[Illustration: Fine Writing Ink!]
[Illustration: Buy an Iron Fork, or a Shovel?]
~Old London Cries.~
These engravings pretty well describe the occupations of the figures
they represent. The cry of “Fine writing-ink” has ceased long ago; and
the demand for such a fork as the woman carries is discontinued. They
are copied from a set of etchings formerly mentioned--the “Cries of
London,” by Lauron. The following of that series are worth describing,
because they convey some notion of cries which we hear no longer in the
streets of the metropolis.
_Buy a new Almanack?_
A woman bears book-almanacks before her, displayed in a round basket.
_London’s Gazette here._
A woman holds one in her hand, and seems to have others in her lapped-up
apron.
_Buy any Wax or Wafers?_
A woman carries these requisites for correspondence in a small
hand-basket, or frail, with papers open in the other hand.
_My Name, and your Name, your Father’s Name, and Mother’s Name._
A man bears before him a square box, slung from his shoulders,
containing type-founders’ letters, in small cases, each on a stick; he
holds one in his hand. I well remember to have heard this very cry when
a boy. The type-seller composed my own name for me, which I was thereby
enabled to imprint on paper with common writing ink. I think it has
become wholly extinct within the last ten years.
_Old Shoes for some Brooms._
A man with birch-brooms suspended behind him on a stick. His cry
intimates, that he is willing to exchange them for old shoes; for which
a wallet at his back, depending from his waist, seems a receptacle.
_Remember the poor Prisoners!_
A man, with a capacious covered basket suspended at his back by leather
handles, through which his arms pass; he holds in his right hand a
small, round, deep box with a slit in the top, through which money may
be put: in his left hand is a short walking-staff for his support. In
former times the prisoners in different gaols, without allowance,
deputed persons to walk the streets and solicit alms for their support,
of passengers and at dwelling-houses. The basket was for
broken-victuals.
_Fritters, piping hot Fritters._
A woman seated, frying the fritters on an iron with four legs, over an
open fire lighted on bricks; a pan of batter by her side: two urchins,
with a small piece of money between them, evidently desire to fritter
it.
_Buy my Dutch Biskets?_
A woman carries them open in a large, round, shallow arm-basket on her
right arm; a smaller and deeper one, covered with a cloth, is on her
left.
_Who’s for a Mutton Pie, or a Christmas Pie?_
A woman carries them in a basket hanging on her left arm, under her
cloak; she rings a bell with her right hand.
_Lilly white Vinegar, Threepence a Quart._
The vinegar is in two barrels, slung across the back of a donkey; pewter
measures are on the saddle in the space between them. The proprietor
walks behind--he is a jaunty youth, and wears flowers on the left side
of his hat, and a lilly white apron; he cracks a whip with his left
hand; and his right fingers play with his apron strings.
_Old Satin, old Taffety, or Velvet._
A smart, pretty-looking lass, in a high-peaked crowned-hat, a black hood
carelessly tied under her chin, handsomely stomachered and ruffled,
trips along in high-heeled shoes, with bows of ribbons on the insteps; a
light basket is on her right arm, and her hands are crossed with a
quality air.
_Scotch or Russia Cloth._
A comfortably clothed, stout, substantial-looking, middle-aged man, in a
cocked hat, (the fashion of those days,) supporting with his left hand a
pack as large as his body, slung at his back; his right hand holds his
yard measure, and is tucked into the open bosom of his buttoned coat; a
specimen of his cloth hangs across his arm. Irish and Holland linen have
superseded Scotch and Russia.
_Four pair for a Shilling, Holland Socks._
A woman cries them, with a shilling’s-worth in her hand; the bulk of her
ware is in an open box before her. Our ancestors took great precautions
against wet from without--they took much within. They were soakers and
sockers.
_Long Thread Laces, long and strong._
A miserably tattered-clothed girl and boy carry long sticks with laces
depending from the ends, like cats-o’-nine tails. This cry was extinct
in London for a few years, while the females dressed naturally--now,
when some are resuming the old fashion of stiff stays and tight-lacing,
and pinching their bowels to inversion, looking unmotherly and bodiless,
the cry has been partially revived.
