Volume 1 — OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED ARTICLES. (continued 2)

The man then gave me the following history of himself. He was a kindly-looking and hearty old man. He had on a ragged fustian jacket, over which he wore a black greasy-looking and tattered oilskin coat—the collar of this was torn away, and the green baize lining alone visible. His waistcoat was patched in every direction, while his trousers appeared to be of corduroy; but the grease and mud was so thick upon them, that it was difficult to tell of what material they were made. His shoes—or rather what remained of them—were tied on his feet with pieces of string. His appearance altogether denoted great poverty.

“My father was a farmer, sir. He had two farms, about 800 acres in all. I was one of eleven (ten sons and one daughter). Seven years before my father’s death he left his farm, and went to live on his money. He had made a good bit at farming; but when he died it was all gone, and we was left to shift as we could. I had little or no education. My brothers could read and write, but I didn’t take to it; I went a bird’s-nesting, boy-like, instead, so that what little I did larn I have forgot. I am very sorry for that now. I used to drive the plough, and go a harrowing for father. I was brought up to nothing else. When father died, I thought as I should like to see London. I was a mere lad—about 20—and so I strolled up to town. I had 10s. with me, and that, with a bundle, was all that I possessed in the world. When I got to London I went to lodge at a public-house—the Red Lion—in Great Wild-street; and while I was there I sought about for work, but could not get any; when all was gone, I was turned out into the streets, and walked about for two days and two nights, without a bed, or a bit to eat, unless what I picked out of the gutter, and eat like a dog—orange-peel and old cabbage-stumps, indeed anything I could find. When I was very hard put to it, I was coming down Drury-lane, and I looked in, quite casual like, to ask for a job of work at the shop of Mr. Bolton, the needle-maker from Redditch. I told him as how I was nigh starving, and would do anything to get a crust; I didn’t mind what I put my hand to. He said he would try me, and gave me two packets of needles to sell—they was the goolden-eyed ones of that time of day—and he said when I had got rid of them I was to come back to him, and I should have two packets more. He told me the price to ask—sixpence a paper—and away I went like a sand-boy, and got rid of the two in an hour and a half. Then I went back, and when I told him what I’d done, he shook hands with me, and said, as he burst out laughing, “Now, you see I’ve made a man of you.” Oh, he was an uncommon nice gentleman! Then he told me to keep the shilling I had taken, and said he would trust me with two more packets. I sold them, and two others besides, that day. Then, he says, ‘I shall give you something else,’ and he let me have two packets of tailors’ needles and half a dozen of tailors’ thimbles. He told me how to sell them, and where to go, and on them I did better. I went round to the tailors’ shops and sold a good lot, but at last they stopped me, because I was taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor blind needle-sellers what supplies the journeymen tailors at the West-end. Then Mr. Bolton sent me down to one of his relations, a Mr. Crooks, in Fetter Lane, who was a Sheffield man, and sold cutlery to the hawkers; and Mr. Crooks and Mr. Bolton sot me up between them, and so I’ve followed the line ever since. I dare say I shall continue in it to my dying day. After I got fairly set agoing, I used to make—take good and bad, wet and dry days together—18s. a week; three shillings a day was what I calculated on at the least, and to do that I was obligated to take between 2l. and 3l. a week, or about eight or nine shillings each day. I went on doing this for upwards of thirty year. I have been nearly forty years, altogether, in the streets, selling cutlery. I did very tidy till about 4 years back—I generally made from 18s. to 1l. a week up to that time. I used to go round the country—to Margate, Brighton, Portsmouth—I mostly travelled by the coast, calling at all the sea-port towns, for I always did best among the sailors. I went away every Spring time, and came to London again at the fall of the year. Sixteen year ago, I married the widow of a printer—a pressman—she had no money, but you see I had no home, and I thought I should be more comfortable, and so I have been—a great deal more comfortable—and so I should be now, if things hadn’t got so bad. Four year ago, as I was a telling you, it was just after the railways had knocked off work, things began to get uncommon bad—before then, I had as good as 30s. or 40s. stock, and when things got slack, it went away, little by little. I couldn’t make profit enough to support me and my old woman—she has got the rheumatics and can’t earn me a halfpenny or a farden in the world; she hasn’t done so for years. When I didn’t make enough to live upon, of course I was obligated to break into my stock; so there it kept going shilling by shilling, and sixpence by sixpence, until I had got nothing left to work upon—not a halfpenny. You see, four or five months ago, I was took very bad with the rheumatic fever and gout. I got wet through in the streets, and my clothes dried on me, and the next day I was taken bad with pains in my limbs, and then everything that would fetch me a penny went to the pawn-shop; all my own and my old woman’s clothes went to get us food—blankets, sheets and all. I never would go nigh the parish; I couldn’t bring myself to have the talk about it. When I got well and out into the streets again, I borrowed 2s. or 3s. of my landlady—I have lived with her these three years—to get my stock again, but you see that got me so few things, that I couldn’t fetch myself up. I lost the greater portion of my time in going backards and forrards to the shop to get fresh goods as fast as I sold them, and so what I took wasn’t enough to earn the commonest living for me and my missus. Since December we have been nearly starving, and that’s as true as you have got the pen in your very hand. Sunday after Sunday we have been without a bit of dinner, and I have laid a-bed all day because we have had no coal, and then been obligated to go out on Monday morning without a bit of victuals between my lips. I’ve been so faint I couldn’t hardly walk. I’ve picked the crusts off the tables of the tap-rooms where I have been to hawk my goods, and put them in my pocket to eat them on the sly. Wet and dry I’m obligated to be out; let it come down ever so hard I must be in it, with scarcely a bit of shoe, and turned 60 years old, as I am. Look here, sir,” he said, holding up his foot; “look at these shoes, the soles is all loose, you see, and let water. On wet days I hawk my goods to respectable shops; tap-rooms is no good, decent people merely get insulted there. But in most of the shops as I goes to people tells me, ‘My good man it is as much as we can do to keep ourselves and our family in these cutting times.’ Now, just to show you what I done last week. Sunday, I laid a-bed all day and had no dinner. Monday, I went out in the morning without a morsel between my lips, and with only 8½d. for stock-money; with that I bought a knife and sold it for a shilling, and then I got another and another after that, and that was my day’s work—three times 3½d. or 10½d. in all, to keep the two of us. Tuesday, I sold a pair of small scissors and two little pearl-handled knives, at 6d. each article, and cleared 10½d. on the whole, and that is all I did. Wednesday, I sold a razor-strop for 6d., a four-bladed knife for a shilling, and a small hone for 6d.; by these I cleared 10d. altogether. Thursday, I sold a pair of razors for a shilling, clearing by the whole 11½d. Friday, I got rid of a pair of razors for 1s. 9d., and got 9d. clear.” I added up the week’s profits and found they amounted to 4s. 3½d. “That’s about right,” said the man, “out of that I shall have to pay 1s. for my week’s rent; we’ve got a kitchen, so that I leave you to judge how we two can live out of what’s remaining.” I told him it would’nt average quite 6d. a day. “That’s about it,” he replied, “we have half a loaf of bread a day, and that thank God is only five farthings now. This lasts us the day, with two-penny-worth of bits of meat that my old woman buys at a ham-shop, where they pare the hams and puts the parings by on plates to sell to poor people; and when she can’t get that, she buys half a sheep’s head, one that’s three or four days old, for then they sells ’em to the poor for 1½d. the half; and these with ¾d. worth of tea, and ½d. worth of sugar, ¼d. for a candle, 1d. of coal—that’s seven pounds—and ¾d. worth of coke—that’s half a peck—makes up all we gets.” These items amount to 6½d. in all. “That’s how we do when we can get it, and when we can’t, why we lays in bed and goes without altogether.”

Of the Blind Street-sellers of Tailors’ Needles, etc.

It is customary with many trades, for the journeymen to buy such articles as they require in their business of those members of their craft who have become incapacitated for work, either by old age, or by some affliction. The tailors—the shoe-makers—the carpenters—and many others do this. These sellers are, perhaps, the most exemplary instances of men driven to the streets, or to hawking for a means of living; and they, one and all, are distinguished by that horror of the workhouse which I have before spoken of as constituting a peculiar feature in the operative’s character. At present I purpose treating of the street-sellers of needles and “trimmings” to the tailors.

