THE COSTERMONGERS AND RAG FAIR.
THERE is a wide, short street, or rather road, in the heart of London.
The buildings are mean, the people who cluster against their doorways
and in the alleys and courts that branch from this short, wide
street, are wretched in appearance; their garments are patched and in
piecemeal, and when untorn they are greasy and besmeared with filth.
In this street, crowded at night--on Saturday night it is almost
impassable--children of a tender age may be seen begging for coppers
and soliciting assistance from those of more mature years, but to the
full as wretched as themselves. Vice is in every glance of their eyes.
Crime has already made its graven lines in their young faces, and their
language or dialect, (for it is not a language), is a combination of
uncouth sounds, obscene imagery, and slang corruptions of the English
tongue.
[Sidenote: ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S GARDENS.]
This street, or road, is called the "New Cut," and is situated in
Lambeth on the Surrey side of the Thames. It is reached from the City
by Waterloo Bridge and the Waterloo road, and from the West End by
Lambeth and Vauxhall bridges. Thousands are born, baptized, many beget
children and die within the municipality of the Great Metropolis, and
yet have never seen the New Cut--nay, have never even heard of it, or
if they did, the word would have as much meaning to them as the plains
of El Ghizeh, or the source of the Nile to a Bow Cockney. Yet there are
thousands who are born here in this New Cut who live and die in it
and make a living for themselves, after a fashion, who, if not content
with, are certainly unaware of any method of changing or bettering
their lot in this life.
Narrow, dark, and mean streets run contiguous to the New Cut, and
branch from it in a winding, snaky way. A decently-dressed man is not
safe in this street, and the only sound of civilization to cheer him,
once lost in the mazes of these festering lanes and alleys, teeming
with low pot-houses, tap-rooms, and wild-looking children, bold,
bad-looking desperadoes of men, and reckless, obscene women, is the
low, rumbling sound coming like the approaching thunder to his ears
every few minutes as the loaded passenger trains dash to and fro on the
Northwestern and Southeastern Railways.
The New Cut runs into the Lower Marsh and is flanked by Wootton, White
Horse, Collingwood, Eaton, Marlboro streets, and the Broad Wall. To
the west are Thomas, Isabella, and Granby streets, and from all this
misery and destitution of a quarter where the inhabitants are packed
like rabbits in a well-stocked warren, the road leads through the
Upper Marsh down to the rare pleasaunce or garden of the palace of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most sumptous ecclesiastical
retreats in England. The Archbishop's gardens, although located in the
heart of a populous city, cover as much ground, it is calculated, as
gives sleeping and eating room to 11,000 human beings in the New Cut
district.
It is true that the river rolls sluggishly five or six hundred yards
below the New Cut, and those who are tired of dog's meat, rotten
vegetables, and the offal of the street markets for their common food,
and of sleeping eight in a room on straw which is not even clean, can
at any time deliver their bodies from further pain and starvation, and
their minds from a daily never-ending struggle as to how the dog's meat
and decayed offal may be procured, by a quick plunge in the river, near
by.
This quarter is the principal resort of the "costermongers" of
London. The word "costermonger" has an equivalent which is better
known as "peddler." All those who vend or hawk vegetables, fruit,
carrion meat, game, fowl, ginger beer, nuts, or, in fact, any of the
numerous articles or commodities of refuse merchandise found on the
barrows and wagons of the London peddlers, are called by the London
term "costermongers." The word is an old one used by Shakespeare,
and therefore has, if none other, the merit of antiquity of the most
genuine kind.
There are in London proper, embracing its suburbs, of both
sexes--including men, women, and children--according to information
which I had procured from the police and physicians, who have means of
knowing, about 23,000 costermongers. These people are from daybreak
until midnight in the open air, I might say, for their marketing is
done as early as four or five o'clock in the morning; and then, after
an hour or so spent in marketing, comes the cheap, scanty breakfast,
consisting of a pound of bread, a "saveloy," which is a sort of a
sausage, at a penny a piece, about four inches long and two inches in
circumference, quite succulent to the costermonger's palate, or perhaps
a piece of beef or bacon of the kind that is vended from barrows in the
London streets at two pence a pound, the refuse of the butchers' shops
and pieces unfit for a ready sale.
Among these refuse pieces are small portions of ham, shoulders, and
pork, fragments of bacon, "snag" pieces, and mutton, and a very
suspicious veal, which is often sold by these same hawkers in the
suburbs to old maids for cats' meat. Sometimes the "coster" will take
a pint of sloppy coffee, which he gets for three half-pence, with his
brief breakfast; at other times he prefers a quartern of gin "neat,"
at two-pence; and again he will be satisfied with a mug of beer at
two-pence. As early as 7 o'clock in the morning the hideous noises,
which can only come from the throat of a costermonger, are heard in the
London streets, awakening those who wish to sleep late, and, to make
matters worse, no person, unless the costermonger himself, can by any
application ever understand the exact words of their cries. They are
only to be recognized by sound, and, therefore, it is always necessary
to appear at a window or doorway in order to discover the precise
article which the coster wishes you to buy.
[Sidenote: SALE OF WATER CRESSES.]
I visited the New Cut on a Saturday night, which is the great market
night, when traffic is at its height in the neighborhood. The wide,
short street, which runs into a half circle at its end, was filled
with people. The noise was of that indefinite kind which is hardly to
be described. Stands, barrows, and wagons, having ponies and asses
attached, were placed along the gutters, with smoky lamps fed with a
disagreeable smelling oil, from which a dusky flame was shed over the
street, showing the faces of the venders as they gave tongue to many
different cries.
"Whelks," a small shell-fish, like the American mussel, were heaped in
thousands on the heads of barrels and tables, and ham sandwiches, at
a penny apiece, and boiled potatoes, with sheeps' trotters, oysters,
fried fish, oranges, apples, plums, and, in fact, every kind of fruit
and vegetable were for sale. Little ragged boys and girls, their feet
bare and dirty, ran hither and thither, importuning the passers-by
to purchase their matches and water-cresses. Here water-cresses and
radishes are sold together in bunches at a penny a handful. Some of
these small children are up as early as five o'clock in the morning,
to purchase the water-cresses at Farringdon market, and from that time
until midnight, or until the theatres close, they are crying their
water-cresses, which they carry with them through the London streets in
a basket.
The whelks are sold at two a penny, and are accounted a delicacy by the
poor of London, when properly seasoned with pepper, salt, and vinegar.
They are very much relished in the pot-houses of the metropolis by
hard drinkers when pickled in this fashion, and in any tap-room of a
Saturday night it is not uncommon to find men or women peddling these
shell-fish to those who have been drinking freely. The costermongers
are universally great gamblers, and earning during the week from
twelve to thirty shillings, as their luck may run with the purchasing
community, yet it is not an uncommon occurrence for them to gamble away
as much as fifty per cent. of their week's earnings in various games of
chance.
These people have no religious belief whatever, and do not know
anything even of the rudiments of religious instruction. To them God is
some indefinite being whose attributes are unknown, and whose immutable
laws are disregarded simply from utter ignorance. They never darken
a church door, and tracts are received by them with the most supreme
disgust.
A number of missionaries have labored among them in vain for any great
result, chiefly dissenting clergymen, and, although they will listen to
them patiently enough, yet they look upon them as the representatives
of wealth and intelligence, and they cannot tell the difference between
a Wesleyan minister who holds forth on a Sunday morning, with a big
banner, calling upon them to repent, in the dark alleys of Bethnal
Green and Whitechapel, and the richly beneficed divine of the Church
of England who rolls by in a carriage, totally heedless of their
condition, bodily or spiritual. All men who wear white neck-cloths are
called parsons, and are disliked by the "costers." Besides, they have
not learned to read, and tracts are useless to them, were they willing
to study their contents.
The marriage relation is utterly ignored among them, and, if what
the police told me be true, not ten per cent. of the costermongers
who live with women and vend their goods in common are married. At
fifteen years of age the young costermonger leaves father and mother
to cleave to a girl of his own age, also the child of a costermonger,
bred in the gutters of the metropolis, and, having purchased a barrow
for ten shillings, and an ass for perhaps £2, the pair begin the world
practically man and wife, but without ever dreaming of calling in the
assistance of the minister to bind them together in the bonds of lawful
wedlock.
[Sidenote: HEATHENISM OF THE COSTERS.]
A marriage certificate in a costermonger's den would, indeed, be a
curious and unusual relic, as would also the marriage ring, which is
looked upon in civilized society as the seal and confirmation of the
wedding ceremony. They say that they cannot afford to pay a minister's
fee, and as their code of morals is beneath mention they do not see
the necessity of the expenditure. Their children grow up in the same
way, bred, as their parents have been, to hawk and cry from dawn until
darkness, and thus the costermongers increase, more savage in their
usages than the American aborigines.
Mind, I am now speaking of the English costermongers, for, with the
Irish costermongers, both male and female, who are still lower in the
social scale as far as the goods of this world go, it is different.
While the English coster cares not for the visits of the minister
of the Protestant faith, the Catholic priest is ever welcome among
his wretched and degraded flock in Whitechapel, in the New Cut, in
St. Giles, or Lambeth, and he is beloved by them in their own rude,
reckless way. The Irish costermonger believes most firmly in the
sanctity of the marriage ceremony. With a few exceptions, their
children, however wretched and miserable their lot may be in the future
life, are born in wedlock, and the slur of illegitimacy cannot be
thrown up at them. They will always have a few coppers to give their
priests to help those more miserable than themselves, and, though these
children but rarely receive the benefits of a common English schooling,
they are more eager to learn and more ready to seek instruction than
the children of their English neighbors.
I inquired of one of these costermongers, who had a fried-fish stand
in the New Cut, and sold sprats all cooked and ready for eating, if he
could read. He seemed rather an intelligent fellow, in his way, and had
by no means the uncouth, ruffianly look that I noticed in many of the
men's faces who were engaged in selling vegetables, fish, whelks, and
periwinkles in the street. He had a little smoky lamp depending from a
sort of gallows over his cart, and he spoke cheerfully:
"Well, I'm not much of a reader, like you gentlefolks be; but I picked
up a little book schoolin' at the Ragged schools by night, when I had
four puns saved, last winter. The letters wor a cruel bother to me at
first, and I most guv it hup at the beginning, sort o' faint-hearted;
but the teacher, as wos a Miss Spencer, she wos a good gal, and she
says to me (about Christmas it wor), 'Jimmy, you'll never learn to read
hif you don't persewere, and I know, Jimmy, you _can_ persewere hif
you want to.' Ye see, sir, I had just gived the blessed book a kick
into a corner of the room, like mad; cos vy, the blessed letters wor so
cranky and they wor all so mixed hup together that I lost my 'ead as it
wor, and I couldn't make nothink hout of their shapes. But that gal,
Miss Spencer, she wor a topper and no mistake. She guv me a kind of a
smile, and bless me hif she didn't go to the corner of the room and she
takes hup the book as I had flung down, with 'er pretty little fingers,
and vith that she puts hit into my 'and, hand then I 'adn't the 'art
to refuse the gal; and that wos the way as I larned to read; and now I
reads _Reynold's Weekly_ hevery Sunday mornin' to my maty, the boiled
potato man, which is 'ere to speak for 'isself, sir."
