London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (20 page)

Of the Street Sale of Milk

[p. 202] During the summer months milk is sold in Smithfleld, Billingsgate, and the other markets, and on Sundays in Battersea-fields, Clapham-common, Camberwell-green, Hampstead-heath, and similar places. About twenty men are engaged in this sale. They usually wear a smock frock, and have the cans and yoke used by the regular milk-sellers; they are not itinerant. The skim milk – for they sell none else – is purchased at the dairies at 1½
d
. a quart, and even the skim milk is also further watered by the street-sellers. Their cry is ‘Half-penny half-pint! Milk!’ The tin measure however in which the milk-and-water is served is generally a ‘slang’, and contains but half of the quantity proclaimed. The purchasers are chiefly boys and children; rarely men, and never costermongers, I was told, ‘for they reckon milk sickly’. These street-sellers – who have most of them been employed in the more regular milk-trade – clear about 1
s
. 6
d
. a day each, for three months; and as the profit is rather more than cent. per cent, it appears that about 4,000 gallons of milk are thus sold, and upwards of 260
l
. laid out upon these persons, yearly in its purchase.

A pair of cans with the yoke cost 15
s
., and 1
l
. is amply sufficient as capital to start in this trade, as the two measures used may be bought for 2
s
.; and 3
s
. can be devoted to the purchase of the liquid.

Of Street Piemen

[pp.
205
–7] The itinerant trade in pies is one of the most ancient of the street callings of London. The meat pies are made of beef or mutton; the fish pies of eels; the fruit of apples, currants, gooseberries, plums, damsons, cherries, raspberries, or rhubarb, according to the season – and
occasionally of mince-meat. A few years ago the street pie-trade was very profitable, but it has been almost destroyed by the ‘pie-shops’, and further, the few remaining street-dealers say ‘the people now haven’t the pennies to spare’. Summer fairs and races are the best places for the piemen. In London the best times are during any grand sight or holiday-making, such as a review in Hyde-park, the Lord Mayor’s show, the opening of Parliament, Greenwich fair, &c. Nearly all the men of this class, whom I saw, were fond of speculating as to whether the Great Exhibition would be ‘any good’ to them, or not.

The London piemen, who may number about forty in winter, and twice that number in summer, are seldom stationary. They go along with their pie-cans on their arms, crying, ‘Pies all ’ot! eel, beef, or mutton pies! Penny pies, all ’ot – all ’ot!’ The ‘can’ has been before described. The pies are kept hot by means of a charcoal fire beneath, and there is a partition in the body of the can to separate the hot and cold pies. The ‘can’ has two tin drawers, one at the bottom, where the hot pies are kept, and above these are the cold pies. As fast as the hot dainties are sold, their place is supplied by the cold from the upper drawer.

A teetotal pieman in Billingsgate has a pony and ‘shay cart’. His business is the most extensive in London. It is believed that he sells 20
s
. worth or 240 pies a day, but his brother tradesmen sell no such amount. ‘I was out last night,’ said one man to me, ‘from four in the afternoon till half-past twelve. I went from Somers-town to the Horse Guards, and looked in at all the public-houses on my way, and I didn’t take above 1
s
. 6
d
. I have been out sometimes from the beginning of the evening till long past midnight, and haven’t taken more than 4
d
., and out of that I have to pay 1
d
. for charcoal.’

The pie-dealers usually make the pies themselves. The meat is bought in ‘pieces’, of the same part as the sausage-makers purchase – the ‘stickings’ – at about 3
d
. the pound. ‘People, when I go into houses,’ said one man, ‘often begin crying, “Mee-yow,” or “Bow-wow-wow!” at me; but there’s nothing of that kind now. Meat, you see, is so cheap.’ About five-dozen pies are generally made at a time. These require a quartern of flour at 5
d
. or 6
d
.; 2 lbs. of suet at 6
d
.; 1½ lbs. meat at 3
d
., amounting in all to about 2
s
. To this must be added 3
d
. for baking; 1
d
. for the cost of keeping hot, and 2
d
. for pepper, salt, and eggs with which to season and wash them over. Hence the cost of the five dozen would be about 2
s
. 6
d
., and the profit the same. The usual quantity of meat in each pie is about half an ounce. There are not more than 20
hot
-piemen now in London. There are some who carry pies about on a tray slung before them; these
are mostly boys, and, including them, the number amounts to about sixty all the year round, as I have stated.

