University of Virginia Library

9. OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF EATABLES AND DRINKABLES.

These dealers were, more numerous, even when
the metropolitan population was but half its
present extent. I heard several causes assigned
for this, — such as the higher rate of earnings
of the labouring people at that time, as well
as the smaller number of shopkeepers who
deal in such cheap luxuries as penny pies,
and the fewer places of cheap amusement,
such as the "penny gaffs." These places, I
was told, "run away with the young people's
pennies," which were, at one period, expended
in the streets.

The class engaged in the manufacture, or in
the sale, of these articles, are a more intelligent
people than the generality of street-sellers.
They have nearly all been mechanics who, from
inability to procure employment at their several
crafts — from dislike to an irksome and, perhaps,
sedentary confinement — or from an overpower-
ing desire "to be their own masters," have
sought a livelihood in the streets. The purchase
and sale of fish, fruit, or vegetables require no
great training or deftness; but to make the
dainties, in which street-people are critical, and
to sell them at the lowest possible price, certainly
requires some previous discipline to produce
the skill to combine and the taste to please.

I may here observe, that I found it common
enough among these street-sellers to describe
themselves and their fraternity not by their
names or callings, but by the article in which
they deal. This is sometimes ludicrous enough:
"Is the man you're asking about a pickled
whelk, sir?" was said to me. In answer to
another inquiry, I was told, "Oh, yes, I know
him — he's a sweet-stuff." Such ellipses, or
abbreviations, are common in all mechanical or
commercial callings.

Men and women, and most especially boys,
purchase their meals day after day in the streets.
The coffee-stall supplies a warm breakfast;
shell-fish of many kinds tempt to a luncheon;
hot-eels or pea-soup, flanked by a potato "all
hot," serve for a dinner; and cakes and tarts,
or nuts and oranges, with many varieties of
pastry, confectionary, and fruit, woo to indul-
gence in a dessert; while for supper there is a
sandwich, a meat pudding, or a "trotter."

The street provisions consist of cooked or
prepared victuals, which may be divided into
solids, pastry, confectionary, and drinkables.

The "solids" however, of these three divi-
sions, are such as only regular street-buyers
consider to be sufficing for a substantial meal,
for it will be seen that the comestibles accounted
"good for dinner," are all of a dainty, rather
than a solid character. Men whose lives, as I
have before stated, are alternations of starvation

[Description: 915EAF. Page 159.]

and surfeit, love some easily-swallowed and
comfortable food, better than the most approved
substantiality of a dinner-table. I was told by
a man, who was once foodless for thirty-eight
hours, that in looking into the window of a cook-
shop — he longed far more for a basin of soup
than for a cut from the boiled round, or the
roasted ribs, of beef. He felt a gnawing rather
than a ravenous desire, and some tasty semi-
liquid was the incessant object of his desires.

The solids then, according to street estima-
tion, consist of hot-eels, pickled whelks, oysters,
sheep's-trotters, pea-soup, fried fish, ham-sand-
wiches, hot green peas, kidney puddings, boiled
meat puddings, beef, mutton, kidney, and eel
pies, and baked potatos. In each of these pro-
visions the street poor find a mid-day or mid-
night meal.

The pastry and confectionary which tempt
the street eaters are tarts of rhubarb, currant,
gooseberry, cherry, apple, damson, cranberry,
and (so called) mince pies; plum dough and
plum-cake; lard, currant, almond and many
other varieties of cakes, as well as of tarts;
gingerbread-nuts and heart-cakes; Chelsea
buns; muffins and crumpets; "sweet stuff"
includes the several kinds of rocks, sticks, lozen-
ges, candies, and hard-bakes; the medicinal
confectionary of cough-drops and horehound;
and, lastly, the more novel and aristocratic
luxury of street-ices; and strawberry cream, at
1d. a glass, (in Greenwich Park).

The drinkables are tea, coffee, and cocoa;
ginger-beer, lemonade, Persian sherbet, and
some highly-coloured beverages which have no
specific name, but are introduced to the public
as "cooling" drinks; hot elder cordial or
wine; peppermint water; curds and whey;
water (as at Hampstead); rice milk; and milk
in the parks.

At different periods there have been attempts to
introduce more substantial viands into the street
provision trade, but all within these twenty
years have been exceptional and unsuccessful.
One man a few years back established a port-
able cook-shop in Leather-lane, cutting out
portions of the joints to be carried away or eaten
on the spot, at the buyer's option. But the
speculation was a failure. Black puddings
used to be sold, until a few years back, smoking
from cans, not unlike potato cans, in such
places as the New Cut; but the trade in these
rather suspicious articles gradually disappeared.

Mr. Albert Smith, who is an acute observer
in all such matters, says, in a lively article on
the Street Boys of London:

"The kerb is his club, offering all the advan-
tages of one of those institutions without any
subscription or ballot. Had he a few pence,
he might dine equally well as at Blackwall,
and with the same variety of delicacies without
going twenty yards from the pillars of St.
Clement's churchyard. He might begin with
a water souchée of eels, varying his first course
with pickled whelks, cold fried flounders, or
periwinkles. Whitebait, to be sure, he would
find a difficulty in procuring, but as the more
cunning gourmands do not believe these deli-
cacies to be fish at all, but merely little bits
of light pie-crust fried in grease; — and as
moreover, the brown bread and butter is after
all the grand attraction, — the boy might soon
find a substitute. Then would come the
potatos, apparently giving out so much steam
that the can which contains them seems in
momentary danger of blowing up; large, hot,
mealy fellows, that prove how unfounded were
the alarms of the bad-crop-ites; and he might
next have a course of boiled feet of some animal
or other, which he would be certain to find in
front of the gin-shop. Cyder-cups perhaps he
would not get; but there would be `ginger-
beer from the fountain, at 1d. per glass;' and
instead of mulled claret, he could indulge in
hot elder cordial; whilst for dessert he could
calculate upon all the delicacies of the season,
from the salads at the corner of Wych-street
to the baked apples at Temple Bar. None of
these things would cost more than a penny a
piece; some of them would be under that sum;
and since as at Verey's, and some other foreign
restaurateurs, there is no objection to your
dividing the "portions," the boy might, if he
felt inclined to give a dinner to a friend, get off
under 6d. There would be the digestive
advantage too of moving leisurely about from
one course to another; and, above all, there
would be no fee to waiters." After alluding
to the former glories of some of the street-
stands, more especially of the kidney pudding
establishments which displayed rude transpa-
rencies, one representing the courier of St.
Petersburg riding six horses at once for a
kidney pudding, Mr. Smith continues, — "But
of all these eating-stands the chief favourite
with the boy is the potato-can. They collect
around it as they would do on 'Change, and
there talk over local matters, or discuss the
affairs of the adjacent cab-stand, in which they
are at times joined by the waterman whom they
respect, more so perhaps than the policeman;
certainly more than they do the street-keeper,
for him they especially delight to annoy, and
they watch any of their fellows eating a potato,
with a curiosity and an attention most remark-
able, as if no two persons fed in the same
manner, and they expected something strange
or diverting to happen at every mouthful."

A gentleman, who has taken an artist's inte-
rest in all connected with the streets, and has
been familiar with their daily and nightly aspect
from the commencement of the present century,
considers that the great change is not so much
in what has ceased to be sold, but in the intro-
duction of fresh articles into street-traffic — such
as pine-apples and Brazil-nuts, rhubarb and
cucumbers, ham-sandwiches, ginger-beer, &c.
The coffee-stall, he represents, has but super-
seded the saloop-stall (of which I have previ-
ously spoken); while the class of street-custom-
ers who supported the saloop-dealer now support
the purveyor of coffee. The appearance of the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 160.]

two stalls, however, seen before dayoreak, with
their respective customers, on a bleak winter's
morning, was very different. Round the saloop-
stall was a group — hardly discernible at a little
distance in the dimly-lighted streets — the pro-
minent figures being of two callings now extinct
— the climbing-boy and the old hackney-coach-
man.

The little sweep would have his saloop smoking
hot — and there was the common appliance of a
charcoal grate — regaling himself with the sa-
voury steam until the mess was cool enough for
him to swallow; whilst he sought to relieve his
naked feet from the numbing effects of the cold
by standing now on the right foot and now on
the left, and swinging the other to and fro, until
a change of posture was necessitated; his white
teeth the while gleamed from his sooty visage as
he gleefully licked his lips at the warm and oily
breakfast.

The old hackney-coachman was wrapped up
in a many-caped great coat, drab — when it left
the tailor's hands some years before — but then
worn and discoloured, and, perhaps, patched or
tattered; its weight alone, however, communi-
cated a sort of warmth to the wearer; his legs
were closely and artistically "wisped" with hay-
bands; and as he kept smiting his chest with his
arms, "to keep the cold out," while his saloop
was cooling, he would, in no very gentle terms,
express his desire to add to its comforting in-
fluence the stimulant of a "flash of lightning,"
a "go of rum," or a "glass of max," — for so a
dram of neat spirit was then called.

The old watchman of that day, too, almost as
heavily coated as the hackneyman, would some-
times partake of the street "Saloop-loop-loop!
Sa-loop!" The woman of the town, in "looped
and windowed raggedness," the outcast of the
very lowest class, was at the saloop, as she is
now and then at the coffee-stall, waiting until
daylight drove her to her filthy lodging-house.
But the climbing-boy has, happily, left no suc-
cessor; the hackneyman has been succeeded by
the jauntier cabman; and the taciturn old
watchman by the lounging and trim policeman.

Another class of street-sellers, no longer to
be seen, were the "barrow-women." They sold
fruit of all kinds, little else, in very clean white
barrows, and their fruit was excellent, and pur-
chased by the wealthier classes. They were, for
the most part, Irish women, and some were re-
markable for beauty. Their dress was usually
a good chintz gown, the skirt being tidily tucked
or pinned up behind, "in a way," said one in-
formant, "now sometimes seen on the stage when
correctness of costume is cared for." These
women were prosperous in their calling, nor was
there any imputation on their chastity, as the
mothers were almost always wives.

Concerning the bygone street-cries, I had
also the following account from the personal
observation of an able correspondent: —

"First among the old `mnsical cries,' may
be cited the `Tiddy Doll!' — immortalised by
Hogarth — then comes the last person, who,
with a fine bass voice, coaxed his customers to
buy sweets with, `Quack, quack, quack, quack!
Browns, browns, browns! have you got any
mouldy browns?' There was a man, too, who
sold tripe, &c., in this way, and to some purpose;
he was as fine a man as ever stepped, and his
deep rich voice would ring through a whole
street, `Dog's-meat! cat's-meat! nice tripe!
neat's feet! Come buy my trotters!' The last
part would not have disgraced Lablache. He
discovered a new way of pickling tripe — got on
— made contracts for supplying the Navy during
the war, and acquired a large property. One of
our most successful artists is his grandson.
Then there was that delight of our childhood —
the eight o'clock `Hot spiced gingerbread! hot
spiced gingerbread! buy my spiced gingerbread!
sm-o-o-king hot!' " Another informant remem-
bered a very popular character (among the boys),
whose daily cry was: "Hot spiced gingerbread
nuts, nuts, nuts! If one'll warm you, wha-at'll
a pound do? — Wha-a-a-at'll a pound do?"
Gingerbread was formerly in much greater de-
mand than it is now.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PEA-SOUP AND
Hot Eels.

Two of the condiments greatly relished by the
chilled labourers and others who regale them-
selves on street luxuries, are "pea-soup" and
"hot eels." Of these tradesmen there may be
500 now in the streets on a Saturday. As the
two trades are frequently carried on by the
same party, I shall treat of them together. The
greatest number of these stands is in Old-street,
St. Luke's, about twenty. In warm weather
these street-cooks deal only in "hot eels" and
whelks; as the whelk trade is sometimes an ac-
companiment of the others, for then the soup will
not sell. These dealers are stationary, having
stalls or stands in the street, and the savoury
odour from them attracts more hungry-looking
gazers and longers than does a cook-shop window.
They seldom move about, but generally frequent
the same place. A celebrated dealer of this class
has a stand in Clare-street, Clare-market, op-
posite a cat's-meat shop; he has been heard to
boast, that he wouldn't soil his hands at the busi-
ness if he didn't get his 30s. a day, and his 2l. 10s. on a Saturday. Half this amount is considered to
be about the truth. This person has mostly all
the trade for hot eels in the Clare-market dis-
trict. There is another "hot eel purveyor" at
the end of Windmill-street, Tottenham-court-
road, that does a very good trade. It is thought
that he makes about 5s. a day at the business,
and about 10s. on Saturday. There was, before
the removals, a man who came out about five
every afternoon, standing in the New-cut, nearly
opposite the Victoria Theatre, his "girl" always
attending to the stall. He had two or three
lamps with "hot eels" painted upon them, and
a handsome stall. He was considered to make
about 7s. a day by the sale of eels alone, but he
dealt in fried fish and pickled whelks as well, and
often had a pile of fried fish a foot high. Near the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 161.]

Bricklayers' Arms, at the junction of the Old and
New Kent-roads, a hot-eel man dispenses what
a juvenile customer assured me was "as spicy
as any in London, as if there was gin in it."
But the dealer in Clare-market does the largest
trade of all in the hot-eel line. He is "the
head man." On one Saturday he was known
to sell 100lbs. of eels, and on most Saturdays
he will get rid of his four "draughts" of eels
(a draught being 20lbs.) He and his son are
dressed in Jenny Lind hats, bound with blue
velvet, and both dispense the provisions, while
the daughter attends to wash the cups. "On a
Sunday, anybody," said my informant, "would
think him the first nobleman or squire in the
land, to see him dressed in his white hat, with
black crape round it, and his drab paletot and
mother-o'-pearl buttons, and black kid gloves,
with the fingers too long for him."

I may add, that even the very poorest, who
have only a halfpenny to spend, as well as
those with better means, resort to the stylish
stalls in preference to the others. The eels
are all purchased at Billingsgate early in the
morning. The parties themselves, or their sons
or daughters, go to Billingsgate, and the water-
men row them to the Dutch eel vessels moored
off the market. The fare paid to the watermen
is 1d. for every 10lbs. purchased and brought
back in the boat, the passenger being gratis.
These dealers generally trade on their own
capital; but when some have been having "a
flare up," and have "broke down for stock,"
to use the words of my informant, they borrow
1l., and pay it back in a week or a fortnight at
the outside, and give 2s. for the loan of it. The
money is usually borrowed of the barrow, truck,
and basket-lenders. The amount of capital re-
quired for carrying on the business of course
depends on the trade done; but even in a small
way, the utensils cost 1l. They consist of one
fish-kettle and one soup-kettle, holding upon an
average three gallons each; besides these, five
basins and five cups and ten spoons are re-
quired, also a washhand basin to wash the cups,
basins, and spoons in, and a board and tressel
on which the whole stand. In a large way, it re-
quires from 3l. to 4l. to fit up a handsome stall.
For this the party would have "two fine kettles,"
holding about four gallons each, and two patent
cast-iron fireplaces (the 1l. outfit only admits of
the bottoms of two tin saucepans being used as
fireplaces, in which charcoal is always burning
to keep the eels and soup hot; the whelks are
always eaten cold). The crockery and spoons
would be in no way superior. A small dealer
requires, over and above this sum, 10s. to go to
market with and purchase stock, and the large
dealer about 30s. The Class of persons belong-
ing to the business have either been bred to it,
or taken to it through being out of work. Some
have been disabled during their work, and have
resorted to it to save themselves from the work-
house. The price of the hot eels is a halfpenny
for five or seven pieces of fish, and three-parts
of a cupfull of liquor. The charge for a half-
pint of pea-soup is a halfpenny, and the whelks
are sold, according to the size, from a halfpenny
each to three or four for the same sum. These
are put out in saucers.

The eels are Dutch, and are cleaned and
washed, and cut in small pieces of from a half
to an inch each. [The daughter of one of my
informants was busily engaged, as I derived this
information, in the cutting of the fish. She
worked at a blood-stained board, with a pile of
pieces on one side and a heap of entrails on the
other.] The portions so cut are then boiled, and
the liquor is thickened with flour and flavoured
with chopped parsley and mixed spices. It is
kept hot in the streets, and served out, as I have
stated, in halfpenny cupfulls, with a small quan-
tity of vinegar and pepper. The best purveyors
add a little butter. The street-boys are extra-
vagant in their use of vinegar.

To dress a draught of eels takes three hours —
to clean, cut them up, and cook them sufficiently;
and the cost is now 5s. 2d. (much lower in the
summer) for the draught (the 2d. being the ex-
pense of "shoring"), 8d. for 4 lb. of flour to
thicken the liquor, 2d. for the parsley to flavour
it, and 1s. 6d. for the vinegar, spices, and pepper
(about three quarts of vinegar and two ounces
of pepper). This quantity, when dressed and
seasoned, will fetch in halfpennyworths from
15s. to 18s. The profit upon this would be
from 7s. to 9s. 6d.; but the cost of the charcoal
has to be deducted, as well as the salt used while
cooking. These two items amount to about 5d.

The pea-soup consists of split peas, celery,
and beef bones. Five pints, at 3½d. a quart, are
used to every three gallons; the bones cost 2d., carrots 1d., and celery ½d. — these cost 1s. 0¼d.; and the pepper, salt, and mint, to season it,
about 2d. This, when served in halfpenny basin-
fulls, will fetch from 2s. 3d. to 2s. 4d., leaving
1s. 1d. profit. But from this the expenses of
cooking must be taken; so that the clear gain
upon three gallons comes to about 11d. In a
large trade, three kettles, or twelve gallons, of
pea-soup will be disposed of in the day, and
about four draughts, or 80 lbs., of hot eels on
every day but Saturday, — when the quantity of
eels disposed of would be about five draughts, or
100 lbs. weight, and about 15 gallons of pea-
soup. Hence the profits of a good business in
the hot-eel and pea-soup line united will be from
7l. to 7l. 10s. per week, or more. But there is
only one man in London does this amount of
business, or rather makes this amount of money.
A small business will do about 15 lbs. of eels in
the week, including Saturday, and about 12 gal-
lons of soup. Sometimes credit is given for a
halfpennyworth, or a pennyworth, at the out-
side; but very little is lost from bad debts.
Boys who are partaking of the articles will occa-
sionally say to the proprietor of the stall, "Well,
master, they are nice; trust us another ha'-
p'orth, and I'll pay you when I comes again;"
but they are seldom credited, for the stall-keepers
know well they would never see them again.
Very often the stock cooked is not disposed of,

[Description: 915EAF. Page 162.]

and then it is brought home and eaten by the
family. The pea-soup will seldom keep a night,
but what is left the family generally use for
supper.

The dealers go out about half-past ten in the
morning, and remain out till about ten at night.
Monday is the next best day to Saturday. The
generality of the customers are boys from 12 to
16 years of age. Newsboys are very partial
to hot eels — women prefer the pea-soup. Some
of the boys will have as many as six halfpenny
cupfulls consecutively on a Saturday night; and
some women will have three halfpenny basins-
full of soup. Many persons in the cold weather
prefer the hot soup to beer. On wet, raw, chilly
days, the soup goes off better than usual, and
in fine weather there is a greater demand for the
hot eels. One dealer assured me that he once
did serve two gentlemen's servants with twenty-
eight halfpenny cupfulls of hot eels one after
another. One servant had sixteen, and the other
twelve cupfulls, which they ate all at one stand-
ing; and one of these customers was so partial
to hot eels, that he used to come twice a day
every day for six months after that, and have
eight cupfulls each day, four at noon and four
in the evening. These two persons were the best
customers my informant ever had. Servants,
however, are not generally partial to the com-
modity. Hot eels are not usually taken for
dinner, nor is pea-soup, but throughout the
whole day, and just at the fancy of the passers-
by. There are no shops for the sale of these
articles. The dealers keep no accounts of what
their receipts and expenditure are.

The best time of the year for the hot eels is
from the middle of June to the end of August.
On some days during that time a person in a
small way of business will clear upon an average
1s. 6d. a day, on other days 1s.; on some days,
during the month of August, as much as 2s. 6d. a day. Some cry out "Nice hot eels — nice hot
eels!" or "Warm your hands and fill your
bellies for a halfpenny." One man used to give
his surplus eels, when he considered his sale
completed on a night, to the poor creatures
refused admission into a workhouse, lending
them his charcoal fire for warmth, which was
always returned to him. The poor creatures
begged cinders, and carried the fire under a
railway arch. The general rule, however, is for
the dealer to be silent, and merely expose the
articles for sale. "I likes better," said one man
to me, "to touch up people's noses than their
heyes or their hears." There are now in the
trade almost more than can get a living at it,
and their earnings are less than they were
formerly. One party attributed this to the
opening of a couple of penny-pie shops in his
neighbourhood. Before then he could get 2s. 6d. a day clear, take one day with another; but
since the establishment of the business in the
penny-pie line he cannot take above 1s. 6d. a
day clear. On the day the first of these pie-
shops opened, it made as much as 10 lbs., or half
a draught of eels, difference to him. There was
a band of music and an illumination at the pie-
shop, and it was impossible to stand against
that. The fashionable dress of the trade is the
"Jenny Lind" or "wide-awake" hat, with a
broad black ribbon tied round it, and a white
apron and sleeves. The dealers usually go to
Hampton-court or Greenwich on a fine Sunday.
They are partial to the pit of Astley's. One of
them told his waterman at Billingsgate the other
morning that "he and his good lady had been
werry amused with the osses at Hashley's last
night."