_Pretty Maids, pretty Pins, pretty Women._
A man, with a square box sideways under his left arm, holds in his right
hand a paper of pins opened. He retails ha’p’orths and penn’orths, which
he cuts off from his paper. I remember when pins were disposed of in
this manner in the streets by women--their cry was a musical distich--
Three-rows-a-penny, pins,
Short whites, and mid-dl-ings!
_Fine Tie, or a fine Bob, sir!_
A wig-seller stands with one on his hand, combing it, and talks to a
customer at his door, which is denoted by an inscription to be in
“Middle-row, Holbourn.” Wigs on blocks stand on a bracketed board
outside his window. This was when every body, old and young, wore
wigs--when the price for a common one was a guinea, and a journeyman had
a new one every year--when it was an article in every apprentice’s
indenture that his master should find him in “one good and sufficient
wig, yearly, and every year, for, and during, and unto the expiration,
of the full end, and term, of his apprenticeship.”
_Buy my fine Singing Glasses!_
They were trumpet-formed glass tubes, of various lengths. The crier
blows one of half his own height. He holds others in his left hand, and
has a little box, and two or three baskets, slung about his waist.
_Japan your Shoes, your honour!_
A shoeblack. A boy, with a small basket beside him, brushes a shoe on a
stone, and addresses himself to a wigged beau, who carries his
cocked-hat under his left arm, with a crooked-headed walking-stick in
his left hand, as was the fashion among the dandies of old times. I
recollect shoeblacks formerly at the corner of almost every street,
especially in great thoroughfares. There were several every morning on
the steps of St. Andrew’s church Holborn, till late in the forenoon. But
the greatest exhibition of these artists was on the site of
Finsbury-square, when it was an open field, and a depository for the
stones used in paving and street-masonry. There, a whole army of
shoeblacks intercepted the citizens and their clerks, on their way from
Islington and Hoxton to the counting houses and shops in the city, with
“Shoeblack, your honour!” “Black your shoes, sir!”
Each of them had a large, old tin-kettle, containing his apparatus, viz.
a capacious pipkin, or other large earthen-pot, containing the blacking,
which was made of ivory black, the coarsest moist sugar, and pure water
with a little vinegar--a knife--two or three brushes--and an old wig.
The old wig was an indispensable requisite to a shoeblack; it whisked
away the dust, or thoroughly wiped off the wet dirt, which his knife and
brushes could not entirely detach; a rag tied to the end of a stick
smeared his viscid blacking on the shoe, and if the blacking was “real
japan,” it shone. The old experienced shoe-wearers preferred an
oleaginous, lustreless blacking. A more liquid blacking, which took a
polish from the brush, was of later use and invention. Nobody, at that
time, wore boots, except on horseback; and every body wore breeches and
stockings: pantaloons or trousers were unheard of. The old shoeblacks
operated on the shoes while they were on the feet, and so dexterously as
not to soil the fine white cotton stocking, which was at one time the
extreme of fashion, or to smear the buckles, which were universally
worn. Latterly, you were accommodated with an old pair of shoes to stand
in, and the yesterday’s paper to read, while your shoes were cleaning
and polishing, and your buckles were whitened and brushed. When
shoestrings first came into vogue, the prince of Wales (now the king)
appeared with them in his shoes, and a deputed body of the buckle-makers
of Birmingham presented a petition to his royal highness to resume the
wearing of buckles, which was good-naturedly complied with. Yet in a
short time shoestrings entirely superseded buckles. The first incursion
on the shoeblacks was by the makers of “patent cake-blacking,” on sticks
formed with a handle, like a small battledoor; they suffered a more
fearful invasion from the makers of liquid blacking in bottles. Soon
afterwards, when “Day and Martin” manufactured the _ne plus ultra_ of
blacking, private shoeblacking became general, public shoeblacks rapidly
disappeared, and now they are extinct. The last shoeblack that I
remember in London, sat under the covered entrance of Red Lion-court,
Fleet-street, within the last six years.
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