The penny pie-shops, the street men say, have done their trade a great deal of harm. These shops have now got mostly all the custom, as they make the pies much larger for the money than those sold in the streets. The pies in Tottenham-court-road are very highly seasoned. ‘I bought one there the other day, and it nearly took the skin off my mouth; it was full of pepper,’ said a street-pieman, with considerable bitterness, to me. The reason why so large a quantity of pepper is put in is, because persons can’t tell the flavour of the meat with it. Piemen generally are not very particular about the flavour of the meat they buy, as they can season it up into anything. In the summer, a street pieman thinks he is doing a good business if he takes 5
s
. per day, and in the winter if he gets half that. On Saturday night, however, he generally takes 5
s
. in the winter, and about 8
s
. in the summer. At Greenwich fair he will take about 14
s
. At a review in Hyde-park, if it is a good one, he will sell about 10
s
. worth. The generality of the customers are the boys of London. The women seldom, if ever, buy pies in the streets. At the public-houses a few pies are sold, and the pieman makes a practice of ‘looking in’ to all the taverns on his way. Here his customers are found principally in the tap-room. ‘Here’s all ‘ot!’ the pieman cries, as he walks in; ‘toss or buy! up and win ’em!’ This is the only way that the pies can be got rid of. ‘If it wasn’t for tossing we shouldn’t sell one.’

To ‘toss the pieman’ is a favourite pastime with costermongers’ boys and all that class; some of them aspire to the repute of being gourmands, and are critical on the quality of the comestible. If the pieman win the toss, he receives 1
d
. without giving a pie; if he lose, he hands it over for nothing. The pieman himself never ‘tosses’, but always calls head or tail to his customer. At the week’s end it comes to the same thing, they say, whether they toss or not: ‘I’ve taken as much as 2
s
. 6
d
. at tossing, which I shouldn’t have had if I hadn’t done so. Very few people buy without tossing, and the boys in particular. Gentlemen “out on the spree” at the late public-houses will frequently toss when they don’t want the pies, and when they win they will amuse themselves by throwing the pies at one another, or at me. Sometimes I have taken as much as half-a-crown, and the people of whom I had the money have never eaten a pie. The boys has the greatest love of gambling, and they seldom, if ever, buys without tossing.’ One of the reasons why the street boys delight in tossing, is, that they can often obtain a pie by such means when they have only a halfpenny wherewith to gamble. If the lad wins he gets a penny pie for his halfpenny.

For street mince-meat pies the pieman usually makes 5lb. of mincemeat at a time, and for this he will put in 2 doz. of apples, 1lb. of sugar, 1lb. of currants, 2lb. of ‘critlings’ (critlings being the refuse left after boiling down the lard), a good bit of spice to give the critlings a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the mince-meat look rich.

The ‘gravy’ which used to be given with the meat-pies was poured out of an oil-can, and consisted of a little salt and water browned. A hole was made with the little finger in the top of the meat pie, and the ‘gravy’ poured in until the crust rose. With this gravy a person in the line assured me that he has known pies four days old to go off very freely, and be pronounced excellent. The street piemen are mostly bakers, who are unable to obtain employment at their trade. ‘I myself,’ said one, ‘was a bread and biscuit baker. I have been at the pie business now about two years and a half, and can’t get a living at it. Last week my earnings were not more than 7
s
. all the week through, and I was out till three in the morning to get that.’ The piemen seldom begin business till six o’clock, and some remain out all night. The best time for the sale of pies is generally from ten at night to one in the morning.

Calculating that there are only fifty street piemen plying their trade in London, the year through, and that their average earnings are 8
s
. a week, we find a street expenditure exceeding 3,000
l
., and a street consumption of pies amounting nearly to three quarters of a million yearly.