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A HOT-EEL AND
PEA-SOUP MAN.

"I was a coalheaver," said one of the class
to me, as I sat in his attic up a close court,
watching his wife "thicken the liquor;" "I
was a-going along the plank, from one barge
to another, when the swell of some steamers
throwed the plank off the `horse,' and chucked
me down, and broke my knee agin the side of
the barge. Before that I was yarning upon an
average my 20s. to 30s. a week. I was seven
months and four days in King's College Hos-
pital after this. I found they was a-doing me
no good there, so I come out and went over to
Bartholemy's Hospital. I was in there nine-
teen months altogether, and after that I was a
month in Middlesex Hospital, and all on 'em
turned me out oncurable. You see, the bone's
decayed — four bits of bone have been taken
from it. The doctor turned me out three
times 'cause I wouldn't have it off. He asked
my wife if she would give consent, but neither
she nor my daughter would listen to it, so I
was turned out on 'em all. How my family
lived all this time it's hard to tell. My eldest
boy did a little — got 3s. 6d. a week as an
errand-boy, and my daughter was in service,
and did a little for me; but that was all we had
to live upon. There was six children on my
hands, and however they did manage I can't
say. After I came out of the hospital I applied
to the parish, and was allowed 2s. 6d. a week
and four loaves. But I was anxious to do
something, so a master butcher, as I knowed,
said he would get me `a pitch' (the right to
fix a stall), if I thought I could sit at a stall
and sell a few things. I told him I thought
I could, and would be very thankful for it.
Well, I had heard how the man up in the
market was making a fortune at the hot-eel and
pea-soup line. [A paviour as left his barrow
and two shovels with me told me to-day, said
the man, by way of parenthesis — `that he
knowed for a fact he was clearing 6l. a week
regular.'] So I thought I'd have a touch at
the same thing. But you see, I never could
rise money enough to get sufficient stock to
make a do of it, and never shall, I expect — it
don't seem like it, however. I ought to have
5s. to go to market with to-morrow, and I ain't
got above 1s. 6d.; and what's that for stock-
money, I'd like to know? Well, as I was
saying, the master butcher lent me 10s. to

[Description: 915EAF. Page 163.]

start in the line. He was the best friend I
ever had. But I've never been able to do
anything at it — not to say to get a living."
"He can't carry anything now, sir," said his
wife, as the old man strove to get the bellows
to warm up the large kettle of pea-soup that
was on the fire. "Aye, I can't go without my
crutch. My daughter goes to Billingsgate for
me. I've got nobody else; and she cuts up
the eels. If it warn't for her I must give it
up altogether, and go into the workhouse out-
right. I couldn't fetch 'em. I ought to have
been out to-night by rights till ten, if I'd had
anything to have sold. My wife can't do
much; she's troubled with the rheumatics in
her head and limbs." "Yes," said the old
body, with a sigh, "I'm never well, and never
shall be again, I know." "Would you accept
on a drop of soup, sir?" asked the man;
"you're very welcome, I can assure you.
You'll find it very good, sir." I told him I
had just dined, and the poor old fellow pro-
ceeded with his tale. "Last week I earned
clear about 8s., and that's to keep six on us.
I didn't pay no rent last week nor yet this, and
I don't know when I shall again, if things goes
on in this way. The week before there was a
fast-day, and I didn't earn above 6s. that week,
if I did that. My boy can't go to school.
He's got no shoes nor nothing to go in. The
girls go to the ragged-school, but we can't send
them of a Sunday nowhere." "Other people
can go," said one of the young girls nestling
round the fire, and with a piece of sacking over
her shoulders for a shawl — "them as has got
things to go in; but mother don't like to let us
go as we are." "She slips her mother's shoes
on when she goes out. It would take 1l. to
start me well. With that I could go to market,
and buy my draught of eels a shilling cheaper,
and I could afford to cut my pieces a little
bigger; and people where they gets used well
comes again — don't you see? I could have
sold more eels if I'd had 'em to-day, and soup
too. Why, there's four hours of about the best
time to-night that I'm losing now 'cause I've
nothing to sell. The man in the market can
give more than we can. He gives what is
called the lumping ha'p'orth — that is, seven or
eight pieces; ah, that I daresay he does;
indeed, some of the boys has told me he gives
as many as eight pieces. And then the more
eels you biles up, you see, the richer the liquor
is, and in our little tin-pot way it's like biling
up a great jint of meat in a hocean of water.
In course we can't compete agin the man in
the market, and so we're being ruined entirely.
The boys very often comes and asks me if I've
got a farden's-worth of heads. The woman at
Broadway, they tells me, sells 'em at four a
farden and a drop of liquor, but we chucks 'em
away, there's nothing to eat on them; the boys
though will eat anything."

In the hot-eel trade are now 140 vendors,
each selling 6 lb. of eels daily at their stands;
60 sell 40 lb. daily; and 100 are itinerant,
selling 5 lb. nightly at the public-houses. The
first mentioned take 2s. daily; the second 16s.; and the third 1s. 8d. This gives a street ex-
penditure in the trade in hot eels of 19,448l. for
the year.

To start in this business a capital is required
after this rate: — stall 6s.; basket 1s.; eel-ket-
tle 3s. 6d.; jar 6d.; ladle 4d.; 12 cups 1s.; 12 spoons 1s.; stew-pan 2s.; chafing-dish 6d.; strainer 1s.; 8 cloths 2s. 8d.; a pair sleeves
4d.; apron 4d.; charcoal 2s. (4d. being an
average daily consumption); ¼ cwt. coal 3½d.; ½ lb. butter (the weekly average) 4d.; 1 quar-
tern flour 5d.; 4 oz. pepper 4d.; I quart
vinegar 10d.; 1 lb. salt ½d.; 1 lb. candles for
stall 6d.; parsley 3d.; stock-money 10s. In
all 1l. 15s. In the course of a year the pro-
perty which may be described as fixed, as in
the stall, &c., and the expenditure daily occur-
ring as for stock, butter, coal, according to
the foregoing statement, amounts to 15,750l. The eels purchased for this trade at Billings-
gate are 1,166,880 lb., costing, at 3d. per lb.,
12,102l.

In the pea-soup trade there are now one half
of the whole number of the hot-eel vendors;
of whom 100 will sell, each 4 gallons daily;
and of the remaining 50 vendors, each will sell
upon an average 10 gallons daily. The first
mentioned take 3s. daily; and the last 7s. 6d. This gives a street expenditure of 4,050l. during
the winter season of five months.

To commence business in the street sale of
pea-soup a capital is required after this rate:
soup-kettle 4s.; peas 2s.; soup-ladle 6d.; pepper-box 1d.; mint-box 3d.; chafing-dish
6d.; 12 basons 1s.; 12 spoons 1s.; bones,
celery, mint, carrots, and onions, 1s. 6d. In
all 10s. 10d. The hot-eel trade being in con-
junction with the pea-soup, the same stall,
candles, towels, sleeves, and aprons, does for
both, and the quantity of extra coal and char-
coal; pepper and salt given in the summary
of hot-eels serves in cooking, &c., both eels and
pea-soup.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PICKLED
WHELKS.

The trade in whelks is one of which the coster-
mongers have the undisputed monopoly. The
wholesale business is all transacted in Billings-
gate, where this shell-fish is bought by the
measure (a double peck or gallon), half-measure,
or wash. A wash is four measures, and is the
most advantageous mode of purchase; "It's so
much cheaper by taking that quantity," I was
told, "it's as good as having a half-measure
in." An average price for the year may be 4s. the wash; "But I've given 21s. for three wash,"
said one costermonger, and he waxed indignant
as he spoke, "one Saturday, when there was a
great stock in too, just because there was a fair
coming on on Monday, and the whelkmen, who
are the biggest rogues in Billingsgate, always
have the price up then, and hinder a poor man

[Description: 915EAF. Page 164.]

doing good — they've a great knack of that." A
wash weighs about 60 lbs. On rare occasions it
has been as low as 2s. 6d., and even 1s. 6d.

About one-half of the whelks are sold alive
(wholesale), and the other half "cooked"
(boiled), some of the salesmen having "conve-
nience for cooking" near the market; but they
are all brought to London alive, "or what
should be alive." When bought alive, which
ensures a better quality, I was told — for
"whelks 'll boil after they're dead and gone,
you see, sir, as if they was alive and hungry" —
the costermonger boils them in the largest sauce-
pan at his command for about ten minutes, and
then leaves them until they cool. "They never
kicks as they boils, like lobsters or crabs," said
one whelk dealer, "they takes it quiet. A mis-
sionary cove said to me, `Why don't you kill
them first? it's murder.' They doesn't suffer;
I've suffered more with a toothach than the
whole of a measure of whelks has in a boiling,
that I'm clear upon." The boiling is generally
the work of the women. The next process is to
place them in a tub, throw boiling water over
them, and stir them up for ten or fifteen minutes
with a broom-handle. If the quantity be a wash,
two broom-handles, usually wielded by the man
and his wife, are employed. This is both to
clean them and "to make them come out easier
to be wormed." The "worming" is equivalent
to the removing of the beard of an oyster or
mussel. The whelks are wormed one by one.
The operator cuts into the fish, rapidly draws
out the "worm," and pushes the severed parts
together, which closes. The small whelks are
not wormed, "because it's not reckoned neces-
sary, and they're sold to poor lads and such
like, that's not particular; but nearly all the
women, and a good many of the boys, are very
particular. They think the worm's poison."
The whelks are next shaken in a tub, in cold
water, and are then ready for sale. The same
process, after the mere boiling, is observed,
when the whelks are bought "cooked."

Some whelk-sellers, who wish to display a
superior article, engage children for a few half-
pence to rub the shell of every whelk, so that it
looks clean and even bright.

I find a difficulty, common in the course of
this inquiry, of ascertaining precisely the num-
ber of whelk-sellers, because the sale is often
carried on simultaneously with that of other
things, (stewed eels, for instance,) and because
it is common for costermongers to sell whelks
on a Saturday night only, both at stalls and
"round to the public-houses," but only when
they are cheap at Billingsgate. On a Saturday
night there may be 300 whelk-sellers in the
streets, nearly half at stalls, and half, or more,
"working the public-houses." But of this
number it must be understood that perhaps the
wife is at the stall while the husband is on a
round, and some whelks are sent out by a man
having an extra stock. This, therefore, reduces
the number of independent dealers, but not the
actual number of sellers. On all other nights
there may be half the number engaged in this
traffic, in the streets regularly all the year; and
more than half on a Monday, as regards the
public-house business, in which little is done
between Monday and Saturday nights. But a
man will, in some instances, work the public-
houses every night (the wife tending the stall),
and the more assiduously if the weather be bad
or foggy, when a public-house custom is the best.
A fair week's earnings in whelks, "when a man's
known," is 1l. a bad week is from 5s. to 8s. I am assured that bad weeks are "as plenty as
good, at least, the year round;" and thus the
average to the street whelk-sellers, in whelks
alone, is about 13s. when the trade is carried on
daily and regularly, and 5s. a week by those who
occasionally resort to it; and as the occasional
hands are the more numerous, the average may
be struck at 7s.

The whelks are sold at the stalls at two, three,
four, six, and eight a penny, according to size.
Four is an average pennyworth for good whelks;
the six a penny are small, and the eight a penny
very small. The principal place for their sale is
in Old-street, City-road. The other principal
places are the street-markets, which I have
before particularised. The whelks are sold in
saucers, generally small and white, and of
common ware, and are contained in jars, ready
to be "shelled" into any saucer that may have
been emptied. Sometimes a small pyramid of
shells, surmounted by a candle protected by a
shade, attracts the regard of the passer-by.
The man doing the best business in London
was to be found, before the removals of which I
have spoken, in Lambeth-walk, but he has now
no fixed locality. His profits, I am informed,
were regularly 3l. a week; but out of this he
had to pay for the assistance of two or some-
times three persons, in washing his whelks,
boiling them, &c.; besides that, his wife was as
busy as himself. To the quality and cleanliness
of his whelks he was very attentive, and would
sell no mediocre article if better could be
bought. "He deserved all he earned, sir,"
said another street-dealer to me; "why, in
Old-street now they'll have the old original
saucers, miserable things, such as they had
fifty years back; but the man we're talking
of, about two years ago, brought in very pretty
plates, quite enterprising things, and they
answered well. His example's spreading, but
it's slowly." The whelks are eaten with vinegar
and pepper.

For sale in the public-houses, the whelks are
most frequently carried in jars, and transferred
in a saucer to the consumer. "There's often a
good sale," said a man familiar with the busi-
ness, "when a public room's filled. People
drinking there always want to eat. They buy
whelks, not to fill themselves, but for a relish. A
man that's used to the trade will often get off
inferior sorts to the lushingtons; he'll have
them to rights. Whelks is all the same, good,
bad, or middling, when a man's drinking, if
they're well seasoned with pepper and vinegar.

[Description: 915EAF. Page 165.]

Oh yes; any whelk-man will take in a drunken
fellow, and he will do it all the same, if he's
made up his mind to, get drunk hisself that very
night."

The trade is carried on by the regular costers,
but of the present number of whelk-sellers, about
twenty have been mechanics or servants. The
whelk-trade is an evening trade, commencing
generally about six, summer and winter, or an
hour earlier in winter.

The capital required to start in the whelk-
business is: stall, 2s. 6d.; saucers, vinegar-bottle,
jar, pepper-castor, and small watering-pan (used
only in dusty weather), 2s. 6d.; a pair of stilts
(supports for the stall), 1s. 6d.; stock-money, 5s.; pepper and vinegar, 6d., or 12s. in all. If the
trade be commenced in a round basket, for
public-house sale, 7s. or 8s. only is required,
but it is a hazardous experiment for a person
unpractised in street business.

OF THE CUSTOMERS, ETC., OF PICKLED
WHELK-SELLERS.

An intelligent man gave me the following ac-
count. He had been connected with street-
trading from his youth up, and is now about
thirty:

"The chief customers for whelks, sir, are
working people and poor people, and they pre-
fer them to oysters; I do myself, and I think
they're not so much eaten because they're not
fashionable like oysters. But I've sold them to
first-rate public-houses, and to doctors' shops —
more than other shops, I don't know why — and
to private houses. Masters have sent out their
servant-maids to me for three or four penn'orths
for supper. I've offered the maids a whelk, but
they won't eat them in the street; I dare say
they're afraid their young men may be about,
and might think they wasn't ladies if they eat
whelks in the street. Boys are the best custo-
mers for `small,' but if you don't look sharp,
you'll be done out of three-ha'porth of vinegar
to a ha'porth of whelks. I can't make out why
they like it so. They're particular enough in
their way. If the whelks are thin, as they will
be sometimes, the lads will say, `What a lot of
snails you've gathered to-night!' If they're
plump and fine, then they'll say, `Fat' uns to-
night — stunners!' Some people eat whelks for
an appetite; they give me one, and more in
summer than winter. The women of the town
are good customers, at least they are in the Cut
and Shoreditch, for I know both. If they have
five-penn'orth, when they're treated perhaps,
there's always sixpence. They come on the
sly sometimes, by themselves, and make what's
a meal, I'm satisfied, on whelks, and they'll
want credit sometimes. I've given trust to a
woman of that sort as far as 2s. 6d. I've lost
very little by them; I don't know how much
altogether. I keep no account, but carry any
credit in my head. Those women's good pay,
take it altogether, for they know how hard it is
to get a crust, and have a feeling for a poor
man, if they haven't for a rich one — that's my
opinion, sir. Costermongers in a good time
are capital customers; they'll buy five or six
penn'orths at a time. The dust's a great in-
jury to the trade in summer time; it dries the
whelks up, and they look old. I wish whelks
were cheaper at Billingsgate, and I could do
more business; and I could do more if I could
sell a few minutes after twelve on a Saturday
night, when people must leave the public-house.
I have sold three wash of a Saturday night, and
cleared 15s. on them. I one week made 3l., but
I had a few stewed eels to help, — that is, I
cleared 2l., and had a pound's worth over on
the Saturday night, and sent them to be sold —
and they were sold — at Battersea on the Sun-
day; I never went there myself. I've had
twenty people round my stall at one time on a
Saturday. Perhaps my earnings on that (and
other odd things) may come to 1l. a week, or
hardly so much, the year round. I can't say
exactly. The shells are no use. Boys have
asked me for them `to make sea-shells of,'
they say — to hold them to their ears when
they're big, and there's a sound like the
sea rolling. Gentlemen have sometimes told
me to keep a dozen dozen or twenty dozen,
for borders to a garden. I make no charge
for them — just what a gentleman may please
to give.

The information given shows an outlay of
5,250l. yearly for street whelks, and as the return
I have cited shows the money spent in whelks at
Billingsgate to be 2,500l., the number of whelks
being 4,950,000, the account is correct, as the
coster's usual "half-profits" make up the sum
expended.

OF THE STREET SELLERS, AND OF THE
PREPARATION OF FRIED FISH.

Among the cooked food which has for many
years formed a portion of the street trade is
fried fish. The sellers are about 350, as a
maximum and 250 as a minimum, 300 being an
average number. The reason of the variation
in number is, that on a Saturday night, and
occasionally on other nights, especially on Mon-
days, stall-keepers sell fried fish, and not as an
ordinary article of their trade. Some men, too,
resort to the trade for a time, when they cannot
be employed in any way more profitable or
suitable to them. The dealers in this article
are, for the most part, old men and boys, though
there may be 30 or 40 women who sell it, but
only 3 or 4 girls, and they are the daughters of
the men in the business as the women are the
wives. Among the fried-fish sellers there are
not half a dozen Irish people, although fish is
so especial a part of the diet of the poor Irish.
The men in the calling have been, as regards
the great majority, mechanics or servants;
none, I was told, had been fishmongers, or their
assistants.

The fish fried by street dealers is known as
"plaice dabs" and "sole dabs," which are
merely plaice and soles, "dab" being a com-

[Description: 915EAF. Page 166.]

mon word for any flat fish. The fish which
supplies upwards of one half the quantity fried
for the streets is plaice; the other fishes used
are soles, haddocks, whitings, flounders, and
herrings, but very sparingly indeed as regards
herrings. Soles are used in as large a quantity
as the other kinds mentioned altogether. On
my inquiry as to the precise quantity of each
description fried, the answer from the traders
was uniform: "I can't say, sir. I buy what-
ever's cheapest." The fish is bought at Bil-
lingsgate, but some of the street dealers obtain
another and even a cheaper commodity than at
that great mart. This supply is known in the
trade as "friers," and consists of the overplus
of a fishmonger's stock, of what he has not sold
overnight, and does not care to offer for sale on
the following morning, and therefore vends it to
the costermongers, whose customers are chiefly
among the poor. The friers are sometimes half,
and sometimes more than half, of the wholesale
price in Billingsgate. Many of the friers are
good, but some, I was told, "in any thing like
muggy or close weather were very queer fish,
very queer indeed," and they are consequently
fried with a most liberal allowance of oil, "which
will conceal anything."

The fish to be fried is first washed and gut-
ted; the fins, head, and tail are then cut off,
and the trunk is dipped in flour and water, so
that in frying, oil being always used, the skin
will not be scorched by the, perhaps, too violent
action of the fire, but merely browned. Pale
rape oil is generally used. The sellers, how-
ever, are often twitted with using lamp oil, even
when it is dearer than that devoted to the pur-
pose. The fish is cooked in ordinary frying-
pans. One tradesman in Cripplegate, formerly
a costermonger, has on his premises a commo-
dious oven which he had built for the frying, or
rather baking, of fish. He supplies the small
shopkeepers who deal in the article (although
some prepare it themselves), and sells his fish
retail also, but the street-sellers buy little of
him, as they are nearly all "their own cooks."
Some of the "illegitimates," however, lay in
their stock by purchase of the tradesman in
question. The fish is cut into portions before
it is fried, and the frying occupies about ten
minutes. The quantity prepared together is
from six to twenty portions, according to the
size of the pans; four dozen portions, or
"pieces," as the street people call them, re-
quire a quart of oil.

The fried fish-sellers live in some out of the
way alley, and not unfrequently in garrets; for
among even the poorest class there are great
objections to their being fellow-lodgers, on
account of the odour from the frying. Even
when the fish is fresh (as it most frequently is),
and the oil pure, the odour is rank. In one
place I visited, which was, moreover, admirable
for cleanliness, it was very rank. The cooks,
however, whether husbands or wives — for the
women often attend to the pan — when they
hear of this disagreeable rankness, answer that
it may be so, many people say so; but for their
parts they cannot smell it at all. The gar-
ments of the fried-fish sellers are more strongly
impregnated with the smell of fish than were
those of any "wet" or other fish-sellers whom
I met with. Their residences are in some of
the labyrinths of courts and alleys that run
from Gray's-inn-lane to Leather-lane, and
similar places between Fetter and Chancery-
lanes. They are to be found, too, in the courts
running from Cow-cross, Smithfield; and from
Turnmill-street and Ray-street, Clerkenwell;
also, in the alleys about Bishopsgate-street and
the Kingsland-road, and some in the half-
ruinous buildings near the Southwark and
Borough-roads. None, or very few, of those
who are their own cooks, reside at a greater
distance than three miles from Billingsgate. A
gin-drinking neighbourhood, one coster said,
suits best, "for people hasn't their smell so
correct there."

The sale is both on rounds and at stalls, the
itinerants being twice as numerous as the station-
ary. The round is usually from public-house
to public-house, in populous neighbourhoods.
The itinerants generally confine themselves to
the trade in fried fish, but the stall-keepers
always sell other articles, generally fish of some
kind, along with it. The sale in the public-
houses is the greatest.

At the neighbouring races and fairs there is
a great sale of fried fish. At last Epsom races,
I was told, there were at least fifty purveyors
of that dainty from London, half of them per-
haps being costermongers, who speculated in it
merely for the occasion, preparing it themselves.
Three men joined in one speculation, expending
8l. in fish, and did well, selling at the usual
profit of cent. per cent, but with the drawback
of considerable expenses. Their customers at
the races and fairs are the boys who hold horses
or brush clothes, or who sell oranges or nuts,
or push at roundabouts, and the costers who are
there on business. At Epsom races there was
plenty of bread, I was informed, to be picked
up on the ground; it had been flung from the
carriages after luncheon, and this, with a piece
of fish, supplied a meal or "a relish" to hun-
dreds.

In the public-houses, a slice of bread, 16 or
32 being cut from a quartern loaf — as they are
whole or half slices — is sold or offered with the
fish for a penny. The cry of the seller is, "fish
and bread, a penny." Sometimes for an extra-
sized piece, with bread, 2d. is obtained, but
very seldom, and sometimes two pieces are
given for 1½d. At the stalls bread is rarely
sold with the edible in question.

For the itinerant trade, a neatly painted
wooden tray, slung by a leathern strap from the
neck, is used: the tray is papered over gene-
rally with clean newspapers, and on the paper
is spread the shapeless brown lumps of fish.
Parsley is often strewn over them, and a salt-
box is placed at the discretion of the customer.
The trays contain from two to five dozen pieces.

[Description: 915EAF. Blank Page.]

[Description: 915EAF. Page 169.]

I understand that no one has a trade greatly in
advance of his fellows. The whole body com-
plain of their earnings being far less than was
the case four or five years back.

The itinerant fried fish-sellers, when pursuing
their avocation, wear generally a jacket of cloth
or fustian buttoned round them, but the rest of
their attire is hidden by the white sleeves and
apron some wear, or by the black calico sleeves
and dark woollen aprons worn by others.

The capital required to start properly in the
business is: — frying-pan 2s. (second-hand 9d.);
tray 2s. 6d. (second-hand 8d.); salt-box 6d. (second-hand 1d.); and stock-money 5s. — in
all 10s. A man has gone into the trade, how-
ever, with 1s., which he expended in fish and
oil, borrowed a frying-pan, borrowed an old tea-
board, and so started on his venture.

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A FRIED FISH-
SELLER, AND OF THE CLASS OF CUSTOMERS.

The man who gave me the following informa-
tion was well-looking, and might be about 45 or
50. He was poorly dressed, but his old brown
surtout fitted him close and well, was jauntily
buttoned up to his black satin stock, worn, but
of good quality; and, altogether, he had what is
understood among a class as "a betterly appear-
ance about him." His statement, as well as those
of the other vendors of provisions, is curious in
its details of public-house vagaries. —

"I've been in the trade," he said, "seventeen
years. Before that, I was a gentleman's ser-
vant, and I married a servant-maid, and we had
a family, and, on that account, couldn't, either
of us, get a situation, though we'd good charac-
ters. I was out of employ for seven or eight
months, and things was beginning to go to the
pawn for a living; but at last, when I gave up
any hope of getting into a gentleman's service, I
raised 10s., and determined to try something
else. I was persuaded, by a friend who kept a
beer-shop, to sell oysters at his door. I took his
advice, and went to Billingsgate for the first
time in my life, and bought a peck of oysters for
2s. 6d. I was dressed respectable then — nothing
like the mess and dirt I'm in now" [I may
observe, that there was no dirt about him];
"and so the salesman laid it on, but I gave him
all he asked. I know a deal better now. I'd
never been used to open oysters, and I couldn't
do it. I cut my fingers with the knife slipping
all over them, and had to hire a man to open for
me, or the blood from my cut fingers would have
run upon the oysters. For all that, I cleared
2s. 6d. on that peck, and I soon got up to the
trade, and did well; till, in two or three months,
the season got over, and I was advised, by the
same friend, to try fried fish. That suited me.
I've lived in good families, where there was
first-rate men-cooks, and I know what good
cooking means. I bought a dozen plaice; I
forget what I gave for them, but they were
dearer then than now. For all that, I took be-
tween 11s. and 12s. the first night — it was Satur-
day — that I started; and I stuck to it, and took
from 7s. to 10s. every night, with more, of course,
on Saturday, and it was half of it profit then. I
cleared a good mechanic's earnings at that time
— 30s. a week and more. Soon after, I was told
that, if agreeable, my wife could have a stall
with fried fish, opposite a wine-vaults just
opened, and she made nearly half as much as I
did on my rounds. I served the public-houses,
and soon got known. With some landlords I
had the privilege of the parlour, and tap-room,
and bar, when other tradesmen have been kept
out. The landlords will say to me still: `You can go in, Fishy.' Somehow, I got the name of
`Fishy' then, and I've kept it ever since. There
was hospitality in those days. I've gone into a
room in a public-house, used by mechanics, and
one of them has said: `I'll stand fish round,
gentlemen;' and I've supplied fifteen penn'orths.
Perhaps he was a stranger, such a sort of cus-
tomer, that wanted to be agreeable. Now, it's
more likely I hear: `Jack, lend us a penny to
buy a bit of fried;' and then Jack says: `You
be d — d! here, lass, let's have another pint.'
The insults and difficulties I've had in the pub-
lic-house trade is dreadful. I once sold 16d. worth to three rough-looking fellows I'd never
seen before, and they seemed hearty, and asked
me to drink with them, so I took a pull; but
they wouldn't pay me when I asked, and I
waited a goodish bit before I did ask. I thought,
at first, it was their fun, but I waited from four
to seven, and I found it was no fun. I felt
upset, and ran out and told the policeman, but
he said it was only a debt, and he couldn't inter-
fere. So I ran to the station, but the head man
there said the same, and told me I should hand
over the fish with one hand, and hold out the
other hand for my money. So I went back to
the public-house, and asked for my money — and
there was some mechanics that knew me there
then — but I got nothing but ` — you's!' and
one of 'em used most dreadful language. At
last, one of the mechanics said: `Muzzle him,
Fishy, if he won't pay.' He was far bigger than
me, him that was one in debt; but my spirit was
up, and I let go at him and gave him a bloody
nose, and the next hit I knocked him backwards,
I'm sure I don't know how, on to a table; but
I fell on him, and he clutched me by the coat-
collar — I was respectable dressed then — and half
smothered me. He tore the back of my coat,
too, and I went home like Jim Crow. The pot-
man and the others parted us, and they made
the man give me 1s., and the waiter paid me the
other 4d., and said he'd take his chance to get
it — but he never got it. Another time I went
into a bar, and there was a ball in the house, and
one of the ball gents came down and gave my
basket a kick without ever a word, and started
the fish; and in a scuffle — he was a little fellow,
but my master — I had this finger put out of
joint — you can see that, sir, still — and was in
the hospital a week from an injury to my leg;
the tiblin bone was hurt, the doctors said" [the
tibia.] "I've had my tray kicked over for a
lark in a public-house, and a scramble for my

[Description: 915EAF. Page 170.]

fish, and all gone, and no help and no money for
me. The landlords always prevent such things,
when they can, and interfere for a poor man;
but then it's done sudden, and over in an instant.
That sort of thing wasn't the worst. I once had
some powdery stuff flung sudden over me at a
parlour door. My fish fell off, for I jumped,
because I felt blinded, and what became of them
I don't know; but I aimed at once for home —
it was very late — and had to feel my way almost
like a blind man. I can't tell what I suffered.
I found it was something black, for I kept rub-
bing my face with my apron, and could just tell
it came away black. I let myself in with my
latch, and my wife was in bed, and I told her to
get up and look at my face and get some water,
and she thought I was joking, as she was half
asleep; but when she got up and got a light, and
a glass, she screamed, and said I looked such a
shiny image; and so I did, as well as I could
see, for it was black lead — such as they use for
grates — that was flung on me. I washed it off,
but it wasn't easy, and my face was sore days
after. I had a respectable coat on then, too,
which was greatly spoiled, and no remedy at all.
I don't know who did it to me. I heard some
one say: `You're served out beautiful' Its
men that calls themselves gentlemen that does
such things. I know the style of them then —
it was eight or ten years ago; they'd heard of
Lord — ,and his goings on. That way it's
better now, but worse, far, in the way of getting
a living. I dare say, if I had dressed in rough
corderoys, I shouldn't have been larked at so
much, because they might have thought I was
a regular coster, and a fighter; but I don't like
that sort of thing — I like to be decent and re-
spectable, if I can.

"I've been in the `fried' trade ever since,
except about three months that I tried the sand-
wiches. I didn't do so well in them, but it was
a far easier trade; no carrying heavy weights all
the way from Billingsgate: but I went back to
the fried. Why now, sir, a good week with me
— and I've only myself in the trade now" [he
was a widower] — "is to earn 12s., a poor week
is 9s.; and there's as many of one as of the
other. I'm known to sell the best of fish, and
to cook it in the best style. I think half of us,
take it round and round for a year, may earn as
much as I do, and the other half about half as
much. I think so. I might have saved money,
but for a family. I've only one at home with
me now, and he really is a good lad. My cus-
tomers are public-house people that want a
relish or a sort of supper with their beer, not so
much to drinkers. I sell to tradesmen, too; 4d. worth for tea or supper. Some of them send to
my place, for I'm known. The Great Exhibi-
tion can't be any difference to me. I've a regu-
lar round. I used to sell a good deal to women
of the town, but I don't now. They haven't the
money, I believe. Where I took 10s. of them,
eight or ten years ago, I now take only 6d. They
may go for other sorts of relishes now; I can't
say. The worst of my trade is, that people must
have as big penn'orths when fish is dear as when
its cheap. I never sold a piece of fish to an
Italian boy in my life, though they're Catholics.
Indeed, I never saw an Italian boy spend a half-
penny in the streets on anything."

A working-man told me that he often bought
fried fish, and accounted it a good to men like
himself. He was fond of fried fish to his sup-
per; he couldn't buy half so cheap as the street-
sellers, perhaps not a quarter; and, if he could,
it would cost him 1d. for dripping to fry the fish
in, and he got it ready, and well fried, and gene-
rally good, for 1d.

Subsequent inquiries satisfied me that my in-
formant was correct as to his calculations of his
fellows' earnings, judging from his own. The
price of plaice at Billingsgate is from ½d. to 2d. each, according to size (the fried fish purveyors
never calculate by the weight), ¾d. being a fair
average. A plaice costing 1d. will now be fried
into four pieces, each 1d.; but the addition of
bread, cost of oil, &c., reduces the "fried"
peoples' profits to rather less than cent. per
cent. Soles and the other fish are, moreover,
30 per cent. dearer than plaice. As 150 sellers
make as much weekly as my informant, and the
other 150 half that amount, we have an average
yearly earning of 27l. 6s. in one case, and of
13l. 13s. in the other. Taking only 20l. a year
as a medium earning, and adding 90 per cent
for profit, the outlay on the fried fish supplied
by London street-sellers is 11,400l.

OF THE PREPARATION AND QUANTITY OF
SHEEP'S TROTTERS, AND OF THE STREET-
SELLERS.

The sale of sheep's trotters, as a regular street-
trade, is confined to London, Liverpool, New-
castle-on-Tyne, and a few more of our greater
towns. The "trotter," as it is commonly called,
is the boiled foot of the sheep. None of my
readers can have formed any commensurate
notion of the extent of the sale in London, and
to some readers the very existence of such a
comestible may be unknown. The great supply
now required is readily attained. The whole-
sale trade is now in the hands of one fellmonger-
ing firm, though until within these twenty
months or so there were two, and the feet are
cut off the sheep-skins by the salesmen in the
skin-market, in Bermondsey, and conveyed to
the fellmonger's premises in carts and in
trucks.

Sheep's trotters, one of my informants could
remember, were sold in the streets fifty years
ago, but in such small quantities that it could
hardly be called a trade. Instead of being pre-
pared wholesale as at present, and then sold out
to the retailers, the trotters were then prepared
by the individual retailers, or by small traders
in tripe and cow-heel. Twenty-five years
ago nearly all the sheep's trotters were "lined
and prepared," when the skin came into
the hands of the fellmonger, for the glue and
size makers. Twenty years ago only about one-

[Description: 915EAF. Page 171.]

twentieth of the trotters now prepared for eating
were devoted to the same purpose; and it was
not until about fifteen years back that the trade
began to reach its present magnitude; and for
the last twelve years it has been about station-
ary, but there were never more sold than last
year.

From fifteen to twenty years ago glue and size,
owing principally to improved modes of manu-
facture, became cheaper, so that it paid the fell-
monger better to dispose of the trotters as an
article "cooked" for the poor, than to the glue-
boiler.

The process of cookery is carried on rapidly
at the fellmonger's in question. The feet are
first scalded for about half an hour. After that
from ten to fifteen boys are employed in scoop-
ing out the hoofs, which are sold for manure or
to manufacturers of Prussian blue, which is ex-
tensively used by painters. Women are then
employed, forty being an average number, "to
scrape the hair off," — for hair it is called —
quickly, but softly, so that the skin should not
be injured, and after that the trotters are boiled
for about four hours, and they are then ready
for market.

The proprietor of this establishment, after he
had obligingly given me the information I
required, invited me to walk round his premises
unaccompanied, and observe how the business
was conducted. The premises are extensive, and
are situated, as are nearly all branches of the
great trade connected with hides and skins, in
Bermondsey. The trotter business is kept dis-
tinct from the general fellmongering. Within
a long shed are five coppers, each containing, on
an average, 250 "sets," a set being the com-
plement of the sheep's feet, four. Two of these
coppers, on my visit, were devoted to the scald-
ing, and three to the boiling of the trotters.
They looked like what one might imagine to be
witches' big caldrons; seething, hissing, boil-
ing, and throwing forth a steam not peculiarly
grateful to the nostrils of the uninitiated. Thus
there are, weekly, "cooking" in one form or
other, the feet of 20,000 sheep for the consump-
tion of the poorer classes, or as a relish for those
whose stomachs crave after edibles of this de-
scription. At one extremity of this shed are
the boys, who work in a place open at the side,
but the flues and fires make all parts sufficiently
warm. The women have a place to themselves
on the opposite side of the yard. The room
where they work has forms running along its
sides, and each woman has a sort of bench in
front of her seat, on which she scrapes the
trotters. One of the best of these workwomen
can scrape 150 sets, or 600 feet in a day, but
the average of the work is 500 sets a week,
including women and girls. I saw no girls but
what seemed above seventeen or eighteen, and
none of the women were old. They were exceed-
ingly merry, laughing and chatting, and appear-
ing to consider that a listener was not of primary
consequence, as they talked pretty much alto-
gether. I saw none but what were decently
dressed, some were good-looking, and none
seemed sickly.

In this establishment are prepared, weekly,
20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet; a yearly average of
4,160,000 trotters, or the feet of 1,040,000 sheep.
Of this quantity the street-folk buy seven-
eighths; 3,640,000 trotters yearly, or 70,000
weekly. The number of sheep trotter-sellers
may be taken at 300, which gives an average of
nearly sixty sets a week per individual.

The wholesale price, at the "trotter yard," is
five a penny, which gives an outlay by the
street-sellers of 3,031l. 11s. yearly.

But this is not the whole of the trade.
Lamb's trotters are also prepared, but only to
one-twentieth of the quantity of sheep's trotters,
and that for only three months of the year.
These are all sold to the street-sellers. The
lamb's foot is usually left appended to the
leg and shoulder of lamb. It is weighed with
the joint, but the butcher's man or boy will say
to the purchaser: "Do you want the foot?"
As the answer is usually in the negative, it is at
once cut off and forms a "perquisite." There
are some half dozen men, journeymen butchers
not fully employed, who collect these feet, pre-
pare and sell them to the street-people, but as
the lamb's feet are very seldom as fresh as those
of the sheep carried direct from the skin market
to — so to speak — the great trotter kitchen, the
demand for "lamb's" falls off yearly. Last
year the sale may be taken at about 14,000 sets,
selling, wholesale, at about 46l., the same price
as the sheep.

The sellers of trotters, who are stationary at
publichouse and theatre doors, and at street
corners, and itinerant, but itinerant chiefly from
one public house to another are a wretchedly
poor class. Three fourths of them are elderly
women and children, the great majority being
Irish people, and there are more boys than girls
in the trade. The capital required to start in
the business is very small. A hand basket of
the larger size costs 1s. 9d., but smaller or
second-hand only 1s., and the white cotton cloth
on which the trotters are displayed costs 4d. or
6d.; stock-money need not exceed 1s., so that
3s. is all that is required. This is one reason,
I heard from several trotter-sellers, why the
business is over-peopled.

STATEMENTS OF SHEEP'S TROTTER WOMEN.

From one woman, who, I am assured, may
be taken as a fair type of the better class of
trotter-sellers — some of the women being sot-
tish and addicted to penn'orths of gin beyond
their means — I had the following statement.
I found her in the top room of a lofty house in
Clerkenwell. She was washing when I called,
and her son, a crippled boy of 16, with his
crutch by his side, was cleaning knives, which
he had done for many months for a family in
the neighbourhood, who paid for his labour
in what the mother pronounced better than
money — broken victuals, because they were of
such good, wholesome quality. The room, which

[Description: 915EAF. Page 172.]

is of a good size, had its red-brown plaster walls,
stained in parts with damp, but a great portion
was covered with the cheap engravings "given
away with No. 6" (or any other number) of some
periodical "of thrilling interest;" while the nar-
row mantel-shelf was almost covered with pot
figures of dumpy men, red-breeched and blue-
coated, and similar ornaments. I have often
noted such attempts to subdue, as it were, the
grimness of poverty, by the poor who had "seen
better days." The mother was tall and spare,
and the boy had that look of premature sedate-
ness, his face being of a sickly hue, common to
those of quiet dispositions, who have been afflicted
from their childhood: —

"I'm the widow of a sawyer, sir," said Mrs.
— , with a very slight brogue, for she was an
Irishwoman, "and I've been a widow 18 long
years. I'm 54, I believe, but that 18 years seems
longer than all the rest of my life together. My
husband earned hardly ever less than 30s. a week,
sometimes 3l., and I didn't know what pinching
was. But I was left destitute with four young
children, and had to bring them up as well as
I could, by what I could make by washing and
charing, and a hard fight it was. One of my
children went for a soldier, one's dead, another's
married, and that's the youngest there. Ah!
poor fellow, what he's gone through! He's had
18 abscesses, one after another, and he has been
four times in Bartholomew's. There's only God
above to help him when I'm gone. My health
broke six years ago, and I couldn't do hard work
in washing, and I took to trotter selling, because
one of my neighbours was in that way, and told
me how to go about it. My son sells trotters
too; he always sits at the corner of this street.
I go from one public-house to another, and
sometimes stand at the door, or sit inside, be-
cause I'm known and have leave. But I can't
either sit, or stand, or walk long at a time, I'm
so rheumatic. No, sir, I can't say I was ever
badly insulted in a public-house; but I only go
to those I know. Others may be different. We
depend mostly on trotters, but I have a shilling
and my meat, for charing, a day in every week.
I've tried 'winks and whelks too, 'cause I thought
they might be more in my pocket than trotters,
but they don't suit a poor woman that's begun
a street-trade when she's not very young. And
the trotters can be carried on with so little
money. It's not so long ago that I've sold three-
penn'orth of trotters — that is, him and me has —
pretty early in the evening; I'd bought them
at Mr. — 's, in Bermondsey, in the afternoon,
for we can buy three penn'orth, and I walked
there again — perhaps it's four miles there and
back — and bought another 3d. worth. The first
three-pence was all I could rise. It's a long
weary way for me to walk, but some walk from
Poplar and Limehouse. If I lay out 2s. on the
Saturday — there's 15 sets for 1s., that's 60
trotters — they'll carry us on to Monday night,
and sometimes, if they'll keep, to Tuesday night.
Sometimes I could sell half-a-crown's worth in
less time. I have to go to Bermondsey three or
four times a week. The trade was far better six
years ago, though trotters were dearer then, only
13 sets 1s., then 14, now 15. For some very
few, that's very fine and very big, I get a penny
a piece; for some I get 1½d. for two; the most's
½d. each; some's four for 1½d.; and some I
have to throw into the dust-hole. The two of
us earns 5s. a week on trotters, not more, I'm
sure. I sell to people in the public-houses;
some of them may be rather the worse for drink,
but not so many; regular drunkards buys no-
thing but drink. I've sold them too to steady,
respectable gentlemen, that's been passing in
the street, who put them in their pockets for
supper. My rent's 1s. a week."

