers who were fortunate enough
to “get a good start” with these articles did exceedingly well. The
pen-holders, when new, are handsome-looking, and at 1_d._ each were
cheap; some few were at first retailed at 2_d._ One man, I am told,
sold two-and-a-half gross in one day in the neighbourhood of the Bank,
purchasers not seldom taking a dozen or more. As the demand continued,
some men connected with the supply of goods for street sale, purchased
all the stock in the swag-shops, expending about 170_l._, and at once
raised the price to 10_s._ 6_d._ the gross. This amount the poorer
street-sellers demurred to give, as they could rarely obtain a higher
price than 1_d._ each, and 2_d._ for the ornamented holders, but
the street-stationers (who bought, however, very sparingly) and the
small shopkeepers gave the advance “as they found the glass-holders
asked for.” On the whole, I am told, this forestalling was not very
profitable to the speculators, as when fresh supplies were received at
the “swags,” the price fell.
At first this street business was carried on by men, but it was soon
resorted to by numbers of poor women and children. One gentleman
informed me that in consequence of reading “London Labour and the
London Poor,” he usually had a little talk with the street-sellers
of whom he purchased any trifle; he bought these pen-holders of
ten or twelve different women and girls; all of them could answer
correctly his inquiry as to the uses of the pens; but only one girl,
of fifteen or sixteen, and she hesitatingly, ventured to assert that
she could write her own name with the pen she offered for sale. The
street-trade still continues, but instead of being in the hands of
400 individuals--as it was, at the very least, I am assured, at one
period--there are now only about fifty carrying it on itinerantly,
while with the “pitched” sales-people, the glass-holders are merely
a portion of the stock, and with the itinerants ten dozen a week (a
receipt of 10_s._, and a profit of 4_s._ 9_d._) is now an average sale.
The former glass-holder sellers of the poorer sort are now vending
oranges.
_Shirt Buttons_ form another of the articles--(generally either “useful
things” or with such recommendation to street-buyers as the galvanic
amulets possessed)--which every now and then are disposed of in great
quantities in the streets. If an attempt be made by a manufacturer to
establish a cheaper shirt button, for instance, of horn, or pot, or
glass, and if it prove unsuccessful, or if an improvement be effected
and the old stock becomes a sort of dead stock, the superseded goods
have to be disposed of, and I am informed by a person familiar with
those establishments, that the swag-shopkeepers can always find
customers, “for anything likely,” with the indispensable proviso that
it be cheap. In this way shirt buttons have lately been sold in the
streets, not only by the vendors of small wares in their regular trade,
but by men, lads, and girls, some of the males shirtless themselves,
who sell them solely, with a continuous and monotonous cry of
“Halfpenny a dozen; halfpenny a dozen.” The wholesale price of the last
“street lot,” was 3_d._ the gross, or 1/4_d._ the dozen. To clear 6_d._
a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4_d._
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WALKING-STICKS.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally
purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street,
Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an
intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a
living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade.
There is nothing in which people are so particular. The stick’s sure to
be either too short or too long, or too thick or too thin, or too limp
or too stiff. You would think it was a simple thing for a man to choose
a stick out of a lot, but if you were with me a selling on a fine
Sunday at Battersea Fields, you’d see it wasn’t. O, it’s a tiresome
job.”
The trade is a summer and a Sunday trade. The best localities are the
several parks, and the approaches to them, Greenwich-park included;
Hampstead Heath, Kennington Common, and, indeed, wherever persons
congregate for pedestrian purposes, Battersea Fields being, perhaps,
the place where the greatest Sunday trade is carried on. Some of the
greater thoroughfares too, such as Oxford-street and the City-road, are
a good deal frequented by the stick-sellers.
This trade--like others where the article sold is not of general
consumption or primary usefulness--affords, what I once heard a
street-seller call, “a good range.” There is no generally recognised
price or value, so that a smart trader in sticks can apportion his
offers, or his charges, to what he may think to be the extent of
endurance in a customer. What might be 2_d._ to a man who “looked
knowing,” might be 6_d._ to a man who “looked green.” The common
sticks, which are the “cripples,” I was told, of all the sorts of
sticks (the spoiled or inferior sticks) mixed with “common pines,” are
15_d._ the dozen. From this price there is a gradual scale up to 8_s._
the dozen for “good polished;” beyond that price the street-seller
rarely ventures, and seldom buys even at that (for street-trade) high
rate, as fourpenny and sixpenny sticks go off the best; these saleable
sticks are generally polished hazel or pine. “I’ve sold to all sorts of
people, sir,” said a stick-seller. “I once had some very pretty sticks,
very cheap, only 2_d._ a piece, and I sold a good many to boys. They
bought them, I suppose, to look like men, and daren’t carry them home;
for I once saw a boy I’d sold a stick to, break it and throw it away
just before he knocked at the door of a respectable house one Sunday
evening. I’ve sold shilling sticks to gentlemen, sometimes, that had
lost or broken or forgot their own. Canes there’s nothing done in now
in the streets; nor in ‘vines,’ which is the little switchy things
that used to be a sort of a plaything. There’s only one stick-man in
the streets, as far as I know, I think--that has what you may call
a capital in sticks. Only the other day I saw him sell a registered
stick near Charing-cross. It was a beauty. A Bath cane, with a splendid
ivory head, and a compass let into the ivory. The head screwed off, and
beneath was a map of London and a Guide to the Great Exhibition. O, but
he has a beautiful stock, and aint he aristocratic! ‘Ash twigs,’ with
the light-coloured bark on them, not polished, but just trimmed, was
a very good sale, but they’re not now. Why, as to what I take, it’s
such a uncertain trade that it’s hard to say. Some days I haven’t taken
6_d._, and the most money I ever took was one Derby day at Epsom--I
wish there was more Derby days, for poor people’s sakes--and then I
took 30_s._ The most money as ever I took in London was 14_s._--one
Sunday, in Battersea Fields, when I had a prime cheap stock of bamboos.
When I keep entirely to the stick trade, and during the summer, I may
take 35_s._ in a week, with a profit of 15_s._”