University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET SALE OF GINGER-BEER,
SHERBET, LEMONADE, &c.

The street-trade in ginger-beer — now a very
considerable traffic — was not known to any
extent until about thirty years ago. About
that time (1822) a man, during a most sultry
drought, sold extraordinary quantities of "cool
ginger-beer" and of "soda-powders," near the
Royal Exchange, clearing, for the three or four
weeks the heat continued, 30s. a day, or 9l. weekly. Soda-water he sold "in powders,"
the acid and the alkali being mixed in the
water of the glass held by the customer, and
drunk whilst effervescing. His prices were 2d. and 3d. a glass for ginger-beer; and 3d. and
4d. for soda-water, "according to the quality;"
though there was in reality no difference what-
ever in the quality — only in the price. From
that time, the numbers pursuing this street
avocation increased gradually; they have how-
ever fallen off of late years.

The street-sellers who "brew their own beer"
generally prepare half a gross (six dozen) at
a time. For a "good quality" or the "penny
bottle" trade, the following are the ingredients
and the mode of preparation: — 3 gallons of
water; 1 lb. of ginger, 6d.; lemon-acid, 2d.; essence of cloves, 2d.; yeast, 2d.; and 1 lb. of
raw sugar, 7d. This admixture, the yeast being
the last ingredient introduced, stands 24 hours,
and is then ready for bottling. If the beverage
be required in 12 hours, double the quantity of
yeast is used. The bottles are filled only "to
the ridge," but the liquid and the froth more
than fill a full-sized half-pint glass. "Only
half froth," I was told, "is reckoned very fair,
and it's just the same in the shops." Thus, 72
bottles, each to be sold at 1d., cost — apart from
any outlay in utensils, or any consideration of
the value of labour — only 1s. 7d., and yield, at
1d. per bottle, 6s. For the cheaper beverage
— called "playhouse ginger-beer" in the trade
— instead of sugar, molasses from the "pri-
vate distilleries" is made available. The
"private" distilleries are the illicit ones:
" `Jiggers,' we call them," said one man; "and
I could pass 100 in 10 minutes' walk from where
we're talking." Molasses, costing 3d. at a jig-
ger's, is sufficient for a half-gross of bottles of
ginger-beer; and of the other ingredients only
half the quantity is used, the cloves being alto-
gether dispensed with, but the same amount of
yeast is generally applied. This quality of
"beer" is sold at ½d. the glass.

About five years ago "fountains" for the
production of ginger-beer became common in
the streets. The ginger-beer trade in the open
air is only for a summer season, extending from
four to seven months, according to the weather,
the season last year having been over in about
four months. There were then 200 fountains in
the streets, all of which, excepting 20 or 30 of
the best, were hired of the ginger-beer manu-
facturers, who drive a profitable trade in them.
The average value of a street-fountain, with
a handsome frame or stand, which is usually
fixed on a wheeled and movable truck, so
as one man's strength may be sufficient to
propel it, is 7l.; and, for the rent of such a
fountain, 6s. a week is paid when the season is
brisk, and 4s. when it is slack; but last summer,
I am told, 4s. 6d. was an average. The largest
and handsomest ginger-beer fountain in London
was — I speak of last summer — in use at the
East-end, usually standing in Petticoat-lane,
and is the property of a dancing-master. It is
made of mahogany, and presents somewhat the
form of an upright piano on wheels. It has
two pumps, and the brass of the pump-handles
and the glass receivers is always kept bright
and clean, so that the whole glitters handsomely
to the light. Two persons "serve" at this
fountain; and on a fine Sunday morning, from
six to one, that being the best trading time, they
take 7l. or 8l. in halfpennies — for "the beer"
is ½d. a glass — and 2l. each other day of the
week. This machine, as it may be called, is
drawn by two ponies, said to be worth 10l. a-piece; and the whole cost is pronounced — per-
haps with a sufficient exaggeration — to have been
150l. There were, in the same neighbourhood,
two more fountains on a similar scale, but com-
moner, each drawn by only one pony instead of
the aristocratic "pair."

