 | OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE STREET-SALE OF MEMORANDUM-
BOOKS AND ALMANACKS.
The memorandum-books in demand in street-
sale are used for weekly "rent-books." The
payment of the rent is entered by the landlord,
and the production of one of these books, show-
ing a punetuality of payment, perhaps for years,
is one of the best "references" that can be
given by any one in search of a new lodging.
They are bought also for the entrance of orders,
and then of prices, in the trade at chandler's
shops, &c., where weekly or monthly accounts
are run. All, or nearly all, the street-sta-
tioners sell memorandum-books, and in addition
to them, there may be, I am told, sometimes as
many as fifty poor persons, including women
and children, who sell memorandum-books with
other trifling articles, not necessarily stationery,
but such things as stay-laces or tapes. If a
man sell memorandum-books alone it is because
his means limit him to that stock, he being at
the time, what I heard a patterer describe as, a
"dry-bread cove." The price is 6d. the dozen,
or 9d. (with almanacks pasted inside the cover),
and thirteen to the dozen. No more than 1d.
is obtained in the streets for any kind of memo-
randum-books.
The almanack street trade, I heard on all
hands, had become a mere nothing. "What
else can you expect, sir," said one street-seller,
"when so many publicans sends almanacks
round, or gives them away to their customers;
and when the slop tailors' shilling-a-day men
thrust one into people's hands at every corner?
It was a capital trade once, before the duty was
taken off — capital! The duty wasn't in our way
so much as in the shop-keepers', though they
did a good deal on the sly in unstamped alma-
nacks. Why of a night in October I've many
a time cleared 5s. and more by selling in the
public-houses almanacks at 2d. and 3d. a-piece
(they cost me 1s. and 1s. 2d. a dozen at that
time). Anything that way, when Government's
done, has a ready sale; people enjoys it; and
I suppose no man, as ever was, thinks it
much harm to do a tax-gatherer! I don't pay
the income-tax myself (laughing). One even-
ing I sold, just by Blackfriars-bridge, fourteen
dozen of diamond almanacks to fit into hat-
crowns. I was liable, in course, and ran a
risk. I sold them mostly at 1d. a piece, but
sometimes got 6d. for three. I cleared between
6s. and 7s. The `diamonds' cost me 8d. a
dozen."
The street almanack trade is now carried on
by the same parties as I have specified in my
account of memorandum-books. Those sold
are of any cheap kind, costing wholesale 6d. a
dozen, but they are almost always announced
as "Moore's."
| OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |