University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GUTTA-PERCHA
HEADS.

There are many articles which, having become
cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-
traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief,
and prosperous trade has been carried on in them,
gradually disappear. These are usually things
which are grotesque or amusing, but of no utility,
and they are supplanted by some more attractive
novelty — a main attraction being that it is a
novelty.

Among such matters of street-trade are the
elastic toys called "gutta-percha heads;" these,
however, have no gutta-percha in their composition,
but consist solely of a composition made of
glue and treacle — the same as is used for printer's
rollers. The heads are small coloured models of
the human face, usually with projecting nose and
chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit
of being squeezed into a different form of fea-
tures, their elasticity causing them to return to
the original caste. The trade carried on in the
streets in these toys was at one time extensive,
but it seems now to be gradually disappearing.
On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there
was not one "head" exposed for sale in any of
the four great street markets of Leather-lane, the
Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the Hamp-
stead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.

The trade became established in the streets up-
wards of two years ago. At first, I am told by a
street-seller, himself one of the first, there were
six "head-sellers," who "worked" the parks and
their vicinity. My informant one day sold a gross
of heads in and about Hyde-park, and a more
fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1½
gross. The heads were recommended, whenever
opportunity offered, by a little patter. "Here,"
one man used to say, "here's the Duke of Wel-
lington's head for 1d. It's modelled from the
statty on horseback, but is a improvement. His
nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel's only 1d.
Anybody you please is 1d.; a free choice and
no favour. The Queen and all the Royal Family
1d. apiece." As the street-seller offered to dis-
pose of the model of any eminent man's head and
face, he held up some one of the most grotesque
of the number. Another man one Saturday
evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers
and others in the street markets "pattering" them
off as the likenesses of any policeman who might
be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was
when the trade was new. The number of sellers
was a dozen in the second week; it was soon
twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of
the heads; besides these the heads were offered to
the street-buying public by many of the stationary
street-folk, whose stock partook of a miscellaneous
character. The men carrying on this traffic were
of the class of general street-sellers.

"The trade was spoiled, sir," said an informant,
"by so many going into it, but I've heard that
it's not bad in parts of the country now. The
sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and
Sundays was the best days. I don't pretend to
be learned about religion, but I know that many
a time after I'd earned next to nothing in a wet
week, it came a fine Sunday morning, and I
took as much as got me and my wife and
children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and
sometimes, when we could depend on it, smoking
hot from the baker's oven; and I then felt I had
something to thank God for. You see, sir, when
a man's been out all the week, and often with
nothing to call half a dinner, and his wife's earn-
ings only a few pence by sewing at home, with
three young children to take care of, you're
nourished and comforted, and your strength keeps
up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in
your own room. But them as eats their dinner
without having to earn it, can't understand about
that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped,
the police drive us about like dogs, not gentle-
men's dogs, but stray or mad dogs. And it

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seems there's some sort of a new police. I can't
understand a bit of it, and I don't want to, for
the old police is trouble enough."

The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the
"English and German" swag-shops. A few are
made by the men who sell them in the streets.
The "swag" price is 1s. the gross; at one time
the swag man demurred to sell less than half a
gross, but now when the demand is diminished, a
dozen is readily supplied for 8d. The street
price retail, is and always was 1d. a head. The
principal purchasers in the street are boys and
young men, with a few tradesmen or working
people, "such as can afford a penny or two," who
buy the "gutta percha" heads for their children.
There used to be a tolerable trade in public
houses, where persons enjoying themselves bought
them "for a lark," but this trade has now
dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the "larks,"
an informant knew to be practised, was to attach
the head to a piece of paper or card, write upon
it some one's name, make it up into a parcel, and
send it to the flattered invividual. The same man
had sold heads to young women, not servant-
maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid
employment, and he believed, from their manner
when buying, for some similar purpose of "larking."
When the heads were a novelty, he sold a good
many to women of the town.

There are now no street-folks who depend upon
the sale of these gutta-percha heads, but they sell
them occasionally. The usual mode is to display
them on a tray, and now, generally with other
things. One man showed me his box, which,
when the lid was raised, he carried as a tray
slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-
percha heads, exhibition medals, and rings and
other penny articles of jewellery.

There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons
selling gutta-percha heads in the streets, some of
them confining their business solely to those articles.
In this number, however, I do not include those
who are both makers and sellers. Their average
receipts, I am assured, do not exceed 5s. a week
each, for, though some may take 15s. a week,
others, and generally the stationary head-sellers,
do not take 1s. The profit to the street retailer
is one third of his receipts. From this calculation
it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue,
390l. is spent yearly in these street toys. At
one time it was far more than twice the amount.