There are, I am informed, two dozen “broken-down” journeymen tailors pursuing this avocation in and around London. “There may be more,” said one who had lost his sight stitching, “but I get my information from the needle warehouse, where we all buy our goods; and the lady there told me she knew as many as twenty-four hawkers who were once tailors. These are all either decayed journeymen, or their widows. Some are incapacitated by age, being between sixty and seventy years old; the greater part of the aged journeymen, however, are inmates of the tailors’ almshouses. I am not aware,” said my informant, “of there being more than one very old man hawking needles to the tailors, though there may be many that I know nothing about. The one I am acquainted with is close upon eighty, and he is a very respectable man, much esteemed in St. James’s and St. George’s; he sells needles, and ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ to the journeymen: he is very feeble indeed, and can scarcely get along.” Of the two dozen needle-sellers above mentioned, there are only six who confine their “rounds” solely to the metropolis. Out of these six my informant knew two who were blind beside himself (one of these sells to the journeymen in the city). There are other blind tailors who were formerly hawkers of needles, but being unable to realize a subsistence thereby, have been obliged to become inmates of the workhouses; others have recently gained admission into the almshouses. Last February, I am assured, there were two blind needle-sellers, and two decrepit, in St. James’s workhouse. There are, moreover, two widows selling tailors’ needles in London. One of these, I am told, is wretchedly poor, being “eat up with the rheumatics, and scarcely able to move”—she is the relict of a blind journeyman, and well known in St. James’s. The other widow is now in St. Pancras Workhouse, having been unable, to use the words of my informant, “to get anything to keep life and soul together at the needle trade;” she, too, I am told, is well known to the journeymen. The tailors’ needle-sellers confining themselves more particularly to London consist of, at present, one old man, three blind, one paralyzed, and one widow; besides these, there are now in the alms-houses, two decrepit and one paralyzed; and one widow in the workhouse, all of whom, till recently, were needle-sellers, and originally connected with the trade.

“That is all that I believe are now in London,” said one to me, “I should, I think, know if there were more; for it is not from one place we get our articles, but many; and there I hear that six is about the number of tailors’ hawkers in town; the rest of the two dozen hawkers that I spoke of go a little way out into the suburbs. The six, however, stick to London altogether.” The needle-sellers who go into the country, I am told, travel as far as Reading, westward, and to Gravesend, in the opposite direction, or Brentwood, in Essex, and they will keep going back’ards and for’ards to the metropolis immediately their stock is exhausted. These persons sell not only tailors’ needles, but women’s needles as well, and staylaces and cottons, and small ware in general, which they get from Shepherd’s, in Compton Street; they have all been tailors, and are incapacitated from labour, either by old age or some affliction. There was one widow of a tailor among the number, but it is believed she is now either too old to continue her journeys, or else that she is deceased. The town-sellers confine their peregrinations mostly to the parishes of St. James’s and St. George’s (my informant was not aware that any went even into Marylebone). One travels the City, while the other five keep to the West End; they all sell thimbles, needles, inch-measures, bodkins, inch sticks, scissars (“when they can get them,” I was told, “and that’s very seldom”), and bees’-wax, basting cotton, and, many of them, publications. The publications vended by these men are principally the cheap periodicals of the day, and two of these street-sellers, I am informed, do much better with the sale of publications than by the “trimmings.” “They get money, sir,” said one man to me, “while we are starving. They have their set customers and have only to go round and leave the paper, and then to get their money on the Monday morning.”

The tailors’ hawkers buy their trimmings mostly at the retail shops. They have not stock-money sufficient, I am assured, to purchase at the wholesale houses, for “such a thing as a paper of needles large tradesmen don’t care about of selling us poor men.” They tell me that if they could buy wholesale they could get their goods one-fourth cheaper, and to be “obligated” to purchase retail is a great drawback on their profits. They call at the principal tailors’ workshops, and solicit custom of the journeymen; they are almost all known to the trade, both masters and men, and, having no other means of living, they are allowed to enter the masters’ shops, though some of the masters, such as Allen, in Bond-street; Curlewis, Jarvis, and Jones, in Conduit-street, and others, refuse the poor fellows even this small privilege. The journeymen treat them very kindly, the needle-sellers tell me, and generally give them part of the provisions they have brought with them to the shop. If it was not for this the needle-sellers, I am assured, could hardly live at all. “There’s that boy there,” said a blind tailor, speaking of the youth who had led him to my house, and who sat on the stool fast asleep by the fire,—“I’m sure he must have starved this winter if it hadn’t been for the goodness of the men to us, for it’s little that me and his mother has to give him; she’s gone almost as blind as myself working at the ‘sank work’ (making up soldiers’ clothing). Oh, ours is a miserable life, sir!—worn out—blind with over work, and scarcely a hole to put one’s head in, or a bit to put in one’s mouth. God Almighty knows that’s the bare truth, sir.” Sometimes the hawkers go on their rounds and take only 2d., but that is not often; sometimes they take 5s. in a day, and “that is the greatest sum,” said my informant, “I ever took; what others might do I can’t say, but that I’m confident is about the highest takings.” In the summer three months the average takings rise to 4s. per day; but in the winter they fall to 1s., or at the outside 1s. 6d. The business lasts only for three hours and a half each day, that is from eight till half-past eleven in the morning; after that no good is to be done. Then the needle-sellers, I am told, go home, and the reason of this is, I am told, if they appear in the public streets selling or soliciting alms, the blind are exempted from becoming recipients of the benefits of many of the charitable institutions. The blind man whom I saw, told me that after he had done work and returned home, he occupied himself with pressing the seams of the soldiers’ clothes when his “missus” had sewed them. The tailors’ needle-sellers are all married, and one of the wives has a mangle; and “perhaps,” said my informant, “the blind husband turns the mangle when he goes home, but I can’t say.” Another wife is a bookfolder, but she has no work. The needles they usually sell five a penny to the journeymen, but the most of the journeymen will take but four; they say “we can’t get a living at all if we sell the needles cheaper. The journeymen are mostly very considerate—very indeed; much more than the masters; for the masters won’t hardly look at us. I don’t know that a master ever gave me a farden—and yet there’s some of them very soothing and kind in speaking.” The profit in the needles, I am told, is rather more than 100 per cent.; “but,” say the sellers, “only think, sir, we must get rid of 150 needles even to take 3s. The most we ever sell in one shop is 6d. worth—and the usual amount is 2d. worth. You can easy tell how many shops we must travel round to, in order to get rid of 3s. worth.” Take one shop with another, the good with the bad, they tell me they make about 1d. profit from each they visit. The profit on the rest of the articles they vend is about 20 per cent., and they calculate that all the year round, summer and winter, they may be said to take 2s. a day, or 12s. a week; out of which they clear from 5s. to 5s. 6d. They sell far more needles than anything else. Some of the blind needle-sellers make their own bees’-wax into “shapes,” (pennyworths) themselves, melting into and pouring into small moulds.

The blind needle-seller whom I saw was a respectable-looking man, with the same delicacy of hand as is peculiar to tailors, and which forms so marked a contrast to the horny palms of other workmen. He was tall and thin, and had that upward look remarkable in all blind men. His eyes gave no signs of blindness (the pupils being full and black), except that they appeared to be directed to no one object, and though fixed, were so without the least expression of observation. His long black surtout, though faded in colour, was far from ragged, having been patched and stitched in many places, while his cloth waistcoat and trowsers were clean and neat—very different from the garments of street-sellers in general. In his hand he carried his stick, which, as he sat, he seemed afraid to part with, for he held it fast between his knees. He came to me accompanied by his son, a good-looking rough-headed lad, habited in a washed-out-blue French kind of pinafore, and whose duty it was to lead his blind father about on his rounds. Though the boy was decently clad, still his clothes, like those of his father, bore many traces of that respectable kind of poverty which seeks by continuous mending to hide its rags from the world. The face of the father, too, was pinched, while there was a plaintiveness about his voice that told of a wretched spirit-broken and afflicted man. Altogether he was one of the better kind of handicraftsmen—one of those fine specimens of the operatives of this country—independent even in their helplessness, scorning to beg, and proud to be able to give some little equivalent for the money bestowed on them. I have already given accounts of the “beaten-out” mechanic from those who certainly cannot be accused of an excess of sympathy for the poor—namely the Poor Law Commissioners and masters of workhouses; and I can only add, that all my experience goes fully to bear out the justice of these statements. As I said before, the class who are driven to the streets to which the beaten-out or incapacitated operative belongs, is, of all others, the most deserving of our sympathy; and the following biography of one of this order is given to teach us to look with a kindly eye upon the many who are forced to become street-sellers as the sole means of saving themselves from the degradation of pauperism or beggary.

“I am 45 years of age next June,” said the blind tailor. “It is upwards of 30 years since I first went to work at the tailoring trade in London. I learnt my business under one of the old hands at Mr. Cook’s, in Poland-street, and after that went to work at Guthrie’s, in Bond-street. I belonged to the Society held at the Old White Hart. I continued working for the honourable trade and belonging to Society for about 15 years. My weekly earnings then averaged 1l. 16s. a week while I was at work, and for several years I was seldom out of work, for when I got into a shop it was a long time before I got out again. I was not married then. I lived in a first floor back room, well-furnished, and could do very comfortably indeed. I saved often my 15s. or 16s. in a week, and was worth a good bit of money up to the time of my first illness. At one period I had nearly 50l. by me, and had it not been for “vacations” and “slack seasons” I should have put by more; but you see to be out of work even a few weeks makes a large hole in a journeyman’s savings. All this time I subscribed regularly to Society, and knew that if I got superannuated I should be comfortably maintained by the trade. I felt quite happy with the consciousness of being provided for in my old age or affliction then, and if it had not been for that perhaps I might have saved more even than I did. I went on in this way, as I said before, for 15 years, and no one could have been happier than I was—not a working man in all England couldn’t. I had my silver watch and chain. I could lay out my trifle every week in a few books, and used to have a trip now and then up and down the river, just to blow the London smoke off, you know. About 15 years ago my eyes began to fail me without any pain at all; they got to have as it were a thick mist, like smoke, before them. I couldn’t see anything clear. Working by gas-light at first weakened and at last destroyed the nerve altogether. I’m now in total darkness. I can only tell when the gas is lighted by the heat of it.

