London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (4 page)

V. Street-artizans, or working pedlars

VI. Street-labourers

The first of these divisions – the
STREET-SELLERS
– includes many varieties; viz. –

1.
The street-sellers of fish, &c
. – ‘wet’, ‘dry’, and shell-fish – and poultry, game, and cheese.

2.
The street-sellers of vegetables
, fruit (both ‘green’ and ‘dry’), flowers, trees, shrubs, seeds, and roots, and ‘green stuff’ (as watercresses, chickweed and grun’sel, and turf).

3.
The street-sellers of eatables and drinkables, –
including the vendors of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, ham sandwiches, peas’-soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum ‘duff’, meat-puddings, baked potatoes, spice-cakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandy-balls, cough drops, and cat and dog’s meat – such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of street-drinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger-beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water.

4.
The street-sellers of stationery, literature, and the fine arts
– among whom are comprised the flying stationers, or standing and running
patterers; the long-song-sellers; the wall-song-sellers (or ‘pinners-up’, as they are technically termed); the ballad sellers; the vendors of playbills, second editions of newspapers, back numbers of periodicals and old books, almanacks, pocket books, memorandum books, note paper, sealing-wax, pens, pencils, stenographic cards, valentines, engravings, manuscript music, images, and gelatine poetry cards.

5.
The street-sellers of manufactured articles
, which class comprises a large number of individuals, as (
a
) the vendors of chemical articles of manufacture – viz., blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, grease-removing compositions, plating-balls, poison for rats, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigar-lights, (
b
) The vendors of metal articles of manufacture – razors and pen-knives, tea-trays, dog-collars, and key-rings, hardware, bird-cages, small coins, medals, jewellery, tin-ware, tools, card-counters, red-herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons, and Dutch ovens, (
c
) The vendors of china and stone articles of manufacture – as cups and saucers, jugs, vases, chimney ornaments, and stone fruit, (
d
) The vendors of linen, cotton, and silken articles of manufacture – as sheeting, table-covers, cotton, tapes and thread, boot and stay-laces, haberdashery, pretended smuggled goods, shirt-buttons, etc., etc.; and (
e
) the vendors of miscellaneous articles of manufacture – as cigars, pipes, and snuff-boxes, spectacles, combs, ‘lots’, rhubarb, sponges, wash-leather, paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol toys, sawdust, and pin-cushions.

6.
The street-sellers of second-hand articles
– of whom there are again four separate classes; as (
a
) those who sell old metal articles – viz. old knives and forks, keys, tin-ware, tools, and marine stores generally; (
b
) those who sell old linen articles – as old sheeting for towels; (
c
) those who sell old glass and crockery-including bottles, old pans and pitchers, old looking glasses, &c.; and (
d
) those who sell old miscellaneous articles – as old shoes, old clothes, old saucepan lids, &c., &c.

7.
The street-sellers of live animals
– including the dealers in dogs, squirrels, birds, gold and silver fish, and tortoises.

8.
The street-sellers of mineral productions and curiosities
– as red and white sand, silver sand, coals, coke, salt, spar ornaments, and shells.

These, so far as my experience goes, exhaust the whole class of street-sellers, and they appear to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in the streets of London.

The next class are the
STREET-BUYERS
, under which denomination come the purchasers of hare-skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass, broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.

After these we have the
STREET-FINDERS
, or those who, as I said
before, literally ‘pick up’ their living in the public thoroughfares. They are the ‘pure’ pickers, or those who live by gathering dogs’-dung; the cigar-end finders, or ‘hard-ups’, as they are called, who collect the refuse pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the mud-larks, the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-hunters.

Under the fourth division, or that of the
STREET-PERFORMERS, ARTISTS, AND SHOWMEN
, are likewise many distinct callings.

