University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SALE OF POCKET-BOOKS
AND DIARIES.

The sale of pocket-books, in the streets, is not,
I was told by several persons, "a living for a
man now-a-days." Ten years ago it was com-
mon to find men in the streets offering "half-
crown pocket-books" for 1s., and holding them
open so as to display the engravings, if there

[Description: 915EAF. Page 272.]

were any. The street-sale usually takes place
in March, when the demand for the regular
trade has ceased, and the publishers dispose of
their unsold stock. The trade is now, I am
assured, only about a tenth of its former extent.
The reason assigned for the decline is that
almanacks, diaries, &c., are so cheap that people
look upon 1s. as an enormous price, even for a
"beautiful morocco-bound pocket-book," as the
street-seller proclaims it. The binding is roan
(a dressed sheep-skin, morocco being a goat-
skin), an imitation of morocco, but the pocket-
books are really those which in the October
preceding have been published in the regular
way of trade. Some few of them may, how-
ever, have been damaged, and these are bought
by the street-people as a "job lot," and at a
lower price than that paid in the regular way;
which is 4s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. the dozen, thirteen to
the dozen. The "job lot" is sometimes bought
for 2s. 6d. a dozen, and sold at 6d. each, or as low
as 4d., — for street-sellers generally bewail their
having often to come down to "fourpenny-bits,
as they're going so much now." One man told
me that he was four days last March in selling
a dozen pocket-books, though the weather was
not unfavourable, and that his profit was 5s.
Engravings of the "fashions," the same man
told me, were "no go now." Even poorly-
dressed women (but they might, he thought, be
dress-makers) had said to him the last time he
displayed a pocket-book with fashions — "They're
out now." The principal supplier of pocket-
books, &c., to the street-trade is in Bride-lane,
Fleet-street. Commercial diaries are bought and
sold at the same rate as pocket-books; but the
sale becomes smaller and smaller.

I am informed that "last season" there were
twenty men, all street-traders in "paper," or
"anything that was up," at other times, selling
pocket-books and diaries. For this trade Lei-
cester-square is a favourite place. Calculating,
from the best data I can command, that each of
those men took 15s. weekly for a month (half of
it their profit), we find 60l. expended in the
streets in this purchase. Ledgers are some-
times sold in the streets; but as the sale is more
a hawker's than a regular street-seller's, an ac-
count of the traffic is not required by my present
subject.