University of Virginia Library

STATEMENTS OF SHEEP'S TROTTER WOMEN.

From one woman, who, I am assured, may
be taken as a fair type of the better class of
trotter-sellers — some of the women being sot-
tish and addicted to penn'orths of gin beyond
their means — I had the following statement.
I found her in the top room of a lofty house in
Clerkenwell. She was washing when I called,
and her son, a crippled boy of 16, with his
crutch by his side, was cleaning knives, which
he had done for many months for a family in
the neighbourhood, who paid for his labour
in what the mother pronounced better than
money — broken victuals, because they were of
such good, wholesome quality. The room, which

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is of a good size, had its red-brown plaster walls,
stained in parts with damp, but a great portion
was covered with the cheap engravings "given
away with No. 6" (or any other number) of some
periodical "of thrilling interest;" while the nar-
row mantel-shelf was almost covered with pot
figures of dumpy men, red-breeched and blue-
coated, and similar ornaments. I have often
noted such attempts to subdue, as it were, the
grimness of poverty, by the poor who had "seen
better days." The mother was tall and spare,
and the boy had that look of premature sedate-
ness, his face being of a sickly hue, common to
those of quiet dispositions, who have been afflicted
from their childhood: —

"I'm the widow of a sawyer, sir," said Mrs.
— , with a very slight brogue, for she was an
Irishwoman, "and I've been a widow 18 long
years. I'm 54, I believe, but that 18 years seems
longer than all the rest of my life together. My
husband earned hardly ever less than 30s. a week,
sometimes 3l., and I didn't know what pinching
was. But I was left destitute with four young
children, and had to bring them up as well as
I could, by what I could make by washing and
charing, and a hard fight it was. One of my
children went for a soldier, one's dead, another's
married, and that's the youngest there. Ah!
poor fellow, what he's gone through! He's had
18 abscesses, one after another, and he has been
four times in Bartholomew's. There's only God
above to help him when I'm gone. My health
broke six years ago, and I couldn't do hard work
in washing, and I took to trotter selling, because
one of my neighbours was in that way, and told
me how to go about it. My son sells trotters
too; he always sits at the corner of this street.
I go from one public-house to another, and
sometimes stand at the door, or sit inside, be-
cause I'm known and have leave. But I can't
either sit, or stand, or walk long at a time, I'm
so rheumatic. No, sir, I can't say I was ever
badly insulted in a public-house; but I only go
to those I know. Others may be different. We
depend mostly on trotters, but I have a shilling
and my meat, for charing, a day in every week.
I've tried 'winks and whelks too, 'cause I thought
they might be more in my pocket than trotters,
but they don't suit a poor woman that's begun
a street-trade when she's not very young. And
the trotters can be carried on with so little
money. It's not so long ago that I've sold three-
penn'orth of trotters — that is, him and me has —
pretty early in the evening; I'd bought them
at Mr. — 's, in Bermondsey, in the afternoon,
for we can buy three penn'orth, and I walked
there again — perhaps it's four miles there and
back — and bought another 3d. worth. The first
three-pence was all I could rise. It's a long
weary way for me to walk, but some walk from
Poplar and Limehouse. If I lay out 2s. on the
Saturday — there's 15 sets for 1s., that's 60
trotters — they'll carry us on to Monday night,
and sometimes, if they'll keep, to Tuesday night.
Sometimes I could sell half-a-crown's worth in
less time. I have to go to Bermondsey three or
four times a week. The trade was far better six
years ago, though trotters were dearer then, only
13 sets 1s., then 14, now 15. For some very
few, that's very fine and very big, I get a penny
a piece; for some I get 1½d. for two; the most's
½d. each; some's four for 1½d.; and some I
have to throw into the dust-hole. The two of
us earns 5s. a week on trotters, not more, I'm
sure. I sell to people in the public-houses;
some of them may be rather the worse for drink,
but not so many; regular drunkards buys no-
thing but drink. I've sold them too to steady,
respectable gentlemen, that's been passing in
the street, who put them in their pockets for
supper. My rent's 1s. a week."

