University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CAKES,
TARTS, &c.

These men and boys — for there are very few
women or girls in the trade — constitute a some-
what numerous class. They are computed (in-
cluding Jews) at 150 at the least, all regular
hands, with an addition, perhaps, of 15 or 20,
who seek to earn a few pence on a Sunday,
but have some other, though poorly remune-
rative, employment on the week-days. The
cake and tart-sellers in the streets have been,
for the most part, mechanics or servants; a fifth
of the body, however, have been brought up to
this or to some other street-calling.

The cake-men carry their goods on a tray slung
round their shoulders when they are offering
their delicacies for sale, and on their heads when
not engaged in the effort to do business. They
are to be found in the vicinity of all public
places. Their goods are generally arranged in
pairs on the trays; in bad weather they are
covered with a green cloth.

None of the street-vendors make the articles
they sell; indeed, the diversity of those articles
renders that impossible. Among the regular
articles of this street-sale are "Coventrys," or
three-cornered puffs with jam inside; raspberry
biscuits; cinnamon biscuits; "chonkeys," or a
kind of mince-meat baked in crust; Dutch
butter-cakes; Jews' butter-cakes; "bowlas,"
or round tarts made of sugar, apple, and bread;
"jumbles," or thin crisp cakes made of treacle,
butter, and flour; and jams, or open tarts with
a little preserve in the centre.

All these things are made for the street-sellers
by about a dozen Jew pastry-cooks, the most of
whom reside about Whitechapel. They confine
themselves to the trade, and make every descrip-
tion. On a fine holiday morning their shops, or
rather bake-houses, are filled with customers,
as they supply the small shops as well as the
street-sellers of London. Each article is made
to be sold at a halfpenny, and the allowance by
the wholesale pastry-cook is such as to enable
his customers to realise a profit of 4d. in 1s.; thus he charges 4d. a dozen for the several
articles. Within the last seven years there has
been, I am assured, a great improvement in the
composition of these cakes, &c. This is attri-
butable to the Jews having introduced superior
dainties, and, of course, rendered it necessary for
the others to vie with them: the articles vended
by these Jews (of whom there are from 20 to 40
in the streets) are still pronounced, by many
connoisseurs in street-pastry, as the best. Some
sell penny dainties also, but not to a twentieth
part of the halfpenny trade. One of the whole-
sale pastry-cooks takes 40l. a week. These
wholesale men, who sometimes credit the street-
people, buy ten, fifteen, or twenty sacks of flour
at a time whenever a cheap bargain offers. They
purchase as largely in Irish butter, which they
have bought at 3d. or 2½d. the pound. They
buy also "scrapings," or what remains in the
butter-firkins when emptied by the butter-sellers
in the shops. "Good scrapings" are used for
the best cakes; the jam they make themselves.
To commence the wholesale business requires a
capital of 600l. To commence the street-selling
requires a capital of only 10s.; and this in-
cludes the cost of a tray, about 1s. 9d.; a cloth
1s.; and a leathern strap, with buckle, to go
round the neck, 6d.; while the rest is for stock,
with a shilling, or two as a reserve. All the
street-sellers insist upon the impossibility of
any general baker making cakes as cheap as
those they vend. "It's impossible, sir," said
one man to me; "it's a trade by itself; nobody
else can touch it. They was miserable little
things seven years ago."

An acute-looking man, decently dressed, gave
me the following account. He resided with his
wife — who went out charing — in a decent little
back-room at the East-end, for which he paid
1s. a week. He had no children: —

"I'm a `translator' (a species of cobbler) by

[Description: 915EAF. Page 199.]

trade," he said, "but I've been a cake and a
tart-seller in the streets for seven or eight years.
I couldn't make 1s. 3d. a day of twelve hours'
work, and sometimes nothing, by translating.
Besides, my health was failing; and, as I used
to go out on a Sunday with cakes to sell for a
cousin of mine, I went into the trade myself,
because I'd got up to it. I did middling the
first three or four years, and I'd do middling
still, if it wasn't for the bad weather and
the police. I've been up three times for
`obstructing.' Why, sir, I never obstructed a
quarter as much as the print-shops and news-
paper-shops down there" (pointing to a narrow
street in the City). "But the keepers of them
shops can take a sight at the Lord Mayor
from behind their tills. The first time I was
up before the Lord Mayor — it's a few years
back — I thought he talked like an old wife.
`You mustn't stand that way,' he says, `and you
mustn't do this, and you mustn't do that.'
`Well, my lord,' says I, `then I mustn't live
honestly. But if you'll give me 9s. a week, I'll
promise not to stand here, and not to stand there;
and neither to do this, nor that, nor anything at
all, if that pleases you better.' They was
shocked, they said, at my impudence — so young
a fellow, too! I got off each time, but a
deal of my things was spoiled. I work the City
on week-days, and Victoria Park on Sundays.
In the City, my best customers is not children,
but young gents; real gents, some of them with
gold watches. They buys twopenn'orth, mostly
— that's four of any sort, or different sorts.
They're clerks in banks and counting-houses, I
suppose, that must look respectable like on a
little, and so feeds cheap, poor chaps! for they
dine or lunch off it, never doubt. Or they
may be keeping their money for other things.
To sell eleven dozen is a first-rate days' work;
that's 1s. 9d. or 1s. 10d. profit. But then comes
the wet days, and I can't trade at all in the
rain; and so the things get stale, and I have to
sell them in Petticoat-lane for two a halfpenny.
Victoria Park — I'm not let inside with my tray
— is good and bad as happens. It's chiefly a
tossing trade there. Oh, I dare say I toss
100 times some Sundays. I don't like tossing
the coster lads, they're the wide-awakes that
way. The thieves use `grays.' They're ha'-
pennies, either both sides heads or both tails.
Grays sell at from 2d. to 6d. I'm not often
had that way, though. Working-people buy
very few of me on Sundays; it's mostly boys;
and next to the gents., why, perhaps, the boys
is my best customers in the City. Only on
Monday a lad, that had been lucky `fiddling' "
(holding horses, or picking up money anyhow)
"spent a whole shilling on me. I clear, I think
— and I'm among the cakes that's the top
of the tree — about 10s. a week in summer,
and hardly 7s. a week in winter. My old
woman and me makes both ends meet, and
that's all."

Reckoning 150 cake-sellers, each clearing 6s. a week, a sufficiently low average, the street
outlay will be 2,340l., representing a street-
consumption of 1,123,200 cakes, tarts, &c.