London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1

The tools are of the commonest kind, and sup-
plied by the cheapest swag-shops, from which es-
tablishments the majority of the street-traders
derive their supplies. They are sometimes dis-
played on a small barrow, sometimes on a stall,
and are mostly German-made.

The articles sold and the price asked — and
generally obtained, as no extravagant profit is de-
manded — is shown by the following: —

Claw hammers, 6d. Large claw, black and
glaze-faced, 1s. Pincers, 4d.; larger ones, 6d. Screw-drivers, from 2d. to 1s.! Flat-nose pliers,
6d. a pair; squares, 6d. to 1s. Carpenters' oil-
cans, from 9d. to 1s. 3d. Nests of brad-awls (for
joiners, and in wooden cases), 6d. to 2s. Back
saws, 1s. to 2s. 6d.

While many of the street-sellers of tools tra-
vel the several thoroughfares and suburbs of
the metropolis, others vend tools of a particular
kind in particular localities. These localities and
sellers may be divided into four distinct classes: —
(1) The street-sellers of tools in the markets; (2)
The street-sellers of tools at the docks and ware-
houses; (3) The street-sellers of tools at mews,
stable-yards, and job-masters'; and (4) The street-
sellers of tools to working men at their workshops.

The markets which are usually frequented by
the vendors of tools are Newgate and Leadenhall.
There are, I am informed, only five or six street-
sellers who at present frequent these markets on
the busy days. The articles in which they deal
are butchers' saws, cleavers, steels, meat-hooks,
and knives; these saws they sell from 2s. to 4s. each; knives and steels, from 9d. to 1s. 3d. each;
cleavers, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. each; and meat-hooks
at 1d., 2d., and 3d. each, according to the size.
It is very seldom, however, that cleavers are sold
by the street-sellers, as they are too heavy to
carry about. I am told that the trade of the
tool-sellers in Newgate and Leadenhall markets is
now very indifferent, owing chiefly to the butchers
having been so frequently imposed upon by the
street-sellers, that they are either indisposed or
afraid to deal with them. When the itinerant
tool-sellers are not occupied at the markets they
vend their wares to tradesmen at private shops,
but often without success. "It is a poor living,"
said one of the hawkers to me; "sometimes little
better than starving. I have gone out a whole
day and haven't taken a farthing." I am informed
that the greater portion of these street-sellers are
broken-down butchers. The tools they vend are
purchased at the Brummagem warehouses. To
start in this branch of the street-business 5s. or
10s. usually constitutes the amount of capital in-
vested in stock, and the average takings of each
are about 2s. or 2s. 6d. a day.

"A dozen years back twenty such men offered
saws at my shop," said a butcher in a northern
suburb to me; "now there's only one, and he
seems half-starving, poor fellow, and looks very
hungrily at the meat. Perhaps it's a way he's
got to have a bit given him, as it is sometimes."

The only street-seller of tools at present fre-
quenting Billingsgate-market is an elderly man,
who is by trade a working cutler. The articles
he displays upon his tray are oyster-knives, fish-
knives, steels, scissors, packing-needles, and ham-
mers. This tradesman makes his own oyster-
knives and fish-knives; the scissors and hammers
are second-hand; and the packing-needles are
bought at the ironmongers. Sometimes brad-awls,
gimlets, nails, and screws form a part of his
stock. He informed me that he had frequented
Billingsgate-market upwards of ten years. "Wet
or dry," he said, "I am here, and I often suffer
from rheumatics in the head and limbs. Some-
times I have taken only a few pence; on other
occasions I have taken 3s. or 4s., but this is not
very often. However, what with the little I take
at Billingsgate, and at other places, I can just get
a crust, and go on from day to day."