1.
The street-performers
, who admit of being classified into (
a
) mountebanks – or those who enact puppet-shows, as Punch and Judy, the fantoccini, and the Chinese shades. (
b
) The street-performers of feats of strength and dexterity – as ‘acrobats’ or posturers, ‘equilibrists’ or balancers, stiff and bending tumblers, jugglers, conjurors, sword-swallowers, ‘salamanders’ or fire-eaters, swordsmen, etc. (
c
) The street-performers with trained animals – as dancing dogs, performing monkeys, trained birds and mice, cats and hares, sapient pigs, dancing bears, and tame camels, (
d
) The street-actors – as clowns, ‘Billy Barlows’, ‘Jim Crows’, and others.

2.
The street showmen
, including shows of (
a
) extraordinary persons – as giants, dwarfs, Albinoes, spotted boys, and pig-faced ladies, (
b
) Extraordinary animals – as alligators, calves, horses and pigs with six legs or two heads, industrious fleas, and happy families, (
c
) Philosophic instruments – as the microscope, telescope, thaumascope. (
d
) Measuring-machines – as weighing, lifting, measuring, and striking machines; and (
e
) miscellaneous shows – such as peep-shows, glass ships, mechanical figures, wax-work shows, pugilistic shows, and fortune-telling apparatus.

3.
The street-artists
– as black profile-cutters, blind paper-cutters, ‘screevers’ or draughtsmen in coloured chalks on the pavement, writers without hands, and readers without eyes.

4.
The street dancers
– as street Scotch girls, sailors, slack and tight rope dancers, dancers on stilts, and comic dancers.

5.
The street musicians
– as the street bands (English and German), players of the guitar, harp, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, musical bells, cornet, tom-tom, &c.

6.
The street singers
, as the singers of glees, ballads, comic songs, nigger melodies, psalms, serenades, reciters, and improvisatori.

7.
The proprietors of street games
, as swings, highflyers, roundabouts, puff-and-darts, rifle shooting, down the dolly, spin-’em-rounds, prick the garter, thimble-rig, etc.

Then comes the Fifth Division of the Street-folk, viz., the
STREET-ARTIZANS
, or
WORKING PEDLARS;

These may be severally arranged into three distinct groups – (1) Those who
make
things in the streets; (2) Those who
mend
things in the streets; and (3) Those who
make
things
at home
and
sell
them in the
streets
.

1. Of
those who make things in the streets
there are the following varieties: (
a
) the metal workers – such as toasting-fork makers, pin makers, engravers, tobacco-stopper makers, (
b
) The textile-workers-stocking-weavers, cabbage-net makers, night-cap knitters, doll-dress knitters, (
c
) The miscellaneous workers, – the wooden spoon makers, the leather brace and garter makers, the printers, and the glass-blowers.

2.
Those who mend things in the streets
, consist of broken china and glass menders, clock menders, umbrella menders, kettle menders, chair menders, grease removers, hat cleaners, razor and knife grinders, glaziers, traveling bell hangers, and knife cleaners.

3.
Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets
, are (
a
) the wood workers – as the makers of clothes-pegs, clothes-props, skewers, needle-cases, foot-stools and clothes-horses, chairs and tables, tea-caddies, writing-desks, drawers, work-boxes, dressing-cases, pails and tubs, (
b
) The trunk, hat, and bonnet-box makers, and the cane and rush basket makers, (
c
) The toy makers – such as Chinese roarers, children’s windmills, flying birds and fishes, feathered cocks, black velvet cats and sweeps, paper houses, cardboard carriages, little copper pans and kettles, tiny tin fire-places, children’s watches, Dutch dolls, buy-a-brooms, and gutta-percha heads, (
d
) The apparel makers – viz., the makers of women’s caps, boys’ and men’s cloth caps, night-caps, straw bonnets, children’s dresses, watch-pockets, bonnet shapes, silk bonnets, and gaiters, (
e
) The metal workers, – as the makers of fire-guards, bird-cages, the wire workers. (
f
) The miscellaneous workers – or makers of ornaments for stoves, chimney ornaments, artificial flowers in pots and in nosegays, plaster-of-Paris night-shades, brooms, brushes, mats, rugs, hearthstones, firewood, rush matting, and hassocks.