“It is not the black clothes that is trying to the sight—black is the steadiest of all colours to work at; white and all bright colours makes the eyes water after looking at ’em for any long time; but of all colours scarlet, such as is used for regimentals, is the most blinding, it seems to burn the eyeballs, and makes them ache dreadful. After working at red there’s always flying colours before the eyes; there’s no steady colour to be seen in anything for some time. Everything seems all of a twitter, and to keep changing its tint. There’s more military tailors blind than any others. A great number of tailors go blind, but a great many more has lost their sight since gas-light has come up. Candle-light was not half so pernicious to the sight. Gas-light is so very heating, and there’s such a glare with it that it makes the eyes throb, and shoot too, if you work long by it. I’ve often continued working past midnight with no other light than that, and then my eyes used to feel like two bits of burning coals in my head. And you see, sir, the worst of it was, as I found my sight going bad I was obliged to try it more, so as to keep up with my mates in the shop. At last my eyes got so weak that I was compelled to give up work, and go into the country, and there I stopped, living on my savings, and unable to do any work for fear of losing my sight altogether. I was away about three years, and then all my money was gone, and I was obligated, in spite of my eyes, to go back to work again. But then, with my sight defective as it was, I could get no employment at the honourable trade, and so I had to take a seat in a shop at one of the cheap houses in the city, and that was the ruin of me entirely; for working there, of course I got “scratched” from the trade Society, and so lost all hope of being provided for by them in my helplessness. The workshop at this cheap house was both small and badly ventilated. It was about seven foot square, and so low, that as you sot on the floor you could touch the ceiling with the tip of your finger. In this place seven of us worked—three on each side and one in the middle. Two of my shopmates were boys, or else I am sure it would not have held us all. There was no chimney, nor no window that could be opened to let the air in. It was lighted by a skylight, and this would neither open nor shut. The only means for letting out the foul air was one of them working ventilators—like cockades, you know, sir—fixed in one of the panes of glass; but this wouldn’t work, so there we were, often from 5 in the morning till 10 at night, working in this dreadful place. There was no fire in the winter, though we never needed one, for the workshop was over-hot from the suffocation, and in the summer it was like an oven. This is what it was in the daytime, but mortal tongue can’t tell what it was at night, with the two gas-lights burning away, and almost stifling us. Many a time some of the men has been carried out by the others fainting for air. They all fell ill, every one of them, and I lost my eyes and my living entirely by it. We spoke to the master repeatedly, telling him he was killing us, and though when he came up to the workshop hisself, he was nearly blown back by the stench and heat, he would not let us have any other room to work in—and yet he’d plenty of convenience up stairs. He paid little more than half the regular wages, and employed such men as myself—only those who couldn’t get anything better to do. What with illness and all, I don’t think my wages there averaged above 12s. a week: sometimes I could make 1l. in the week, but then, the next week, maybe I’d be ill, and would get but a few shillings. It was impossible to save anything then—even to pay one’s way was a difficulty, and, at last, I was seized with rheumatics on the brain, and obliged to go into St. Thomas’s Hospital. I was there eleven months, and came out stone blind. I am convinced I lost my eyesight by working in that cheap shop; nothing on earth will ever persuade me to the contrary, and what’s more, my master robbed me of a third of my wages and my sight too, and left me helpless in the world, as, God knows, I am now. It is by the ruin of such men as me that these masters are enabled to undersell the better shops; they get hold of the men whose eyes are just beginning to fail them, like mine did, because they know they can get them to work cheap, and then, just at the time when a journeyman requires to be in the best of shops, have the best of air, and to work as little by gas-light as possible, they puts him into a hole of a place that would stifle a rat, and keeps him working there half the night through. That’s the way, sir, the cheap clothes is produced, by making blind beggars of the workmen, like myself, and throwing us on the parish in our old age. You are right, sir, they not only robs the men but the ratepayers too.

“Well, sir, as I said, I come out of the hospital stone blind, and have been in darkness ever since, and that’s near upon ten years ago. I often dream of colours, and see the most delightful pictures in the world; nothing that I ever beheld with my eyes can equal them—they’re so brilliant, and clear and beautiful. I see then the features and figures of all my old friends, and I can’t tell you how pleasureable it is to me. When I have such dreams they so excite me that I am ill all the next day. I often see, too, the fields, with the cows grazing on a beautiful green pasture, and the flowers, just at twilight like, closing up their blossoms as they do. I never dream of rivers; nor do I ever remember seeing a field of corn in my visions; it’s strange I never dreamt in any shape of the corn or the rivers, but maybe I didn’t take so much notice of them as of the others. Sometimes I see the sky, and very often indeed there’s a rainbow in it, with all kinds of beautiful colours. The sun is a thing I often dream about seeing, going down like a ball of fire at the close of the day. I never dreamt of the stars, nor the moon—it’s mostly bright colours that I see.

“I have been under all the oculists I could hear of—Mr. Turnbull, in Russell-square, but he did me no good; then I went to Charing-cross, under Mr. Guthrie, and he gave me a blind certificate, and made me a present of half-a-sovereign; he told me not to have my eyes tampered with again, as the optic nerve was totally decayed. Oh, yes; if I had all the riches in the world I’d give them every one to get my sight back, for it’s the greatest pressure to me to be in darkness. God help me! I know I am a sinner, and believe I’m so afflicted on account of my sins. No, sir, it’s nothing like when you shut your eyes; when I had my sight, and closed mine, I remember I could still see the light through the lids, the very same as when you hold your hand up before the candle; but mine’s far darker than that—pitch black. I see a dark mass like before me, and never any change—everlasting darkness, and no chance of a light or shade in this world. But I feel consolated some how, now it is settled; although it’s a very poor comfort after all. I go along the streets in great fear. If a baby have hold of me, I am firm, but by myself, I reel about like a drunken man. I feel very timid unless I have hold of something—not to support me, but to assure me I shall not fall. If I was going down your staircase, sir, I should be all right so long as I touched the bannister, but if I missed that, I’m sure I should grow so giddy and nervous I should fall from the top to the bottom. After losing my sight, I found a great difficulty in putting my food into my mouth, for a long time—six months or better—and I was obliged to have some one to guide my hand, for I used often to put the fork up to my forehead instead of my mouth. Shortly after my becoming quite blind, I found all my other senses much quickened—my hearing—feeling—and reckoning. I got to like music very much indeed; it seemed to elevate me—to animate and cheer me much more than it did before, and so much so now, that when it ceases, I feel duller than ever. It sounds as if it was in a wilderness to me—I can’t tell why, but that’s all I can compare it to; as if I was quite alone with it. My smell and taste is very acute” (he was given some violets to smell)—“Oh, that’s beautiful,” he cried, “very reviving indeed. Often of an evening, I can see things in my imagination, and that’s why I like to sit alone then; for of all the beautiful thoughts that ever a man possessed, there’s none to equal a blind man’s, when he’s by hisself.

“I don’t see my early home, but occurrences that has recently took place. I see them all plain before me, in colours as vivid as if I had my sight again, and the people all dressed in the fashion of my time; the clothes seem to make a great impression on me, and I often sit and see in my mind master tailors trying a coat on a gentleman, and pulling it here and there. The figures keep passing before me like soldiers, and often I’m so took by them that I forget I’m blind, and turn my head round to look after them as they pass by me. But that sort of thinking would throw me into a melancholly—it’s too exciting while it lasts, and then leaves me dreadful dull afterwards. I have got much more melancholy since my blindness; before then, I was not seriously given, but now I find great consolation in religion. I think my blindness is sent to try my patience and resignation, and I pray to the Almighty to give me strength to bear with my affliction. I was quick and hot-tempered before I was blind, but since then, I have got less hasty like; all other troubles appears nothing to me. Sometimes I revile against my affliction—too frequently—but that is at my thoughtless moments, for when I’m calm and serious, I feel thankful that the Almighty has touched me with his correcting rod, and then I’m happy and at peace with all the world. If I had run my race, and not been stopped, I might never have believed there was a God. My wife works at the ‘sank work.’ She makes soldiers’ coats; she gets 1s. 1d. for making one, and that’s nearly a day and a half’s work; then she has to find her own trimmings, and they’re 1d. It takes her 16 hours to finish one garment, and the over-work at that is beginning to make her like as I was myself. If she takes up a book to read to me now, it’s all like a dirty mass before her, and that’s just as my sight was before I lost it altogether. She slaves hard to help me; she’s anxious and willing—indeed too much so. If she could get constant work, she might perhaps make about 7s. a week; but as it is, her earnings are, take one week with another, not more than 3s. Last week she earned 5s.; but that was the first job of work she’d had to do for two months. I think the two of us make on an average about 8s.; and out of that there is three people to keep—our two selves and our boy. Our rent is 2s. 6d., so that after paying that, we has about 5s. 6d. left for food, firing, and clothing for the whole of us. How we do it I can’t tell; but I know we live very, very hard: mostly on pieces of bread that the men gives to me and my boy, as we go round to the workshops. If we was any of us to fall ill, we must all go to the parish; if my boy was to go sick, I should be left without any one to lead me about, and that would be as bad as if I was laid-up myself; and if anything was to happen to my wife, I’d be done clean altogether. But yet the Lord is very good, and we’d get out of that, I dare say. If anything was to drive me to the parish, I should lose all hopes of getting some help from the blind institutions; and so I dread the workhouse worse than all. I’d sooner die on the step of a door, any time, than go there and be what they call well kept. I don’t know why I should have a dislike to going there, but yet I do possess it. I do believe, that any one that is willing to work for their bread, hates a workhouse; for the workhouse coat is a slothful, degrading badge. After a man has had one on his back, he’s never the same. I would’nt go for an order for relief so long as I could get a halfpenny loaf in twenty-four hours. If I could only get some friend to give me a letter of recommendation to Mr. Day’s Charity for the Blind, I should be happy for the rest of my days. I could give the best of references to any one who would take pity on me in my affliction.”

