University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BOILED
PUDDINGS.

The sale of boiled puddings, meat and currant
— which might perhaps be with greater cor-
rectness called dumplings — has not been known
in London, I was informed by one in the trade,
more than twelve or fourteen years. The
ingredients for the meat puddings are not
dissimilar to those I have described as re-
quired for the meat pies, but the puddings are
boiled, in cotton, bags, in coppers or large pans,
and present the form of a round ball. The
charge is a halfpenny each. Five or six years
back a man embarked his means — said to be
about 15l. — in the meat-pudding line, and pre-
pared a superior article, which was kept warm
in the street by means of steam, in a manner
similar to that employed by the pieman. A
mechanic out of work was engaged by this
projector to aid him in the sale of his street
luxuries, and the mechanic and his two boys
made a living by this sale for two or three years.
The original pudding-projector relinquished the
street trade to go into business as a small shop-
keeper, and the man who sold for him on a sort
of commission, earning from 12s. to 18s. a week,
made the puddings on his own account. His
earnings, however, on his own account were not
above from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a week beyond what he
earned by commission, and a little while back
he obtained work again at his own business, but
his two boys still sell puddings in the street.

The sale of boiled meat puddings is carried
on only in the autumn and winter months, and
only in the evenings, except on Saturdays, when
the business commences in the afternoon. The
sale, I was informed by one of the parties, has
been as many as forty-five dozen puddings on
a Saturday evening. The tins in which the
puddings are carried about hold from four to
six dozen, and are replenished from the pans —
the makers always living contiguous to the
street where the vend takes place — as fast as
the demand requires such replenishment. An
average sale on a fine dry winter Saturday even-
ing is thirty dozen, but then, as in most street
callings, "the weather" — a remark often made
to me — "has considerable to do with it." A
frost, I was told, helped off the puddings, and
a rain kept them back. Next to Saturday the
best business night is Monday; but the average
sale on the Monday is barely half that on the
Saturday, and on the other evenings of the week
about a third. This gives a weekly sale by each
street-seller of 85 dozen, or 1,020 puddings,
and as I am informed there are now but six
street-sellers (regularly) of this comestible, the
weekly aggregate would be — allowing for bad
weather — 5,400, or 129,600 in a season of
24 weeks; an expenditure on the part of the
street boys and girls (who are the principal
purchasers), and of the poor persons who
patronise the street-trade, of about 270l. per
annum. The wandering street-musicians of
the poorer class — such as "Old Sarey" and
the Italian boys — often make their dinner off a
meat pudding purchased on their rounds; for it
is the rule with such people never to return home
after starting in the morning till their day's
work is done.

The boys who ply their callings in the street,
or are much in the open air, are very fond of
these puddings, and to witness the way in which
they throw the pudding, when very hot, from
hand to hand, eyeing it with an expression that
shows an eagerness to eat with a fear of burning
the mouth, is sometimes laughable and some-
times painful, because not unfrequently there
is a look of keen hunger about the — probably
outcast — lad. The currant puddings are, I
believe, sold only at Billingsgate and Petticoat-
lane.