OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | ||
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SONGS.
These street-traffickers, with the exception, in
a great degree, of the "pinners-up," are of the
same class, but their callings are diversified.
There are long song-sellers, ballad-sellers (who
are generally singers of the ballads they vend,
unless they are old and infirm, and offer ballads
instead of begging), chaunters, pinners-up, and
song-book-sellers. The three first-mentioned
classes I have already described in their con-
nection with the patterers; and I now proceed to
deal with the two last-mentioned.
The "pinners-up" (whom I have mentioned
as an exceptional body), are the men and women
— the women being nearly a third of the num-
ber of the men — who sell songs which they have
"pinned" to a sort of screen or large board, or
have attached them, in any convenient way, to
a blank wall; and they differ from the other
song-sellers, inasmuch as that they are not at
all connected with patter, and have generally
been mechanics, porters, or servants, and re-
duced to struggle for a living as "pinners-up."
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | ||