University of Virginia Library

THE STREET-SELLERS OF CUTLERY.

The cutlery sold in the streets of London con-
sists of razors, pen-knives, pocket-knives, table
and carving-knives and forks, scissors, shears,
nail-filers, and occasionally (if ordered) lancets.
The knives are of various kinds — such as sailors'
knives (with a hole through the handle), butchers'
knives, together with choppers and steels (sold
principally at Newgate and Billinsgate Markets,
and round about the docks), oyster and fish-
knives (sold principally at Billinsgate and Hun-
gerford Markets), bread-knives (hawked at the
bakers' shops), ham and beef knives (hawked at
the ham and beef shops), cheese-knives with
tasters, and ham-triers, shoemakers' knives, and a
variety of others. These articles are usually pur-
chased at the "swag-shops," and the prices of
them vary from 2½d. to 1s. 1½d. each. They are
bought either by the dozen, half-dozen, or singly,
according to the extent of the street-seller's stock-
money. Hence it would appear that the street-seller
of cutlery can begin business with only a few
pence; but it is only when the swag-shop keeper
has known the street-seller that he will consent
to sell one knife alone "to sell again;" to street-
sellers with whom he is unacquainted, he will
not vend less than half-a-dozen. Even where the
street-seller is known, he has, if "cracked-up," to
beg hard, I am told, before he can induce the ware-
houseman to let him have only one article. "The
swag-shops won't be bothered with it," say the
men — "what are our troubles to them? if the
rain starves us out and makes us eat up all our
stock-money, what is it to such folks? they
wouldn't let us have even a row of pins without
the money for 'em — no, not if we was to drop
down dead for want of bread in their shops.
They have been deceived by such a many that
now they won't listen to none." I subjoin a list
of the prices paid and received by the street-
sellers of cutlery for the principal articles in which
they deal:

               

	Lowest price paid per half- dozen.		Sold at in streets.		Highest price paid per half- dozen.		Sold at in streets.
	s.	d.	s.	d.	s.	d.	s. #d.
Table-knives and forks	1	3	2	0	5	0	7 #6
Ditto, without forks	0	9	1	3	4	0	6 #0
Pocket-knives	1	0	1	6	4	0	6 #0
Pen-knives	1	9	2	6	2	6	3 #9
Razors	1	9	2	6	5	0	7 #6
Scissors	0	3½	0	6	1	9	2 #6

Their usual rate of profit is 50 per cent., but
rather than refuse a ready sale the street cutlery-
seller will often take much less. Many of the
sellers only pursue the trade for a few weeks in
the year. A number of the Irish labourers take
to it in the winter-time when they can get no work.
Some few of the sellers are countrymen, but these
mostly follow the business continuously. "I don't
see as there is hardly one upon the list as has ever
been a cutler by trade," said one street-seller to me,
"and certainly none of the cutlery-sellers have ever
belonged to Sheffield — they may say so, but its
only a dodge." The cutlery street-sellers are not
one-quarter so numerous as they were two
years back. "The reason is," I am told, "that
things are got so bad a man can't live by
the trade — mayhap he has to walk three miles
now before he can sell for 1s. a knife that
has cost him 8½d., and then mayhap he is faint,
and what's 3½d., sir, to keep body and soul toge-
ther, when a man most likely has had no victuals
all the day before." If they had a good bit of
stock they might perhaps get a crust, they say.
"Things within the last two or three years," to
quote the words of one of my informants, "have
been getting much worse in the streets; 'specially
in the cutlery line. I can't give no account for
it, I'm sure, sir; the sellers have not been half as
many as they were. What's become of them
that's gone, I can't tell; they're in the work-
house, I dare say." But, notwithstanding this
decrease in the number of sellers, there is a greater
difficulty to vend their goods now than formerly.
"It's all owing to the times, that's all I can say.
People, shopkeepers, and all says to me, I can't
tell why things is so bad, and has been so bad in

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trade; but so they is. We has to walk farther
to sell our goods, and people beat us down so
terrible hard, that we can't get a penny out of
them when we do sell. Sometimes they offers
me 9d., yes, and often 6d. for an 8½d. knife; and
often enough 4d. for one that stands you in 3d. — a ¼d. profit, think of that, sir. Then they say,
`Well, my man, will you take my money?' and so
as to make you do so, they'll flash it before your
eyes, as if they knew you was a starving, and would
be sure to be took in by the sight of it. Yes,
sir, it is a very hard life, and we has to put up
with a good deal — a good deal — starvation and
hard-dealing, and insults and knockings about,
and all. And then you see the swag-shops is
almost as hard on us as the buyers. The swag-
men will say, if you merely makes a remark, that
a knife they've sold you is cracked in the handle,
`Oh, is it; let me see whereabouts;' and when
you hands it to 'em to show it 'em, they'll put it
back where they took it from, and tell you, `You're
too particular by half, my man. You'd better
go and get your goods somewhere else; here
take your money, and go on about your business,
for we won't sarve you at all.' They'll do just
the same with the scissors too, if you complains
about their being a bit rusty. `Go somewhere
else,' they'll say, `We won't sarve you.' Ah, sir,
that's what it is to be a poor man; to have your
poverty flung in your teeth every minute. People
says, `to be poor and seem poor is the devil;' but
to be poor, and be treated like a dog merely
because you are poor, surely is ten thousand times
worse. A sreet-seller now-a-days is looked upon
as a `cadger,' and treated as one. To try to get
a living for one's self is to do something shameful
in these times."

The man then gave me the following history
of himself. He was a kindly-looking and hearty
old man. He had on a ragged fustian jacket, over
which he wore a black greasy-looking and tattered
oilskin coat — the collar of this was torn away, and
the green baize lining alone visible. His waist-
coat was patched in every direction, while his
trousers appeared to be of corduroy; but the
grease and mud was so thick upon them, that it
was difficult to tell of what material they were
made. His shoes — or rather what remained of
them — were tied on his feet with pieces of string.
His appearance altogether denoted great poverty.

"My father was a farmer, sir. He had two
farms, about 800 acres in all. I was one of
eleven (ten sons and one daughter). Seven years
before my father's death he left his farm, and
went to live on his money. He had made a
good bit at farming; but when he died it was all
gone, and we was left to shift as we could. I had
little or no education. My brothers could read
and write, but I didn't take to it; I went a bird's-
nesting, boy-like, instead, so that what little I did
larn I have forgot. I am very sorry for that
now. I used to drive the plough, and go a har-
rowing for father. I was brought up to nothing
else. When father died, I thought as I should
like to see London. I was a mere lad — about
20 — and so I strolled up to town. I had 10s. with me, and that, with a bundle, was all
that I possessed in the world. When I got to
London I went to lodge at a public-house — the
Red Lion — in Great Wild-street; and while I
was there I sought about for work, but could not
get any; when all was gone, I was turned out
into the streets, and walked about for two days
and two nights, without a bed, or a bit to eat,
unless what I picked out of the gutter, and eat
like a dog — orange-peel and old cabbage-stumps,
indeed anything I could find. When I was very
hard put to it, I was coming down Drury-lane,
and I looked in, quite casual like, to ask for a job
of work at the shop of Mr. Bolton, the needle-
maker from Redditch. I told him as how I was
nigh starving, and would do anything to get a
crust; I didn't mind what I put my hand to. He
said he would try me, and gave me two packets of
needles to sell — they was the goolden-eyed ones
of that time of day — and he said when I had got
rid of them I was to come back to him, and I
should have two packets more. He told me the
price to ask — sixpence a paper — and away I went
like a sand-boy, and got rid of the two in an hour
and a half. Then I went back, and when I told
him what I'd done, he shook hands with me, and
said, as he burst out laughing, "Now, you see
I've made a man of you." Oh, he was an un-
common nice gentleman! Then he told me
to keep the shilling I had taken, and said he
would trust me with two more packets. I
sold them, and two others besides, that day.
Then, he says, `I shall give you something else,
and he let me have two packets of tailors' needles
and half a dozen of tailors' thimbles. He told me
how to sell them, and where to go, and on them I
did better. I went round to the tailors' shops
and sold a good lot, but at last they stopped me,
because I was taking the bread out of the mouths
of the poor blind needle-sellers what supplies the
journeymen tailors at the West-end. Then Mr.
Bolton sent me down to one of his relations, a
Mr. Crooks, in Fetter Lane, who was a Sheffield
man, and sold cutlery to the hawkers; and Mr.
Crooks and Mr. Bolton sot me up between them,
and so I've followed the line ever since. I dare say
I shall continue in it to my dying day. After I
got fairly set agoing, I used to make — take good
and bad, wet and dry days together — 18s. a week;
three shillings a day was what I calculated on at
the least, and to do that I was obligated to take
between 2l. and 3l. a week, or about eight or nine
shillings each day. I went on doing this for upwards
of thirty year. I have been nearly forty years,
altogether, in the streets, selling cutlery. I did
very tidy till about 4 years back — I generally
made from 18s. to 1l. a week up to that time.
I used to go round the country — to Margate,
Brighton, Portsmouth — I mostly travelled by
the coast, calling at all the sea-port towns,
for I always did best among the sailors. I went
away every Spring time, and came to London
again at the fall of the year. Sixteen year ago,
I married the widow of a printer — a pressman —
she had no money, but you see I had no home,
and I thought I should be more comfortable, and so