The boiled potato man was advanced in years--a hardy, rugged-looking
fellow, who seemed as if he would like to read like his "maty," but
could not muster up courage to begin so late in life. I mentioned
casually to him that a great Latin grammarian had, at an early stage
of the world's history, made the attempt to learn Greek, being then
seventy years of age. His characteristic reply made me see that my
remark had struck him in the wrong place.
"Well," said he, "hif that blessed hold Latting, as ye calls 'im, had
to 'awk biled pertaters from mornin' till night in the New Cut, and go
'ome to three kids vith, maybe, honly sevenpence for 'is day's vork,
I'm blessed hif 'ee'd a-bother'd 'is precious hold soul a-learnin'
Greek, or hany other lingo. I finds henuff to do vith the mealys,
vithout a-troublin' myself habout the books as I see heverywhere I
goes. N-i-c-e 'ot pertaties--hall smokin' 'ot--a-penny apiece!"
[Illustration: VICTORIA THEATRE--NEW CUT.]
I bought a hot potato and a sprat, and left the two wondering if
I had been "gaffing" or "larkin'" on 'em; and passing through the
crowded street, past butchers standing at their doors in dirty aprons,
sharpening their knives in a business like manner; past water-cress
and match girls, who seemed to spring out of the gutters, so thick
were they; past drunken, noisy women, staggering home to their
miasmatic dens, with bunches of vegetables or chunks of meat in
their arms, wrapped in coarse brown papers, dirty children following
their footsteps, gaunt and shadowy-like; past reeking, greasy
coffee-shops, the very sign-boards of which were redolent of eel pies,
kidney stews, and all the abominations which are devoured in this
neighborhood daily and nightly, by the poor people who are forced to
eat this food, the refuse of the slaughter-houses of mighty, populous
London, from that stern, blind necessity which knows no law, and I
came upon a crowd of the working people--costermongers, peddlers,
match-women, and young lads and girls--who find habitations in the
dusky lanes and frightful courts of the neighborhood. I stood before a
large, dark-looking building, which seemed like a prison, its frowning,
dirty facade being no evidence that it was a place of amusement. But it
was a place of amusement, or, rather, a place of torture. This was the
"Royal Victoria Theatre," New Cut, Lambeth.
[Sidenote: THE NEW CUT.]
The Victoria Theatre, or the "Vick," as it is called by its patrons,
is one of the most democratic places of amusement, if not the most
democratic in London. In another place I will attempt to describe
the strange sights which I saw inside of its walls, but at present I
shall confine myself to giving my readers a view of the "Old Clothes"
district, which is chiefly inhabited by the lower class of the London
Jew peddlers or hawkers.
Dick Ralph was a patrolman bold, who did duty in the "H," or Smithfield
Division of the City of London police, and was rewarded for his
vigilance and attention to duty by being promoted to the office of
"special," under probation, in the old Jewry squad of detectives.
Dick had lately married and was the proprietor of a fine chubby boy of
fifteen months old, who resembled his father in every respect, having
the same red flush in the cheeks, the same black eyes, which sparkled
like diamonds, and the same little chubby nose. The family lived back
of St. Paul's towering pile, in a little lane or court which ran around
the old sheds that formed a part of the Old Market or Newgate shambles,
and was the principal fresh meat mart before the New Smithfield Market
had been built.
Ralph had been detailed by Inspector Bailey to visit Petticoat lane,
Houndsditch, Bevis Marks, and the Minories with me, and we were to
go together to the Sunday market in this district, which is almost
entirely inhabited by Jews, although a greater part of the out-door
trade and costermongering is done by Christian Cockneys.
I found Ralph living up a two-pair back, in one of the queerest,
old-fashioned wooden houses in the Newgate shambles. Directly over my
head was the dome of St. Paul's, with the morning fog clearing away
from its peak, and the sun was gradually appearing to gild the tall
cross on the apex, and the tower of St. Faith's, under St. Paul's. The
stairs were ricketty and dark, and the wainscotting quite fanciful. A
woman of twenty-five or six years of age, rather tidy in appearance,
I saw holding the big chubby baby, the pride of the Ralph family. The
family were at breakfast, and had been busy discussing fresh plaice and
soles from Billingsgate. The baby was allowed to tumble all over the
floor and bite its fingers.