The Public-House Hawkers of Metal Spoons, etc.

The public-house hawkers are never so prosperous as those who confine their calling to private houses; they are often invited to partake of drink; are not the most industrious class of hawkers, and, to use their own language, are more frequently hard up than those who keep away from tap-room selling. The profits of the small hawkers in public-houses vary considerably. Some of them, when they have earned a shilling or two, are content to spend it before they leave the tap-room, and so they lose both their stock and profit. I do not mean to infer that this is the case with the whole of the public-house hawkers, for some among them strive hard to better their condition, and occasionally succeed; but there are too many who are content to drawl out their existence by always suffering to-morrow to provide for itself. The man who gave me the routine of small hawkers’ business I found in a tap-room in Ratcliffe Highway. He was hawking tea-spoons, and all the stock he possessed was half-a-dozen. These he importuned me to purchase with great earnestness. He prayed of me to lay out a trifle with him. He had not taken a penny the whole day he said, and had nothing to eat. “What’s much worse for such as me,” he added, “I’m dying for a glass of rum.” I might have his tea-spoons, he told me, at any price. If I would but pay for a glass of rum for him they should be mine. I assured him some bread and cheese would do him more good, as he had not eaten anything that day; but still he would have the rum. With a trembling hand he threw the liquor down his throat, smacked his lips, and said “that there dram has saved my life.” A few minutes afterwards he sold his spoons to a customer for sixpence; and he had another glass of rum. “Now,” said he, “I’m all right for business; if I’d twopence more I could buy a dozen tea-spoons, and I should earn a ‘bob’ or two yet before I went to bed.” After this he grew communicative, and told me he was as good a hawker as there was in London, and he thought he could do more than any other man with a small stock. He had two or three times resolved to better himself, and had ‘put in the pin,’ meaning he had made a vow to refrain from drinking; but he had broken out again and gone on in his old course until he had melted the whole of his stock, though twice it had, during his sobriety, amounted to 5l., and was often worth between 2l. and 3l. It was almost maddening when he came to his senses, he said, to find he had acted so foolishly; indeed, it was so disheartening to discover all the result of his good resolutions dissipated in a moment, that he declared he never intended to try again. After having drunk out his stock, he would if possible commence with half-a-dozen Britannia metal tea-spoons; these cost him 6d., and would sell for 9d. or 1s. When one half-dozen were disposed of he would procure another, adding a knife, or a comb or two. If entirely destitute, he would stick a needle in a cork, and request to know of “the parties” assembled in some tap-room, if they wanted anything in the ironmongery line, though the needle was all the stock he had. This was done for the purpose of “raising the wind;” and by it he would be sure to obtain a glass or two of ale if he introduced himself with his “ironmongery establishment” among the sailors. Sometimes he would manage to beg a few pence, and then he would purchase a knife, pair of braces, or half-a-dozen tea-spoons, and begin to practise his trade in a legitimate manner. In answer to my inquiry he said he had not always been a hawker. His father had been a soldier, and he had worked in the armoury. His father had been discharged upon a pension, and he (the hawker) left the army with his parents. He had never enlisted while his father was a soldier, but he had since. His mother adopted the business of a hawker upon the receipt of his father’s first quarter’s pension; and then he used to accompany her on her rounds. With the pension and the mother’s exertions they managed to subsist tolerably well. “Being the only child, I was foolishly spoilt by my parents,” he said; “and when I was a very young man—15 or 16—I became a great trouble to them. At 18 I enlisted in the 7th Fusileers, remained in the regiment three months, and then, at my own request, was bought off. My mother sold off most of her stock of goods to raise the money (twenty pounds). When I returned home I could not think of trudging by my mother’s side, as I had been used to do when carrying the goods; nor did I feel inclined to exert myself in any way for my own support. I considered my mother had a right to keep me without my working, and she, poor thing, thought so too. I was not only supported in idleness, but my mother would give me many a shilling, though she could ill afford it, for me to spend with my companions. I passed most of my time in a skittle ground. I was not what you might term a skittle sharp, for I never entered into a plot to victimise any person, although I confess I have often bet upon the ‘greenness’ of those who were silly enough to make wagers that they could not possibly win. Sometimes, after I had lost the trifle supplied me by my mother, I would return, and be blackguard enough to assume the bully unless my demands on her for a further supply were attended to. Poor thing, she was very meek, and with tears in her eyes she would grant my request. I often weep when I think how I treated her” (here the tears trickled down the man’s cheek), “and yet, badly as I used her, in my heart I loved her very much. I got tired of the skittle grounds in consequence of getting into a hobble relative to a skittle swindle: some sharpers had obtained a flat; I was speculating in a small way, betting pennies and twopences in such a manner as always to win; I was practising upon the flat upon my own account, without having any connection with the others; they fleeced their dupe out of several pounds, and he made a row about it. The police interfered, and I was singled out as one of the gang; the principals were also apprehended; they got six months each, and I was accommodated with a month’s board and lodging at the expense of the nation. I thought this at the time unjust, but I was as culpable as any of them, for at the time I only regretted I had not more money to stake larger wagers, and envied the other parties who were making a better thing of the business than I was. When I came out of jail, my poor mother treated me as a martyr. She thought I was as innocent as a child. Shortly after my release from prison my father died, and with him went the pension of course. I was then obligated to do something for myself. A few shillings’ worth of goods only were procured—for my father’s funeral and my extravagances had sadly crippled my mother’s means. I behaved very well for a short time. My mother then was often ill, and she never recovered the death of my father. In about a year after my father died I lost my mother; our stock of goods had dwindled down to a very poor lot, and I was obligated to ask relief of the parish towards her funeral expenses. When all was over, the value of my goods and cash did not amount to 20s. Ten years have elapsed since my mother’s death, and I don’t think I have ever been, during the whole period, sober for a month together.”

While I sat in this tap-room, I counted in the course of an hour and a quarter,—4 hawkers of sheep’s trotters, who visited the place; 3 sellers of shrimps, pickled whelks, and periwinkles; 2 baked potato-sellers; 8 song-hawkers; the same number with lucifer matches; and 3 with braces, &c. Not one of these effected a sale.

Of the Street-Sellers of Jewellery.

The jewellery now sold in the streets far exceeds, both in cheapness and quality, what was known even ten years ago. Fifty years ago the jewellery itinerant trade was almost entirely, if not entirely, in the hands of Jews, who at any rate professed to sell really gold articles, and who asked large prices; but these traders have lost their command over this, as I have shown that they have over other street callings, as not a twelfth of the street-jewellers are now Jews. A common trade among such street and country itinerant jewellers was in large watch seals, the bodies of which were of lead, more or less thickly plated with gold, and which were unsaleable even as old metal until broken to pieces,—but not always saleable then. The street or itinerant trade was for a long time afterwards carried on only by those who were regularly licensed as hawkers, and who preferred “barter” or “swopping” to actual sale, the barter being usually for other and more solid articles of the goldsmith’s trade.

The introduction of “mosaic” and other cheap modes of manufacturing quasi gold ornaments, brought about considerable changes in the trade, pertaining, however, more to the general manufacture, than to that prepared for the streets.