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I have been — a great deal more comfortable — and
so I should be now, if things hadn't got so bad.
Four year ago, as I was a telling you, it was just
after the railways had knocked off work, things
began to get uncommon bad — before then, I had
as good as 30s. or 40s. stock, and when things
got slack, it went away, little by little. I couldn't
make profit enough to support me and my old
woman — she has got the rheumatics and can't
earn me a halfpenny or a farden in the world;
she hasn't done so for years. When I didn't
make enough to live upon, of course I was
obligated to break into my stock; so there it kept
going shilling by shilling, and sixpence by six-
pence, until I had got nothing left to work upon
— not a halfpenny. You see, four or five months
ago, I was took very bad with the rheumatic
fever and gout. I got wet through in the
streets, and my clothes dried on me, and the next
day I was taken bad with pains in my limbs,
and then everything that would fetch me a
penny went to the pawn-shop; all my own
and my old woman's clothes went to get us
food — blankets, sheets and all. I never would
go nigh the parish; I couldn't bring myself
to have the talk about it. When I got well
and out into the streets again, I borrowed 2s. or 3s. of my landlady — I have lived with her
these three years — to get my stock again, but you
see that got me so few things, that I couldn't
fetch myself up. I lost the greater portion of my
time in going backards and forrards to the shop
to get fresh goods as fast as I sold them, and
so what I took wasn't enough to earn the com-
monest living for me and my missus. Since De-
cember we have been nearly starving, and that's
as true as you have got the pen in your very
hand. Sunday after Sunday we have been with-
out a bit of dinner, and I have laid a-bed all day
because we have had no coal, and then been obli-
gated to go out on Monday morning without a bit
of victuals between my lips. I've been so faint I
couldn't hardly walk. I've picked the crusts off
the tables of the tap-rooms where I have been to
hawk my goods, and put them in my pocket to
eat them on the sly. Wet and dry I'm obligated
to be out; let it come down ever so hard I must
be in it, with scarcely a bit of shoe, and turned
60 years old, as I am. Look here, sir," he
said, holding up his foot; "look at these shoes,
the soles is all loose, you see, and let water. On
wet days I hawk my goods to respectable shops;
tap-rooms is no good, decent people merely get
insulted there. But in most of the shops as I
goes to people tells me, `My good man it is as
much as we can do to keep ourselves and our
family in these cutting times.' Now, just to show
you what I done last week. Sunday, I laid a-bed
all day and had no dinner. Monday, I went out
in the morning without a morsel between my lips,
and with only 8½d. for stock-money; with that I
bought a knife and sold it for a shilling, and then
I got another and another after that, and that was
my day's work — three times 3½d. or 10½d. in all,
to keep the two of us. Tuesday, I sold a pair of
small scissors and two little pearl-handled knives,
at 6d. each article, and cleared 10½d. on the
whole, and that is all I did. Wednesday, I sold a
razor-strop for 6d., a four-bladed knife for a shil-
ling, and a small hone for 6d.; by these I cleared
10d. altogether. Thursday, I sold a pair of razors
for a shilling, clearing by the whole 11½d. Fri-
day, I got rid of a pair of razors for 1s. 9d., and
got 9d. clear." I added up the week's profits and
found they amounted to 4s. 3½d. "That's about
right," said the man, "out of that I shall have to
pay 1s. for my week's rent; we've got a kitchen,
so that I leave you to judge how we two can live
out of what's remaining." I told him it would'nt
average quite 6d. a day. "That's about it," he
replied, "we have half a loaf of bread a day, and
that thank God is only five farthings now. This
lasts us the day, with two-penny-worth of bits of
meat that my old woman buys at a ham-shop,
where they pare the hams and puts the parings by
on plates to sell to poor people; and when she can't
get that, she buys half a sheep's head, one that's
three or four days old, for then they sells 'em to
the poor for 1½d. the half; and these with ¾d. worth of tea, and ½d. worth of sugar, ¼d. for a
candle, 1d. of coal — that's seven pounds — and ¾d. worth of coke — that's half a peck — makes up all
we gets." These items amount to 6½d. in all.
"That's how we do when we can't get it, and
when we can't, why we lays in bed and goes
without altogether."