Of the last division, or
STREET-LABOURERS
, there are four classes:

1.
The cleansers
– such as scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimneysweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, ‘street-orderlies’, labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts.

2.
The lighters and waterers
– or the turn-cocks and the lamplighters.

3.
The street-advertisers
– viz., the bill-stickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement stencillers.

4.
The street-servants
– as horse holders, linkmen, coach-hirers, street-porters, shoe-blacks.

[pp.
8
–9] Among the street-folk there are many distinct characters of people – people differing as widely from each in tastes, habits, thoughts and creed, as one nation from another. Of these the costermongers form by far the largest and certainly the mostly broadly marked class. They appear to be a distinct race – perhaps, originally, of Irish extraction – seldom associating with any other of the street-folks, and being all known to each other. The ‘patterers’, or the men who cry the last dying-speeches, &c. in the street, and those who help off their wares by long harangues in the public thoroughfares, are again a separate class. These, to use their own term, are ‘the aristocracy of the street-sellers’, despising the costers for their ignorance, and boasting that they live by their intellect. The public, they say, do not expect to receive from them an equivalent for their money – they pay to hear them talk. Compared with the costermongers, the patterers are generally an educated class, and among them are some classical scholars, one clergyman, and many sons of gentlemen. They appear to be the counterparts of the old mountebanks or street-doctors. As a body they seem far less improvable than the costers, being more ‘knowing’ and less impulsive. The street-performers differ again from those; these appear to possess many of the characteristics of the lower class of actors, viz., a strong desire to excite admiration, a love of the tap-room, though more for the society and display than for the drink connected with it, a great fondness for finery and predilection for the performance of dexterous or dangerous feats. Then there are the street mechanics, or artizans – quiet, melancholy, struggling men, who, unable to find any regular employment at their own trade, have made up a few things, and taken to hawk them in the streets, as the last shift of independence. Another distinct class of street-folk are the blind people (mostly musicians in a rude way), who, after the loss of their eyesight, have sought to keep themselves from the workhouse by some little excuse for alms-seeking. These, so far as my experience goes, appear to be a far more deserving class than is usually supposed – their affliction, in most cases, seems to have chastened them and to have given a peculiar religious cast to their thoughts.

Such are the several varieties of street-folk, intellectually considered – looked at in a national point of view, they likewise include many distinct people. Among them are to be found the Irish fruit-sellers; the Jew clothesmen; the Italian organ boys, French singing women, the German
brass bands, the Dutch buy-a-broom girls, the Highland bagpipe players, and the Indian crossing-sweepers – all of whom I here shall treat of in due order.

The costermongering class or order has also its many varieties. These appear to be in the following proportions: One-half of the entire class are costermongers proper, that is to say, the calling with them is hereditary, and perhaps has been so for many generations; while the other half is composed of three-eighths Irish, and one-eighth mechanics, tradesmen, and Jews.

Under the term ‘costermonger’ is here included only such ‘street-sellers’ as deal in fish, fruit, and vegetables, purchasing their goods at the wholesale ‘green’ and fish markets. Of these some carry on their business at the same stationary stall or ‘standing’ in the street, while others go on ‘rounds’. The itinerant costermongers, as contradistinguished from the stationary street-fishmongers and greengrocers, have in many instances regular rounds, which they go daily, and which extend from two to ten miles. The longest are those which embrace a suburban part; the shortest are through streets thickly peopled by the poor, where duly to ‘work’ a single street consumes, in some instances, an hour. There are also ‘chance’ rounds. Men ‘working’ these carry their wares to any part in which they hope to find customers. The costermongers, moreover, diversify their labours by occasionally going on a country round, travelling on these excursions, in all directions, from thirty to ninety and even a hundred miles from the metropolis. Some, again, confine their callings chiefly to the neighbouring races and fairs.