I then had some conversation with the poor
lad. He'd had many a bitter night, he told
me, from half-past five to twelve, for he knew
there was no breakfast for his mother and him
if he couldn't sell some trotters. He had a cry
sometimes. He didn't know any good it did
him, but he couldn't help it. The boys ga-
thered round him sometimes, and teased him,
and snatched at his crutch; and the policeman
said that he must make him "move on," as he
encouraged the boys about him. He didn't like
the boys any more than they were fond of the
policemen. He had often sad thoughts as he
sat with his trotters before him, when he didn't
cry; he wondered if ever he would be better off;
but what could he do? He could read, but not
write; he liked to read very well when he had
anything to read. His mother and he never
missed mass.

Another old woman, very poorly, but rather
tidily dressed, gave me the following account,
which shows a little of public-house custom: —

"I've seen better days, sir, I have indeed; I
don't like to talk about that, but now I'm only
a poor sheep's trotter seller, and I've been one a
good many years. I don't know how long, and
I don't like to think about it. It's shocking
bad trade, and such insults as we have to put
up with. I serve some public-houses, and I
stand sometimes at a playhouse-door. I make
3s. or 3s. 6d. a week, and in a very good week
4s., but, then, I sometimes make only 2s. I'm
infirm now, God help me! and I can do nothing
else. Another old woman and me has a room
between us, at 1s. 4d. a week. Mother's the
best name I'm called in a public-house, and it
ain't a respectable name. `Here, mother, give
us one of your b — trotters,' is often said to me.
One customer sometimes says: `The stuff'll
choke me, but that's as good as the Union.' He ain't a bad man, though. He sometimes treats
me. He'll bait my trotters, but that's his lark-
ing way, and then he'll say:

It's his own poetry, he says. I don't know
what he is, but he's often drunk, poor fellow.
Women's far worse to please than men. I've
known a woman buy a trotter, put her teeth
into it, and then say it wasn't good, and return
it. It wasn't paid for when she did so, and be-

[Description: 915EAF. Page 173.]

cause I grumbled, I was abused by her, as if
I'd been a Turk. The landlord interfered, and
he said, said he, `I'll not have this poor woman
insulted; she's here for the convenience of
them as requires trotters, and she's a well-con-
ducted woman, and I'll not have her insulted,'
he says, says he, lofty and like a gentleman,
sir. `Why, who's insulting the old b — h?'
says the woman, says she. `Why, you are,'
says the landlord, says he, `and you ought to
pay her for her trotter, or how is she to live?'
`What the b — h — ll do I care how she lives,'
says the woman, `its nothing to me, and I
won't pay her.' `Then I will,' says the land-
lord, says he, `here's 6d.,' and he wouldn't take
the change. After that I soon sold all my
trotters, and some gave me double price, when
the landlord showed himself such a gentleman,
and I went out and bought nine trotters more,
another woman's stock, that she was dreading
she couldn't sell, and I got through them in no
time. It was the best trotter night I ever had.
She wasn't a woman of the town as used me so.
I have had worse sauce from modest women, as
they called themselves, than from the women
of the town, for plenty of them knows what
poverty is, and is civiler, poor things — yes,
I'm sure of that, though it's a shocking life —
O, shocking! I never go to the playhouse-door
but on a fine night. Young men treats their
sweethearts to a trotter, for a relish, with a drop
of beer between the acts. Wet nights is the
best for public-houses. `They're not salt
enough,' has been said to me, oft enough, `they
don't make a man thirsty.' It'll come to the
workhouse with me before long, and, perhaps,
all the better. It's warm in the public-house,
and that draws me to sell my trotters there
sometimes. I live on fish and bread a good
deal."

The returns I collected show that there is
expended yearly in London streets on trotters,
calculating their sale, retail, at ½d. each, 6,500l., but though the regular price is ½d., some trotters
are sold at four for 1½d., very few higher than
½d., and some are kept until they are unsaleable,
so that the amount may be estimated at 6,000l., a receipt of 7s. 6d. weekly, per individual seller,
rather more than one-half of which sum is
profit.

OF THE STREET TRADE IN BAKED POTATOES.

The baked potato trade, in the way it is at pre-
sent carried on, has not been known more than
fifteen years in the streets. Before that, pota-
toes were sometimes roasted as chestnuts are
now, but only on a small scale. The trade is
more profitable than that in fruit, but continues
for but six months of the year.

The potatoes, for street-consumption, are
bought of the greengrocers, at the rate of 5s. 6d. the cwt. They are usually a large-sized
"fruit," running about two or three to the
pound. The kind generally bought is what are
called the "French Regent's." French pota-
toes are greatly used now, as they are cheaper
than the English. The potatoes are picked,
and those of a large size, and with a rough
skin, selected from the others, because they are
the mealiest. A waxy potato shrivels in the
baking. There are usually from 280 to 300
potatoes in the cwt.; these are cleaned by the
huckster, and, when dried, taken in baskets,
about a quarter cwt. at a time, to the baker's, to
be cooked. They are baked in large tins, and
require an hour and a half to do them well.
The charge for baking is 9d. the cwt., the baker
usually finding the tins. They are taken home
from the bakehouse in a basket, with a yard and
a half of green baize in which they are covered
up, and so protected from the cold. The huck-
ster then places them in his can, which consists
of a tin with a half-lid; it stands on four legs,
and has a large handle to it, while an iron fire-
pot is suspended immediately beneath the vessel
which is used for holding the potatoes. Di-
rectly over the fire-pot is a boiler for hot water.
This is concealed within the vessel, and serves
to keep the potatoes always hot. Outside the
vessel where the potatoes are kept is, at one
end, a small compartment for butter and salt,
and at the other end another compartment for
fresh charcoal. Above the boiler, and beside
the lid, is a small pipe for carrying off the
steam. These potato-cans are sometimes
brightly polished, sometimes painted red, and
occasionally brass-mounted. Some of the
handsomest are all brass, and some are highly
ornamented with brass-mountings. Great pride
is taken in the cans. The baked-potato man
usually devotes half an hour to polishing them
up, and they are mostly kept as bright as silver.
The handsomest potato-can is now in Shore-
ditch. It cost ten guineas, and is of brass
mounted with German silver. There are three
lamps attached to it, with coloured glass, and of
a style to accord with that of the machine; each
lamp cost 5s. The expense of an ordinary
can, tin and brass-mounted, is about 50s. They
are mostly made by a tinman in the Ratcliffe-
highway. The usual places for these cans to
stand are the principal thoroughfares and street-
markets. It is considered by one who has been
many years at the business, that there are,
taking those who have regular stands and those
who are travelling with their cans on their arm,
at least two hundred individuals engaged in
the trade in London. There are three at the
bottom of Farringdon-street, two in Smithfield,
and three in Tottenham-court-road (the two
places last named are said to be the best
`pitches' in all London), two in Leather-lane,
one on Holborn-hill, one at King's-cross, three
at the Brill, Somers-town, three in the New-
cut, three in Covent-garden (this is considered
to be on market-days the second-best pitch),
two at the Elephant and Castle, one at West-
minster-bridge, two at the top of Edgeware-
road, one in St. Martin's-lane, one in Newport-
market, two at the upper end of Oxford-street,
one in Clare-market, two in Regent-street, one

[Description: 915EAF. Page 174.]

in Newgate-market, two at the Angel, Isling-
ton, three at Shoreditch church, four about
Rosemary-lane, two at Whitechapel, two near
Spitalfields-market, and more than double the
above number wandering about London. Some
of the cans have names — as the "Royal Union
Jack" (engraved in a brass plate), the "Royal
George," the "Prince of Wales," the "Original
Baked Potatoes," and the "Old Original Baked
Potatoes."

The business begins about the middle of
August and continues to the latter end of April,
or as soon as the potatoes get to any size, —
until they are pronounced `bad.' The season,
upon an average, lasts about half the year,
and depends much upon the weather. If
it is cold and frosty, the trade is brisker
than in wet weather; indeed then little is doing.
The best hours for business are from half-past
ten in the morning till two in the afternoon,
and from five in the evening till eleven or
twelve at night. The night trade is considered
the best. In cold weather the potatoes are fre-
quently bought to warm the hands. Indeed,
an eminent divine classed them, in a public
speech, among the best of modern improve-
ments, it being a cheap luxury to the poor
wayfarer, who was benumbed in the night by
cold, and an excellent medium for diffusing
warmth into the system, by being held in the
gloved hand. Some buy them in the morning
for lunch and some for dinner. A newsvender,
who had to take a hasty meal in his shop, told
me he was "always glad to hear the baked-
potato cry, as it made a dinner of what was
only a snack without it." The best time at
night, is about nine, when the potatoes are
purchased for supper.

The customers consist of all classes. Many
gentlefolks buy them in the street, and take
them home for supper in their pockets; but the
working classes are the greatest purchasers.
Many boys and girls lay out a halfpenny in a
baked potato. Irishmen are particularly fond
of them, but they are the worst customers, I am
told, as they want the largest potatoes in the
can. Women buy a great number of those sold.
Some take them home, and some eat them in
the street. Three baked potatoes are as much
as will satisfy the stoutest appetite. One potato
dealer in Smithfield is said to sell about 2½ cwt.
of potatoes on a market-day; or, in other words,
from 900 to 1,000 potatoes, and to take upwards
of 2l. One informant told me that he himself
had often sold 1½ cwt. of a day, and taken 1l. in
halfpence. I am informed, that upon an ave-
rage, taking the good stands with the bad ones
throughout London, there are about 1 cwt. of
potatoes sold by each baked-potato man — and
there are 200 of these throughout the metro-
polis — making the total quantity of baked
potatoes consumed every day 10 tons. The
money spent upon these comes to within a few
shillings of 125l. (calculating 300 potatoes to
the cwt., and each of those potatoes to be sold
at a halfpenny). Hence, there are 60 tons of
baked potatoes eaten in London streets, and
750l. spent upon them every week during the
season. Saturdays and Mondays are the best
days for the sale of baked potatoes in those
parts of London that are not near the markets;
but in those in the vicinity of Clare, Newport,
Covent-garden, Newgate, Smithfield, and other
markets, the trade is briskest on the market-
days. The baked-potato men are many of them
broken-down tradesmen. Many are labourers
who find a difficulty of obtaining employment
in the winter time; some are costermongers;
some have been artisans; indeed, there are some
of all classes among them.

After the baked potato season is over, the
generality of the hucksters take to selling straw-
berries, raspberries, or anything in season.
Some go to labouring work. One of my in-
formants, who had been a bricklayer's labourer,
said that after the season he always looked out
for work among the bricklayers, and this kept
him employed until the baked potato season
came round again.

"When I first took to it," he said, "I was
very badly off. My master had no employment
for me, and my brother was ill, and so was my
wife's sister, and I had no way of keeping 'em,
or myself either. The labouring men are mostly
out of work in the winter time, so I spoke to a
friend of mine, and he told me how he managed
every winter, and advised me to do the same.
I took to it, and have stuck to it ever since.
The trade was much better then. I could buy
a hundred-weight of potatoes for 1s. 9d. to 2s. 3d., and there were fewer to sell them. We gene-
rally use to a cwt. of potatoes three-quarters of
a pound of butter — tenpenny salt butter is what
we buy — a pennyworth of salt, a pennyworth of
pepper, and five pennyworth of charcoal. This,
with the baking, 9d., brings the expenses to just
upon 7s. 6d. per cwt., and for this our receipts
will be 12s. 6d., thus leaving about 5s. per cwt.
profit." Hence the average profits of the trade
are about 30s. a week — "and more to some,"
said my informant. A man in Smithfield-
market, I am credibly informed, clears at the
least 3l. a week. On the Friday he has a fresh
basket of hot potatoes brought to him from the
baker's every quarter of an hour. Such is his
custom that he has not even time to take money.
and his wife stands by his side to do so.

Another potato-vender who shifted his can,
he said, "from a public-house where the tap
dined at twelve," to another half-a-mile off,
where it "dined at one, and so did the par-
lour," and afterwards to any place he deemed
best, gave me the following account of his cus-
tomers: —

"Such a day as this, sir [Jan. 24], when the
fog's like a cloud come down, people looks very
shy at my taties, very; they've been more sus-
picious ever since the taty rot. I thought I
should never have rekivered it; never, not the
rot. I sell most to mechanics — I was a grocer's
porter myself before I was a baked taty — for
their dinners, and they're on for good shops

[Description: 915EAF. Page 175.]

where I serves the taps and parlours, and pays
me without grumbling, like gentlemen. Gen-
tlemen does grumble though, for I've sold to
them at private houses when they've held the
door half open as they've called me — aye, and
ladies too — and they've said, `Is that all for
2d.?' If it 'd been a peck they'd have said the
same, I know. Some customers is very plea-
sant with me, and says I'm a blessing. One
always says he'll give me a ton of taties when
his ship comes home, 'cause he can always have
a hot murphy to his cold saveloy, when tin's
short. He's a harness-maker, and the railways
has injured him. There's Union-street and
there's Pearl-row, and there's Market-street,
now, — they're all off the Borough-road — if I
go there at ten at night or so, I can sell 3s. worth, perhaps, 'cause they know me, and I
have another baked taty to help there some-
times. They're women that's not reckoned the
best in the world that buys there, but they pay
me. I know why I got my name up. I had
luck to have good fruit when the rot was about,
and they got to know me. I only go twice or
thrice a week, for it's two miles from my regu-
lar places. I've trusted them sometimes.
They've said to me, as modest as could be,
`Do give me credit, and 'pon my word you
shall be paid; there's a dear!' I am paid
mostly. Little shopkeepers is fair customers,
but I do best for the taps and the parlours.
Perhaps I make 12s. or 15s. a week — I hardly
know, for I've only myself and keep no 'count
— for the season; money goes one can't tell
how, and 'specially if you drinks a drop, as I
do sometimes. Foggy weather drives me to it,
I'm so worritted; that is, now and then, you'll
mind, sir."

There are, at present, 300 vendors of hot
baked potatoes getting their living in the streets
of London, each of whom sell, upon an average,
¾ cwt. of potatoes daily. The average takings
of each vendor is 6s. a day; and the receipts of
the whole number throughout the season (which
lasts from the latter end of September till March
inclusive), a period of 6 months, is 14,000l.

A capital is required to start in this trade as,
follows: — can, 2l.; knife, 3d.; stock-money, 8s.; charge for baking 100 potatoes, 1s.; charcoal,
4d.; butter, 2d.; salt, 1d., and pepper, 1d.; altogether, 2l. 9s. 11d. The can and knife is the
only property described as fixed, stock-money,
&c., being daily occurring, amounts to 75l. during the season.

OF "TROTTING," OR "HAWKING"
BUTCHERS.

These two appellations are, or have been,
used somewhat confusedly in the meat trade.
Thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago — for each
term was mentioned to me — the butcher in
question was a man who went "trotting" on
his small horse to the mere distant suburbs to
sell meat. This was when the suburbs, in any
direction, were "not built up to" as they are
now, and the appearance of the trotting butcher
might be hailed as saving a walk of a mile, or
a mile and a half, to a butcher's shop, for only
tradesmen of a smaller capital then opened
butcher's shops in the remoter suburbs. For a
suburban butcher to send round "for orders"
at that period would have occupied too much
time, for a distance must be traversed; and to
have gone, or sent, on horseback, would have
entailed the keeping or hiring of a horse, which
was in those days an expensive matter. One
butcher who told me that he had known the
trade, man and boy, for nearly fifty years, said:
"As to `trotting,' a small man couldn't so
well do it, for if 20l. was offered for a tidy
horse in the war time it would most likely be
said, `I'll get more for it in the cavaldry — for
it was often called cavaldry then — there's better
plunder there.' (Plunder, I may explain, is a
common word in the horse trade to express
profit.) So it wasn't so easy to get a horse."
The trotting butchers were then men sent or
going out from the more frequented parts to
supply the suburbs, but in many cases only
when a tradesman was "hung up" with meat.
They carried from 20 to 100 lb. of meat gene-
rally in one basket, resting on the pommel of
the saddle, and attached by a long leathern
strap to the person of the "trotter." The
trade, however, was irregular and, considering
the expenses, little remunerative; neither was
it extensive, but what might be the extent I
could not ascertain. There then sprung up the
class of butchers — or rather the class became
greatly multiplied — who sent their boys or men
on fast trotting horses to take orders from the
dwellers in the suburbs, and even in the streets,
not suburbs, which were away from the shop
thoroughfares, and afterwards to deliver the
orders — still travelling on horseback — at the
customer's door. This system still continues,
but to nothing like its former extent, and as it
does not pertain especially to the street-trade
I need not dwell upon it at present, nor on the
competition that sprung up as to "trotting
butcher's ponies," — in the "matching" of
which "against time" sporting men have
taken great interest.

Of "trotting" butchers, keeping their own
horses, there are now none, but there are still,
I am told, about six of the class who contrive,
by hiring, or more frequently borrowing, horses
of some friendly butcher, to live by trotting.
These men are all known, and all call upon
known customers — often those whom they have
served in their prosperity, for the trotting but-
cher is a "reduced" man — and are not likely
to be succeeded by any in the same line, or —
as I heard it called — "ride" of business.
These traders not subsisting exactly upon street
traffic, or on any adventure depending upon
door by door, or street by street, commerce,
but upon a connection remaining from their
having been in business on their own accounts,
need no further mention.

The present class of street-traders in raw
meat are known to the trade as "hawking"

[Description: 915EAF. Page 176.]

butchers, and they are as thoroughly street-
sellers as are the game and poultry "hawkers."
Their number, I am assured, is never less than
150, and sometimes 200 or even 250. They
have all been butchers, or journeymen but-
chers, and are broken down in the one case, or
unable to obtain work in the other. They then
"watch the turn of the markets," as small
meat "jobbers," and — as on the Stock Ex-
change — "invest," when they account the
market at the lowest. The meat so purchased
is hawked in a large basket carried on the
shoulders, if of a weight too great to be sus-
tained in a basket on the arm. The sale is
confined almost entirely to public-houses, and
those at no great distance from the great meat
marts of Newgate, Leadenhall, and White-
chapel. The hawkers do not go to the suburbs.
Their principal trade is in pork and veal, — for
those joints weigh lighter, and present a larger
surface in comparison with the weight, than
do beef or mutton. The same may be said of
lamb; but of that they do not buy one quarter
so much as of pork or veal.

The hawking butcher bought his meat last
year at from 2½d. to 5½d. the pound, according
to kind and quality. He seldom gave 6d., even
years ago, when meat was dearer; for it is diffi-
cult — I was told by one of these hawkers — to
get more than 6d. per lb. from chance custom-
ers, no matter what the market price. "If I
ask 7½d. or 7d.," he said, "I'm sure of one
answer — `Nonsense!' I never goes no higher
nor 6d.' " Sometimes — and especially if he can
command credit for two or three days — the
hawking butcher will buy the whole carcass of
a sheep. If he reside near the market, he may
"cut it up" in his own room; but he can gene-
rally find the necessary accommodation at some
friendly butcher's block. If the weather be
"bad for keeping," he will dispose of a portion
of the carcass to his brother-hawkers; if cold,
he will persevere in hawking the whole himself.
He usually, however, buys only a hind or fore-
quarter of mutton, or other meat, except beef,
which he buys by the joint, and more sparingly
than he buys any other animal food. The hawker
generally has his joints weighed before he starts,
and can remember the exact pounds and ounces
of each, but the purchasers generally weigh them
before payment; or, as one hawker expressed it,
"They goes to the scales before they come to the
tin."

Many of these hawkers drink hard, and, being
often men of robust constitution, until the ap-
proach of age, can live "hard," — as regards
lodging, especially. One hawker I heard of
slept in a slaughter-house, on the bare but clean
floor, for nearly two years: "But that was seven
years ago, and no butcher would allow it now."

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A HAWKING
BUTCHER.

A middle-aged man, the front of his head being
nearly bald, and the few hairs there were to be
seen shining strongly and lying tflat, as if rubbed
with suet or dripping, gave me the following
account. He was dressed in the usual blue garb
of the butcher: —

"I've hawked, sir — well, perhaps for fifteen
years. My father was a journeyman butcher,
and I helped him, and so grew up to it. I never
had to call regular work, and made it out with
hawking. Perhaps I've hawked, take it alto-
gether, nearly three quarters of every year. The
other times I've had a turn at slaughtering.
But I haven't slaughtered for these three or
four years; I've had turns as a butcher's porter,
and wish I had more, as it's sure browns, if it's
only 1s. 6d. a day: but there's often a bit of
cuttings. I sell most pork of anything in
autumn and winter, and most mutton in
summer; but the summer isn't much more than
half as good as the winter for my trade. When I
slaughtered I had 3s. for an ox, 4d. for a sheep,
and 1s. for a pig. Calves is slaughtered by the
master's people generally. Well, I dare say it
is cruel the way they slaughter calves; you
would think it so, no doubt. I believe they
slaughter cheaper now. If I buy cheap — and
on a very hot day and a slow market, I have
bought a fore, aye, and a hind, quarter of mut-
ton, about two and a half stone each (8 lbs.
to the stone), at 2d. a pound; but that's
only very, very seldom — when I buy cheap
sir, I aim at 2d. a pound over what I give, if
not so cheap at 1d., and then its low to my
customers. But I cut up the meat, you see,
myself, and I carry it. I sell eight times as
much to public-houses and eating-houses as
anywhere else; most to the publics if they've
ordinaries, and a deal for the publics' families'
eating, 'cause a landlord knows I wouldn't
deceive him, — and there's a part of it taken
out in drink, of course, and landlords is good
judges. Trade was far better years back.
I've heard my father and his pals talk about
a hawking butcher that twenty years ago was
imprisoned falsely, and got a honest lawyer to
bring his haction, and had 150l. damages for
false imprisonment. It was in the Lord
Mayor's Court of Equity, I've heard. It was
a wrong arrest. I don't understand the par-
ticulars of it, but it's true; and the damages
was for loss of time and trade. I'm no
lawyer myself; not a bit. I have sold the like
of a loin of mutton, when it was small, in a
tap-room, to make chops for the people there.
They'll cook chops and steaks for a pint of beer,
at a public; that is, you must order a pint — but
I've sold it very seldom. When mutton was
dearer it was easier to sell it that way, for I
sold cheap; and at one public the mechanics —
I hardly know just what they was, something
about building — used to gather there at one
o'clock and wait for Giblets'; so they called me
there. I live a good bit on the cuttings of the
meat I hawk, or I chop a meal off if I can
manage or afford it, or my wife — (I've only a
wife and she earns never less than 2s. a week
in washing for a master butcher — I wish I was
a master butcher, — and that covers the rent) —

[Description: 915EAF. Page 177.]

my wife makes it into broth. Take it all the
year round, I s'pose I sell three stun a day
(24 lb.), and at 1d. a pound profit. Not a
farthing more go round and round. I don't
think the others, altogether, do as much, for
I'm known to a many landlords. But some
make 3s. and 4s. a day oft enough. I've made
as much myself sometimes. We all aim at 1d. a pound profit, but have to take less in hot
weather sometimes. Last year 4d. the pound has
been a haverage price to me for all sorts."

