London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (27 page)

Statement of a Packman

[pp.
421
–2] Of the way of trading of a travelling-pedlar I had the following account from one of the body. He was well dressed, and a good but keen-looking man of about thirty-five, slim, and of rather short stature, with quick dark eyes and bushy whiskers, on which it was evident no small culture was bestowed. His manners were far from obtrusive or importunate – to those whom he sought to make customers – for I happened to witness a portion of his proceedings in that respect; but he had a quiet perseverance with him, which, along with perfect civility, and something like deference, might be the most efficient means of recommending himself to the maid-servants, among whom lay his chief customers. He showed a little of the pride of art in describing the management of his business, but he would not hear that he ‘pattered’: he talked to his customers, he declared, as any draper, who knew his business well, might talk to
his
.

When I saw him, his pack, which he carried slung over one shoulder, contained a few gown-pieces of printed cotton, nearly all with pink grounds; a few shawls of different sizes; and three rolls firmly packed, each with a card-label on which was neatly written, ‘French Merino. Full duty paid. A.B. – L.F. – 18 – 33 – 1851 –. French Chocolate.’ There were also six neat paper packages, two marked ‘worked collars’, three, ‘gauze handkerchiefs’, and the other ‘beautiful child’s gros de naples’. The latter
consisted of 4½ yards of black silk, sufficient for a child’s dress. He carried with him, moreover, 5 umbrellas, one inclosed in a bright glazed cover, while from its mother-of-pearl handle hung a card addressed – ‘The Lady’s Maid, Victoria Lodge, 13
s
. 6
d
.’

‘This is a very small stock,’ he said, ‘to what I generally carry, but I’m going on a country round to-morrow, and I want to get through it before I lay in a new one. I tell people that I want to sell off my goods cheap, as they’re too good for country sale; and that’s true, the better half of it.’

On my expressing some surprise that he should be leaving London at this particular time, he answered:

‘I go into the country because I think all the hawkers will be making for town, and there’ll be plenty of customers left in the country, and fewer to sell to them at their own places. That’s my opinion.

‘I sell to women of all sorts. Smart-dressing servant-maids, perhaps, are my best customers, especially if they live a good way from any grand ticketing shop. I sold one of my umbrellas to one of them just before you spoke to me. She was standing at the door, and I saw her give half a glance at the umbrellas, and so I offered them. She first agreed to buy a very nice one at 3
s
. 3
d
. (which should have been 4
s
.) but I persuaded her to take one at 3
s
. 9
d
. (which should have been 4
s
. 6
d
.). “Look here, ma’am,” said I, “this umbrella is much bigger you see, and will carry double so when you’re coming from church of a wet Sunday evening, a friend can have share of it, and very grateful he’ll be, as he’s sure to have his best hat on. There’s been many a question put under an umbrella that way that’s made a young lady blush, and take good care of her umbrella when she was married, and had a house of her own. I look sharp after the young and pretty ladies, Miss, and shall as long as I’m a bachelor.” “O,” says she, “such ridiculous nonsense. But I’ll have the bigger umbrella, because it’s often so windy about here, and then one must have a good cover if it rains as well.”

‘That’s my way, sir. I don’t mind telling that, because they do the same in the shops. I’ve heard them, but they can’t put love and sweet-hearting so cleverly in a crowded shop as we can in a quiet house. It’s that I go for, love and sweet-hearting; and I always speak to any smart servant as if I thought she was the mistress, or as if I wasn’t sure whether she was the mistress or the lady’s-maid; three times out of four she’s house-maid or maid of all work. I call her “ma’am”, and “young lady”, and sometimes “miss”. It’s no use offering to sell until a maid has tidied herself in the afternoon – not a bit. I should made a capital draper’s shopman, I know, only I could never bear the confinement. I never will hear such words as
“I don’t want it”, or, “nothing more to-day”, no more than if I was behind a counter.