The itinerants usually carry their wares in boxes or cases, which shut up close, and can be slung on the shoulder for conveyance, or hung round the neck for the purposes of sale. These cases are nearly all glazed; within them the jewellery is disposed in such manner as, in the street-seller’s judgment, is the most attractive. A card of the larger brooches, or of cameos, often forms the centre, and the other space is occupied with the shawl-pins, with their globular tops of scarlet or other coloured glass: rings, armlets, necklaces, a few earrings and ear-drops, and sometimes a few side-combs, small medals for keepsakes, clasps, beads, and bead-purses, ornamental buttons for dresses, gilt buckles for waist-belts, thimbles, &c., constitute the street jeweller’s stock-in-trade. The usual prices are from 2d. to 1s. 6d.; the price most frequently obtained for any article being 3d. It will be seen from the enumeration of the articles, that the stock is such as is required “for women’s wear,” and women are now almost the sole customers of the street-jewellers. “In my time, sir,” said one elderly street-trader, “or rather, when I was a boy, and in my uncle’s time—for he was in jewellery, and I helped him at times—quite different sorts of jewellery was sold, and quite different prices was had; what’s a high figure now was a low figure then. I’ve known children’s coral and bells in my uncle’s stock—well, I don’t know whether it was real coral or not—and big watch keys with coloured stones in the centre on ’em, such as I’ve seen old gents keep spinning round when they was talking, and big seals and watch-chains; there weren’t no guards then, as I remember. And there was plated fruit-knives—silver, as near as a toucher—and silver pencils (pencil-cases), and gilt lockets, to give your sweetheart your hair in for keepsakes. Lor’ bless you! times is turned upside down.”

The disposition of the street-stalls is somewhat after the same fashion as that in the itinerant’s box, with the advantage of a greater command of space. Some of the stalls—one in Tottenham-court Road, I may instance, and another in Whitechapel—make a great show.

I did not hear of any in this branch of the jewellery trade who had been connected with it as working jewellers. I heard of two journeymen watchmakers and four clockmakers now selling jewellery (but often with other things, such as eye-glasses) in the street, but that is all. The street mass selling jewellery in town and country are, I believe, composed of the various classes who constitute the street-traders generally.

Of the nature of his present trade, and of the class of his customers, I had the following account from a man of twelve years’ experience in the vending of street jewellery:—

“It’s not very easy to tell, sir,” he said, “what sells best, for people begins to suspect everything, and seems to think they’re done if they give 3d. for an agate brooch, and finds out it ain’t set in gold. I think agate is about the best part of the trade now. It seems a stone as is easy imitated. Cornelians, too, ain’t so bad in brooches—people likes the colour; but not what they was, and not up to agates. But nothing is up to what it once was; not in the least. Sell twice as much—when you can, which often stands over till to-morrow come-never—and get half the profit. I don’t expect very much from the Great Exhibition. They sends goods so cheap from Germany, they’ll think anything dear in London, if it’s only at German prices. I think it’s a mistake to fancy that the cheaper a jewellery article is the more you’ll sell of it. You won’t. People’s of opinion—at least that’s my notion of it—that it’s so common everybody’ll have it, and so they won’t touch it. It’s Thames water, sir, against beer, is poor low-priced jewellery, against tidy and fair-priced; but then the low-priced has now ruined the other sorts, for they’re all thought to go under the same umbrella,—all of a sort; 1s. or 1d. Why, as to who’s the best customers, that depends on where you pitches your pitch, or works your round, and whether you are known, or are merely a upstart. But I can tell you, sir, who’s been my best customers—and is yet, but not so good as they was—and that’s women of the town; and mostly (for I’ve tried most places) about Ratcliff Highway, Whitechapel, Mile-end-road, Bethnal-green, and Oxford-street. The sailors’ gals is the best of all; but a’most all of them is very particular, and some is uncommon tiresome. ‘I’m afeard,’ they says, ‘this colour don’t suit my complexion; it’s too light, or it’s too dark. How does that ring show on my finger?’ I’ve known some of the fat and fair ones—what had been younger, but would be older—say, ‘Let me have a necklace of bright black beads;’ them things shows best with the fat ’uns—but in gen’ral them poor creatures is bad judges of what becomes them. The things they’re the most particular of all in is necklaces. Amber and pearl sells most. I have them from 6d. to 1s. 6d. I never get more than 1s. 6d. Cornelian necklaces is most liked by children, and most bought for them. I’ve trusted the women of the town, and trust them still. One young woman in Shadwell took a fancy the t’other week for a pearl necklace, ‘it became her so,’ which it didn’t; and offered to pay me 6d. a week for it if I wouldn’t sell it away from her. The first week she paid 6d.; the second nothing; and next week the full tip, ’cause her Jack had come home. I never lost a halfpenny by the women. Yes, they pays you a fairish price, but nothing more. Sometimes they’ve beat me down 1d., and has said, ‘It’s all the money I has.’

“It’s not very long ago that one of them offered me a fine goold watch which I could have bought at any price, for I saw she knew nothing of what it was worth. I never do anything that way. I believe a very few in my line does, for they can’t give the prices the rich fences can. It’s common enough for them gals to ask any street-jeweller they knows how much a watch ought to pop for, or to sell for, afore they tries it on. But it isn’t they as tries it on, sir; they gets some respeckbel old lady, or old gent, to do that for them. I’ve had cigars and Cavendish of them; such as seamen had left behind them; you know, sir, I’ve never given money, only jewellery for it. Plenty of shopkeepers is glad to buy it of me, and not at a bad price. They asks no questions, and I tells them no lies. One reason why these gals buys free is that when the jewellery gets out of order or out of fashion, they can fling it away and get fresh, it’s so cheap. When I’ve had no money on a day until I has sold to these women, I’ve oft enough said, ‘God bless ’em!’ Earrings is hardly any go now, sir; nothing to what they was; they’re going out. The penny jewellery’s little good; it’s only children what buys, or gets it bought for them. I sell most of brooches from 3d. to 6d., very seldom higher, and bracelets—they calls them armlets now—at the same price. I buys all my goods at a swag-shop: there’s no other market. Watchguards was middling sale, both silver and goold, or washed white and washed yellow, and the swags made money in them; but instead of 1s., they’re not to be sold at a Joey now, watchguards ain’t, if a man patters ever so.”

I am informed that there are not less than 1000 individuals who all buy their jewellery at the London swag-shops, and sell it in the streets, with or without other articles, but principally without; and that of this number 500 are generally in London and its suburbs, including such places as Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich. Of these traders about one-tenth are women; and in town about three-fifths are itinerant, and the others stationary. One-half, or thereabouts, of the women, are the wives of street-sellers; the others trade on their own account. A few “swop” jewellery for old clothes, with either the mistress or the maids. Four or five, when they see a favourable opportunity, offer to tell any servant-maid her fortune. “‘Buy this beautiful agate brooch, my dear,’ the woman’ll say, ‘and I’ll only charge you 1s. 6d.’—a German thing, sir, costing her seven farthings one street-jeweller informed me,—‘and I’ll tell you your fortune into the bargain.’”

One “old hand” calculated, that when a street-jeweller could display 50s. worth of stock, he could clear, all the year round, 15s. a week. “People,” said this man, “as far as I’ve known the streets, like to buy of what they think is a respectable man, and seemingly well to do; they feel safe with him.” Those, however, who cannot boast so large a stock of jewellery as 50s. worth, may only clear 10s. instead of 15s. weekly. One trader thought that the average earnings of his fraternity might be taken at 12s. a week; another—and both judged from their own experience—thought 10s. 6d. was high enough. Calculating, then, at a weekly profit of 10s. 6d., and a receipt of 18s. per individual, we find 23,400l. expended in the street-trade, including the sales at Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich; where—both places being resorted to by pleasure-seekers and seamen—the trade is sometimes considerable; watches, which now are almost unknown in a regular street-trade, there forming an occasional part of it.

Of The Pedlar-Jewellers.

