“catch-’em-alive” boys who gave him his account of his trade. He was a
swarthy featured boy, with a broad nose like a negro’s, and on his
temple was a big half-healed scar, which he accounted for by saying that
“he had been runned over” by a cab, though, judging from the blackness
of one eye, it seemed to Mr. Mayhew to have been the result of some
street fight. He said:
“I’m an Irish boy, and nearly turned sixteen, and I’ve been silling
fly-papers for between eight and nine year. I must have begun to sill
them when they first come out. Another boy first tould me of them, and
he’d been silling them about three weeks before me. He used to buy them
of a party as lives in a back-room near Drury-lane, what buys paper and
makes the catch ’em alive for himself. When they first come out they
used to charge sixpence a dozen for ’em, but now they’ve got ’em to
twopence ha’penny. When I first took to silling ’em, there was a tidy
lot of boys at the business, but not so many as now, for all the boys
seem at it. In our court alone I should think there was about twenty
boys silling the things.
“At first, when there was a good time, we used to buy three or four
gross together, but now we don’t no more than half a gross. As we go
along the streets we call out different cries. Some of us says,
‘Fly-papers, fly-papers, ketch ’em all alive.’ Others make a kind of
song of it, singing out, ‘Fly-paper, ketch ’em all alive, the nasty
flies, tormenting the baby’s eyes. Who’d be fly-blow’d, by all the nasty
blue-bottles, beetles, and flies?’ People likes to buy of a boy as sings
out well, ’cos it makes ’em laugh.
“I don’t think I sell so many in town as I do in the borders of the
country, about Highbury, Croydon, and Brentford. I’ve got some regular
customers in town about the City-prison and the Caledonian-road; and
after I’ve served them and the town custom begins to fall off, then I
goes to the country. We goes two of us together, and we takes about
three gross. We keep on silling before us all the way, and we comes back
the same road. Last year we sould very well in Croydon, and it was the
best place for gitting the best price for them; they’d give a penny a
piece for ’em there, for they didn’t know nothing about them. I went off
one day at ten o’clock and didn’t come home till two in the morning. I
sould eighteen dozen out in that d’rection the other day, and got rid of
them before I had got half-way. But flies are very scarce at Croydon
this year, and we haven’t done so well. There ain’t half as many flies
this summer as last.
“Some people says the papers draws more flies than they ketches, and
that when one gets in, there’s twenty others will come to see him. It’s
according to the weather as the flies is about. If we have a fine day it
fetches them out, but a cold day kills more than our papers.
“We sills the most papers to little cook-shops and sweet-meat shops. We
don’t sill so many at private houses. The public-houses is pretty good
customers, ’cos the beer draws the flies. I sould nine dozen at one
house--a school--at Highgate, the other day. I sould ’em two for
three-ha’ pence. That was a good hit, but then t’other days we loses. If
we can make a ha’penny each we thinks we does well.
“Those that sills their papers at three a-penny buys them at St.
Giles’s, and pays only three ha’pence a dozen for them, but they ain’t
half as big and good as those we pays tuppence-ha’penny a dozen for.
“Barnet is a good place for fly-papers; there’s a good lot of flies down
there. There used to be a man at Barnet as made ’em, but I can’t say if
he do now. There’s another at Brentford, so it ain’t much good going
that way.
“In cold weather the papers keep pretty well, and will last for months
with just a little warming at the fire; for they tears on opening when
they are dry. You see we always carry them with the stickey sides
doubled up together like a sheet of writing-paper. In hot weather, if
you keep them folded up, they lasts very well; but if you opens them,
they dry up. It’s easy opening them in hot weather, for they comes apart
as easy as peeling a horrange. We generally carries the papers in a
bundle on our arm, and we ties a paper as is loaded with flies round our
cap, just to show the people the way to ketch ’em. We get a loaded paper
given to us at a shop.
“When the papers come out first, we use to do very well with fly-papers;
but now it’s hard work to make our own money for ’em. Some days we used
to make six shillings a day regular. But then we usen’t to go out every
day, but take a rest at home. If we do well one day, then we might stop
idle another day, resting. You see, we had to do our twenty or thirty
miles silling them to get that money, and then the next day we was
tired.
“The silling of papers is gradual falling off. I could go out and sill
twenty dozen wonst where I couldn’t sill one now. I think I does a very
grand day’s work if I yearns a shilling. Perhaps some days I may lose by
them. You see, if it’s a very hot day, the papers gets dusty; and
besides, the stuff gets melted and oozes out; though that don’t do much
harm, ’cos we gets a bit of whitening and rubs ’em over. Four years ago
we might make ten shillings a day at the papers, but now, taking from
one end of the fly-season to the other, which is about three months, I
think we makes about one shilling a day out of papers, though even that
ain’t quite certain. I never goes out without getting rid of mine,
somehow or another, but then I am obleeged to walk quick and look about
me.
“When it’s a bad time for silling the papers, such as a wet, could day,
then most of the fly-paper boys goes out with brushes, cleaning boots.
Most of the boys is now out hopping. They goes reg’lar every year after
the season is give over for flies.
“The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and
turpentine and resin. It’s seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes
after it gets on the paper, and then it’s as dead as a house. The
blue-bottles is tougher, but they don’t last long, though they keeps on
fizzing as if they was trying to make a hole in the paper. The stuff is
only p’isonous for flies, though I never heard of anybody as ever eat a
fly-paper.”
A second lad, in conclusion, said: “There’s lots of boys going selling
‘ketch-’em-alive oh’s’ from Golden-lane, and White-chapel and the
Borough. There’s lots, too, comes out of Gray’s-inn-lane and St.
Giles’s. Near every boy who has nothing to do goes out with fly-papers.
Perhaps it ain’t that the flies is falled off that we don’t sill so many
papers now, but because there’s so many boys at it.”
A third, of the lot the most intelligent and gentle in his demeanor,
though the smallest in stature, said:
“I’ve been longer at it than the last boy, though I’m only getting on
for thirteen, and he’s older than I’m; ’cos I’m little and he’s big,
getting a man. But I can sell them quite as well as he can, and
sometimes better, for I can holler out just as loud, and I’ve got
reg’lar places to go to. I was a very little fellow when I first went
out with them, but I could sell them pretty well then, sometimes three
or four dozen a day. I’ve got one place, in a stable, where I can sell a
dozen at a time to country people.
“I calls out in the streets, and I goes into the shops, too, and calls
out, ‘Ketch ’em alive, ketch ’em alive; ketch all the nasty
black-beetles, blue-bottles, and flies; ketch ’em from teasing the
baby’s eyes.’ That’s what most of us boys cries out. Some boys who is
stupid only says, ‘Ketch ’em alive,’ but people don’t buy so well from
them.
“Up in St. Giles’s there is a lot of fly-boys, but they’re a bad set,
and will fling mud at gentlemen, and some prigs the gentlemen’s pockets.
Sometimes, if I sell more than a big boy, he’ll get mad and hit me.
He’ll tell me to give him a halfpenny and he won’t touch me, and that if
I don’t he’ll kill me. Some of the boys takes an open fly-paper, and
makes me look another way, and then they sticks the ketch-’em-alive on
my face. The stuff won’t come off without soap and hot water, and it
goes black, and looks like mud. One day a boy had a broken fly-paper,
and I was taking a drink of water, and he come behind me and slapped it
up in my face. A gentleman as saw him give him a crack with a stick and
me twopence. It takes your breath away, until a man comes and takes it
off. It all sticked to my hair, and I couldn’t rack (comb) right for
some time....
“I don’t like going along with other boys, they take your customers
away; for perhaps they’ll sell ’em at three a penny to ’em, and spoil
the customers for you. I won’t go with the big boy you saw, ’cos he’s
such a blackgeyard; when he’s in the country he’ll go up to a lady and
say, ‘Want a fly-paper, marm?’ and if she says ‘No,’ he’ll perhaps job
his head in her face--butt at her like.
“When there’s no flies, and the ketch-’em-alive is out, then I goes
tumbling. I can turn a cat’enwheel over on one hand. I’m going to-morrow
to the country, harvesting and hopping--for, as we says, ‘Go out
hopping, come in jumping.’ We start at three o’clock to-morrow, and we
shall get about twelve o’clock at night at Dead Man’s Barn. It was left
for poor people to sleep in, and a man was buried there in a corner. The
man had got six farms of hops; and if his son hadn’t buried him there,
he wouldn’t have had none of the riches.
