University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CIGAR LIGHTS,
OR FUZEES.

This is one of the employments to which boys,
whom neglect, ill-treatment, destitution, or a
vagrant disposition, have driven or lured to a
street life, seem to resort to almost as readily as to
the offers," "Old your'os, sir? "Shall I carry
your passel, marm?"

The trifling capital required to enter into the
business is one cause of its numbering many fol-
lowers. The "fuzees," as I most frequently heard
them called, are sold at the "Congreve shops,"
and are chiefly German made. At one time, in-
deed, they were announced as "German tinder."
The wholesale charge is 4½d. per 1000 "lights."
The 1000 lights are apportioned into fifty rows,
each of twenty self-igniting matches; and these
"rows" are sold in the streets, one or two
for ½d., and two, three, or four 1d. It is com-
mon enough for a juvenile fuzee-seller to buy only
500; so that 2¼d. supplies his stock in trade.

The boys (for the majority of the street-traders
who sell only fuzees, are boys) frequent the ap-
proaches to the steam-boat piers, the omnibus
stands, and whatever places are resorted to by
persons who love to smoke in the open air. Some
of these young traders have neither shoes nor
stockings, more especially the Irish lads, who are
at least half the number, and their apology for a
cap fully displays the large red ears, and flat
features, which seem to distinguish a class of the
Irish children in the streets of London. Some
Irish boys hold out their red-tipped fuzees with
an appealing look, meant to be plaintive, and say,
in a whining tone, "Spend a halfpenny on a
poor boy, your honour." Others offer them,
without any appealing look or tone, either in si-
lence, or saying — "Buy a fuzee to light your
pipe or cigar, sir; a row of lights for a ½d."

I met with one Irish boy, of thirteen or four-
teen years of age, who was offering fuzees to the
persons going to Chalk Farm fair on Easter
Tuesday, but the rain kept away many visitors,
and the lad could hardly find a customer. He
was literally drenched, for his skin, shining with
the rain, could be seen about his arms and knees
through the slits of his thin corduroy jacket and
trowsers, and he wore no shirt.

"It's oranges I sell in ginral, your honour," he
said, "and it's on oranges I hopes to be next
week, plaze God. But mother — it's orange-selling
she is too — wanted to make a grand show for
Aister wake, and tuk the money to do it, and put
me on the fuzees. It's the thruth I'm telling
your honour. She thought I might be after
making a male's mate" (meal's meat) "out of them,
intirely; but the sorra a male I'll make to day
if it cost me a fardin, for I haven't tuk one. I
niver remimber any fader; mother and me lives
together somehow, glory be to God; but it's often
knowin' what it is to be hungry we are. I've

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sould fuzees before, when ingans, and nuts, and
oranges was dear and not for the poor to buy,
but I niver did so bad as to-day. A gintleman
once said to me: `Here, Pat, yer sowl, you look
hungry. Here's a thirteener for yez; go and get
drunk wid it.' Och, no, your honour, he wasn't
an Irish gintleman; it was afther mocking me he
was, God save him." On my asking the boy if
he felt hurt at this mockery, he answered, slily,
with all his air of simplicity, "Sure, thin, wasn't
there the shillin'? For it was a shillin' he gave
me, glory be to God. No, I niver heard it called
a thirteener before, but mother has. Och, thin,
sir, indeed, and it's could and wet I am. I have
a new shirt, as was giv to mother for me by a
lady, but I wouldn't put it on sich a day as this,
your honour, sir. I'll go to mass in it ivery
Sunday. I've made 6d. a day and sometimes
more a sellin' fuzees, wid luck, God be praised,
but the bad wither's put me out intirely this
time."

The fuzee-sellers frequently offer their wares at
the bars of public-houses in the daytime, and
sometimes dispose of them to those landlords who
sell cigars. From the best information I can com-
mand there are now upwards of 200 persons
selling fuzees in the streets of the metropolis. But
the trade is often collateral. The cigar-seller offers
fuzees, play-bill sellers (boys) do so sometimes at
the doors of the theatres to persons coming out,
the pipe-sellers also carry them; they are some-
times sold along with lucifer matches, and at
miscellaneous stalls. It will, I believe, be accurate
to state that in the streets there are generally
100 persons subsisting, or endeavouring to subsist,
on the sale of fuzees alone. It may be estimated
also that each of these traders averages a receipt
of 10d. a day (with a profit exceeding 6d.), so
that 1300l. is yearly laid out in the streets in this
way.

Of the fuzee-selling lads, those who are parent-
less, or runaway, sleep in the lodging-houses, in
the better conducted of which the master or deputy
takes charge of the stock of fuzees or lucifer-
matches during the night to avert the risk of fire;
in others these combustibles are stowed anywhere
at the discretion, or indiscretion, of the lodgers.