To start in the penny pie business of the streets requires 1
l
. for a ‘can’, 2
s
. 6
d
. for a ‘turn-halfpenny’ board to gamble with, 12
s
. for a gross of tin pie-dishes, 8
d
. for an apron, and about 6
s
. 6
d
. for stock money – allowing 1
s
. for flour, 1
s
. 3
d
. for meat, 2
d
. for apples, 4
d
. for eels, 2
s
. for pork flare or fat, 2
d
. for sugar, ½
d
. for cloves, 1
d
. for pepper and salt, 1
d
. for an egg to wash the pies over with, 6
d
. for baking, and 1
d
. for charcoal to keep the pies hot in the streets. Hence the capital required would be about 2
l
. in all.

of the Street-sellers of Plum ‘Duff’ or Dough

[pp.
207
–8] Plum dough is one of the street-eatables – though perhaps it is rather a violence to class it with the street-pastry – which is usually made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest description. It is sometimes made in the rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more frequently in the ‘roly-poly’ style. Hot pudding used to be of much more extensive sale in the streets. One informant told me that twenty or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire, pudding, ‘with
plums in it’, was a popular street business. The ‘plums’, as in the orthodox plum-puddings, are raisins. The street-vendors of plum ‘duff’ are now very few, only six as an average, and generally women, or if a man be the salesman he is the woman’s husband. The sale is for the most part an evening sale, and some vend the plum dough only on a Saturday night. A woman in Leather-lane, whose trade is a Saturday night trade, is accounted ‘one of the best plum duffs’ in London, as regards the quality of the comestible, but her trade is not considerable.

The vendors of plum dough are the street-sellers who live by vending other articles, and resort to plum dough, as well as to other things, ‘as a help’. This dough is sold out of baskets in which it is kept hot by being covered with cloths, sometimes two and even three, thick; and the smoke issuing out of the basket, and the cry of the street-seller, ‘Hot plum duff, hot plum’, invite custom. A quartern of flour, 5
d
.; ½ lb. Valentia raisins, 2
d
.; dripping and suet in equal proportions, 2½
d
.; treacle, ½
d
.; and all-spice, ½
d
. – in all 10½
d
.; supply a roly-poly of twenty pennyworths. The treacle, however, is only introduced ‘to make the dough look rich and spicy’, and must be used sparingly.

The plum dough is sold in slices at ½
d
. or 1
d
. each, and the purchasers are almost exclusively boys and girls – boys being at least three-fourths of the revellers in this street luxury. I have ascertained – as far as the information of the street-sellers enables me to ascertain – that take the year through, six ‘plum duffers’ take 1
s
. a day each, for four winter months, including Sundays, when the trade is likewise prosecuted. Some will take from 4
s
. to 10
s
. (but rarely 10
s
.) on a Saturday night, and nothing on other nights, and some do a little in the summer. The vendors, who are all stationary, stand chiefly in the street-markets and reside near their stands, so that they can get relays of hot dough.

If we calculate then 42
s
. a week as the takings of six persons, for five months, so including the summer trade, we find that upwards of 200
l
. is expended in the street purchase of plum dough, nearly half of which is profit. The trade, however, is reckoned among those which will disappear altogether from the streets.

The capital required to start is: basket, 1
s
. 9
d
.; cloths, 6
d
.; pan for boiling, 2
s
.; knife, 2
d
.; stock-money, 2
s
.; in all about, 7
s
. 6
d
.

Of the Street-sellers of Cakes, Tarts, &c
.

[p. 208] These men and boys – for there are very few women or girls in the trade – constitute a somewhat numerous class. They are computed
(including Jews) at 150 at the least, all regular hands, with an addition, perhaps, of 15 or 20, who seek to earn a few pence on a Sunday, but have some other, though poorly remunerative, employment on the week-days. The cake and tart-sellers in the streets have been, for the most part, mechanics or servants; a fifth of the body, however, have been brought up to this or to some other street-calling.

The cake-men carry their goods on a tray slung round their shoulders when they are offering their delicacies for sale, and on their heads when not engaged in the effort to do business. They are to be found in the vicinity of all public places. Their goods are generally arranged in pairs on the trays; in bad weather they are covered with a green cloth.