I have heard a manufacturer of Birmingham jewellery assert, that one pound of copper was sufficient to make 10l. worth of jewellery; consequently, the material to provide the unmanufactured stock in trade of a wholesale dealer in Birmingham jewellery, is not over expensive. It may be imagined then that the pedlars who hawk jewellery do not invest a very great capital in the wares they sell; there are some few, however, who have very valuable stocks of goods, pedlars though they be. This trade is principally pursued by Jews, and to a great extent (especially in a small way) by foreign Jews. The Jews are, I think, more attentive to the wants of their poorer brethren than other people; and instead of supplying them with trifling sums of money, which must necessarily soon be expended, they give them small quantities of goods, so that they may immediately commence foraging for their own support. Many of these poor Jews, when provided with their stock of merchandise, can scarcely speak a word of English, and few of them know but little respecting the value of the goods they sell; they always take care to ask a good price, leaving plenty of room for abatement. I heard one observe that they could not easily be taken in by being overcharged, for according what they paid for the article they fixed the price upon it. Some of these men, notwithstanding their scanty knowledge of the trade at starting, have eventually become excellent judges of jewellery; some of them, moreover, have acquired riches in it; indeed from the indomitable perseverance of the Hebrew race, success is generally the result of their untiring industry. If once you look at the goods of a Jew pedlar, it is not an easy matter to get out of his clutches; it is not for want of perseverance if he does not bore and tease you, until at length you are glad to purchase some trifle to get rid of him. One of my informants tells me he is acquainted with several Jews, who now hold their heads high as merchants, and are considered very excellent judges of the wares they deal in, who originally began trading with but a small stock of jewellery, and that a charitable donation. As well as Jews there are Irishmen who deal in such commodities. The pedlar generally has a mahogany box bound with brass, and which he carries with a strap hung across his shoulder; when he calls at a house, an inquiry is made whether there is any old silver or gold to dispose of. “I will give you a full price for any such articles.” If the lady or gentleman accosted seems to be likely to buy, the box is immediately opened and a tempting display of gold rings, chains, scent-boxes, lockets, brooches, breast-pins, bracelets, silver thimbles, &c., &c., are exposed to view. All the eloquence the pedlar can command is now brought into play. The jewellery is arranged about the persons of his expected customers to the best advantage. The pedlar says all he can think of to enhance their sale: he will chop and change for anything they may wish to dispose of—any old clothes, books, or useless lumber may be converted into ornaments for the hair or other parts of dress. The Irish pedlar mostly confines his visits to the vicinity of large factories where there are many girls employed; these he supplies with earrings, necklaces, shawl-pins, brooches, lockets, &c., which are bought wholesale at the following prices:—Earrings and drops at from 3s. 6d. to 12s. per dozen pairs; the 3d. earring is a neat little article says my informant, and those sold at 1s. each, wholesale, are gorgeous-looking affairs; many of the latter have been disposed of by the pedlars at 1l. the pair, and even a greater price. Necklaces are from 5s. to 1l. per dozen. Lockets may be purchased wholesale at from 2s. to 10s. per dozen; guard chains (German silver) are 4s. per dozen; gilt heavy-looking waistcoat chains 6s. per dozen: and all other articles are equally low in price. The pedlar jeweller can begin business “respectably” for two pounds. His box costs him 7s. 6d.; half-a-dozen pairs of earrings of six different sorts, 3s.; half-a-dozen lockets (various), 1s. 9d.; half-a-dozen guard chains, 2s.; half-a-dozen shawl brooches, 2s. 6d.; one dozen breast-pins (different kinds), 3s.; one dozen finger rings of various descriptions, 3s. 6d.; half-a-dozen brooches at 4d. each, 2s.; one dozen necklaces (a variety), at 6s.; three silver pencil-cases at 1s. 9d. each, 5s. 3d.; half-a-dozen waistcoat chains, 3s.; one silver toothpick, at 1s. 6d. These make altogether two pounds. If the articles are arranged with taste and seeming care (as if they were very valuable), with jeweller’s wadding under each, and stuck on pink cards, &c., while the finger rings are inserted in the long narrow velvet-lined groove of the box, and the other “valuables” well spread about the little portable shop—they may be made to assume a very respectable and almost “rich” appearance. Many who now have large establishments commenced life with much less stock than is here mentioned. The Jews, I do not think, continues my informant, are the best salesmen; and the fact of their being Israelites is, in many instances, a bar to their success; country people, especially, are afraid of being taken in by them. The importunities and appeals of the Hebrew, however, are far more urgent than any other tradesman; and they always wait where they think there’s the slightest chance of effecting a sale, until the door is slammed in their face. I believe there are not, at the present time, many (especially small traders) who deal exclusively in jewellery; they mostly add other small and light articles—such as fancy cutlery, side combs, &c. There may, at a rough guess, be 500 of them travelling the country; half the number are poor foreign Jews; a quarter are Jews, who have, perhaps, followed the same calling for years; and the remaining quarter, a mixture of Irish and English, with a small preponderance of Irishmen. All these “swop” their goods for old gold and silver, and frequently realize a large sum, by changing the base metal for the sterling article. Their goods are always sold as being gold or silver—If asked whether a particular article be gold, they reply “It’s jewellers’ gold;” “Is this ring gold?” inquires the customer, taking one from the box—“No, ma’am, I wouldn’t deceive you!” is the answer, “that is not gold; but here is one,” adds the pedlar (taking up one exactly of the same description, and which cost the same price) “which is of a similar shape and fashion, and the best jeweller’s gold that is made.” The profits of the pedlar-jewellers it is almost impossible to calculate, for they will sell at any price upon which the smallest amount of profit can be realized. The foreign Jews, especially, will do this, and it is not an unusual circumstance for one of these men to ask 5s. for an article which originally cost them 3d., and which they will eventually sell for 4d.

In London there are about 200 hawkers of jewellery, who visit the public-houses; but few of these have boxes—they invite customers by displaying some chains in their hands, or having one or two arranged in front of their waistcoats, while the smaller articles are carried in their waistcoat pockets. The class of persons who patronize the public-house hawkers are those who visit the tap-rooms of taverns, and countrymen in the vicinity of Smithfield upon market days, (one of the hawkers tells me, that they succeed better upon the hay-market days than at the cattle sales, for the butchers, they say, are too “fly” for them). Sailors are among their best customers, but the coster-girls are very fond of drop earrings and coral beads; the sailors, however, give the best prices of all. I am told that the quantity of old gold and silver which the country pedlars obtain in exchange for their goods is “astonishing;” and there have been occasions on which a pedlar has been enriched for life by one single transaction of barter; some old and unfashionable piece of jewellery, that they received for their goods, has been composed of costly stones, which had lain by for years, and of which the pedlar’s customer was unacquainted with the value. The more respectable jewellery pedlars put up at the better class of public-houses, and, even after their day’s travels are over, they still have an eye to business; they open the box upon the table of the tap-room where they are lodging, and, under the pretence of cleaning or arranging their goods, temptingly display their glittering stock. The bar-maid, kitchen-maid, the landlady’s daughter, or perhaps the landlady herself, admires some ornaments, which the pedlar declares would become them vastly. He hangs a necklace upon the neck of one of them; holds a showy earring and drop to the ear of another; facetiously inquires of the girls whether they are not likely to want something of this sort shortly—as he holds up first a wedding-ring, and then a baby’s coral; or else he exhibits a ring set with Turquoise, or pearls and small diamonds in a cluster, to the landlady, and tries it on her finger; and by such arts a sale that will cover his expenses is generally effected. There is one peculiarity these men have when bartering their goods. A worn-out ornament of jewellery is brought to them, and, although it be brass, the pedlar never attempts to undeceive the possessor, if he finds it is considered to be genuine. Of course he never gives cash for such articles; but he offers a large price in barter. “I will take 10s. for this ring, and allow you 5s. for the old one,” says the pedlar. It would never do to say the ornament was not gold; the customer bought it years ago for such, and no one ever disputed its being the precious metal; should our pedlar do so, he might as well shut up shop immediately. The lady would be angry and suspicious; neither would she believe him, but rather suspect that he wanted only to cheat her; consequently the pedlar barters, obtains the old ring, or some other article, and 5s., for his commodity; and though the article he has taken in exchange is worth only a few pence, he very likely profits to the amount of 200 per cent. upon the cash received. The pedlars of lesser consequence put up at humble private or public-houses, and some of them at the common lodging-houses. Those who have only small stocks confine their visits to farm-houses and villages.

Of the Street-Sellers of Card-Counters, Medals, etc.

The “card-counters,” or, as I have heard them sometimes called by street-sellers, the “small coins,” are now of a very limited sale. The slang name for these articles is “Jacks” and “Half Jacks.” They are sold to the street-people at only two places in London; one in Holborn, and the other at Black Tom’s (himself formerly a street-seller, now “a small swag”), in Clerkenwell. They are all made in Birmingham, and are of the size and colour of the genuine sovereigns and half sovereigns; but it is hardly possible that any one who had ever received a sovereign in payment, could be deceived by the substitution of a Jack. Those now sold in the streets are much thinner, and very much lighter. Each presents a profile of the Queen; but instead of the superscription “Victoria Dei Gratiâ” of the true sovereign, the Jack has “Victoria Regina.” On the reverse, in the place of the “Britanniarum Regina Fid. Def.” surrounding the royal arms and crown, is a device (intended for an imitation of St. George and the Dragon) representing a soldier on horseback—the horse having three legs elevated from the ground, while a drawn sword fills the right hand of the equestrian, and a crown adorns his head. The superscription is, “to Hanover,” and the rider seems to be sociably accompanied by a dragon. Round the Queen’s head on the half Jack is “Victoria, Queen of Great Britain,” and on the reverse the Prince of Wales’s feather, with the legend, “The Prince of Wales’s Model Half Sovereign.”

Until within these five or six years the gilt card-counters had generally the portraiture of the monarch, and on the reverse the legend “Keep your temper,” as a seasonable admonition to whist players. Occasionally the card-counter was a gilt coin, closely resembling a sovereign; but the magistracy, eight or nine years back, “put down” the sale of these imitations.

Under another head will be found an account of the use made of these sovereigns, in pretended wagers. A further use of them was to add to the heaps of apparent gold at the back of the table-keeper in a race booth, when gambling was allowed at Epsom, and the “great meetings.”

There are now only two men regularly selling Jacks in the streets. There have been as many as twelve. One of these street-sellers is often found in Holborn, announcing “30s. for 1d.! 30s. for 1d.! cheapest bargain ever offered; 30s. for 1d.!”

The Jacks cost, wholesale, 4s. 6d. the gross; the half Jacks 2s. 9d. The two are sold for 1d. If the sale be not brisk, the street-seller will give a ring into the bargain. These rings cost 1s. the gross, or the third part of a farthing each.

If there be, on the year’s average, only two street-sellers disposing of the Jacks, and earning 9s. a week—to earn which the receipts will be about 20s.—we find 104l. expended in the streets on these trifles.

Of medals the street sale is sometimes considerable, at others a mere nothing. When a popular subject is before the public, many of the general patterers “go to medals.” I could not learn that any of the present street-people vended medals in the time of the war; I believe there are none at present among the street folk who did so. I am told that the street sale in war medals was smaller than might reasonably have been expected. The manufacture of those articles in the Salamanca, Vittoria, and even Waterloo days, was greatly inferior to what it is at present, and the street price demanded was as often 6d. as a smaller sum. These medals in a little time presented a dull, leaden look, and the knowledge that they were “poor things” seems to have prevented the public buying them to any extent in the streets, and perhaps deterred the street-sellers from offering them. Those who were the most successful of the medal-sellers had been, or assumed to have been, soldiers or seamen.

Within the last eighteen years, or more, there has hardly been any public occurrence without a comparatively well-executed medal being sold in the streets in commemoration of it. That sold at the opening of London-bridge was, I am told, considered “a superior thing,” and the improvement in this art of manufacture has progressed to the present time. Within the last three years the most saleable medals, an experienced man told me, were of Hungerford Suspension (bridge), the New Houses of Parliament, the Chinese Junk, and Sir Robert Peel. The Thames Tunnel medals were at one time “very tidy,” as were those of the New Royal Exchange. The great sale is at present of the Crystal Palace; and one man had heard that there were a great many persons coming to London to sell them at the opening of the Great Exhibition. “The great eggs and bacon, I call it,” he said; “for I hope it will bring us that sort of grub. But I don’t know; I’m afraid there’ll be too many of us. Besides, they say we shan’t be let sell in the park.”

The exhibition medal is as follows:—

What the street medal-sellers call the “right-side”—I speak of the “penny” medal, which commands by far the greatest sale—presents the Crystal Palace, raised from the surface of the medal, and whitened by the application of aqua fortis. The superscription is “THE BUILDING FOR THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, LONDON, 1851.” On the “wrong side” (so called) is the following inscription, occupying the whole face of the medal:

THE CONSTRUCTION IS OF IRON AND OF GLASS, 1848 FEET LONG. ABOUT HALF IS 456 WIDE. THE REMAINDER 408 FEET WIDE, AND 66 FEET HIGH; SITE, UPWARDS OF 20 ACRES. COST £150,000. JOSH. PAXTON, ARCHT.

The size of this medal is between that of a shilling and a half-crown.

A patterer, who used to sell medals on Sunday mornings in the park, informed me that he told his customers the Crystal Palace part was dead silver, by a new discovery making silver cheap; but for all that he would risk changing it for a four-penny bit!

The two-penny medal is after the same style, but the letters are more distinct. On my stating, to a medal-seller, that it was difficult to read the inscription on his “pennies,” he said, “Not at all, sir; but it’s your eyes is dazzled.” This was said quietly, and with a touch of slyness, and I have no doubt was the man’s “cut-and-dried” answer.

The patterer whom I have mentioned, told me, that encouraged by a tolerable sale and “a gathering of the aristocrats,” on a very fine Sunday in January or February—he could not remember which—he ventured upon 6 “sixpenny medals,” costing him 1s. 9d. He sold them all but one, which he showed me. It was exactly the size of a crown-piece. The Crystal Palace was “raised,” and of “dead silver,” as in the smaller medals. The superscription was the same as on the penny medal; but underneath the representation of the palace were raised figures of Mercury and of a naked personage, with a quill as long as himself, a cornucopia, and a bee-hive: this I presume was Industry. These twin figures are supporters to a medallion, crown-surmounted, of the Queen and Prince Albert: being also in “dead silver.” On the reverse was an inscription, giving the dimensions, &c., of the building.

The medals in demand for street-sale in London seem to be those commemorative of local events only. None, for instance, were sold relating to the opening of the Britannia Bridge.

The wholesale price of the medals retailed in the street at 1d. is 7s. the gross; those retailed at 2d. are 12s. the gross, but more than three-fourths of those sold are penny medals. They are all bought at the swag-shops, and are all made in Birmingham. It is difficult to compute how many persons are engaged in this street trade, for many resort to it only on occasions. There are, however, from 12 to 20 generally selling medals, and at the present time about 30 are so occupied: they, however, do not sell medals exclusively, but along with a few articles of jewellery, or occasionally of such street stationery as letter stamps and “fancy” pens, with coloured glass or china handles. A fourth of the number are women. The weather greatly influences the street medal trade, as rain or damp dims their brightness. One seller told me that the day before I saw him he had sold only four medals. “I’ve known the trade, off and on,” he said, “for about six years, and the greatest number as ever I sold was half-a-gross one Saturday. I cleared rather better than 3s. I sold them in Whitehall and by Westminster-bridge. There was nothing new among them, but I had a good stock, and it was a fine day, and I was lucky in meeting parties, and had a run for sets.” By a “run for sets,” my informant meant that he had met with customers who bought a medal of each of the kinds he displayed; this is called “a set.”

An intelligent man, familiar with the trade, and who was in the habit of clubbing his stock-money with two others, that they might buy a gross at a time, calculated that 15 medal sellers were engaged in the traffic the year through, and earned, in medals alone, 6d. a day each, to clear which they would take 6s. 6d. weekly, giving a yearly outlay of 253l. 10s. It must be remembered, to account for the smallness of the earnings, that the trade in medals is irregular, and the calculation embraces all the seasons of the trade.

On occasions when medals are the sole or chief articles of traffic, they are displayed on a tray, which is a box with a lid, and thus look bright as silver on the faded brown velvet, with which the box is often lined. Among the favourite pitches are Oxford-street, the approaches to London, Blackfriars, Westminster, and Waterloo-bridges, the railway stations, and the City-road.

Of small coins (proper) there is now no sale in the streets. When there was an issue of half-farthings, about seven years ago, the street-sellers drove a brisk trade, in vending them at four a penny, urging on the sale before the coins got into circulation, which they never did. “It’s not often,” said one patterer to me, “that we has anything to thank the Government for, but we may thank them for the half-farthings. I dare say at least 30 of us made a tidy living on them for a week or more; and if they wasn’t coined just to give us a spirt, I should like to know what they was coined for! I once myself, sir, for a lark, gave one to a man that swept a capital crossing, and he was in a thundering passion, and wanted to fight me, when I told him they was coined to pay the likes of him!”

There was afterwards a tolerable sale of the “new silver pennies, just issued from the Mint, three ha’pence each, or 7 for 6d.;” also of “genuine models of the new English florin, only 1d.:” both of these were fictitious.

Of the Street-Sellers of Rings and Sovereigns for Wagers.

This class is hardly known in the streets of London at present. Country fairs and races are a more fitting ground for the ring-seller’s operations. One man of this class told me that he had been selling rings, and occasionally medals, for wagers for this last fifteen years. “It’s only a so-so game just now,” he said; “the people get so fly to it. A many hold out their penny for a ring, and just as I suppose I’m a going to receive it, they put the penny into their pockets, and their thumb upon their nose. I wish I had some other game, for this is a very dickey one. I gives 3d. a-dozen for the rings at the swag shop; and sometimes sells a couple of dozen in a day, but seldom more. Saturday is no better day than any other. Country people are my best customers. I know them by their appearance. Sometimes a person in the crowd whispers to others that he bought one the other day and went and pawned it for 5s., and he’d buy another, but he’s got no money. I don’t ask for such assistance; I suppose it’s done for a lark, and to laugh at others if they buy. Women buy more frequently than any one else. Several times since I have been on this dodge, women have come back and abused me because the ring they bought for a penny was not gold. Some had been to the pawn shop, and was quite astonished that the pawnbroker wouldn’t take the ring in. I do best in the summer at races: people think it more likely that two sporting gents would lay an out of the way wager (as you know I always make out) then than at any other time. I have been interfered with at races before now for being an impostor, and yet at the same time the gamblers was allowed to keep their tables; but of course theirs was all fair—no imposition about them—oh no! I am considered one of the best patterers among our lot. I dare say there may be twenty on us all together, in town and country, on rings and sovereigns. Sometimes, when travelling on foot to a race or fair, I do a little in the Fawney dropping line;” (fawneys are rings;) “but that is a dangerous game, I never did it but two or three times. There were some got lagged for it, and that frightened me. In ring-dropping we pretend to have found a ring, and ask some simple-looking fellow if it’s good gold, as it’s only just picked up. Sometimes it is immediately pronounced gold: ‘Well it’s no use to me,’ we’ll say, ‘will you buy it?’ Often they are foolish enough to buy, and it’s some satisfaction to one’s conscience to know that they think they are a taking you in, for they give you only a shilling or two for an article which if really gold would be worth eight or ten. Some ring-droppers write out an account and make a little parcel of jewellery, and when they pick out their man, they say, ‘If you please, sir, will you read this for me, and tell me what I should do with these things, as I’ve just found them?’ Some people advise they should be taken to the police office—but very few say that; some, that they should be taken to the address; others, that they should be sold, and the money shared; others offer a price for them, stating that they’re not gold, they’re only trumpery they say, but they’ll give half-a-crown for them. It’s pleasant to take such people in. Sometimes the finder says he’s in haste, and will sell them for anything to attend to other business, and he then transfers his interest at perhaps 200 per cent. profit. This game won’t friz now, sir, it’s very dangerous. I’ve left it off long since. I don’t like the idea of quod. I’ve been there once.” Another plan of dropping rings is to write a letter. This is the style:—

“My dear Anne,

“I have sent you the ring, and hope it will fit.—Excuse me not bringing it. John will leave it with you.—You know I have so much to attend to.—I shall think every minute a year until the happy day arrives.