“The greatest number of fly-papers I’ve sold in a day is about eight
dozen. I never sells no more than that; I wish I could. People won’t buy
’em now. When I’m at it I makes, taking one day with another, about ten
shillings a week. You see, if I sold eight dozen, I’d make four
shillings. I sell ’em at a penny each, at two for three-ha’pence, and
three for twopence. When they gets stale I sells ’em for three a penny.
I always begin by asking a penny each, and perhaps they’ll say, ‘Give me
two for three ha’pence?’ I’ll say, ‘Can’t, ma’am,’ and then they pulls
out a purse full of money and gives a penny.
“The police is very kind to us, and don’t interfere with us. If they see
another boy hitting us they’ll take off their belts and hit ’em.
Sometimes I’ve sold a ketch-’em-alive to a policeman; he’ll fold it up
and put it into his pocket to take home with him. Perhaps he’s got a
kid, and the flies teazes its eyes.
“Some ladies like to buy fly-cages better than ketch-em-alive’s, because
sometimes when they’re putting ’em up they falls in their faces, and
then they screams.”
The history of the manufacture of Fly-papers was thus given to Mr.
Mayhew by a manufacturer, whom he found in a small attic-room near
Drury-lane: “The first man as was the inventor of these fly-papers kept
a barber’s shop in St. Andrew-street, Seven Dials, of the name of
Greenwood or Greenfinch, I forget which. I expect he diskivered it by
accident, using varnish and stuff, for stale varnish has nearly the same
effect as our composition. He made ’em and sold ’em at first at
threepence and fourpence a piece. Then it got down to a penny. He sold
the receipt to some other parties, and then it got out through their
having to employ men to help ’em. I worked for a party as made ’em, and
then I set to work making ’em for myself, and afterwards hawking them.
They was a greater novelty then than they are now, and sold pretty well.
Then men in the streets, who had nothing to do, used to ask me where I
bought ’em, and then I used to give ’em my own address, and they’d come
and find me.”[1006]
Œstridæ--Bot-flies.
The larvæ of Bots, _Œstris ovis_, found in the heads of sheep and goats,
have been prescribed, and that, from the tripod of Delphos, as a remedy
for the epilepsy. We are told so on the authority of Alexander Trailien;
but whether Democritus, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this
remedy, does not appear; the story shows, however, that the ancients
were aware that these maggots made their way even into the brain of
living animals.[1007] The oracle answered Democritus as follows:
Take a tame goat that hath the greatest head,
Or else a wilde goat in the field that’s bred,
And in his forehead a great worm you’l finde,
This cures all diseases of that kinde.[1008]
The common saying that a whimsical person is _maggoty_, or has got
_maggots in his head_, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have been
observed to exhibit when infested by their Bots.[1009]
The following “charme for the Bots[1010] in a horse” is found in Scots’
Discovery of Witchcraft, printed in 1651: “You must both say and do thus
upon the diseased horse three days together, before the sun rising: _In
nomine pa†tris & fi†lii & Spiritus†sancti, Exorcize te vermen per Deum
pa†trem & fi†lium & Spiritum†sanctum_: that is, In the name of God the
father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost, I conjure thee O worm by God, the
Father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost; that thou neither eate nor drink
the flesh, blood, or bones of this horse; and that thou hereby maiest be
made as patient as Job, and as good as S. John Baptist, when he baptized
Christ in Jordan, _In nomine pa†tris & fi†lii et spiritus†sancti_. And
then say three _Pater nosters_, and three _Aves_, in the right eare of
the horse, to the glory of the holy trinity. Do†minus fili†us spirit†us
Mari†a.”[1011]
There is a popular error in England respecting the _Œstrus
(Gasterophilus) equi (hæmorrhoidalis)_, which Shakspeare has followed,
and which has been judiciously explained by Mr. Clark. Shakspeare makes
the carrier at Rochester observe: “Peas and oats are as dank here as a
dog, and that’s the next way to give _poor jades the bots_.”[1012]
The larvæ of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly known among the
country people by the name of _wormals_, _wormuls_, _warbles_, or, more
properly, _Bots_. And our ancestors erroneously imagined that poverty or
improper food engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems to
be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots are also, and are
then, without doubt, most troublesome; whence it was very naturally
supposed that poverty or bad food was the parent of them.[1013]
A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, was said to be
elf-shot: the holes being made by the arrows of the little malignant
fairies. In the Northern Antiquities, p. 404, we find the following:
“If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, where a
thorter knot has been taken out, or through the hole made by an
elf-arrow (which has probably been made by a Warble) in the skin of a
beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting)
with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will never see with
that eye again.”