The ingredients required to feed the "ginger-
beer" fountains are of a very cheap description.
To supply 10 gallons, 2 quarts of lime-juice
(as it is called, but it is, in reality, lemon-
juice), costing 3s. 6d., are placed in the recess,
sometimes with the addition of a pound of
sugar (4d.); while some, I am assured, put
in a smaller quantity of juice, and add two-
pennyworth of oil of vitriol, which "brings out
the sharpness of the lime-juice." The rest
is water. No process of brewing or fermenta-
tion is necessary, for the fixed air pumped into

[Description: 915EAF. Page 187.]

the liquid as it is drawn from the fountain,
communicates a sufficient briskness or effer-
vescence. "The harder you pumps," said one
man who had worked a fountain, "the fronthier
it comes; and though it seems to fill a big
glass — and the glass an't so big for holding as
it looks — let it settle, and there's only a quarter
of a pint." The hirer of a fountain is required
to give security. This is not, as in some slop-
trades, a deposit of money; but a householder
must, by written agreement, make himself re-
sponsible for any damage the fountain may sus-
tain, as well as for its return, or make good the
loss: the street ginger-beer seller is alone re-
sponsible for the rent of the machine. It is
however, only men that are known, who are
trusted in this way. Of the fountains thus hired,
50 are usually to be found at the neighbouring
fairs and races. As the ginger-beer men carry
lime-juice, &c., with them, only water is required
to complete the "brewing of the beer" and so
conveyance is not difficult.

There is another kind of "ginger-beer," or
rather of "small acid tiff," which is sold out
of barrels at street-stalls at ½d. the glass. To
make 2½ gallons of this, there is used ½lb. tar-
taric, or other acid, 1s.; ½lb. alkali (soda),
10d.; ½lb. lump sugar, bruised fine, 4d.; and
yeast 1d. Of these "barrel-men" there are
now about one hundred.

Another class of street-sellers obtain their
stock of ginger-beer from the manufacturers.
One of the largest manufacturers for the street-
trade resides near Ratcliffe-highway, and another
in the Commercial-road. The charge by the
wholesale traders is 8d. the doz., while to a
known man, or for ready money, 13 are given
to the dozen. The beer, however, is often let
out on credit — or in some cases security is given
in the same way as for the fountains — and the
empty bottles must be duly returned. It is not
uncommon for two gross of beer to be let out
in this way at a time. For the itinerant trade
these are placed on a truck or barrow, fitted
up with four shelves, on which are ranged the
bottles. These barrows are hired in the same
way as the costers' barrows. Some sell their
beer at stalls fitted up exclusively for the trade,
a kind of tank being let into the centre of the
board and filled with water, in which the glasses
are rinsed or washed. Underneath the stall
there is usually a reserve of the beer, and a keg
containing water. Some of the best frequented
stalls were in Whitechapel, Old-street-road, City-
road, Tottenham-court-road, the New-cut, Ele-
phant and Castle, the Commercial-road, Tower-
hill, the Strand, and near Westminster-bridge.

The stationary beer business is, for the most
part, carried on in the more public streets, such
as Holborn and Oxford-street, and in the mar-
kets of Covent-garden, Smithfield, and Billings-
gate; while the peripatetic trade, which is
briskest on the Sundays — when, indeed, some of
the stationary hands become itinerant — is more
for the suburbs; Victoria-park, Battersea-fields,
Hampstead-heath, Primrose-hill, Kennington-
common, and Camberwell-green, being ap-
proved Sunday haunts.

The London street-sellers of ginger-beer,
say the more experienced, may be computed at
3,000 — of whom about one-third are women. I
heard them frequently estimated at 5,000, and
some urged that the number was at least as near
5,000 as 3,000. For my own part I am inclined
to believe that half the smaller number would
be nearer the truth. Judging by the number of
miles of streets throughout the metropolis, and
comparing the street-sellers of ginger-beer with
the fruit-stall keepers, I am satisfied that in
estimating the ginger-beer-sellers at 1,500 we
are rather over than under the truth. This
body of street-sellers were more numerous five
years back by 15 or 20 per cent., but the intro-
duction of the street fountains, and the trade
being resorted to by the keepers of coal-sheds
and the small shopkeepers — who have frequently
a stand with ginger-beer in front of their shops
— have reduced the amount of the street-sellers.
In 1842, there were 1,200 ginger-beer sellers in
the streets who had attached to their stalls or
trucks labels, showing that they were members
— or assumed to be members — of the Society
of Odd Fellows. This was done in hopes of a
greater amount of custom from the other mem-
bers of the Society, but the expectation was
not realised — and so the Odd Fellowship of
the ginger-beer people disappeared. Of the
street-traders 200 work fountains; and of the
remaining portion the stationary and the itine-
rant are about equally divided. Of the whole
number, however, not above an eighth confine
themselves to the trade, but usually sell with
their "pop" some other article of open-air
traffic — fruit, sweet-stuff, or shell-fish. There
are of the entire number about 350, who, when-
ever the weather permits, stay out all night
with their stands or barrows, and are to be found
especially in all the approaches to Covent-gar-
den, and the other markets to which there is a
resort during the night or at day-break. These
men, I was told by one of their body, worked
from eight in the evening to eight or ten next
morning, then went to bed, rose at three, and
"plenty of 'em then goes to the skittles or to
get drunk."

The character of the ginger-beer-sellers does
not differ from what I have described as per-
taining to the costermonger class, and to street-
traders generally. There is the same admix-
ture of the reduced mechanic, the broken-down
gentleman's servant, the man of any class in
life who cannot brook the confinement and re-
straint of ordinary in-door labour, and of the
man "brought up to the streets." One ex-
perienced and trustworthy man told me that
from his own knowledge he could count up
twenty "classical men," as he styled them,
who were in the street ginger-beer-trade, and of
these four had been, or were said to have been
"parsons," two being of the same name (Mr.
S — ); but my informant did not know if
they stood in any degree of consanguinity one

[Description: 915EAF. Page 188.]

to another. The women are the wives, daugh-
ters, or other connections of the men.

Some of the stalls at which ginger-beer is sold
— and it is the same at the coal-sheds and
the chandlers' shops — are adorned pictorially.
Erected at the end of a stall is often a painting,
papered on a board, in which a gentleman, with
the bluest of coats, the whitest of trousers, the
yellowest of waistcoats, and the largest of guard-
chains or eye-glasses, is handing a glass of gin-
ger-beer, frothed up like a pot of stout, and
containing, apparently, a pint and a half, to
some lady in flowing white robes, or gorgeous
in purple or orange.

To commence in this branch of the street
business requires, in all 18s. 3d.: six glasses,
2s. 9d.; board, 5s.; tank, 1s.; keg, 1s.; gross of
beer, 8s. (this is where the seller is not also the
maker); and for towels, &c., 6d.; if however
the street-seller brew his own beer, he will
require half a gross of bottles, 5s. 6d.; and the
ingredients I have enumerated, 1s. 7d.

In addition to the street-sale of ginger-beer is
that of other summer-drinks. Of these, the
principal is lemonade, the consumption of which
is as much as that of all the others together.
Indeed, the high-sounding names given to some
of these beverages — such as "Nectar" and
"Persian Sherbet" — are but other names for
lemonade, in a slightly different colour or
fashion.

Lemonade is made, by those vendors who deal
in the best articles, after the following method:
1 lb. of carbonate of soda, 6d.; 1 lb. of tartaric
acid, 1s. 4d. ("at least," said an informant, `I pay 1s. 4d. at 'Pothecaries Hall, but it can be
had at 1s."); 1 lb. of loaf-sugar, 5½d.; essence
of lemon, 3d. This admixture is kept, in the
form of a powder, in a jar, and water is drawn
from what the street-sellers call a "stone-bar-
rel" — which is a stone jar, something like the
common-shaped filters, with a tap — and a larger
or smaller spoonful of the admixture in a glass
of water supplies an effervescing draught for 1d. or ½d. "There's sometimes shocking roguish-
ness in the trade," said one man, "and there is
in a many trades — some uses vitriol!" Lemon-
ade, made after the recipe I have given, is
sometimes bottled by the street-sellers, and sold
in the same way as ginger-beer. It is bought,
also, for street sale of the ginger-beer manufac-
turers — the profit being the same — but so bought
to less than a twentieth of the whole sale. The
water in the stone barrel is spring-water, ob-
tained from the nearest pump, and in hot weather
obtained frequently, so as to be "served" in as
cool a state as possible. Sometimes lemonade
powders are used; they are bought at a che-
mist's, at 1s. 6d. the pound. "Sherbet" is the
same admixture, with cream of tartar instead of
tartaric acid. "Raspberry" has, sometimes, the
addition of a few crusted raspberries, and a
colouring of cochineal, with, generally, a greater
degree of sweetening than lemonade. "If co-
chineal is used for colouring," said one man,
"it sometimes turns brown in the sun, and the
rasberry don't sell. A little lake's better."
"Lemon-juice" is again lemonade, with a slight
infusion of saffron to give it a yellow or pale
orange colour. "Nectar," in imitation of
Soyer's, has more sugar and less acid than the
lemonade; spices, such as cinnamon, is used to
flavour it, and the colouring is from lake and
saffron.