“Yours devotedly, “James Brown.”

This love epistle containing the wedding-ring was most successful when it first came up, but the public now are too wide awake. According to another informant, the ring-dropping “lurk” is now carried on this way, for the old style is “coopered.” “A woman” he says, “is made up so as to appear in the family-way—pretty far gone—and generally with a face as long as a boy’s kite. Up she goes to any likely ken, where she knows there are women that are married or expect to get married, and commences begging. Then comes the tale of woe, if she can get them to listen—‘I’m in the family-way,’ she says, ‘as you can plainly see young ladies (this she says to the servants, and that prides them you know). My husband has left me after serving me in this way. I don’t know where he is, and am forced to solicit the ladies’ charity.’ Well, the servants will bring broken victuals and make a little collection among themselves for the ‘unprotected female;’ for which in return, with many thanks for their kindness, she offers her gold wedding-ring for sale, as she wants to get back to her suffering kids to give them something to eat, poor things, and they shall have the gold ring, she says, for half what it’s worth; or if they won’t buy it, will they lend 2s. or 3s. on it till she can redeem it, as she hasn’t been in the habit of pledging! The girls are taken off their guard (she not being in the habit of pledging is a choker for them) by the woman’s seeming simplicity, and there’s a consultation. One says to the other—‘Oh, you’ll want it, Mary, for John;’ and another, ‘No, you’ll want it first, Sally, for William.’ But the woman has her eye on the one as says the least, as the likeliest of all to want it, and so she says to the John and William girls, ‘Oh, you don’t want it; but here (touching the silent one), here’s a young lady as does,’ (that sweetens the servant girl up directly.) She says, ‘I don’t want it, bless you (with a giggle), but I’ll lend you a trifle, as you are in this state, and have a family, and are left like this by your husband—aint he cruel, Sally (she adds to her fellow-servant)?’ The money the ring-woman gets, sir, depends upon the servant’s funds; if it is just after quarter-day, she generally gets a tidy tip—if not, 4 or 5 bob. I’ve known one woman get 10s. and even 12s. this way. The ring is made out of brass gilt buttons, and stunning well: it’s faked up to rights, and takes a good judge even at this day to detect it without a test.”

“The best sort of rings for fawney dropping is the Belchers. They are a good thick looking ring, and have the crown and V. R. stamped upon them. They are 7d. a dozen. I takes my stand now, in my ring-selling, as if I was in a great hurry, and pulls out my watch. I used to have a real one, but now it’s a dummy. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen,’ says I, ‘I am not permitted to remain more than ten minutes in one spot. I have rings to sell to decide a wager recently made between two sporting noblemen, to the effect that I do not sell a certain quantity of these rings in a given time, at a penny a piece. I can recommend the article as being well worth the money I ask for it, perhaps something more. I do not say they are gold; in fact, I must not say too much, as there is a person in this company watching my proceedings, and seeing that I do not remain more than ten minutes in this spot,’—here I always looks very hard at the most respectable and gentlemanly-looking person among my hearers, and sometimes gives him a wink, and sometimes a nod,—‘but if you should hear anything more about these rings, and you want to purchase, don’t be vexed if I am gone when you want me. The ten minutes has nearly expired; three minutes more; any more buyers? It makes no difference to me whether I sell or not—I get my pay all the same; but, if you take my advice, buy; and perhaps if you was to call at the sign of the Three Balls, as you go home, you may be agreeably surprised, and hear something to your advantage. Perhaps I have said too much. I have one minute more, before I close the establishment. After shutting the box, I dare not sell another in this spot, if you were to offer me 5l. for it; therefore, if you wish to purchase, now is your time.’ I make many a pitch, and do not sell a single ring; and the insults I receive used to aggravate me very much, but I do not mind them now, I’m used to it. The flyest cove among all us ring-sellers is little Ikey, the Jew. There were two used to work the game. They had a real gold ring, just like the ones they were selling, and they always used to pitch near a pawnbroker’s shop. Ikey’s pal would buy a ring for a penny, of the street-seller, and would then say, loud enough to be heard by the bystanders, ‘There’s a pawn shop—I’ll go and ask them to take it in.’ A crowd would follow him. He would enter the pawnbroker’s—present a real gold ring—obtain a loan of 5s., and would present the ticket to the bystanders, who would then buy very fast. When the pitch was over, Ikey’s pal would take the ring out of pawn, and away the two would go to work near some other pawnbroker’s. I have heard Ikey say they have pawned the ring thirty-five times in a day. I tried the same caper; but my pal cut with the gold ring the first day, and I’ve never had another go at that fake since.

“Before I commenced the jewellery line,” continued my candid informant, “a good many years ago, I used to hold horses about Bond-street. Afterwards I was taken as an errand boy at a druggist’s, was out of an errand one day and got 6d. for holding a gentleman’s horse, which kept me nearly an hour; when I went back to my master’s I was told I wasn’t wanted any more. I had been cautioned about stopping of errands two or three times before; however I didn’t like the situation, it was too confining. I next got a place as pot-boy, in Brick Lane. Here I was out one day gathering in the pots. I hung the strap of pots to a railing to have a game at chances (pitch and toss), somebody prigged my strap of pots, and I cut. A few weeks after I was grabbed for this, and got a month at the mill; but I was quite innocent of prigging—I was only careless. When I came out of prison, I went to Epsom races, thinking to get a job there at something or other. A man engaged me to assist him in ‘pitching the hunters.’ Pitching the hunters is the three sticks a penny, with the snuffboxes stuck upon sticks; if you throw your stick, and they fall out of the hole, you are entitled to what you knock off. I came to London with my master the pitcher-hunter, he went to a swag shop in Kent-street, in the Borough, to purchase a new stock. I saw a man there purchasing rings, this was little Ikey, the Jew; some days afterwards I saw him making a pitch, and selling very fast. I had fourpence in my pocket; went to Kent-street, to the swag shops, bought a dozen rings, and commenced selling them. I sold that day three dozen; that wasn’t bad considering that my toggery was very queer, and I looked anything but like one who would be trusted with ten pounds’ worth of gold rings. This wager between the two sporting noblemen has been a long time settling. I’ve been at it more than fifteen years. The origin of it was this here: when sovereigns were first coined, the Jew boys and others used to sell medals and card-counters upon particular occasions, the same as they do now, and shove them in a saucepan lid, with silver paper under them. Captain Barclay, and another of the same sort, bet a wager, that one of these Jew-boys could not dispose of a certain number of real sovereigns in a given time, supposing the Jew-boy cried out nothing more than ‘here’s sovereigns, only a penny a piece.’ The number he was to sell was 50 within the hour, and to take his station at London Bridge. The wager was made, the Jew-boy procured, and the sovereigns put into the pot lid. ‘Here are real sovereigns a penny a piece, who’ll buy?’ he cried; but he sold only a few. The number disposed of, within the hour, I have heard, was seventeen. Those who purchased, when they found that they had really bought sovereigns at a penny a piece, returned for more, but the salesman was gone. A good harvest was afterwards reaped among the Jews, who got up a medal something like a sovereign, and sold them in every quarter of London, for the Captain’s wager soon spread about everywhere. It’s a stale game now; it was so before my time, but I’ve heard the Jews talk about it. The second day I tried the ring dodge, I was a little more successful; indeed every day for some time exceeded the day before, for, as I improved in patter, my sales increased. My appearance, too, was improving. At one time I was a regular swell, sported white kid gloves, white choker, white waistcoat, black ribbon, and a quizzing glass. Some people used to chaff me, and cry out ‘there’s a swell.’ I never was saving, always spent my money as fast as I got it. I might have saved a goodish bit, and I wish I had now. I never had a wife, but I have had two or three broomstick matches, though they never turned out happy. I never got hold of one but what was fond of lush. I live in Westminster, at a padding-ken. I’d rather not tell you where, not that I’ve anything to fear, but people might think I was a nose, if anybody came after me, and they would crab me. I’d rather get something else to do if I could, but I think this is the best street game I could follow. I don’t believe any of the ring-sellers dispose of more than myself, except little Ikey; he now adds other articles, a silver thimble (he calls it), some conundrums, a song-book and a seal, and all for a penny. I tried the same thing, but found I could do just as well with the rings alone. We all expects to do great things during the Exhibition. I think all on us ought to be allowed to sell in the parks. Foreigners are invited to witness specimens of British Industry, and it’s my opinion they should see all, from the highest to the lowest. We did intend petitioning the Prince on the subject, but I don’t suppose it would be any go, seeing as how the slang coves” (the showmen), “have done so, and been refused.”