In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find the following:
Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who threatened him, “deare sail
yow rewe it! and within half ane howre therafter, going to the
pleugh,--befoir he had gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee,
so that the foir horses did runne away with the pleugh, and wer liklie
to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander and the boy that was
with him, narrowlie escaped with their lyves.”[1014] Possibly the
incident is not exaggerated, as a single Œstrus will turn the oxen of a
whole herd, and render them furious.
* * * * *
Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poisonous Fly, known
in Hungary under the name of the Golubaeser-fly, which is singularly
destructive to cattle. The Hungarian peasants, to account for the
severity of the bite of this insect, tell us that in the caverns, near
the Castle of Golubaes, the renowned champion, St. George, killed the
dragon, and that its decomposed remains have continued to generate these
insects down to the present day. So firmly did they believe this, that
they closed up the mouths of the caverns with stone walls.[1015]
ORDER X.
APHANIPTERA.
Pulicidæ--Fleas.
The name _Pulex_, given to the Flea by the Romans, is stated by Isodorus
to have been derived from _pulvis_, dust, _quasi pulveris filius_. Our
English name _Flea_, and the German _Flock_, are evidently deduced from
the quick motions of this insect.
As to the origin of Fleas, Moufet had a similar notion to that contained
in the word Pulex, if we adopt the etymology of Isodorus, for he says
they are produced from the dust, especially when moistened with urine,
the smallest ones springing from putrid matter. Scaliger relates that
they are produced from the moistened humors among the hairs of
dogs.[1016] Conformable to the curious notion of Moufet, Shakspeare
says:
_2 Car._ I think this be the most villainous house in all London
road for fleas: I am stung like a tench.
_1 Car._ Like a tench? by the mass, there is ne’er a king in
Christendom could be better bit than I have been since the first
cock.
_2 Car._ Why, they will allow us ne’er a jorden, and then we leak in
your chimney; and your _chamber-ley breeds fleas_ like a
loach.[1017]
“Martyr, the author of the Decads of Navigation, writes, that in
Perienna, a countrey of the Indies, the drops of sweat that fall from
their slaves’ bodies will presently turn to Fleas.”[1018]
Ewlin, in his book of Travels in Turkey, has recorded a singular
tradition of the history of the Flea and its confraternity, as preserved
among a sect of Kurds, who dwelt in his time at the foot of Mount
Sindshar. “When Noah’s Ark,” says the legend, “sprung a leak by
striking against a rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah
despaired altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of
his mishap if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh after the
deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do so; and the serpent
coiling himself up, drove his body into the fracture and stopped the
leak. When the pluvious element was appeased, and all were making their
way out of the ark, the serpent insisted upon the fulfillment of the
pledge he had received; but Noah, by Gabriel’s advice, committed the
pledge to the flames, and scattering its ashes in the air, there arose
out of them Fleas, Flies, Lice, Bugs, and all such sort of vermin as
prey upon human blood, and after this fashion was Noah’s pledge
redeemed.”[1019]
The Sandwich Islanders have the following tradition in regard to the
introduction of Fleas into their country: Many years ago a woman from
Waimea went out to a ship to see her lover, and as she was about to
return, he gave her a bottle, saying that there was very little valuable
property (_waiwai_) contained in it, but that she must not open it, on
any account, until she reached the shore. As soon as she gained the
beach, she eagerly uncorked the bottle to examine her treasure, but
nothing was to be discovered,--the Fleas hopped out, and “they have gone
on hopping and biting ever since.”[1020]
Our pigmy tormentor, _Pulex irritans_, in the opinion of some, seems to
have been regarded as an agreeable rather than a repulsive object. “Dear
Miss,” said a lively old lady to a friend of Kirby and Spence (who had
the misfortune to be confined to her bed by a broken limb, and was
complaining that the Fleas tormented her), “don’t you like _Fleas_?
