A firm, which has been established in London seven years, and which
manufactures exclusively poison known to the trade as the “Phosphor
Paste for the destruction of black-beetles, cockroaches, rats, mice,”
&c., were kind enough to give me the following information:--
“We have now sold this vermin poison for seven years, but we have
never had an application for our composition from any street-seller.
We have seen, a year or two since, a man about London who used to sell
beetle-wafers; but as we knew that kind of article to be entirely
useless, we were not surprised to find that he did not succeed in
making a living. We have not heard of him for some time, and have no
doubt he is dead, or has taken up some other line of employment.
“It is a strange fact, perhaps; but we do not know anything, or
scarcely anything, as to the kind of people and tradesmen who purchase
our poison--to speak the truth, we do not like to make too many
inquiries of our customers. Sometimes, when they have used more than
their customary quantity, we have asked, casually, how it was and to
what kind of business-people they disposed of it, and we have always
been met with an evasive sort of answer. You see tradesmen don’t like
to divulge too much; for it must be a poor kind of profession or
calling that there are no secrets in; and, again, they fancy we want
to know what description of trades use the most of our composition, so
that we might supply them direct from ourselves.
“From this cause we have made it a rule not to inquire curiously into
the matters of our customers. We are quite content to dispose of the
quantity we do, for we employ six travellers to call on chemists and
oilmen for the town trade, and four for the country.
“The other day an elderly lady from High-street, Camden Town, called
upon us: she stated that she was overrun with black-beetles, and wished
to buy some of our paste from ourselves, for she said she always found
things better if you purchased them of the maker, as you were sure to
get them stronger, and by that means avoided the adulteration of the
shopkeepers. But as we have said we would not supply a single box to
any one, not wishing to give our agents any cause for complaint, we
were obliged to refuse to sell to the old lady.
“We don’t care to say how many boxes we sell in the year; but we
can tell you, sir, that we sell more for beetle poisoning in the
summer than in the winter, as a matter of course. When we find that a
particular district uses almost an equal quantity all the year round,
we make sure that that is a rat district; for where there is not the
heat of summer to breed beetles, it must follow that the people wish to
get rid of rats.
“Brixton, Hackney, Ball’s Pond, and Lower Road, Islington, are the
places that use most of our paste, those districts lying low, and being
consequently damp. Camden Town, though it is in a high situation, is
very much infested with beetles; it is a clayey soil, you understand,
which retains moisture, and will not allow it to filter through like
gravel. This is why in some very low districts, where the houses are
built on gravel, we sell scarcely any of our paste.
“As the farmers say, a good fruit year is a good fly year; so we say,
a good dull, wet summer, is a good beetle summer; and this has been a
very fertile year, and we only hope it will be as good next year.
“We don’t believe in rat-destroyers; they profess to kill with weasels
and a lot of things, and sometimes even say they can charm them away.
Captains of vessels, when they arrive in the docks, will employ these
people; and, as we say, they generally use our composition, but as long
as their vessels are cleared of the vermin, they don’t care to know
how it is done. A man who drives about in a cart, and does a great
business in this way, we have reason to believe uses a great quantity
of our Phosphor Paste. He comes from somewhere down the East-end or
Whitechapel way.
“Our prices are too high for the street-sellers. Your street-seller
can only afford to sell an article made by a person in but a very
little better position than himself. Even our small boxes cost at the
trade price two shillings a dozen, and when sold will only produce
three shillings; so you can imagine the profit is not enough for the
itinerant vendor.
“Bakers don’t use much of our paste, for they seem to think it no use
to destroy the vermin--beetles and bakers’ shops generally go together.”