These "cooling drinks" are sold from the
powder or the jar, as I have described, from
fountains, and from bottles. The fountain sale
is not above a tenth of the whole. All is sold in
½d. and 1d. glasses, except the nectar, which is
never less than 1d. The customers are the same
as those who buy ginger-beer; but one "lemon-
ader" with whom I conversed, seemed inclined
to insist that they were a "more respectabler
class." Boys are good customers — better, per-
haps, than for the beer, — as "the colour and the
fine names attracts them."

The "cooling drink" season, like that of the
ginger-beer, is determined by the weather, and
last summer it was only four months. It was
computed for me that there were 200 persons,
chiefly men, selling solely lemonade, &c., and an
additional 300 uniting the sale with that of gin-
ger-beer. One man, whose statement was con-
firmed by others, told me that on fine days he
took 3s. 6d., out of which he cleared 2s. to 2s. 6d.; and he concluded that his brother tradesmen
cleared as much every fine day, and so, allowing
for wet weather and diminished receipts, made
10s. a week. The receipts, then, for this street
luxury — a receipt of 17s. 6d. affording a profit of
10s. — show a street expenditure in such a sum-
mer as the last, of 2,800l., by those who do not
unite ginger-beer with the trade. Calculating
that those who do unite ginger beer with it sell
only one-half as much as the others, we find a
total outlay of 4,900l. One of the best trades
is in the hands of a man who "works" Smith-
field, and on the market days clears generally
from 6s. to 9s.

The stalls, &c., are of the same character as
those of the ginger-beer sellers. The capital
required to start is: — stone barrel, with brass
tap, 5s. 6d.; stand and trestle, 6s.; 6 tumbler
glasses, 2s. 3d.; 2 towels, 6d.; stock money,
2s. 6d.; jar, 2s.; 12 bottles (when used), 3s. 6d.; in all, about a guinea.

In showing the money expended in the gin-
ger-beer trade it must be borne in mind that a
large portion of the profits accrues to persons
who cannot be properly classed with the regular
street-traders. Such is the proprietor of the
great fountain of which I have spoken, who is
to be classed as a speculative man, ready to
embark capital in any way — whether connected
with street-traffic or not — likely to be remu-
nerative. The other and large participants
in the profits are the wholesale ginger-beer
manufacturers, who are also the letters-out of
fountains, one of them having generally nine
let out at a time. For a street trader to sell
three gross of ginger-beer in bottle is now
accounted a good week, and for that the receipts

[Description: 915EAF. Page 189.]

will be 36s. with a profit in the penny bottle
trade, to the seller, if he buy of a manufacturer,
of 12s.; if he be his own brewer — reckoning
a fair compensation for labour, and for money
invested in utensils, and in bottles, &c., of 20s.
An ordinary week's sale is two gross, costing
the public 24s., with the same proportion of
profit in the same trade to the seller. In a bad week, or "in a small way to help out other
things," not more than one gross is sold.

The fountain trade is the most profitable to
the proprietors, whether they send out their
machines on their own account, or let them out
on hire; but perhaps there are only an eighth of
the number not let out on hire. Calculating
that a fountain be let out for three successive
seasons of twenty weeks each, at only 4s. the
week, the gross receipts are 12l. for what on the
first day of hire was worth only 7l.; so that the
returns from 200 machines let out for the same
term, would be 2,400l., or a profit of 1,000l. over and above the worth of the fountain, which
having been thus paid for is of course in a suc-
ceeding year the means of a clear profit of 4l.
I am assured that the weekly average of "a
fountain's takings," when in the hands of the
regular street-dealers, is 18s.

The barrel traders may be taken as in the
average receipt of 6s. a week.

The duration of the season was, last year,
only sixteen weeks. Calculating from the best
data I could acquire, it appears that for this
period 200 street-sellers of ginger-beer in the
bottle trade of the penny class take 30s. a week
each (thus allowing for the inferior receipts in
bad weather); 300 take 20s. each, selling for
the most part at ½d. the bottle, and that the re-
maining 400 "in a small way" take 6s. each;
hence we find 11,480l. expended in the bottled
ginger-beer of the streets. Adding the receipts
from the fountains and the barrels, the barrel
season continuing only ten weeks, the total sum
expended annually in street ginger-beer is alto-
gether 14,660l. The bottles of ginger-beer sold
yearly in the streets will number about 4,798,000,
and the total street consumption of the same
beverage may be said to be about 250,000 gal-
lons per annum.