The itinerant saw-sellers offer their goods to any
one in the street as well as at the shops, and are
at the street markets on Saturday evenings with
small saws for use in cookery. With the butchers
they generally barter rather than sell, taking any
old saw in exchange with so much money, for a
new one. "I was brought up a butcher," said
one of these saw-sellers, "and worked as a journey-
man, off and on, between twenty and thirty year.
But I grew werry delicate from rheumaticks, and
my old 'ooman was bad too, so that we once had
to go into Marylebone work'us. I had no family
living, perhaps they're better as it is. We dis-
charged ourselves after a time, and they gave
us 5s. I then thought I'd try and sell a few saws
and things. A master-butcher that's been a
friend to me, lent me another 5s., and I asked a
man as sold saws to butchers to put me in the
way of it, and he took me to a swag-shop.
I do werry badly, sir, but I'll not deny, and I
can't deny — not anyhow — when you tell me
Mr. — told you about me — that there's 'elps
to me. If I make a bargain, for so much; or for
old saws or cleavers, or any old butcher thing, and
so much; a man wot knows me says, `Well, old
boy, you don't look satisfied; here's a bit of steak
for you.' Sometimes it's a cut off a scrag of
mutton, or weal; that gives the old 'ooman
and me a good nourishing bit of grub. I can
work at times, and every Saturday a'most I'm
now a porter to a butcher. I carries his meat
from Newgate, when he's killed hisself, and
wants no more than a man's weight from the
market; and when he 'asn't killed hisself in
course he hires a cart. I makes 1s. a day the
year round, I think, on saws, and my old 'ooman
makes more than 'arf as much at charing, and
there's the 'elps, and then I gets 18d. and my

362

[Description: 915EAF. Page 362.]

grub every Saturday. It's no use grumbling;
lots isn't grubbed 'arf so well as me and my old
'ooman. My rent's 20d. a week."

The articles vended by the second class of the
street-sellers of tools, or those whose purchasers
are mostly connected with the docks and ware-
houses, consist of iron-handled claw-hammers,
spanners, bed-keys, and corkscrews. Of these
street-traders there are ten or twelve, and the
greater portion of them are blacksmiths out of
employ. Some make their own hammers, whereas
others purchase the articles they vend at the
swag-shops. "We sell more hammers and bed-
keys than other things," said one, "and some-
times we sells a corkscrew to the landlord of a
public-house, and then we have perhaps half-a-
pint of beer. Our principal customers for span-
ners are wheelwrights. Those for hammers are
egg-merchants, oilmen, wax and tallow-chandlers,
and other tradesmen who receive or send out
goods in wooden cases; as well as chance cus-
tomers in the streets." The amount of capital
required to start in the line is from 5s. to 15s.: "it
is not much use," said one, "to go to shop with
less than 10s."

A third class of the street-sellers of tools are
the vendors of curry-combs and brushes, mane-
combs, scrapers, and clipping instruments; and
these articles are usually sold at the several mews,
stable-yards, and jobbing-masters' in and about the
metropolis. The sellers are mostly broken-down
grooms, who, not being able to obtain a situation,
resort to street-selling as a last shift. "It is the
last coach, when a man takes to this kind of
living," said one of my informants, a groom in a
"good place;" "and it's getting worse and worse.
The poor fellows look half-starved. Why, what
do you think I gave for these scissors? I got 'em
for 6d. and a pint of beer, and I should have to
give perhaps half-a-crown for 'em at a shop." The
trade is fast declining, and to gentlemen's carriage
mews the street-sellers of such tools rarely resort,
as the instruments required for stable-use are now
bought, by the coachmen, of the tradesmen who
supply their masters. At the "mixed mews," as
I heard them called, there are two men who, along
with razors, knives, and other things, occasionally
offer "clipping" and "trimming" scissors. Four
or five years ago there were four of these street-
sellers. The trimming-scissors are, in the shops,
1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a pair. There is one trade still
carried on in these places, although it is diminutive
compared to what it was: I allude to the sale of
curry-combs. Those vended by street-sellers at the
mews are sold at 7d. or 6d. The best sale for these
curry-combs is about Coventry-street and the Hay-
market, and at the livery-stables generally. Along
with curry-combs, the street-vendors sell wash-
leathers, mane-combs (horn), sponges (which were
like dried moss for awhile, I was told, got up by
the Jews, but which are now good), dandy-brushes
(whalebone-brushes, to scrape dirt from a horse's
legs, before he is groomed), spoke-brushes (to clean
carriage-wheels), and coach-mops. One dweller in
a large West-end mews computed that 100 differ-
ent street-traders resorted thither daily, and that
twenty sold the articles I have specified. In this
trade, I am assured, there are no broken-down
coachmen or grooms, only the regular street-sellers.
A commoner curry-comb is sold at 2d. (prime cost
1s. 3d. a dozen), at Smithfield, on market-days,
and to the carmen, and the owners of the rougher
sort of horses; but this trade is not extensive.

There may be ten men, I am told, selling com-
mon "currys;" and they also sell other articles
(often horse oil-cloths and nose-bags) along with
them.