"How are you this morning, sir," said patrolman Ralph; "it promises to
be a pertickelerly fine Sunday does this, and a nice one for stroll to
see the sights."
Ralph took down his hat and overcoat from a nail, and bidding his wife
good-bye affectionately, we strolled out into the streets.
We took a walk up Newgate street to Cheapside, through the Poultry,
through Cornhill, passing the Bank and Mansion House on our way,
and finally opposite the Aldgate Church, with its curious old Sir
Christopher Wren spire, we found ourselves standing against the railing
which encloses a little green square of grass belting the church.
"Now, sir," said Dick Ralph, "we are just going into one of the worst
places in London. There's a regular mob here all the time, and hits
just as much as a man can do to pass the peddlers without having his
'at and coat taken hoff him by the Sheenies who are selling of hall
sorts of things on the Sunday market. You can buy hanything from a
gimlet here in Petticoat lane to a suit of clothes in Rag Fair."
[Sidenote: PETTICOAT LANE.]
Houndsditch is a wide street which runs down from the Aldgate High
street to Bishopsgate street. At the other end is the street called
the Minories, going in the direction of the Tower, which frowns upon
the river. Here, also, is the district called "Petticoat lane," which
embraces a number of short streets, courts, lanes, and filthy alleys,
with such characteristic names as "Sandy's Row," "Frying Pan alley,"
"Little Love court," "Catharine Wheel alley," "Hebrew Place," "Fisher's
alley," "Tripe yard," "Gravel lane," "Harper's alley," "Boar's Head
yard," "Stoney lane," "Swan court," and "Borer's lane."
These are only a few of the choice thoroughfares in this locality,
and all of them are dirty and swarming with a class who obtain their
living in the streets. There are, it is calculated, living and doing
business in Petticoat lane and its lesser tributaries of streets and
alleys, about six thousand men, women, and children who profess the
Jewish faith, and are in humble circumstances, who have to struggle and
compete with the Irish of the poorer class in the street trades, though
the Jews have a monopoly of the old clothes' trade.
Houndsditch is in every way superior to the other streets which
surround it. It is wider, the shops are of a better order, and it is
noticeable that very few of their doors are open on a Sunday morning.
As the detective and I passed through the street I noticed such names
as "Abrams & Son," "L. Benjamin," "Isaacs & Co.," "Moses & Son," "Hyams
& Co.," and other like names over the doors of fruit shops, jeweller
shops, mercer shops, clothiers, and in one or two instances, over the
doors of small publics. It is, however, not a common thing to find a
Jewish name over a liquor shop door in London.
"We are in the very nick of time to see the show," said Ralph to me--it
was nearly nine o'clock of the Sunday morning, and we had gone down
Houndsditch about three of our New York blocks.
"The market is from eight o'clock Sunday morning until about two in the
hafternoon, and the business is as brisk as can be all that time," said
Ralph.
The houses were all old, and all of them had a slouching, mean look,
with funny gables, grimy windows in the upper stories, and queerly
peaked and stunted roofs, overhung by tubular red chimneys, which
stood up like rows of corn in a field when seen from a distance.
The people whom we met in the streets had an Eastern look, with
peculiarly brilliant, almond-shaped eyes, and prominent noses. Some
others had the Celtic features and spoke to each other with the
unmistakable brogue. The policemen that we met, too, seemed to partake
of the characteristics of the place, and I fancied that I could trace a
resemblance in their faces to those by whom they were surrounded.
Crossing the street, we went through a court about a hundred feet wide,
that seemed to lead into a covered shed, from which came a din and
clamor of voices that was almost deafening.
There was a wooden building like a market covered over, to to which we
ascended by a flight of three steps.