"Dead salesmen," as they are called — that is,
the market salesmen of the meat sent so largely
from Scotland and elsewhere, ready slaughtered
— expressed to me their conviction that my
informant's calculation was correct, and might
be taken as an average; so did butchers. Thus,
then, we find that the hawking butchers, taking
their number at 150, sell 747,000 lbs. of meat,
producing 12,450l. annually, one-fourth being
profit; this gives an annual receipt of 83l. each,
and an annual earning of 20l. 15s. The capital
required to start in this trade is about 20s., which
is uaually laid out as follows: — A basket for the
shoulders, which costs 4s. 6d.; a leathern strap,
1s.; a basket for the arm, 2s. 6d.; a butcher's
knife, 1s.; a steel, 1s. 6d.; a leather belt for the
waist to which the knife is slung, 6d.; a chop-
per, 1s. 6d.; and a saw, 2s.; 6s. stock-money,
though credit is sometimes given.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF HAM-SAND-
WICHES.

The ham-sandwich-seller carries his sandwiches
on a tray or flat basket, covered with a clean
white cloth; he also wears a white apron, and
white sleeves. His usual stand is at the doors
of the theatres.

The trade was unknown until eleven years
ago, when a man who had been unsuccessful in
keeping a coffee-shop in Westminster, found it
necessary to look out for some mode of living,
and he hit upon the plan of vending sand-
wiches, precisely in the present style, at the
theatre doors. The attempt was successful; the
man soon took 10s. a night, half of which was
profit. He "attended" both the great theatres,
and was "doing well;" but at five or six weeks'
end, competitors appeared in the field, and in-
creased rapidly, and so his sale was affected,
people being regardless of his urging that he
"was the original ham-sandwich." The capital
required to start in the trade was small; a few
pounds of ham, a proportion of loaves, and a
little mustard was all that was required, and
for this 10s. was ample. That sum, however,
could not be commanded by many who were
anxious to deal in sandwiches; and the man
who commenced the trade supplied them at 6d. a dozen, the charge to the public being 1d. a-piece. Some of the men, however, murmured,
because they thought that what they thus
bought were not equal to those the wholesale
sandwich-man offered for sale himself; and his
wholesale trade fell off, until now, I am told, he
has only two customers among street-sellers.

Ham sandwiches are made from any part of the
bacon which may be sufficiently lean, such as
"the gammon," which now costs 4d. and 5d. the
pound. It is sometimes, but very rarely, picked
up at 3½d. When the trade was first started,
7d. a pound was paid for the ham, but the
sandwiches are now much larger. To make
three dozen a pound of meat is required, and
four quartern loaves. The "ham" may cost 5d., the bread 1s. 8d. or 1s. 10d., and the mustard 1d.
The proceeds for this would be 3s., but the trade
is very precarious: little can be done in wet
weather. If unsold, the sandwiches spoil, for
the bread gets dry, and the ham loses its fresh
colour; so that those who depend upon this
trade are wretchedly poor. A first-rate week is
to clear 10s.; a good week is put at 7s.; and a
bad week at 3s. 6d. On some nights they do
not sell a dozen sandwiches. There are half-
penny sandwiches, but these are only half the
size of those at a penny.

The persons carrying on this trade have been,
for the most part, in some kind of service —
errand-boys, pot-boys, foot-boys (or pages), or
lads engaged about inns. Some few have been
mechanics. Their average weekly earnings
hardly exceed 5s., but some "get odd jobs"
at other things.

"There are now, sir, at the theatres this (the
Strand) side the water, and at Ashley's, the
Surrey, and the Vic., two dozen and nine sand-
wiches." So said one of the trade, who counted
up his brethren for me. This man calculated
also that at the Standard, the saloons, the con-
cert-rooms, and at Limehouse, Mile-end, Beth-
nal-green-road, and elsewhere, there might be
more than as many again as those "working"
the theatres — or 70 in all. They are nearly all
men, and no boys or girls are now in the trade.
The number of these people, when the large
theatres were open with the others, was about
double what it is now.

The information collected shows that the
expenditure in ham-sandwiches, supplied by
street-sellers, is 1,820l. yearly, and a consump-
tion of 436,800 sandwiches.

To start in the ham-sandwich street-trade
requires 2s. for a basket, 2s. for kettle to boil
ham in, 6d. for knife and fork, 2d. for mustard-
pot and spoon, 7d. for ½ cwt. of coals, 5s. for
ham, 1s. 3d. for bread, 4d. for mustard, 9d. for
basket, cloth, and apron, 4d. for over-sleeves —
or a capital of 12s. 11d.

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A HAM SANDWICH-
SELLER.

A young man gave me the following account.
His look and manners were subdued; and,
though his dress was old and worn, it was clean
and unpatched: —

"I hardly remember my father, sir," he said;
"but I believe, if he'd lived, I should have been
better off. My mother couldn't keep my brother
and me — he's older than me — when we grew to
be twelve or thirteen, and we had to shift for
ourselves. She works at the stays, and now

[Description: 915EAF. Page 178.]

makes only 3s. a week, and we can't help her.
I was first in place as a sort of errand-boy, then
I was a stationer's boy, and then a news agent's
boy. I wasn't wanted any longer, but left with
a good character. My brother had gone into the
sandwich trade — I hardly know what made him
— and he advised me to be a ham sandwich-man,
and so I started as one. At first, I made 10s., and 7s., and 8s. a week — that's seven years,
or so — but things are worse now, and I make
3s. 6d. some weeks, and 5s. others, and 6s. is an
out-and-outer. My rent's 2s. a week, but I
haven't my own things. I am so sick of this
life, I'd do anything to get out of it; but I don't
see a way. Perhaps I might have been more
careful when I was first in it; but, really, if you
do make 10s. a week, you want shoes, or a shirt
— so what is 10s. after all? I wish I had it now,
though. I used to buy my sandwiches at 6d. a
dozen, but I found that wouldn't do; and now I
buy and boil the stuff, and make them myself.
What did cost 6d., now only costs me 4d. or 4½d. I work the theatres this side of the water, chiefly
the 'Lympic and the 'Delphi. The best theatre
I ever had was the Garding, when it had two
galleries, and was dramatic — the operas there
wasn't the least good to me. The Lyceum was
good, when it was Mr. Keeley's. I hardly know
what sort my customers are, but they're those
that go to theaytres: shopkeepers and clerks, I
think. Gentlemen don't often buy of me. They
have bought, though. Oh, no, they never give a
farthing over; they're more likely to want seven
for 6d. The women of the town buy of me, when
it gets late, for themselves and their fancy men.
They're liberal enough when they've money.
They sometimes treat a poor fellow in a public-
house. In summer I'm often out 'till four in
the morning, and then must lie in bed half next
day. The 'Delphi was better than it is. I've
taken 3s. at the first "turn out" (the leaving
the theatre for a short time after the first piece),
"but the turn-outs at the Garding was better
than that. A penny pie-shop has spoiled us at
the 'Delphi and at Ashley's. I go out between
eight and nine in the evening. People often want
more in my sandwiches, though I'm starving on
them. `Oh,' they'll say, `you've been 'pren-
ticed to Vauxhall, you have.' `They're 1s. there,' says I, `and no bigger. I haven't Vaux-
hall prices.' I stand by the night-houses when
it's late — not the fashionables. Their customers
would'nt look at me; but I've known women,
that carried their heads very high, glad to get a
sandwich afterwards. Six times I've been upset
by drunken fellows, on purpose, I've no doubt,
and lost all my stock. Once, a gent. kicked my
basket into the dirt, and he was going off — for
it was late — but some people by began to make
remarks about using a poor fellow that way, so
he paid for all, after he had them counted. I am
so sick of this life, sir. I do dread the winter so.
I've stood up to the ankles in snow till after
midnight, and till I've wished I was snow myself,
and could melt like it and have an end. I'd do
anything to get away from this, but I can't.
Passion Week's another dreadful time. It drives
us to starve, just when we want to get up a little
stock-money for Easter. I've been bilked by
cabmen, who've taken a sandwich; but, instead
of paying for it, have offered to fight me. There's
no help. We're knocked about sadly by the
police. Time's very heavy on my hands, some-
times, and that's where you feel it. I read a bit,
if I can get anything to read, for I was at St.
Clement's school; or I walk out to look for a
job. On summer-days I sell a trotter or two.
But mine's a wretched life, and so is most ham
sandwich-men. I've no enjoyment of my youth,
and no comfort.

"Ah, sir! I live very poorly. A ha'porth
or a penn'orth of cheap fish, which I cook
myself, is one of my treats — either herrings or
plaice — with a 'tatur, perhaps. Then there's a
sort of meal, now and then, off the odds and ends
of the ham, such as isn't quite viewy enough for
the public, along with the odds and ends of the
loaves. I can't boil a bit of greens with my
ham, 'cause I'm afraid it might rather spoil the
colour. I don't slice the ham till it's cold — it
cuts easier, and is a better colour then, I think.
I wash my aprons, and sleeves, and cloths my-
self, and iron them too. A man that sometimes
makes only 3s. 6d. a week, and sometimes less,
and must pay 2s. rent out of that, must look
after every farthing. I've often walked eight
miles to see if I could find ham a halfpenny
a pound cheaper anywhere. If it was tainted,
I know it would be flung in my face. If I
was sick there's only the parish for me."

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BREAD.

The street-trade in bread is not so extensive as
might be expected, from the universality of the
consumption. It is confined to Petticoat-lane
and the poorer districts in that neighbourhood.
A person who has known the East-end of town
for nearly fifty years, told me that as long as
he could recollect, bread was sold in the streets,
but not to the present extent. In 1812 and
1813, when bread was the dearest, there was
very little sold in the streets. At that time,
and until 1815, the Assize Acts, regulating the
bread-trade, were in force, and had been in force
in London since 1266. Previously to 1815 bakers
were restricted, by these Acts, to the baking of
three kinds of bread — wheaten, standard wheat-
en, and household. The wheaten was made
of the best flour, the standard wheaten of the
different kinds of flour mixed together, and the
household of the coarser and commoner flour.
In 1823, however, it was enacted that within
the City of London and ten miles round, "it
shall be lawful for the bakers to make and
sell bread made of wheat, barley, rye, oats,
buck-wheat, Indian-corn, peas, beans, rice, or
potatoes, or any of them, along with common
salt, pure-water, eggs, milk, barm-leaven, po-
tato, or other yeast, and mixed in such propor-
tions as they shall think fit." I mention this
because my informant, as well as an old
master baker with whom I conversed on the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 179.]

subject, remembered that every now and then,
after 1823, but only for two or three years,
some speculative trader, both in shops and in
the streets, would endeavour to introduce an in-
ferior, but still & wholesome, bread, to his cus-
tomers, such as an admixture of barley with
wheat-flour, but no one — as far as I could learn
— persevered in the speculation for more than a
week or so. Their attempts were not only un-
successful but they met with abuse, from street-
buyers especially, for endeavouring to palm off
"brown" bread as "good enough for poor
people." One of my elder informants remem-
bered his father telling him that in 1800 and
1801, George III. had set the example of eat-
ing brown bread at his one o'clock dinner, but
he was sometimes assailed as he passed in his
carriage, with the reproachful epithet of
"Brown George." This feeling continues, for
the poor people, and even the more intelligent
working-men, if cockneys, have still a notion that
only "white" bread is fit for consumption. Into
the question of the relative nutrition of breads,
I shall enter when I treat of the bakers.

During a period of about four months in
the summer, there are from twenty to thirty
men daily selling stale bread. Of these only
twelve sell it regularly every day of the year,
and they trade chiefly on their own account.
Of the others, some are sent out by their
masters, receiving from 1s. to 2s. for their
labour. Those who sell on their own account,
go round to the bakers' shops about Stepney,
Mile-end, and Whitechapel, and purchase the
stale-bread on hand. It is sold to them at ½d., 1d. and 1½d. per quartern less than the retail shop
price; but when the weather is very hot, and
the bakers have a large quantity of stale-bread
on hand, the street-sellers sometimes get the
bread at 2d. a quartern less than the retail price.
All the street-sellers of bread have been brought
up as bakers. Some have resorted to the street-
trade, I am told, when unable to procure work;
others because it is a less toilsome, and some-
times a more profitable means of subsistence,
than the labour of an operative baker. It is
very rarely that any of the street-traders leave
their calling to resume working as journeymen.
Some of these traders have baskets containing
the bread offered for street-sale; others have
barrows, and one has a barrow resembling a
costermonger's, with a long basket made to fit
upon it. The dress of these vendors is a light
coat of cloth or fustian; corduroy, fustian, or
cloth trousers, and a cloth cap or a hat, the
whole attire being, what is best understood as
"dusty," ingrained as it is with flour.

From one bread-seller, a middle-aged man,
with the pale look and habitual stoop of a jour-
neyman baker, I had the following account:

"I've known the street-trade a few years;
I can't say exactly how many. I was a journey-
man baker before that, and can't say but what
I had pretty regular employment; but then, sir,
what an employment it is! So much night-
work, and the heat of the overn, with the close
air, and sleeping on sacks at nights (for you can't
leave the place), so that altogether it's a slave's
life. A journeyman baker hasn't what can be
called a home, for he's so much away at the
oven; he'd better not be a married man, for
if his wife isn't very careful there's talk, and
there's unhappiness about nothing perhaps. I
can't be thought to speak feelingly that way
though, for I've been fortunate in a wife. But
a journeyman baker's life drives him to drink,
almost whether he will or not. A street life's
not quite so bad. I was out of work two or three
weeks, and I certainly lushed too much, and
can't say as I tried very hard to get work, but
I had a pound or two in hand, and then I began
to think I'd try and sell stale bread in the
streets, for it's a healthfuller trade than the
other; so I started, and have been at it ever
since, excepting when I work a few days, or
weeks, for a master baker; but he's a relation,
and I assist him when he's ill. My customers
are all poor persons, — some in rags, and some as
decent as their bad earnings 'll let them. No
doubt about it, sir, there's poor women buy of
me that's wives of mechanics working slop, and
that's forced to live on stale bread. Where there's
a family of children, stale bread goes so very
much further. I think I sell to few but what has
families, for a quartern's too much at a time for
a single woman. I often hear my customers talk
about their children, and say they must make
haste, as the poor things are hungry, and they
couldn't get them any bread sooner. O, it's a
hard fight to live, all Spitalfields and Bethnal-
green way, for I know it all. There are first
the journeyman bakers over-worked and fretted
into drinking, a-making the bread, and there
are the poor fellows in all sorts of trade over-
worked to get money to buy it. I've had women
that looked as if they was `reduced,' come to
me of an evening as soon as it was dusk, and
buy stale bread, as if they was ashamed to be
seen. Yes, I give credit. Some has a week's
credit regular, and pays every Saturday night.
I lose very little in trusting. I sometimes have
bread over and sell it — rather than hold it over
to next day — for half what it cost me. I have
given it away to begging people, sooner than
keep it to be too stale, and they would get
something for it at a lodging-house. The
lodging-house keepers never buy of me that
I know of. They can buy far cheaper than I
can — you understand, sir. Perhaps, altogether,
I make about a guinea every week; wet weather
and short days are against me. I don't sell more,
I think, on a Saturday than on other nights.
The nights are much of a muchness that way."

The average quantity sold by each vendor
during the summer months is 150 quarterns
daily, usually at 4d., but occasionally at 3d. the
quartern. One man informed me that he had sold
in one day 350 quarterns, receiving 5l. 16s. 8d. for them.

The number of men (for if there be women
they are the men's wives) engaged daily through-
out the year in the street-sale of bread is 12.

[Description: 915EAF. Page 180.]

These sell upon an average 100 quarterns each
per day: taking every day in the year 1l. 12s. each (a few being sold at 3d.)

Calculating then the four months' trade in
summer at 150 quarterns per day per man, and
reckoning 15 men so selling, and each receiving
45s. (thus allowing for the threepenny sale); and
taking the receipts of the 12 regular traders at
1l. 12s. per day, we find nearly 9,000l. annually
expended in the street purchase of 700,000
quartern loaves of bread. The profits of the
sellers vary from 1l. to 2l. a week, according to
the extent of their business.

To start in this branch of the street-trade a
capital is required according to the following
rate: — Stock-money for bread, average 1l.; (largest amount required, 5l.; smallest, 10s.);
a basket, 4s. 6d. Of those who are employed in
the summer, one-half have baskets, and the
other half bakers' barrows; while of those who
attend the year through, 8 have baskets at
4s. 6d. each, 3 have barrows at 40s. each, and one
a barrow and the long basket, before mentioned.
The barrow costs 30s., and the basket 2l.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF HOT GREEN
PEAS.

The sale of hot green peas in the streets is of
great antiquity, that is to say, if the cry of "hot
peas-cod," recorded by Lydgate (and formerly
alluded to), may be taken as having intimated
the sale of the same article. In many parts
of the country it is, or was, customary to have
"Scaldings of peas," often held as a sort of
rustic feast. The peas were not shelled, but
boiled in the pod, and eaten by the pod being
dipped in melted butter, with a little pepper,
salt, and vinegar, and then drawn through the
teeth to extract the peas, the pod being thrown
away. The mention of peas-cod (or pea-shell)
by Lydgate renders it probable that the "scald-
ing" method was that then in use in the streets.
None of the street-sellers, however, whom I saw,
remembered the peas being vended in any other
form than shelled and boiled as at present.

The sellers of green peas have no stands, but
carry a round or oval tin pot or pan, with a
swing handle; the pan being wrapped round
with a thick cloth, to retain the heat. The peas
are served out with a ladle, and eaten by the
customers, if eaten in the street, out of basins,
provided with spoons, by the pea-man. Salt,
vinegar, and pepper, are applied from the ven-
dor's store, at the customer's discretion.

There are now four men carrying on this
trade. They wear no particular dress, "just
what clothes we can get," said one of them.
One, who has been in the trade twenty-five years,
was formerly an inn-porter; the other three are
ladies' shoemakers in the day-time, and pea-
sellers in the evening, or at early morning, in any
market. Their average sale is three gallons
daily, with a receipt of 7s. per man. Seven
gallons a day is accounted a large sale; but
the largest of all is at Greenwich fair, when
each pea-man will take 35s. in a day. Each
vendor has his district. One takes Billingsgate,
Rosemary-lane, and its vicinity; another, the
Old Clothes Exchange, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch,
and Bethnal-green; a third, Mile-end and Step-
ney; and a fourth, Ratcliffe-highway, Lime-
house, and Poplar. Each man resides in his
"round," for the convenience of boiling his
peas, and introducing them to his customers
"hot and hot."

The peas used in this traffic are all the dried
field pea, but dried green and whole, and not
split, or prepared, as are the yellow peas for
soup or puddings. They are purchased at the
corn-chandlers' or the seed-shops, the price
being 2s. the peck (or two gallons.) The peas
are soaked before they are boiled, and swell con-
siderably, so that one gallon of the dried peas
makes rather more than two gallons of the boiled.
The hot green peas are sold in halfpennyworths;
a halfpennyworth being about a quarter of a
pint. The cry of the sellers is, "Hot green
peas! all hot, all hot! Here's your peas hot,
hot, hot!"

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A HOT GREEN PEA
SELLER.