The last class of street-sellers is the beaten-out
mechanic or workman, who, through blindness, age,
or infirmities, is driven to obtain a livelihood by
supplying his particular craft with their various
implements. Of this class, as I have before stated,
there are six men in London who were brought up
as tailors, but are now, through some affliction or
privation, incapacitated from following their calling.
These men sell needles at four and five for 1d.; thimbles 1d. to 2d. each; scissors from 1s. to
2s. 6d.; and wax 1d. the lump. There are also
old and blind shoemakers, who sell a few articles
of grindery to their shopmates, as they term them,
as well as a few decayed members of other trades,
hawking the implements of the handicraft to
which they formerly belonged. But as I have
already given a long account of one of this class,
under the head of the blind needle-seller, there is
no occasion for me to speak further on the subject.

From one of the street-traders in saws I had the
following account of his struggles, as well as the
benefit he received from teetotalism, of which he
spoke very warmly. His room was on the fourth
floor of a house in a court near Holborn, and was
clean and comfortable-looking. There were good-
sized pictures, in frames, of the Queen, the Last Sup-
per, and a Rural Scene, besides minor pictures:
some of these had been received in exchange for
saws with street-picture-sellers. A shelf was
covered with china ornaments, such as are sold in
the streets; the table had its oil-skin cover, and
altogether I have seldom seen a more decent room.
The rent, unfurnished, was 2s. a week.

"I've been eight years in this trade, sir," the
saw-seller said, "but I was brought up to a very
different one. When a lad I worked in a coal-pit
along with my father, but his behaviour to me was
so cruel, he beat me so, that I ran away, and
walked every step from the north of England to
London. I can't say I ever repented running
away — much as I've gone through. My money
was soon gone when I got to London, and my
way of speaking was laughed at. [He had now
very little of a provincial accent.] That's fourteen
year back. Why, indeed, sir, it puzzles me to
tell you how I lived then when I did live. I
jobbed about the markets, and slept, when I could
pay for a lodging, at the cheap lodging-houses; so
I got into the way of selling a few things in the
streets, as I saw others do. I sold laces and
children's handkerchiefs. Sometimes I was miser-
able enough when I hadn't a farthing, and if I
managed to make a sixpence I got tipsy on it. For
six weeks I slept every night in the Peckham
Union. For another five or six weeks I slept every

363

[Description: 915EAF. Page 363.]

night in the dark arches by the Strand. I've
sometimes had twenty or thirty companions there.
I used to lie down on the bare stones, and was
asleep in a minute, and slept like a top all night,
but waking was very bad. I felt stiff, and sore,
and cold, and miserable. How I lived at all is a
wonder to me. About eleven years ago I was per-
suaded to go to a Temperance Meeting in Harp
Alley (Farringdon-street), and there I signed the
pledge; that is, I made my mark, for I can't read
or write, which has been a great hinder to me. If
I'd been a scholard a teetotal gent would have
got me into the police three years ago, about the
time I got married. I did better, of course,
when I was a teetotaller — no more dark arches.
I sold a few little shawls in the streets
then, but it was hardly bread and butter and
coffee at times. Eight year ago I thought I
would try saw-selling: a shopkeeper advised me,
and I began on six salt saws, which I sold to oil-
men. They're for cutting salt only, and are made
of zinc, as steel would rust and dirty the salt.
The trade was far better at first than it is now.
In good weeks I earned 16s. to 18s. In bad
weeks 10s. or 12s. Now I may earn 10s., not
more, a week, pretty regular: yesterday I made
only 6d. Oilmen are better customers than chance
street-buyers, for I'm known to them. There's
only one man besides myself selling nothing
but saws. I walk, I believe, 100 miles every
week, and that I couldn't do, I know, if I wasn't
teetotal. I never long for a taste of liquor if
I'm ever so cold or tired. It's all poisonous."

The saws sold are 8 inch, which cost at the
swag-shops 8s. and 8s. 6d. a dozen; 10 inch, 9s. and 9s. 6d.; and so on, the price advancing ac-
cording to the increased size, to 18 inch, 13s. 6d. the dozen. Larger sizes are seldom sold in the
streets. The second man's earnings, my informant
believed, were the same as his own.

The wife of my informant, when she got work
as an embroideress, could earn 11s. and 12s. At
present she was at work braiding dresses for a
dressmaker, at 2½d. each. By hard work, and if
she had not her baby to attend to, she could earn no
more than 7½d. a day. As it was she did not earn 6d.

University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF TOOLS.