University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-PURCHASERS OF GAME AND
POULTRY.

As the purchasers of game and poultry are of
a different class to the costermongers' ordinary
customers, I may devote a few words to them.
From all the information that I could acquire,
they appear to consist, principally, of those who
reside at a distance from any cheap market, and
buy a cheap luxury when it is brought to
their doors, as well as of those who are "always
on the look-out for something toothy, such as
the shabby genteels, as they're called, who never
gives nothing but a scaly price. They've bar-
gained with me till I was hard held from pitch-
ing into them, and over and over again I should,
only it would have been fourteen days anyhow.
They'll tell me my birds stinks, when they're as
sweet as flowers. They'd go to the devil to
save three farthings on a partridge." Other
buyers are old gourmands, living perhaps on
small incomes, or if possessed of ample incomes,
but confining themselves to a small expendi-
ture; others, again, are men who like a cheap
dinner, and seldom enjoy it, at their own cost,
unless it be cheap, and who best of all like
"such a thing as a moor bird (grouse)," said
one hawker, "which can be eat up to a man's
own cheek." This was also the opinion of a
poulterer and game-dealer, who sometimes sold
"goods" to the hawkers. Of this class of "pa-
trons" many shopkeepers, in all branches of
business, have a perfect horror, as they will
care nothing for having occupied the trades-
men's time to no purpose.

The game and poultry street-sellers, I am
told, soon find out when a customer is bent
upon a bargain, and shape their prices accord-
ingly. Although these street-sellers may gene-
rally take as their motto the announcement so
often seen in the shops of competitive trades-
men, "no reasonable offer refused," they are
sometimes so worried in bargaining that they do refuse.

In a conversation I had with a "retired"
game salesman, he said it might be curious
to trace the history of a brace of birds — of
grouse, for instance — sold in the streets; and he
did it after this manner. They were shot in
the Highlands of Scotland by a member of
parliament who had gladly left the senate for
the moors. They were transferred to a trades-
man who lived in or near some Scotch town
having railway communication, and with whom
"the honourable gentleman," or "the noble
lord," had perhaps endeavoured to drive a hard
bargain. He (the senator) must have a good
price for his birds, as he had given a large sum
for the moor: and the season was a bad one:
the birds were scarce and wild: they would
soon be "packed" (be in flocks of twenty or
thirty instead of in broods), and then there
would be no touching a feather of them. The
canny Scot would quietly say that it was early
in the season, and the birds never packed so
early; that as to price, he could only give what
he could get from a London salesman, and
he was "nae just free to enter into any agree-
ment for a fixed price at a'." The honour-
able gentleman, after much demurring, gives
way, feeling perhaps that he cannot well do
anything else. In due course the grouse are
received in Leadenhall, and unpacked and
flung about with as little ceremony as if they
had been "slaughtered" by a Whitechapel

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journeyman butcher, at so much a head. It
is a thin market, perhaps, when they come to
hand. A dealer, fashionable in the parish of
St. George, Hanover-square, has declined to
give the price demanded; they were not his
money; "he had to give such long credit."
A dealer, popular in the ward of Cheap, has
also declined to buy, and for the same alleged
reason. The salesman, knowing that some of
these dealers must buy, quietly says that he
will take no less, and as he is known to be
a man of his word, little is said upon the
subject. As the hour arrives at which fashion-
able game-dealers are compelled to buy, or
disappoint customers who will not brook such
disappointment, the market, perhaps, is glutted,
owing to a very great consignment by a later
railway train. The Inverness Courier, or the
North of Scotland Gazette, are in due course
quoted by the London papers, touching the
"extraordinary sport" of a party of lords and
gentlemen in the Highlands; and the "heads"
of game are particularized with a care that would
do honour to a Price Current. The salesman
then disposes rapidly of divers "brace" to the
"hawkers," at 1s. or 2s. the brace, and the
hawker offers them to hotel-keepers, and shop-
keepers, and housekeepers, selling some at
3s. 6d. the brace, some at 3s., at 2s. 6d., at 2s. and at less. "At last," said my informant,
"he may sell the finest brace of his basket,
which he has held back to get a better price for,
at 6d. a-piece, rather than keep them over-night,
and that to a woman of the town, whom he may
have met reeling home with money in her
purse. Thus the products of an honourable
gentleman's skilful industry, on which he
greatly prided himself, are eaten by the woman
and her `fancy man,' grumblingly enough, for
they pronounce the birds inferior to tripe."

The best quarters for the street-sale of game and
poultry are, I am informed from several sources,
either the business parts of the metropolis, or
else the houses in the several suburbs which are
the furthest from a market or from a business
part. The squares, crescents, places, and streets,
that do not partake of one or the other of these
characteristics, are pronounced "no good."