The most experienced man in the trade gave me
the following account: —

"Come the 25th of March, sir, and I shall have
been 26 years in the business, for I started it on
the 25th of March — it's a day easy for to re-
member, 'cause everybody knows it's quarter-
day — in 1825. I was a porter in coaching-inns
before; but there was a mishap, and I had to
drop it. I didn't leave 'cause I thought the pea
line might be better, but because I must do
something, and knew a man in the trade, and all
about it. It was a capital trade then, and for a
good many years after I was in it. Many a day
I've taken a guinea, and, sometimes, 35s.; and
I have taken two guineas at Greenwich Fair, but
then I worked till one or two in the morning from
eleven the day before. Money wasn't so scarce
then. Oh, sir, as to what my profit was or is, I
never tell. I wouldn't to my own wife; neither
her that's living nor her that's dead." [A per-
son present intimated that the secret might be
safely confided to the dead wife, but the pea-
seller shook his head.] "Now, one day with
another, except Sundays, when I don't work, I
may take 7s. I always use the dried peas. They
pay better than fresh garden-peas would at a groat
a peck. People has asked for young green peas,
but I've said that I didn't have them. Billings-
gate's my best ground. I sell to the costers, and
the roughs, and all the parties that has their din-
ners in the tap-rooms — they has a bit of steak, or
a bit of cold meat they've brought with them.
There's very little fish eat in Billingsgate, except,
perhaps, at the ord'n'ries (ordinaries). I'm
looked for as regular as dinner-time. The land-
lords tell me to give my customers plenty of
pepper and salt, to make them thirsty. I go on
board the Billingsgate ships, too, and sometimes
sell 6d. worth to captain and crew. It's a treat,
after a rough voyage. Oh, no, sir, I never go on

[Description: 915EAF. Page 181.]

board the Dutch eel-vessels. There's nothing
to be got out of scaly fur'ners (foreigners.) I
sell to the herring, and mackarel, and oyster-
boats when they're up. My great sale is in
public-houses, but I sometimes sell 2d. or 3d. worth to private houses. I go out morning,
noon, and night; and at night I go my round
when people's having a bite of supper, perhaps,
in the public-houses. I sell to the women of the
town then. Yes, I give them credit. To-night,
now (Saturday), I expect to receive 2s. 3d., or
near on to it, that I've trusted them this week.
They mostly pay me on a Saturday night. I
lose very little by them. I'm knocked about in
public-houses by the Billingsgate roughs, and
I've been bilked by the prigs. I've known at
least six people try my trade, and fail in it, and
I was glad to see them broke. I sell twice as
much in cold weather as in warm."

I ascertained that my informant sold three
times as much as the other dealers, who confine
their trade principally to an evening round.
Reckoning that the chief man of business sells
3 gallons a day (which, at 1d. the quarter-pint,
would be 8s., my informant said 7s.), and that
the other three together sell the same quantity,
we find a street-expenditure on hot green peas of
250l. and a street consumption of 1870 gallons.
The peas, costing 2s. the two gallons, are
vended for 4s. or 5s., at the least, as they boil
into more than double the quantity, and a gal-
lon, retail, is 2s. 8d.; but the addition of vinegar,
pepper, &c., may reduce the profit to cent. per
cent., while there is the heaping up of every
measure retail to reduce the profit. Thus, inde-
pendent of any consideration as to the labour in
boiling, &c. (generally done by the women), the
principal man's profit is 21s. a week; that of
the others 7s. each weekly.

The capital required to start in the business
is — can, 2s. 6d.; vinegar-bottle and pepper-box,
4d.; saucers and spoons, 6d.; stock-money,
about 2s.; cloth to wrap over the peas, 4d. (a vendor wearing out a cloth in three months);
or an average of 9s. or 10s.

OF CATS' AND DOGS'-MEAT DEALERS.

The supply of food for cats and dogs is far
greater than may be generally thought. "Vy,
sir," said one of the dealers to me, "can you
tell me 'ow many people's in London?" On
my replying, upwards of two millions; "I don't
know nothing vatever," said my informant,
"about millions, but I think there's a cat to
every ten people, aye, and more than that; and
so, sir, you can reckon." [I told him this gave
a total of 200,000 cats in London; but the num-
ber of inhabited houses in the metropolis was
100,000 more than this, and though there was
not a cat to every house, still, as many lodgers
as well as householders kept cats, I added that
I thought the total number of cats in London
might be taken at the same number as the in-
habited houses, or 300,000 in all.] "There's not
near half so many dogs as cats. I must know,
for they all knows me, and I sarves about 200 cats
and 70 dogs. Mine's a middling trade, but some
does far better. Some cats has a hap'orth a day,
some every other day; werry few can afford a
penn'orth, but times is inferior. Dogs is better
pay when you've a connection among 'em."

The cat and dogs'-meat dealers, or "carriers,"
as they call themselves, generally purchase the
meat at the knackers' (horse-slaughterers')
yards. There are upwards of twenty of such
yards in London; three or four are in White-
chapel, one in Wandsworth, two in Cow-cross
— one of the two last mentioned is the largest
establishment in London — and there are two
about Bermondsey. The proprietors of these
yards purchase live and dead horses. They con-
tract for them with large firms, such as brewers,
coal-merchants, and large cab and 'bus yards,
giving so much per head for their old live
and dead horses through the year. The price
varies from 2l. to 50s. the carcass. The knackers
also have contractors in the country (harness-
makers and others), who bring or send up to
town for them the live and dead stock of those
parts. The dead horses are brought to the yard
— two or three upon one cart, and sometimes five.
The live ones are tied to the tail of these
carts, and behind the tail of each other. Oc-
casionally a string of fourteen or fifteen are
brought up, head to tail, at one time. The live
horses are purchased merely for slaughtering.
If among the lot bought there should chance
to be one that is young, but in bad condition, it is
placed in the stable, fed up, and then put into the
knacker's carts, or sold by them, or let on hire.
Occasionally a fine horse has been rescued from
death in this manner. One person is known to
have bought an animal for 15s., for which he
afterwards got 150l. Frequently young horses
that will not work in cabs — such as "jibs" — are
sold to the horse-slaughterers as useless. They
are kept in the yard, and after being well fed,
often turn out good horses. The live horses are
slaughtered by the persons called "knackers."
These men get upon an average 4s. a day. They
begin work at twelve at night, because some of
the flesh is required to be boiled before six in the
morning; indeed, a great part of the meat is
delivered to the carriers before that hour. The
horse to be slaughtered has his mane clipped as
short as possible (on account of the hair, which
is valuable). It is then blinded with a piece of
old apron smothered in blood, so that it may not
see the slaughterman when about to strike. A
pole-axe is used, and a cane, to put an imme-
diate end to the animal's sufferings. After the
animal is slaughtered, the hide is taken off, and
the flesh cut from the bones in large pieces.
These pieces are termed, according to the part
from which they are cut, hind-quarters, fore-
quarters, cram-bones, throats, necks, briskets,
backs, ribs, kidney pieces, hearts, tongues, liver
and lights. The bones (called "racks" by the
knackers) are chopped up and boiled, in order
to extract the fat, which is used for greasing
common harness, and the wheels of carts and
drags, &c. The bones themselves are sold for

[Description: 915EAF. Page 182.]

manure. The pieces of flesh are thrown into large
coppers or pans, about nine feet in diameter and
four feet deep. Each of these pans will hold about
three good-sized horses. Sometimes two large
brewers' horses will fill them, and sometimes as
many as four "poor" cab-horses may be put into
them. The flesh is boiled about an hour and 20
minutes for a "killed" horse, and from two hours
to two hours and 20 minutes for a dead horse
(a horse dying from age or disease). The flesh,
when boiled, is taken from the coppers, laid on
the stones, and sprinkled with water to cool it.
It is then weighed out in pieces of 112, 56, 28,
21, 14, 7, and 3½ lbs. weight. These are either
taken round in a cart to the "carriers," or, at
about five, the carriers call at the yard to pur-
chase, and continue doing so till twelve in the day.
The price is 14s. per cwt. in winter, and 16s. in
summer. The tripe is served out at 12 lb. for
6d. All this is for cats and dogs. The carriers
then take the meat round town, wherever their
"walk" may lie. They sell it to the public at
the rate of 2½d. per lb., and in small pieces, on
skewers, at a farthing, a halfpenny, and a penny
each. Some carriers will sell as much as a
hundred-weight in a day, and about half a hun-
dred-weight is the average quantity disposed of
by the carriers in London. Some sell much
eheaper than others. These dealers will fre-
quently knock at the doors of persons whom
they have seen served by another on the previous
day, and show them that they can let them have
a larger quantity of meat for the same money.
The class of persons belonging to the business
are mostly those who have been unable to obtain
employment at their trade. Occasionally a per-
son is bred to it, having been engaged as a lad
by some carrier to go round with the barrow
and assist him in his business. These boys will,
after a time, find a "walk" for themselves, be-
ginning first with a basket, and ultimately rising
to a barrow. Many of the carriers give light
weight to the extent of 2 oz. and 4 oz. in the
pound. At one yard alone near upon 100
carriers purchase meat, and there are, upon
an average, 150 horses slaughtered there every
week. Each slaughter-house may be said to do,
one with another, 60 horses per week through-
out the year, which, reckoning the London
slaughter-houses at 12, gives a total of 720
horses killed every week in the metropolis, or, in
round numbers, 37,500 in the course of the year.

The London cat and dogs'-meat carriers or
sellers — nearly all men — number at the least
1,000.

The slaughtermen are said to reap large
fortunes very rapidly — indeed, the carriers
say they coin the money. Many of them retire
after a few years, and take large farms. One,
after 12 years' business, retired with several
thousand pounds, and has now three large farms.
The carriers are men, women, and boys. Very
few women do as well as the men at it. The
carriers "are generally sad drunkards." Out of
five hundred, it is said three hundred at least
spend 1l. a head a week in drink. One party in
the trade told me that he knew a carrier who
would often spend 10s. in liquor at one sitting.
The profit the carriers make upon the meat is at
present only a penny per pound. In the summer
time the profit per pound is reduced to a half-
penny, owing to the meat being dearer on ac-
count of its scarcity. The carriers give a great
deal of credit — indeed, they take but little ready
money. On some days they do not come home
with more than 2s. One with a middling walk
pays for his meat 7s. 6d. per day. For this he
has half a hundred-weight. This produces him
as much as 11s. 6d., so that his profit is 4s.; which, I am assured, is about a fair average
of the earnings of the trade. One carrier is
said to have amassed 1,000l. at the business.
He usually sold from 1½ to 2 cwt. every morn-
ing, so that his profits were generally from
16s. to 1l. per day. But the trade is much
worse now. There are so many at it, they
say, that there is barely a living for any. A
carrier assured me that he seldom went less
than 30, and frequently 40 miles, through
the streets every day. The best districts are
among the houses of tradesmen, mechanics,
and labourers. The coachmen in the mews at
the back of the squares are very good custo-
mers. "The work lays thicker there," said
my informant. Old maids are bad, though very
plentiful, customers. They cheapen the carriers
down so, that they can scarcely live at the busi-
ness. "They will pay one halfpenny and owe
another, and forget that after a day or two." The
cats' meat dealers generally complain of their
losses from bad debts. Their customers require
credit frequently to the extent of 1l. "One
party owes me 15s. now," said a carrier to me,
"and many 10s.; in fact, very few people pay
ready money for the meat."

The carriers frequently serve as much as ten
penny worths to one person in a day. One gentle-
man has as much as 4 lbs. of meat each morning
for two Newfoundland dogs; and there was one
woman — a black — who used to have as much as
16 pennyworth every day. This person used to
get out on the roof of the house and throw it
to the cats on the tiles. By this she brought so
many stray cats round about the neighbourhood,
that the parties in the vicinity complained; it
was quite a nuisance. She would have the meat
always brought to her before ten in the morn-
ing, or else she would send to a shop for it, and
between ten and eleven in the morning the noise
and cries of the hundreds of stray cats attracted
to the spot was "terrible to hear." When the
meat was thrown to the cats on the roof, the
riot, and confusion, and fighting, was beyond
description. "A beer-shop man," I was told,
"was obliged to keep five or six dogs to drive
the cats from his walls." There was also a mad
woman in Islington, who used to have 14 lbs.
of meat a day. The party who supplied her
had his money often at 2l. and 3l. at a time.
She had as many as thirty cats at times in her
house. Every stray one that came she would
take in and support. The stench was so great

[Description: 915EAF. Page 183.]

that she was obliged to be ejected. The best
days for the cats' meat business are Mondays,
Tuesdays, and Saturdays. A double quantity
of meat is sold on the Saturday; and on that day
and Monday and Tuesday the weekly customers
generally pay.

"My father was a baker by trade," said a
carrier to me, "but through an enlargement of
the heart he was obliged to give up working
at his trade; leaning over the trough increased
his complaint so severely, that he used to
fall down, and be obliged to be brought home.
This made him take to the cats' and dogs' meat
trade, and he brought me up to it. I do pretty
comfortably. I have a very good business,
having been all my life at it. If it wasn't for
the bad debts I should do much better; but
some of the people I trust leave the houses, and
actually take in a double quantity of meat the
day before. I suppose there is at the present
moment as much as 20l. owing to me that I
never expect to see a farthing of."

The generality of the dealers wear a shiny
hat, black plush waistcoat and sleeves, a blue
apron, corduroy trousers, and a blue and white
spotted handkerchief round their necks. Some,
indeed, will wear two and three handkerchiefs
round their necks, this being fashionable among
them. A great many meet every Friday after-
noon in the donkey-market, Smithfield, and
retire to a public-house adjoining, to spend the
evening.

A "cats' meat carrier" who supplied me with
information was more comfortably situated than
any of the poorer classes that I have yet seen.
He lived in the front room of a second floor, in
an open and respectable quarter of the town,
and his lodgings were the perfection of comfort
and cleanliness in an humble sphere. It was
late in the evening when I reached the house.
I found the "carrier" and his family pre-
paring for supper. In a large morocco leather
easy chair sat the cats' meat carrier himself;
his "blue apron and black shiny hat" had
disappeared, and he wore a "dress" coat and
a black satin waistcoat instead. His wife, who
was a remarkably pretty woman, and of very
attractive manners, wore a "Dolly Varden" cap,
placed jauntily at the back of her head, and a
drab merino dress. The room was cosily car-
peted, and in one corner stood a mahogany "crib"
with cane-work sides, in which one of the chil-
dren was asleep. On the table was a clean white
table-cloth, and the room was savoury with the
steaks, and mashed potatoes that were cooking
on the fire. Indeed, I have never yet seen
greater comfort in the abodes of the poor. The
cleanliness and wholesomeness of the apartment
were the more striking from the unpleasant
associations connected with the calling.

It is believed by one who has been engaged
at the business for 25 years, that there are from
900 to 1,000 horses, averaging 2 cwt. of meat
each — little and big — boiled down every week;
so that the quantity of cats' and dogs' meat used
throughout London is about 200,000 lbs. per
week, and this, sold at the rate of 2½d. per lb.,
gives 2,000l. a week for the money spent in
cats' and dogs' meat, or upwards of 100,000l. a
year, which is at the rate of 100l.-worth sold
annually by each carrier. The profits of the
carriers may be estimated at about 50l. each
per annum.

The capital required to start in this business
varies from 1l. to 2l. The stock-money needed
is between 5s. and 10s. The barrow and basket,
weights and scales, knife and steel, or black-
stone, cost about 2l. when new, and from 15s. to
4s. second-hand.

OF THE STREET-SALE OF DRINKABLES.

The street-sellers of the drinkables, who have
now to be considered, belong to the same class
as I have described in treating of the sale of
street-provisions generally. The buyers are
not precisely of the same class, for the street-
eatables often supply a meal, but with the ex-
ception of the coffee-stalls, and occasionally
of the rice-milk, the drinkables are more of
a luxury than a meal. Thus the buyers are
chiefly those who have "a penny to spare,"
rather than those who have "a penny to dine
upon." I have described the different classes
of purchasers of each potable, and perhaps the
accounts — as a picture of street-life — are even
more curious than those I have given of the
purchasers of the eatables — of (literally) the
diners out.

OF COFFEE-STALL KEEPERS.

The vending of tea and coffee, in the streets, was
little if at all known twenty years ago, saloop
being then the beverage supplied from stalls to
the late and early wayfarers. Nor was it until
after 1842 that the stalls approached to any-
thing like their present number, which is said to
be upwards of 300 — the majority of the pro-
prietors being women. Prior to 1824, coffee
was in little demand, even among the smaller
tradesmen or farmers, but in that year the duty
having been reduced from 1s. to 6d. per lb., the
consumption throughout the kingdom in the next
seven years was nearly trebled, the increase being
from 7,933,041 lbs., in 1824, to 22,745,627 lbs.,
in 1831. In 1842, the duty on coffee, was fixed
at 4d., from British possessions, and from foreign
countries at 6d.

But it was not owing solely to the reduced
price of coffee, that the street-vendors of it in-
creased in the year or two subsequent to 1842, at
least 100 per cent. The great facilities then
offered for a cheap adulteration, by mixing
ground chicory with the ground coffee, was an
enhancement of the profits, and a greater tempta-
tion to embark in the business, as a smaller
amount of capital would suffice. Within these
two or three years, this cheapness has been
still further promoted, by the medium of
adulteration, the chicory itself being, in its
turn, adulterated by the admixture of baked
carrots, and the like saccharine roots, which, of
course, are not subjected to any duty, while

[Description: 915EAF. Page 184.]

foreign chicory is charged 6d. per lb. English
chicory is not chargeable with duty, and is now
cultivated, I am assured, to the yield of be-
tween 4,000 and 5,000 tons yearly, and this
nearly all used in the adulteration of coffee.
Nor is there greater culpability in this trade
among street-venders, than among "respecta-
ble" shopkeepers; for I was assured, by a
leading grocer, that he could not mention
twenty shops in the city, of which he could say:
"You can go and buy a pound of ground coffee
there, and it will not be adulterated." The
revelations recently made on this subject by the
Lancet are a still more convincing proof of the
general dishonesty of grocers.

The coffee-stall keepers generally stand at
the corner of a street. In the fruit and meat
markets there are usually two or three coffee-
stalls, and one or two in the streets leading to
them; in Covent-garden there are no less than
four coffee-stalls. Indeed, the stalls abound in
all the great thoroughfares, and the most in
those not accounted "fashionable" and great
"business" routes, but such as are frequented
by working people, on their way to their day's
labour. The best "pitch" in London is sup-
posed to be at the corner of Duke-street, Oxford-
street. The proprietor of that stall is said to
take full 30s. of a morning, in halfpence. One
stall-keeper, I was informed, when "upon the
drink" thinks nothing of spending his 10l. or
15l. in a week. A party assured me that once,
when the stall-keeper above mentioned was away
"on the spree," he took up his stand there, and
got from 4s. to 5s. in the course of ten minutes,
at the busy time of the morning.

The coffee-stall usually consists of a spring-
barrow, with two, and occasionally four, wheels.
Some are made up of tables, and some have a tres-
sel and board. On the top of this are placed two
or three, and sometimes four, large tin cans, hold-
ing upon an average five gallons each. Beneath
each of these cans is a small iron fire-pot, per-
forated like a rushlight shade, and here char-
coal is continually burning, so as to keep the
coffee or tea, with which the cans are filled, hot
throughout the early part of the morning. The
board of the stall has mostly a compartment for
bread and butter, cake, and ham sandwiches,
and another for the coffee mugs. There is
generally a small tub under each of the stalls,
in which the mugs and saucers are washed.
The "grandest" stall in this line is the one
before-mentioned, as standing at the corner of
Duke-street, Oxford-street (of which an engrav-
ing is here given). It is a large truck on four
wheels, and painted a bright green. The cans
are four in number, and of bright polished
tin, mounted with brass-plates. There are
compartments for bread and butter, sand-
wiches, and cake. It is lighted by three large
oil lamps, with bright brass mountings, and
covered in with an oil-cloth roof. The coffee-
stalls, generally, are lighted by candle-lamps.
Some coffee-stalls are covered over with tar-
paulin, like a tent, and others screened from
the sharp night or morning air by a clothes-
horse covered with blankets, and drawn half
round the stall.

Some of the stall-keepers make their appear-
ance at twelve at night, and some not till three
or four in the morning. Those that come out
at midnight, are for the accommodation of the
"night-walkers" — "fast gentlemen" and loose
girls; and those that come out in the morning,
are for the accommodation of the working men.

It is, I may add, piteous enough to see
a few young and good-looking girls, some with-
out the indelible mark of habitual depravity
on their countenances, clustering together for
warmth round a coffee-stall, to which a penny
expenditure, or the charity of the proprietor, has
admitted them. The thieves do not resort to
the coffee-stalls, which are so immediately under
the eye of the policeman.