Well, I think they are the prettiest little merry things in the
world.--I never saw a dull Flea in all my life.”[1021] Dr. Townson, as
mentioned by the above writers, from the encomium which he bestows upon
these vigilant little vaulters, as supplying the place of an alarum and
driving us from the bed of sloth, should seem to have regarded them with
the same happy feelings.[1022]
When Ray and Willughby were traveling, they found “at Venice and
Augsburg Fleas for sale, and at a small price too, decorated with steel
or silver collars around their necks, of which Willughby purchased one.
When they are kept in a box amongst wool or cloth, in a warm place, and
fed once a day, they will live a long time. When they begin to suck they
erect themselves almost perpendicularly, thrusting their sucker, which
originates in the middle of the forehead, into the skin. The itching is
not felt immediately, but a little afterwards. As soon as they are full
of blood, they begin to void a portion of it, and thus, if permitted,
they will continue for many hours sucking and voiding. After the first
itching no uneasiness is subsequently felt. Willughby’s Flea lived for
three months by sucking in this manner the blood of his hand; it was at
length killed by the cold of winter.”[1023]
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that a city of the Miantines is said to
have been dispeopled by Fleas;[1024] and Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, who
found these insects more tormenting than all the other plagues of the
Missouri country, say they sometimes here compel even the natives to
shift their quarters.[1025]
Dr. Clarke was informed by an Arab Sheikh that “the king of the Fleas
held his court at Tiberias.”[1026]
To prevent Fleas from breeding, Pliny gives the following curious
recipe: “Since I have made mention of the cuckow,” says this writer,
“there comes into my mind a strange and miraculous matter that the said
magicians report of this bird; namely, that if a man, the first time
that he heareth her to sing, presently stay his right foot in the very
place where it was when he heard her, and withal mark out the point and
just proportion of the said foot upon the ground as it stood, and then
digg up the earth under it within the said compasse, look what chamber
or roume of the house is strewed with the said mould, there will no
Fleas bread there.”[1027]
Thomas Hill, in his Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions, printed 1650,
quotes this passage from Pliny, calling it “A very easie and merry
conceit to keep off fleas from your beds or chambers.”[1028]
The Hungarian shepherds grease their linen with hogs’ lard, and thus
render themselves so disgusting even to the Fleas and Lice, as to put
them effectually to flight.[1029]
There is still shown in the Arsenal at Stockholm a diminutive piece of
ordnance, four or five inches in length, with which, report says, on the
authority of Linnæus, the celebrated Queen Christiana used to cannonade
Fleas.[1030]
But, seriously, if you wish for an effectual remedy, that prescribed by
old Tusser, in his Points of Goode Husbandry, in the following lines,
will answer your purpose:
While wormwood hath seed, get a handfull or twaine,
To save against March, to make flea to refraine:
Where chamber is sweeped and wormwood is strown,
No flea for his life dare abide to be known.
The inhabitants of Dalecarlia place the skins of hares in their
apartments, in which the Fleas willingly take refuge, so that they are
easily destroyed by the immersion of the skin in scalding water.[1031]
Pamphilius among others gives the following remedies against Fleas: If a
person, he says, sets a dish in the middle of the house, and draws a
line around it with an iron sword (it will be better if the sword has
done execution), and if he sprinkles the rest of the house, excepting
the place circumscribed, with an irrigation of staphisagria, or of
powdered leaves of the bay-tree, they having been boiled in brine or in
sea-water, he will bring all the Fleas together into the dish. A jar
also being set in the ground with its edge even with the pavement, and
smeared with bulls’ fat, will attract all the Fleas, even those that are
in the wardrobe. If you enter a place where there are Fleas, express the
usual exclamation of distress, and they will not touch you. Make a small
trench under a bed, and pour goats’ blood into it, and it will bring all
the Fleas together, and it will allure those from your clothing. Fleas
may be removed also, concludes this writer, from the most villous and
from the thickest pieces of tapestry, whither, they betake themselves
when full, if goats’ blood is set in a vessel or in a cork.[1032]
Moufet says: “A Gloeworm, set in the middle of the house, drives away
Fleas.”[1033]