‘The great difficulty I have is to get a chance of offering my goods. If I ring at a gate – for I always go a little way out of town – they can see who it is, and I may ring half an hour for nothing. If the door’s opened it’s often shut again directly, and I just hear “bother”. I used to leave a few bills, and I do so still in some parts of the country, with a list of goods, and “this bill to be called for” printed at the bottom. But I haven’t done that in town for a long time; it’s no good. People seem to think it’s giving double trouble. One of the prettiest girls I ever saw where I called one evening, pointed – just as I began to say, “I left a bill and” – to some paper round a candle in a stick, and shut the door laughing.

‘In selling my gown-pieces I say they are such as will suit the complexion, and such like; and I always use my judgment in saying so. Why shouldn’t I? It’s the same to me what colour I sell. “It’s a genteel thing, ma’am,” I’ll say to a servant-maid, “and such as common people won’t admire. It’s not staring enough for them. I’m sure it would become you, ma’am, and is very cheap; cheaper than you could buy at a shop; for all these things are made by the same manufacturers, and sold to the wholesale dealers at the same price, and a shopkeeper, you know, has his young men, and taxes, and rates, and gas, and fine windows to pay for, and I haven’t, so it don’t want much judgment to see that I must be able to sell cheaper than shopkeepers, and I think your own taste, ma’am, will satisfy you that these here are elegant patterns.”

‘That’s the way I go on. No doubt there’s others do the same, but I know and care little about them. I have my own way of doing business, and never trouble myself about other people’s patter or nonsense.

‘Now, that piece of silk I shall, most likely, sell to the landlady of a public-house, where I see there’s children. I shall offer it after I’ve got a bit of dinner there, or when I’ve said I want a bit. It’s no use offering it there, though, if it isn’t cheap; they’re too good judges. Innkeepers aren’t bad customers, I think, taking it altogether, to such as me, if you can get to talk to them, as you sometimes can at their bars. They’re generally wanting something, that’s one step. I always tell them that they ought to buy of men, in my way, who live among them, and not of fine shopkeepers, who never came a-near their houses. I’ve sold them both cottons and linens, after such talk as that. I live at public-houses in the country. I sleep nowhere else.

‘My trade in town is nothing to what it was ten or a dozen years back. I don’t know the reason exactly. I think so many threepenny busses is one;
for they’ll take any servant, when she’s got an afternoon, to a thoroughfare full of ticket-shops, and bring her back, and her bundle of purchases too, for another 3
d
. I shall cut it altogether, I think, and stick to the country. Why, I’ve known the time when I should have met from half-a-dozen to a dozen people trading in my way in town, and for these three days, and dry days too, I haven’t met one. My way of trading in the country is just the same as in town. I go from farm-house to farm-house, or call at gentlemen’s grand seats – if a man’s known to the servants there, it may be the best card he can play – and I call at every likely house in the towns or villages. I only go to a house and sell a mistress or maid the same sort of goods (a little cheaper, perhaps), and recommend them in the same way, as is done every day at many a fine city, and borough, and West-End shop. I never say they’re part of a bankrupt’s stock; a packfull would seem nothing for that. I never pretend that they’re smuggled. Mine’s a respectable trade, sir. There’s been so much dodging that way, it’s been a great stop to fair trading; and I like to go on the same round more than once. A person once taken-in by smuggled handkerchiefs, or anything, won’t deal with a hawker again, even though there’s no deception. But “duffing”, and all that is going down fast, and I wish it was gone altogether. I do nothing in tally. I buy my goods; and I’ve bought all sorts, in wholesale houses, of course, and I’d rather lay out 10
l
. in Manchester than in London. O, as to what I make, I can’t say it’s enough to keep me (I’ve only myself), and escape the income-tax. Sometimes I make 10
s
. a week; sometimes 20
s
.; sometimes 30
s
.; and I have made 50
s
.; and one week, the best I ever did, I made as much as 74
s
. 6
d
. That’s all I can say.’

Perhaps it may be sufficiently accurate to compute the average weekly earnings of a smart trader like my informant, at from 21
s
. to 25
s
. in London, and from 25
s
. to 30
s
. in the country.

[pp. 511–17] As the volume is now fast drawing to a close, and a specific account has been furnished of almost every description of street-
seller
(with the exception of those who are the
makers
of the articles they vend), I purpose giving a more full and general history and classification than I have yet done of the feminine portion of the traders in the streets.