The coffee-stall keepers usually sell coffee
and tea, and some of them cocoa. They keep
hot milk in one of the large cans, and coffee,
tea, or cocoa in the others. They supply bread
and butter, or currant cake, in slices — ham
sandwiches, water-cresses, and boiled eggs. The
price is 1d. per mug, or ½d. per half-mug, for
coffee, tea, or cocoa; and ½d. a slice the bread
and butter or cake. The ham sandwiches are
2d. (or 1d.) each, the boiled eggs 1d., and the
water-cresses a halfpenny a bunch. The coffee,
tea, cocoa, and sugar they generally purchase
by the single pound, at a grocer's. Those who
do an extensive trade purchase in larger quan-
tities. The coffee is usually bought in the
berry, and ground by themselves. All pur-
chase chicory to mix with it. For the coffee
they pay about 1s.; for the tea about 3s.; for
the cocoa 6d. per lb.; and for the sugar 3½d. to 4d. For the chicory the price is 6d. (which is
the amount of the duty alone on foreign chico-
ry), and it is mixed with the coffee at the rate of
6 ozs. to the pound; many use as much as 9 and
12 ozs. The coffee is made of a dark colour
by means of what are called "finings," which
consist of burnt sugar — such, as is used for
browning soups. Coffee is the article mostly
sold at the stalls; indeed, there is scarcely
one stall in a hundred that is supplied with
tea, and not more than a dozen in all London
that furnish cocoa. The stall-keepers usually
make the cake themselves. A 4 lb. cake
generally consists of half a pound of cur-
rants, half a pound of sugar, six ounces of
beef dripping, and a quartern of flour. The
ham for sandwiches costs 5½d. or 6d. per lb.;
and when boiled produces in sandwiches about
2s. per lb. It is usually cut up in slices little
thicker than paper. The bread is usually "second
bread;" the butter, salt, at about 8d. the pound.
Some borrow their barrows, and pay 1s. a week
for the hire of them. Many borrow the capital
upon which they trade, frequently of their land-
lord. Some get credit for their grocery — some
for their bread. If they borrow, they pay about
20 per cent. per week for the loan. I was told
of one man that makes a practice of lending

[Description: 915EAF. Blank Page.]

[Description: 915EAF. Page 185.]

money to the coffee-stall-keepers and other
hucksters, at the rate of at least 20 per cent. a
week. If the party wishing to borrow a pound
or two is unknown to the money-lender, he
requires security, and the interest to be paid
him weekly. This money-lender, I am in-
formed, has been transported once for receiving
stolen property, and would now purchase any
amount of plate that might be taken to him.

The class of persons usually belonging to
the business have been either cab-men, police-
men, labourers, or artisans. Many have been
bred to dealing in the streets, and brought up
to no other employment, but many have taken
to the business owing to the difficulty of ob-
taining work at their own trade. The gene-
rality of them are opposed to one another. I
asked one in a small way of business what was
the average amount of his profits, and his answer
was, —

"I usually buy 10 ounces of coffee a night.
That costs, when good, 1s. 0½d. With this I
should make five gallons of coffee, such as I
sell in the street, which would require 3 quarts
of milk, at 3d. per quart, and 1½lb. of sugar, at
3½d. per lb., there is some at 3d. This would
come to 2s. 2¾d.; and, allowing 1¼d. for a
quarter of a peck of charcoal to keep the coffee
hot, it would give 2s. 4d. for the cost of five
gallons of coffee. This I should sell out at about
1½d. per pint; so that the five gallons would
produce me 5s., or 2s. 8d. clear. I generally
get rid of one quartern loaf and 6 oz. of
butter with this quantity of coffee, and for
this I pay 5d. the loaf and 3d. the butter,
making 8d.; and these I make into twenty-eight
slices at ½d. per slice; so the whole brings me
in 1s. 2d., or about 6d. clear. Added to this,
I sell a 4 lb. cake, which costs me 3½d. per lb.
1s. 2d. the entire cake; and this in twenty-
eight slices, at 1d. per slice, would yield 2s. 4d., or 1s. 2d. clear; so that altogether my clear
gains would be 4s. 4d. upon an expenditure of
2s. 2d. — say 200 per cent."

This is said to be about the usual profit of the
trade. Sometimes they give credit. One per-
son assured me he trusted as much as 9½d. that
morning, and out of that he was satisfied there
was 4d., at least, he should never see. Most of
the stalls are stationary, but some are locomotive.
Some cans are carried about with yokes, like
milk-cans, the mugs being kept in a basket.
The best district for the night-trade is the City,
and the approaches to the bridges. There are
more men and women, I was told, walking
along Cheapside, Aldersgate-street, Bishops-
gate-street, and Fleet-street. In the latter
place a good trade is frequently done between
twelve at night and two in the morning. For
the morning trade the best districts are the
Strand, Oxford-street, City-road, New-road
(from one end to the other), the markets, espe-
cially Covent Garden, Billingsgate, Newgate,
and the Borough. There are no coffee-stalls
in Smithfield. The reason is that the drovers,
on arriving at the market, are generally tired
and cold, and prefer sitting down to their coffee
in a warm shop rather than drink it in the
open street. The best days for coffee-stalls are
market mornings, viz. Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday. On these days the receipts are gene-
rally half as much again as those of the other
mornings. The best time of the year for the
business is the summer. This is, I am told,
because the workpeople and costermongers have
more money to spend. Some stall-keepers save
sufficient to take a shop, but these are only such
as have a "pitch" in the best thoroughfares.
One who did a little business informed me that
he usually cleared, including Sunday, 14s. —
last week his gains were 15s.; the week
before that he could not remember. He
is very frequently out all night, and does not
earn sixpence. This is on wet and cold nights,
when there are few people about. His is gene-
rally the night-trade. The average weekly
earnings of the trade, throughout the year, are
said to be 1l. The trade, I am assured by all,
is overstocked. They are half too many, they
say. "Two of us," to use their own words,
"are eating one man's bread." "When coffee
in the streets first came up, a man could go
and earn," I am told, "his 8s. a night at the
very lowest; but now the same class of men
cannot earn more than 3s." Some men may
earn comparatively a large sum, as much as
38s. or 2l., but the generality of the trade can-
not make more than 1l. per week, if so much.
The following is the statement of one of the
class: —

"I was a mason's labourer, a smith's labourer,
a plasterer's labourer, or a bricklayer's labourer.
I was, indeed, a labouring man. I could not get
employment. I was for six months without any
employment. I did not know which way to sup-
port my wife and child (I have only one child).
Being so long out of employment, I saw no other
means of getting a living but out of the streets.
I was almost starving before I took to it — that I
certainly was. I'm not ashamed of telling any-
body that, because it's true, and I sought for a
livelihood wherever I could. Many said they
wouldn't do such a thing as keep a coffee-stall,
but I said I'd do anything to get a bit of bread
honestly. Years ago, when I was a boy, I used
to go out selling water-cresses, and apples,
oranges, and radishes, with a barrow, for my
landlord; so I thought, when I was thrown out
of employment, I would take to selling coffee in
the streets. I went to a tinman, and paid him
10s. 6d. (the last of my savings, after I'd been
four or five months out of work) for a can,
I didn't care how I got my living so long as
I could turn an honest penny. Well; I went
on, and knocked about, and couldn't get a
pitch anywhere; but at last I heard that
an old man, who had been in the habit of
standing for many years at the entrance of one
of the markets, had fell ill; so, what did
I do, but I goes and pops into his pitch, and
there I've done better than ever I did afore. I
get 20s. now where I got 10s. one time; and

[Description: 915EAF. Page 186.]

if I only had such a thing as 5l. or 10l., I
might get a good living for life. I cannot
do half as much as the man that was there
before me. He used to make his coffee down
there, and had a can for hot water as well;
but I have but one can to keep coffee and
all in; and I have to borrow my barrow,
and pay 1s. a week for it. If I sell my can out,
I can't do any more. The struggle to get a
living is so great, that, what with one and an-
other in the coffee-trade, it's only those as can
get good `pitches' that can get a crust at it."

As it appears that each coffee-stall keeper
on an average, clears 1l. a week, and his
takings may be said to be at least double that
sum, the yearly street expenditure for tea, cof-
fee, &c., amounts to 31,200l. The quantity of
coffee sold annually in the streets, appears to
be about 550,000 gallons.

To commence as a coffee-stall keeper in a
moderate manner requires about 5l. capital.
The truck costs 2l., and the other utensils and
materials 3l. The expense of the cans is near
upon 16s. each. The stock-money is a few
shillings.

OF THE STREET SALE OF GINGER-BEER,
SHERBET, LEMONADE, &c.

The street-trade in ginger-beer — now a very
considerable traffic — was not known to any
extent until about thirty years ago. About
that time (1822) a man, during a most sultry
drought, sold extraordinary quantities of "cool
ginger-beer" and of "soda-powders," near the
Royal Exchange, clearing, for the three or four
weeks the heat continued, 30s. a day, or 9l. weekly. Soda-water he sold "in powders,"
the acid and the alkali being mixed in the
water of the glass held by the customer, and
drunk whilst effervescing. His prices were 2d. and 3d. a glass for ginger-beer; and 3d. and
4d. for soda-water, "according to the quality;"
though there was in reality no difference what-
ever in the quality — only in the price. From
that time, the numbers pursuing this street
avocation increased gradually; they have how-
ever fallen off of late years.

The street-sellers who "brew their own beer"
generally prepare half a gross (six dozen) at
a time. For a "good quality" or the "penny
bottle" trade, the following are the ingredients
and the mode of preparation: — 3 gallons of
water; 1 lb. of ginger, 6d.; lemon-acid, 2d.; essence of cloves, 2d.; yeast, 2d.; and 1 lb. of
raw sugar, 7d. This admixture, the yeast being
the last ingredient introduced, stands 24 hours,
and is then ready for bottling. If the beverage
be required in 12 hours, double the quantity of
yeast is used. The bottles are filled only "to
the ridge," but the liquid and the froth more
than fill a full-sized half-pint glass. "Only
half froth," I was told, "is reckoned very fair,
and it's just the same in the shops." Thus, 72
bottles, each to be sold at 1d., cost — apart from
any outlay in utensils, or any consideration of
the value of labour — only 1s. 7d., and yield, at
1d. per bottle, 6s. For the cheaper beverage
— called "playhouse ginger-beer" in the trade
— instead of sugar, molasses from the "pri-
vate distilleries" is made available. The
"private" distilleries are the illicit ones:
" `Jiggers,' we call them," said one man; "and
I could pass 100 in 10 minutes' walk from where
we're talking." Molasses, costing 3d. at a jig-
ger's, is sufficient for a half-gross of bottles of
ginger-beer; and of the other ingredients only
half the quantity is used, the cloves being alto-
gether dispensed with, but the same amount of
yeast is generally applied. This quality of
"beer" is sold at ½d. the glass.

About five years ago "fountains" for the
production of ginger-beer became common in
the streets. The ginger-beer trade in the open
air is only for a summer season, extending from
four to seven months, according to the weather,
the season last year having been over in about
four months. There were then 200 fountains in
the streets, all of which, excepting 20 or 30 of
the best, were hired of the ginger-beer manu-
facturers, who drive a profitable trade in them.
The average value of a street-fountain, with
a handsome frame or stand, which is usually
fixed on a wheeled and movable truck, so
as one man's strength may be sufficient to
propel it, is 7l.; and, for the rent of such a
fountain, 6s. a week is paid when the season is
brisk, and 4s. when it is slack; but last summer,
I am told, 4s. 6d. was an average. The largest
and handsomest ginger-beer fountain in London
was — I speak of last summer — in use at the
East-end, usually standing in Petticoat-lane,
and is the property of a dancing-master. It is
made of mahogany, and presents somewhat the
form of an upright piano on wheels. It has
two pumps, and the brass of the pump-handles
and the glass receivers is always kept bright
and clean, so that the whole glitters handsomely
to the light. Two persons "serve" at this
fountain; and on a fine Sunday morning, from
six to one, that being the best trading time, they
take 7l. or 8l. in halfpennies — for "the beer"
is ½d. a glass — and 2l. each other day of the
week. This machine, as it may be called, is
drawn by two ponies, said to be worth 10l. a-piece; and the whole cost is pronounced — per-
haps with a sufficient exaggeration — to have been
150l. There were, in the same neighbourhood,
two more fountains on a similar scale, but com-
moner, each drawn by only one pony instead of
the aristocratic "pair."

The ingredients required to feed the "ginger-
beer" fountains are of a very cheap description.
To supply 10 gallons, 2 quarts of lime-juice
(as it is called, but it is, in reality, lemon-
juice), costing 3s. 6d., are placed in the recess,
sometimes with the addition of a pound of
sugar (4d.); while some, I am assured, put
in a smaller quantity of juice, and add two-
pennyworth of oil of vitriol, which "brings out
the sharpness of the lime-juice." The rest
is water. No process of brewing or fermenta-
tion is necessary, for the fixed air pumped into

[Description: 915EAF. Page 187.]

the liquid as it is drawn from the fountain,
communicates a sufficient briskness or effer-
vescence. "The harder you pumps," said one
man who had worked a fountain, "the fronthier
it comes; and though it seems to fill a big
glass — and the glass an't so big for holding as
it looks — let it settle, and there's only a quarter
of a pint." The hirer of a fountain is required
to give security. This is not, as in some slop-
trades, a deposit of money; but a householder
must, by written agreement, make himself re-
sponsible for any damage the fountain may sus-
tain, as well as for its return, or make good the
loss: the street ginger-beer seller is alone re-
sponsible for the rent of the machine. It is
however, only men that are known, who are
trusted in this way. Of the fountains thus hired,
50 are usually to be found at the neighbouring
fairs and races. As the ginger-beer men carry
lime-juice, &c., with them, only water is required
to complete the "brewing of the beer" and so
conveyance is not difficult.

There is another kind of "ginger-beer," or
rather of "small acid tiff," which is sold out
of barrels at street-stalls at ½d. the glass. To
make 2½ gallons of this, there is used ½lb. tar-
taric, or other acid, 1s.; ½lb. alkali (soda),
10d.; ½lb. lump sugar, bruised fine, 4d.; and
yeast 1d. Of these "barrel-men" there are
now about one hundred.

Another class of street-sellers obtain their
stock of ginger-beer from the manufacturers.
One of the largest manufacturers for the street-
trade resides near Ratcliffe-highway, and another
in the Commercial-road. The charge by the
wholesale traders is 8d. the doz., while to a
known man, or for ready money, 13 are given
to the dozen. The beer, however, is often let
out on credit — or in some cases security is given
in the same way as for the fountains — and the
empty bottles must be duly returned. It is not
uncommon for two gross of beer to be let out
in this way at a time. For the itinerant trade
these are placed on a truck or barrow, fitted
up with four shelves, on which are ranged the
bottles. These barrows are hired in the same
way as the costers' barrows. Some sell their
beer at stalls fitted up exclusively for the trade,
a kind of tank being let into the centre of the
board and filled with water, in which the glasses
are rinsed or washed. Underneath the stall
there is usually a reserve of the beer, and a keg
containing water. Some of the best frequented
stalls were in Whitechapel, Old-street-road, City-
road, Tottenham-court-road, the New-cut, Ele-
phant and Castle, the Commercial-road, Tower-
hill, the Strand, and near Westminster-bridge.

The stationary beer business is, for the most
part, carried on in the more public streets, such
as Holborn and Oxford-street, and in the mar-
kets of Covent-garden, Smithfield, and Billings-
gate; while the peripatetic trade, which is
briskest on the Sundays — when, indeed, some of
the stationary hands become itinerant — is more
for the suburbs; Victoria-park, Battersea-fields,
Hampstead-heath, Primrose-hill, Kennington-
common, and Camberwell-green, being ap-
proved Sunday haunts.

The London street-sellers of ginger-beer,
say the more experienced, may be computed at
3,000 — of whom about one-third are women. I
heard them frequently estimated at 5,000, and
some urged that the number was at least as near
5,000 as 3,000. For my own part I am inclined
to believe that half the smaller number would
be nearer the truth. Judging by the number of
miles of streets throughout the metropolis, and
comparing the street-sellers of ginger-beer with
the fruit-stall keepers, I am satisfied that in
estimating the ginger-beer-sellers at 1,500 we
are rather over than under the truth. This
body of street-sellers were more numerous five
years back by 15 or 20 per cent., but the intro-
duction of the street fountains, and the trade
being resorted to by the keepers of coal-sheds
and the small shopkeepers — who have frequently
a stand with ginger-beer in front of their shops
— have reduced the amount of the street-sellers.
In 1842, there were 1,200 ginger-beer sellers in
the streets who had attached to their stalls or
trucks labels, showing that they were members
— or assumed to be members — of the Society
of Odd Fellows. This was done in hopes of a
greater amount of custom from the other mem-
bers of the Society, but the expectation was
not realised — and so the Odd Fellowship of
the ginger-beer people disappeared. Of the
street-traders 200 work fountains; and of the
remaining portion the stationary and the itine-
rant are about equally divided. Of the whole
number, however, not above an eighth confine
themselves to the trade, but usually sell with
their "pop" some other article of open-air
traffic — fruit, sweet-stuff, or shell-fish. There
are of the entire number about 350, who, when-
ever the weather permits, stay out all night
with their stands or barrows, and are to be found
especially in all the approaches to Covent-gar-
den, and the other markets to which there is a
resort during the night or at day-break. These
men, I was told by one of their body, worked
from eight in the evening to eight or ten next
morning, then went to bed, rose at three, and
"plenty of 'em then goes to the skittles or to
get drunk."

The character of the ginger-beer-sellers does
not differ from what I have described as per-
taining to the costermonger class, and to street-
traders generally. There is the same admix-
ture of the reduced mechanic, the broken-down
gentleman's servant, the man of any class in
life who cannot brook the confinement and re-
straint of ordinary in-door labour, and of the
man "brought up to the streets." One ex-
perienced and trustworthy man told me that
from his own knowledge he could count up
twenty "classical men," as he styled them,
who were in the street ginger-beer-trade, and of
these four had been, or were said to have been
"parsons," two being of the same name (Mr.
S — ); but my informant did not know if
they stood in any degree of consanguinity one

[Description: 915EAF. Page 188.]

to another. The women are the wives, daugh-
ters, or other connections of the men.

Some of the stalls at which ginger-beer is sold
— and it is the same at the coal-sheds and
the chandlers' shops — are adorned pictorially.
Erected at the end of a stall is often a painting,
papered on a board, in which a gentleman, with
the bluest of coats, the whitest of trousers, the
yellowest of waistcoats, and the largest of guard-
chains or eye-glasses, is handing a glass of gin-
ger-beer, frothed up like a pot of stout, and
containing, apparently, a pint and a half, to
some lady in flowing white robes, or gorgeous
in purple or orange.

To commence in this branch of the street
business requires, in all 18s. 3d.: six glasses,
2s. 9d.; board, 5s.; tank, 1s.; keg, 1s.; gross of
beer, 8s. (this is where the seller is not also the
maker); and for towels, &c., 6d.; if however
the street-seller brew his own beer, he will
require half a gross of bottles, 5s. 6d.; and the
ingredients I have enumerated, 1s. 7d.

In addition to the street-sale of ginger-beer is
that of other summer-drinks. Of these, the
principal is lemonade, the consumption of which
is as much as that of all the others together.
Indeed, the high-sounding names given to some
of these beverages — such as "Nectar" and
"Persian Sherbet" — are but other names for
lemonade, in a slightly different colour or
fashion.

Lemonade is made, by those vendors who deal
in the best articles, after the following method:
1 lb. of carbonate of soda, 6d.; 1 lb. of tartaric
acid, 1s. 4d. ("at least," said an informant, `I pay 1s. 4d. at 'Pothecaries Hall, but it can be
had at 1s."); 1 lb. of loaf-sugar, 5½d.; essence
of lemon, 3d. This admixture is kept, in the
form of a powder, in a jar, and water is drawn
from what the street-sellers call a "stone-bar-
rel" — which is a stone jar, something like the
common-shaped filters, with a tap — and a larger
or smaller spoonful of the admixture in a glass
of water supplies an effervescing draught for 1d. or ½d. "There's sometimes shocking roguish-
ness in the trade," said one man, "and there is
in a many trades — some uses vitriol!" Lemon-
ade, made after the recipe I have given, is
sometimes bottled by the street-sellers, and sold
in the same way as ginger-beer. It is bought,
also, for street sale of the ginger-beer manufac-
turers — the profit being the same — but so bought
to less than a twentieth of the whole sale. The
water in the stone barrel is spring-water, ob-
tained from the nearest pump, and in hot weather
obtained frequently, so as to be "served" in as
cool a state as possible. Sometimes lemonade
powders are used; they are bought at a che-
mist's, at 1s. 6d. the pound. "Sherbet" is the
same admixture, with cream of tartar instead of
tartaric acid. "Raspberry" has, sometimes, the
addition of a few crusted raspberries, and a
colouring of cochineal, with, generally, a greater
degree of sweetening than lemonade. "If co-
chineal is used for colouring," said one man,
"it sometimes turns brown in the sun, and the
rasberry don't sell. A little lake's better."
"Lemon-juice" is again lemonade, with a slight
infusion of saffron to give it a yellow or pale
orange colour. "Nectar," in imitation of
Soyer's, has more sugar and less acid than the
lemonade; spices, such as cinnamon, is used to
flavour it, and the colouring is from lake and
saffron.

These "cooling drinks" are sold from the
powder or the jar, as I have described, from
fountains, and from bottles. The fountain sale
is not above a tenth of the whole. All is sold in
½d. and 1d. glasses, except the nectar, which is
never less than 1d. The customers are the same
as those who buy ginger-beer; but one "lemon-
ader" with whom I conversed, seemed inclined
to insist that they were a "more respectabler
class." Boys are good customers — better, per-
haps, than for the beer, — as "the colour and the
fine names attracts them."