I then had some conversation with the poor
lad. He'd had many a bitter night, he told
me, from half-past five to twelve, for he knew
there was no breakfast for his mother and him
if he couldn't sell some trotters. He had a cry
sometimes. He didn't know any good it did
him, but he couldn't help it. The boys ga-
thered round him sometimes, and teased him,
and snatched at his crutch; and the policeman
said that he must make him "move on," as he
encouraged the boys about him. He didn't like
the boys any more than they were fond of the
policemen. He had often sad thoughts as he
sat with his trotters before him, when he didn't
cry; he wondered if ever he would be better off;
but what could he do? He could read, but not
write; he liked to read very well when he had
anything to read. His mother and he never
missed mass.

Another old woman, very poorly, but rather
tidily dressed, gave me the following account,
which shows a little of public-house custom: —

"I've seen better days, sir, I have indeed; I
don't like to talk about that, but now I'm only
a poor sheep's trotter seller, and I've been one a
good many years. I don't know how long, and
I don't like to think about it. It's shocking
bad trade, and such insults as we have to put
up with. I serve some public-houses, and I
stand sometimes at a playhouse-door. I make
3s. or 3s. 6d. a week, and in a very good week
4s., but, then, I sometimes make only 2s. I'm
infirm now, God help me! and I can do nothing
else. Another old woman and me has a room
between us, at 1s. 4d. a week. Mother's the
best name I'm called in a public-house, and it
ain't a respectable name. `Here, mother, give
us one of your b — trotters,' is often said to me.
One customer sometimes says: `The stuff'll
choke me, but that's as good as the Union.' He ain't a bad man, though. He sometimes treats
me. He'll bait my trotters, but that's his lark-
ing way, and then he'll say:

It's his own poetry, he says. I don't know
what he is, but he's often drunk, poor fellow.
Women's far worse to please than men. I've
known a woman buy a trotter, put her teeth
into it, and then say it wasn't good, and return
it. It wasn't paid for when she did so, and be-

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cause I grumbled, I was abused by her, as if
I'd been a Turk. The landlord interfered, and
he said, said he, `I'll not have this poor woman
insulted; she's here for the convenience of
them as requires trotters, and she's a well-con-
ducted woman, and I'll not have her insulted,'
he says, says he, lofty and like a gentleman,
sir. `Why, who's insulting the old b — h?'
says the woman, says she. `Why, you are,'
says the landlord, says he, `and you ought to
pay her for her trotter, or how is she to live?'
`What the b — h — ll do I care how she lives,'
says the woman, `its nothing to me, and I
won't pay her.' `Then I will,' says the land-
lord, says he, `here's 6d.,' and he wouldn't take
the change. After that I soon sold all my
trotters, and some gave me double price, when
the landlord showed himself such a gentleman,
and I went out and bought nine trotters more,
another woman's stock, that she was dreading
she couldn't sell, and I got through them in no
time. It was the best trotter night I ever had.
She wasn't a woman of the town as used me so.
I have had worse sauce from modest women, as
they called themselves, than from the women
of the town, for plenty of them knows what
poverty is, and is civiler, poor things — yes,
I'm sure of that, though it's a shocking life —
O, shocking! I never go to the playhouse-door
but on a fine night. Young men treats their
sweethearts to a trotter, for a relish, with a drop
of beer between the acts. Wet nights is the
best for public-houses. `They're not salt
enough,' has been said to me, oft enough, `they
don't make a man thirsty.' It'll come to the
workhouse with me before long, and, perhaps,
all the better. It's warm in the public-house,
and that draws me to sell my trotters there
sometimes. I live on fish and bread a good
deal."

The returns I collected show that there is
expended yearly in London streets on trotters,
calculating their sale, retail, at ½d. each, 6,500l., but though the regular price is ½d., some trotters
are sold at four for 1½d., very few higher than
½d., and some are kept until they are unsaleable,
so that the amount may be estimated at 6,000l., a receipt of 7s. 6d. weekly, per individual seller,
rather more than one-half of which sum is
profit.