"This is the Rag Fair, sir; I suppose you heard on't before. It's a
werry strange place, Rag Fair. But don't stop to look at anythink, or
them as keeps the stands will tear you to pieces to make you buy."
[Sidenote: A CONGRESS OF RAGS.]
Although I took as much heed as possible of the injunction, it was
impossible not to look. It was a very queer place in more senses than
one. To get an idea of it take a section of Washington Market, New
York, with its stalls and blocks, and buyers and sellers; and on the
walls where the pork, mutton, and beef are hung to be inspected and
sold, and, instead of the flesh of the cow, pig, and peaceful sheep,
hang hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of trousers--trousers that have
been worn by young men of fashion, trousers without a wrinkle or just
newly scoured, trousers taken from the reeking hot limbs of navies
and pot boys, trousers from lumbering men-of-war's men, from spruce
young shop boys, trousers that have been worn by criminals executed
at Newgate, by patients in fever hospitals; waistcoats that were the
pride of fast young brokers in the city, waistcoats flashy enough to
have been worn by the Marquis of Hastings at a race-course, or the
Count D'Orsay at a literary assemblage; take thousands of spencers,
highlows, fustian jackets, some greasy, some unsoiled, shooting-coats,
short-coats, and cutaways; coats for the jockey and the dog-fighter,
for the peer and the pugilist, pilot-jackets and sou-westers, drawers
and stockings, the latter washed and hung up in all their appealing
innocence, there being thousands of these garments that I have
enumerated, and thousands of others that none but a master cutter could
think of without a softening of the brain, take two hundred men, women,
and children, mostly of the Jewish race, with here and there a burly
Irishman sitting placidly smoking a pipe amid the infernal din; and
shake all these ingredients up well, and you have a faint idea of what
I saw in Rag Fair.
Take five thousand pair of shoes, boots, gaiters, bootees, brogans,
watermen's boots, shoes of criminals, and suspicious-looking boots,
taken from the feet of thieves, flashy-looking women's gaiters and
cordovans purchased from prostitutes and wretched women in garrets, who
had sold them to buy food or a drink of gin.
Take all these articles, scatter them around, hang them on nails and
hooks depending from greasy stalls ascending to the old tumble down
roof, and then the reader will have a dose offered to him such as I got
when I fell on Rag Fair, Petticoat lane.
It was by far the strangest scene I had ever looked upon. London has
nothing like it elsewhere, and New York, which is really destitute
of any specially salient characteristic, could not in fifty years'
time organize and bring together such a mass of old clothes, grease,
patches, tatters, and remnants of decayed prosperity and splendor.
In every old tattered trousers there was an unwritten epic; in every
gaudily fashioned waistcoat there was a tale perhaps of sorrow and
sadness and want, if any one could but point it out.
The patches and rents that were botched up and mended, showed the
hasty repairs in the old coats that hung in platoons and files from
the niches; the jagged sewing and frayed edges in each of these old
garments, could they speak, would tell an astonishing tale, or furnish
the groundwork of a plot for a popular drama.
The stalls were in rows, and the men and women and boys who did
business there kept running about all the time I remained in the fair,
shouting and screaming like possessed beings. Their great aim and
object was to catch some unfortunate visitor by the lappel of his coat
or snatch his elbow, his coat-tail, or any other available part of his
clothing, hold on to him, shake an old waistcoat in his face, and if
he didn't want a waistcoat, shake a dirty old pair of trousers in his
face, talking all the time in an imploring, or may be a trembling tone,
until the man would be compelled to break away by sheer force or call
the police, who seemed to have enough to do in this place.
[Illustration: RAG FAIR.]
I stopped for a moment to look at a stall where about a hundred
pairs of boots and shoes were displayed in rows, the thick-soled
heavy-looking brogans of the laborer ranged next to the
nicely-fashioned gaiter of the elegant, with their well-turned toes
and arching insteps, and the man, a sharp-featured Hebrew, who was
proprietor, seized me and thrust a second-hand pair of boots in my
face, saying at the same time:
[Sidenote: MODUS OPERANDI OF SELLING.]