The women engaged in street-sale are of all ages and of nearly all classes. They are, however, chiefly of two countries, England and Ireland. There are (comparatively) a few Jewesses, and a very few Scotchwomen
and Welchwomen who are street-traders; and they are so, as it were, accidentally, from their connection, by marriage or otherwise, with male street-sellers. Of foreigners there are German broom-women, and a few Italians with musical instruments.

The first broad and distinctive view of the female street-sellers, is regarding them
nationally
, that is to say, either English or Irish women – two classes separated by definite characteristics from each other.

The Irishwomen – to avoid burthening the reader with an excess of subdivisions – I shall speak of generally; that is to say, as one homogeneous class, referring those who require a more specific account to the description before given of the street-sellers.

The Englishwomen selling in the streets appear to admit of being arranged into four distinct groups, viz.:

1. The wives of street-sellers.

2. Mechanics’ or labourers’ wives, who go out street-selling (while their husbands are at work) as a means of helping out the family income.

3. Widows of former street-sellers.

4. Single women.

I do not know of any street-trade carried on
exclusively
by women. The sales in which they are principally concerned are in fish (including shrimps and oysters), fruit and vegetables (widows selling on their own account), fire-screens and ornaments, laces, millinery, artificial flowers (but not in any great majority over the male traders), cut flowers, boot and stay-laces and small wares, wash-leathers, towels, burnt linen, combs, bonnets, pin-cushions, tea and coffee, rice-milk, curds and whey, sheeps’-trotters, and dressed and undressed dolls.

What may be called the ‘heavier’ trades, those necessitating the carrying of heavy weights, or the pushing of heavily laden barrows, are in the hands of men; and so are, even more exclusively, what may be classed as the more skilled trades of the streets, viz. the sale of stationery, of books, of the most popular eatables and drinkables (the coffee-stalls excepted), and in every branch dependent upon the use of patter. In such callings as root-selling, crock-bartering, table-cover selling, mats, game, and poultry, the wife is the helpmate of her husband; if she trade separately in these things, it is because there is a full stock to dispose of, which requires the exertions of two persons, perhaps with some hired help just for the occasion.

The difference in the street-traffic, as carried on by Englishwomen and Irishwomen, is marked enough. The Irishwoman’s avocations are the least skilled, and the least remunerative, but as regards mere toil, such as
the carrying of a heavy burthen, are by far the most laborious. An Irishwoman, though not reared to the streets, will carry heavy baskets of oranges or apples, principally when those fruits are cheap, along the streets while her English co-trader (if not a costermonger) may be vending laces, millinery, artificial flowers, or other commodities of a ‘light’, and in some degree of street estimation a ‘genteel’ trade. Some of the less laborious callings, however, such as that in wash-leathers, are principally in the hands of young and middle-aged Irishwomen, while that in sheeps’-trotters, which does not entail heavy labour, are in the hands mostly of elderly Irishwomen. The sale of such things as lucifer-matches and watercresses, and any ‘stock’ of general use, and attainable for a few pence, is resorted to by the very poor of every class. The Irishwoman more readily unites begging with selling than the Englishwoman, and is far more fluent and even eloquent; perhaps she pays less regard to truth, but she unquestionably pays a greater regard to chastity. When the uneducated Irishwoman, however, has fallen into licentious ways, she is, as I once heard it expressed, the most ‘savagely wicked’ of any.

After these broad distinctions I proceed to details.

1. From the best information at my command it may be affirmed that about one-half of the women employed in the diverse trades of the streets, are the wives or concubines (permanently or temporarily) of the men who pursue a similar mode of livelihood – the male street-sellers. I may here observe that I was informed by an experienced police-officer – who judged from his personal observation, without any official or even systematic investigation – that the women of the town, who survived their youth or their middle age, did not resort to the sale of any commodity in the streets, but sought the shelter of the workhouse, or died, he could not tell where or under what circumstances. Of the verity of this statement I have no doubt, as a street-sale entails some degree of industry or of exertion, for which the life of those wretched women may have altogether unfitted them.