"You wan'sh a nish pair o' bootsh? S'help, I shells you thish pair for
two shillings, and they wash never made lesh than a guinea and a half!
Don't you want to buy these sphlendid bootsh; s'help me, I only makes'h
two pensh?"
I tried to get away, but he held to my arm and kept shaking the boots,
while his sharp, black eyes glittered like sword points at the prospect
of losing a sale. At last the detective, losing patience, jerked him
away, and we passed on to the next slop stand.
This was kept by an old Irish woman. The Jew was all mercantile
acerbity and sharpness. This old humbug of a female Celt was all
treacle and honey.
"Ah, then, it's the foine gentleman that ye are. It's easy to see
the good dhrop is in ye. May be it's a likin' ye'd be taking to this
sphlindid waistcoat; that's all the fashion now, and it's well it 'id
look on yer fine figger. And don't ye want nothing at all to wear?
And shure ye wouldn't be afther goin' naked like an omaudhaun in the
streets and havin' the people shoutin' after ye?"
"How much rent d'ye pay for this stall," said I to her, to get her off
a topic by which she made her living.
"Is't the durty rint ye mane? Well, it's enouff for the ould hole. I
pay sixpence a day in advance, and the devil resave the penny I've
turned yet, this blessed mornin."
"Have you any one to support beside yourself?"
"Well, indade, I have two childher, and its small comfort they are to
me. One of thim, the eldest, is down wud scarlet favir, and the docthor
says it tin to one if she'll ever recover."
"You see sir," said the detective, "the people who rent stands from
the men as own this place, they have to pay sixpence a day to 'old the
stand. But those fellows as you see running around like lunatics, and a
borin of every one, they pays two pence a day rents--cos why they 'ave
no stands and honly walk habout with the clothes hon their harms."
"Yis, and I wish you'd sind them to the divil, the haythens--they niver
give an honest woman a chance to make a penny be hook or be crook, wud
thim runnin all over the fair."
"Halso, we never allows the 'awker as has no stands to stay in one
place," said Dick Ralph, "cos hif we did, that would ruin the business
of the people as pays rent for the stands. So we keeps them a movin'
hon, and they doesn't like it, but we have got to do it, or else they
would have rows hall the Sunday through with the nobs as keeps the
stands. You see, the wery minute one of the 'awkers gets hopposite
a stand, he collects a crowd and--now, there goes one now;" and he
pointed to a fellow with a pair of trousers, who was bawling his goods
out while a policeman had him by the neck shoving him along by main
force.
"Oh, some of these lads are precious 'ard coves, I tell you, to manage.
Some of them will fight and curse at you like as hif they wor made of
brass. But we never talks long to them, 'cos hif we did Rag Fair would
be too much for the force."
"How much a day do the hawkers make on an average?" I asked Ralph.
"Well, I can't tell, because they are sich werry 'ardened liars. I axed
one the werry last Sunday as I wos 'ere. Says I, 'old Benjamin, how
much do you take in on a day's work on a haverage?'"
"Oh! blesh your 'art," sez he, "some days I hash two pounds profit, and
some days I makes a shillin' by 'ard vork."
"Now ye see," said Ralph, "I knew he was of gaffin me, for he was not
worth two pounds, body and soul, and I don't suppose he never made more
than half a crown in a day and do his best. Then Old Benjamin spends it
hall in fish. The Jew peddlers here are wery fond of fish on Saturdays.
They would go without a meal in three days to have a fresh mackerel on
Sunday. And they are werry pertikler as to who kills the meat before
they buys it."
Determining to make another attempt to see Petticoat Lane on a week
day, I bade the polite policeman and the highly odorous quarter of the
Old Clothes sellers, a very good day.