The "cooling drink" season, like that of the
ginger-beer, is determined by the weather, and
last summer it was only four months. It was
computed for me that there were 200 persons,
chiefly men, selling solely lemonade, &c., and an
additional 300 uniting the sale with that of gin-
ger-beer. One man, whose statement was con-
firmed by others, told me that on fine days he
took 3s. 6d., out of which he cleared 2s. to 2s. 6d.; and he concluded that his brother tradesmen
cleared as much every fine day, and so, allowing
for wet weather and diminished receipts, made
10s. a week. The receipts, then, for this street
luxury — a receipt of 17s. 6d. affording a profit of
10s. — show a street expenditure in such a sum-
mer as the last, of 2,800l., by those who do not
unite ginger-beer with the trade. Calculating
that those who do unite ginger beer with it sell
only one-half as much as the others, we find a
total outlay of 4,900l. One of the best trades
is in the hands of a man who "works" Smith-
field, and on the market days clears generally
from 6s. to 9s.

The stalls, &c., are of the same character as
those of the ginger-beer sellers. The capital
required to start is: — stone barrel, with brass
tap, 5s. 6d.; stand and trestle, 6s.; 6 tumbler
glasses, 2s. 3d.; 2 towels, 6d.; stock money,
2s. 6d.; jar, 2s.; 12 bottles (when used), 3s. 6d.; in all, about a guinea.

In showing the money expended in the gin-
ger-beer trade it must be borne in mind that a
large portion of the profits accrues to persons
who cannot be properly classed with the regular
street-traders. Such is the proprietor of the
great fountain of which I have spoken, who is
to be classed as a speculative man, ready to
embark capital in any way — whether connected
with street-traffic or not — likely to be remu-
nerative. The other and large participants
in the profits are the wholesale ginger-beer
manufacturers, who are also the letters-out of
fountains, one of them having generally nine
let out at a time. For a street trader to sell
three gross of ginger-beer in bottle is now
accounted a good week, and for that the receipts

[Description: 915EAF. Page 189.]

will be 36s. with a profit in the penny bottle
trade, to the seller, if he buy of a manufacturer,
of 12s.; if he be his own brewer — reckoning
a fair compensation for labour, and for money
invested in utensils, and in bottles, &c., of 20s.
An ordinary week's sale is two gross, costing
the public 24s., with the same proportion of
profit in the same trade to the seller. In a bad week, or "in a small way to help out other
things," not more than one gross is sold.

The fountain trade is the most profitable to
the proprietors, whether they send out their
machines on their own account, or let them out
on hire; but perhaps there are only an eighth of
the number not let out on hire. Calculating
that a fountain be let out for three successive
seasons of twenty weeks each, at only 4s. the
week, the gross receipts are 12l. for what on the
first day of hire was worth only 7l.; so that the
returns from 200 machines let out for the same
term, would be 2,400l., or a profit of 1,000l. over and above the worth of the fountain, which
having been thus paid for is of course in a suc-
ceeding year the means of a clear profit of 4l.
I am assured that the weekly average of "a
fountain's takings," when in the hands of the
regular street-dealers, is 18s.

The barrel traders may be taken as in the
average receipt of 6s. a week.

The duration of the season was, last year,
only sixteen weeks. Calculating from the best
data I could acquire, it appears that for this
period 200 street-sellers of ginger-beer in the
bottle trade of the penny class take 30s. a week
each (thus allowing for the inferior receipts in
bad weather); 300 take 20s. each, selling for
the most part at ½d. the bottle, and that the re-
maining 400 "in a small way" take 6s. each;
hence we find 11,480l. expended in the bottled
ginger-beer of the streets. Adding the receipts
from the fountains and the barrels, the barrel
season continuing only ten weeks, the total sum
expended annually in street ginger-beer is alto-
gether 14,660l. The bottles of ginger-beer sold
yearly in the streets will number about 4,798,000,
and the total street consumption of the same
beverage may be said to be about 250,000 gal-
lons per annum.

OF THE EXPERIENCE AND CUSTOMERS OF A
GINGER-BEER SELLER.

A slim, well-spoken man, with a half-military
appearance, as he had a well trimmed mous-
tache, and was very cleanlily dressed, gave me
the following account: "I have known the
ginger-beer trade for eight years, and every
branch of it. Indeed I think I've tried all
sorts of street business. I've been a coster-
monger, a lot-seller, a nut-seller, a secret-
paper-seller (with straws, you know, sir), a
cap-seller, a street-printer, a cakeman, a clown,
an umbrella-maker, a toasting-fork maker, a
sovereign seller, and a ginger-beer seller. I
hardly know what I haven't been. I made
my own when last I worked beer. Sunday
was my best day, or rather Sunday mornings
when there's no public-houses open. Drinking
Saturday nights make dry Sunday mornings.
Many a time men have said to me: `Let's
have a bottle to quench a spark in my throat,'
or `My mouth's like an oven.' I've had to
help people to lift the glass to their lips, their
hands trembled so. They couldn't have written
their names plain if there was a sovereign for
it. But these was only chance customers; one
or two in a morning, and five or six on a
Sunday morning. I've been a teetotaller
myself for fifteen years. No, sir, I didn't
turn one — but I never was a drinker — not
from any great respect for the ginger-beer trade,
but because I thought it gave one a better
chance of getting on. I once had saved money,
but it went in a long sickness. I used to be
off early on Sunday mornings sometimes to
Hackney Marsh, and sell my beer there to
gentlemen — oldish gentlemen some of them —
going a fishing. Others were going there to
swim. One week I took 35s. at 1d. a bottle, by
going out early in a morning; perhaps 20s. of
it was profit, but my earnings in the trade in
a good season wasn't more than 12s. one week
with another. All the trades in the streets are
bad now, I think. Eight years back I could
make half as much more in ginger-beer as could
be made last summer. Working people and
boys were my other customers. I stuck to
ginger-beer in the season and then went into
something else, for I can turn my hand to any-
thing. I began a street life at eight years old
by selling memorandum-books in the bull-ring
at Birmingham. My parents were ill and
hadn't a farthing in the house. I began with
1d. stock-money, and I bought three memoran-
dum-books for it at Cheap Jack's thatched
house. I've been in London seventeen or
eighteen years. I'm a roulette-maker now;
I mean the roulette boxes that gentlemen take
with them to play with when travelling on a
railway or such times. I make loaded dice, too,
and supply gaming-houses. I think I know
more gaming-houses than any man in London.
I've sold them to gentlemen and to parsons,
that is ministers of religion. I can prove that.
I don't sell those sort of things in the streets.
I could do very well in the trade, but it's so
uncertain and so little's wanted compared to
what would keep a man going, and I have a
mother that's sixty to support. Altogether my
present business is inferior to the ginger-beer;
but the fountains will destroy all the fair gin-
ger-beer trade."

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF HOT ELDER
WINE.

The sale of hot elder wine in the streets is
one of the trades which have been long esta-
blished, but it is only within these eight or
ten years that it has been carried on in its
present form. It continues for about four months
in the winter.

Elder wine is made from the berries of the
elder-tree. Elder syrup — also made from the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 190.]

berries — was formerly famous in the north of
England as a curative for colds, and was fre-
quently taken, with a small admixture of rum,
at bedtime. Some of the street-sellers make the
wine themselves; the majority, however, buy it
of the British wine makers. The berries must
be gathered when fully ripe, and on a dry day.
They are picked, measured, and put into a
copper, two gallons of water being added to
every gallon of berries. They are then boiled
till the berries are quite soft, when the liquor is
strained and pressed from them through a strong
hair sieve. The liquor thus expressed is again
put into the copper, boiled an hour, skimmed,
and placed in a tub along with a bread toast,
on which yeast is spread thickly; it then
stands two days, and is afterwards put into a
cask, a few cloves and crusted ginger being
hung in a muslin bag from the bung-hole,
so as to flavour the liquor. Sometimes this
spicing is added afterwards, when the liquor
is warmed. The berries are sold in the mar-
kets, principally in Covent-garden, — the price
varying, according to the season, from 1s. 6d. to 3s. a gallon. Of all elder-wine makers the
Jews are the best as regards the street com-
modity. The costermongers say they "have a
secret;" a thing said frequently enough when
superior skill is shown, and especially when,
as in the case of the Jews' elder wine, better
pennyworths are given. The Jews, I am told,
add a small quantity of raspberry vinegar to
their "elder," so as to give it a "sharp pleasant
twang." The heat and pungency of the elder
wine sold in the streets is increased by some
street-sellers by means of whole black pepper
and capsicums.

The apparatus in which the wine is now kept
for sale in the streets is of copper or brass,
and is sometimes "handsome." It is generally
an urn of an oblong form, erected on a sort
of pedestal, with the lid or top ornamented
with brass mouldings, &c. Three plated taps
give vent to the beverage. Orifices are con-
trived and are generally hidden, or partially
hidden, with some ornament, which act as
safety-valves, or, as one man would have it,
"chimneys." The interior of these urns holds
three or four quarts of elder wine, which is sur-
rounded with boiling water, and the water and
wine are kept up to the boiling pitch by
means of a charcoal fire at the foot of the
vessel. Fruit of some kind is generally sold
by the elder-wine men at their stand.

The elder wine urn is placed on a stand
covered with an oil-cloth, six or eight glasses
being ranged about it. It is sold at a half-
penny and a penny a glass; but there is
"little difference in some elder wines," I
was told, "between the penn'orths and the
ha'porths." A wine glass of the "regular"
size is a half-quartern, or the eighth of a pint.

Along with each glass of hot elder wine is
given a small piece of toasted bread. Some
buyers steep this bread in the wine, and so
imbibe the flavour. "It ain't no good as I
know on," said an elder-wine seller, "but
it's the fashion, and so people must have
it." The purchasers of elder wine are the
working classes — but not the better order of
them — and the boys of the street. Some of
these lads, I was told, were very choice and
critical in their elder wines. Some will say:
"It ain't such bad wine, but not the real
spicy." — "The helder I thinks," said another,
"is middlin', but somehow there's nothing but
hotness for to taste."

Of these traders there are now perhaps fifty
in London. One man counted up thirty of his
brethren whom he knew personally, or knew
to be then "working elder," and he thought
that there might be as many more, but I am
assured that fifty is about the mark. The
sellers of elder wine have been for the most
part mechanics who have adopted the calling
for the reasons I have often given. None of
them, in the course of my inquiry, depended
entirely upon the sale of the wine, but sold fruit
in addition to it. All complained of the bad
state of trade. One man said, that four or five
years back he had replenished the wine in a
three quart urn twelve times a day, a jar of
the wine being kept at the stall in readiness for
that purpose. This amounted to 576 glasses
sold in the course of the day, and a receipt —
reckoning each glass at a penny — of 48s.; but
probably not more than 40s. would be taken,
as some would have halfpenny glasses. Now the
same man rarely sells three quarts in a day,
except perhaps on a Saturday, and on wet days
he sells none at all. The elder wine can be
bought at almost any at the wine makers,
from 4d. to 1s. 6d. the quart. The charge in
the public-houses is twice as high as in the
streets, but the inn wine, I was told by a person
familiar with the trade, contains spirit, and is
more highly spiced.

A decent-looking middle-aged man who had
been in a gentleman's service, but was disabled
by an accident which crushed his hand, and
who thereupon resorted to street-selling and
had since continued in it, in different branches,
from fifteen to twenty years, gave me an account
of his customers. He had not been acquainted
with the elder-wine trade above four or five
years when he bought an elder can for about 15s. among a cheap miscellaneous "lot" in Smith-
field one Friday afternoon, and so he com-
menced:

"It's a poor trade, sir," he said. "I don't
suppose any of us make 10s. a week at it alone,
but it's a good help to other things, and I do
middling. I should say less than a 1s. a day
was above the average profits of the trade. Say
5s. a week, for on wet days we can't sell at all.
No one will stop to drink elder wine in the wet.
They'll rather have a pennor'th of gin, or half
a pint of beer with the chill off, under shelter.
I sell sometimes to people that say they're
teetotallers and ask if there's any spirit in my
wine. I assure them there's not, just the juice
of the berry. I start when I think the weather's

[Description: 915EAF. Page 191.]

cold enough, and keep at it as long as there's
any demand. My customers are boys and
poor people, and I sell more ha'porths than
pennor'ths. I've heard poor women that's
bought of me say it was the only wine they
ever tasted. The boys are hard to please, but
I won't put up with their nonsense. It's not
once in fifty times that a girl of the town buys
my wine. It's not strong enough for her, I
fancy. A sharp frosty dry day suits me best.
I may then sell three or four quarts. I don't
make it, but buy it. It's a poor trade, and I
think it gets worse every year, though I believe
there's far fewer of us."

One elder-wine stand in Tottenham-court-
road cost, when new, 7l., but that was six or
seven years ago. Calculating that 50 persons
clear 5s. a week for 16 weeks, their profit being
at least cent. per cent., the street outlay in this
very British wine will be only 200l., and the
street-consumption of it in the course of the
year 1,500 gallons.

OF THE STREET SALE OF PEPPERMINT-WATER.

Perhaps the only thing which can be called a
cordial or a liqueur sold in the streets (if we
except elder wine), is peppermint-water, and of
this the sale is very limited. For the first 15
or 20 years of the present century, I was told
by one who spoke from a personal knowledge,
"a pepperminter" had two little taps to his keg,
which had a division in the interior. From one
tap was extracted "peppermint-water;" from
the other, "strong peppermint-water." The one
was at that time 1d. a glass, the other from 2d. to 4d., according to the size of the glass. With
the "strong" beverage was mixed smuggled
spirit, but so strongly impregnated with the
odour of the mint, that a passer-by could not
detect the presence of the illicit compound.
There are six persons selling peppermint-water
in the winter, and only half that number in the
summer. The trade is irregular, as some pursue
it only of a night, and generally in the street mar-
kets; others sell at Billingsgate, and places of
great traffic, when the traffic is being carried on.
They are stationary for awhile, but keep shifting
their ground. The vendors generally "distilled
their own mint," when the sale was greater, but
within these six or eight years they have pur-
chased it at a distilling chemist's, and have
only prepared it for sale. Water is added to the
distilled liquid bought of the chemist, to in-
crease the quantity; but to enhance the heat of
the draught — which is a draw to some buyers —
black pepper (unground), or ginger, or, but
rarely, capsicums, are steeped in the beverage.
The peppermint-water is lauded by the vendors,
when questioned concerning it, as an excellent
stomachic; but nothing is said publicly of its
virtues, the cry being merely, "Pep-permint
water, a halfpenny a glass."

The sellers will generally say that they distil
the peppermint-water themselves, but this is
not now commonly the case. The process, how-
ever, is simple enough. The peppermint
is gathered just as it is bursting into flower, and
the leaves and buds are placed in a tub, with
ust water enough to cover them. This steeping
continues 24 hours, and then a still is filled
three-parts full, and the water is "over" drawn
very slowly.

The price at the chemist's is 1s. a quart for
the common mint-water; the street price is ½d. a glass, containing something short of the eighth
of a pint. What costs 1s., the street-seller dis-
poses of for 2s., so realising the usual cent. per
cent.

To take 2s. is now accounted "a tidy day's
work;" and calculating that four "pepper-
minters" take that amount the year round, Sun-
days excepted, we find that nearly 125l. is spent
annually in peppermint-water and 900 gallons
of it consumed every year in the streets of
London.

The capital required is, keg, 3s. 6d., or jar,
2s. (for they are used indifferently); four glasses,
1s.; towel, 4d., and stock-money, 4s.; or, in all,
about 8s. The "water"-keg, or jar, is carried
by the vendor, but sometimes it is rested on a
large stool carried for the purpose. A distilling
apparatus, such as the street-sellers used, was
worth about 10s. The vendors are of the same
class of street-sellers as the ginger-beer people.

OF MILK SELLING IN ST. JAMES'S PARK.

The principal sale of milk from the cow is in
St. James's Park. The once fashionable drink
known as syllabubs — the milk being drawn
warm from the cow's udder, upon a portion
of wine, sugar, spice, &c. — is now unknown.
As the sellers of milk in the park are merely
the servants of cow-keepers, and attend to the
sale as a part of their business, no lengthened
notice is required.

The milk-sellers obtain leave from the Home
Secretary, to ply their trade in the park. There
are eight stands in the summer, and as many
cows, but in the winter there are only four cows.
The milk-vendors sell upon an average, in
the summer, from eighteen to twenty quarts
per day; in the winter, not more than a third
of that quantity. The interrupted milking of
the cows, as practised in the Park, often causes
them to give less milk, than they would in
the ordinary way. The chief customers are
infants, and adults, and others, of a delicate
constitution, who have been recommended to
take new milk. On a wet day scarcely any
milk can be disposed of. Soldiers are occa-
sional customers.

A somewhat sour-tempered old woman,
speaking as if she had been crossed in love, but
experienced in this trade, gave me the following
account:

"It's not at all a lively sort of life, selling
milk from the cows, though some thinks it's
a gay time in the Park! I've often been dull
enough, and could see nothing to interest one,
sitting alongside a cow. People drink new milk
for their health, and I've served a good many such.
They're mostly young women, I think, that's de-

[Description: 915EAF. Page 192.]

licate, and makes the most of it. There's twenty
women, and more, to one man what drinks new
milk. If they was set to some good hard work,
would do them more good than new milk, or
ass's milk either, I think. Let them go on a milk-
walk to cure them — that's what I say. Some
children come pretty regularly with their nurses
to drink new milk. Some bring their own china
mugs to drink it out of; nothing less was good
enough for them. I've seen the nurse-girls
frightened to death about the mugs. I've heard
one young child say to another: `I shall tell
mama that Caroline spoke to a mechanic, who
came and shook hands with her.' The girl
was as red as fire, and said it was her brother.
Oh, yes, there's a deal of brothers comes to
look for their sisters in the Park. The great-
est fools I've sold milk to is servant-gals out
for the day. Some must have a day, or half a
day, in the month. Their mistresses ought to
keep them at home, I say, and not let them out
to spend their money, and get into nobody knows
what company for a holiday; mistresses is too
easy that way. It's such gals as makes fools
of themselves in liking a soldier to run after
them. I've seen one of them — yes, some would
call her pretty, and the prettiest is the silliest
and easiest tricked out of money, that's my opi-
nion, anyhow — I've seen one of them, and more
than one, walk with a soldier, and they've stopped
a minute, and she's taken something out of her
glove and given it to him. Then they've come
up to me, and he's said to her, `Mayn't I treat
you with a little new milk, my dear?' and he's
changed a shilling. Why, of course, the silly
fool of a gal had given him that there shilling.
I thought, when Annette Myers shot the soldier,
it would be a warning, but nothing's a warning
to some gals. She was one of those fools. It
was a good deal talked about at the stand, but
I think none of us know'd her. Indeed, we
don't know our customers but by sight. Yes,
there's now and then some oldish gentlemen —
I suppose they're gentlemen, anyhow, they're
idle men — lounging about the stand: but there's
no nonsense there. They tell me, too, that
there's not so much lounging about as there
was; those that's known the trade longer than
me thinks so. Them children's a great check
on the nusses, and they can't be such fools as
the servant-maids. I don't know how many of
them I've served with milk along with soldiers:
I never counted them. They're nothing to me.
Very few elderly people drink new milk. It's
mostly the young. I've been asked by strangers
when the Duke of Wellington would pass to the
Horse-Guards or to the House of Lords. He's
pretty regular. I've had 6d. given me — but not
above once or twice a year — to tell strangers
where was the best place to see him from as
he passed. I don't understand about this Great
Exhibition, but, no doubt, more new milk will
be sold when it's opened, and that's all I cares
about."

OF THE STREET SALE OF MILK.

During the summer months milk is sold in
Smithfield, Billingsgate, and the other markets,
and on Sundays in Battersea-fields, Clapham-
common, Camberwell -green, Hampstead-
heath, and similar places. About twenty men
are engaged in this sale. They usually wear a
smock frock, and have the cans and yoke used
by the regular milk-sellers; they are not
itinerant. The skim milk — for they sell none
else — is purchased at the dairies at 1½d. a
quart, and even the skim milk is also further
watered by the street-sellers. Their cry is
"Half-penny half-pint! Milk!" The tin
measure however in which the milk-and-water
is served is generally a "slang," and contains
but half of the quantity proclaimed. The pur-
chasers are chiefly boys and children; rarely
men, and never costermongers, I was told, "for
they reckon milk sickly." These street-sellers
— who have most of them been employed in the
more regular milk-trade — clear about 1s. 6d. a day each, for three months; and as the profit
is rather more than cent. per cent. it appears
that about 4,000 gallons of milk are thus sold,
and upwards of 260l. laid out upon these per-
sons, yearly in its purchase.

A pair of cans with the yoke cost 15s., and
1l. is amply sufficient as capital to start in this
trade, as the two measures used may be bought
for 2s.; and 3s. can be devoted to the purchase
of the liquid.

OF THE STREET-SALE OF CURDS AND
WHEY.

The preparations of milk which comprise the
street-trade, are curds and whey and rice-milk,
the oldest street-sellers stating that these were a
portion of the trade in their childhood. The one
is a summer, and the other a winter traffic, and
both are exclusively in the hands of the same
middle-aged and elderly women. The vendors
prepare the curds and whey in all cases them-
selves. "Skim-milk," purchased at the dairies,
is used by the street-purveyors, a gallon being
the quantity usually prepared at a time. This
milk gallon is double the usual quantity, or
eight quarts. The milk is first "scalded," the
pan containing it being closely watched, in order
that the contents may not boil. The scalding oc-
cupies 10 or 15 minutes, and it is then "cooled"
until it attains the lukewarmness of new milk.
Half a pound of sugar is then dissolved in the
milk, and a tea-spoonful of rennet is introduced,
which is sufficient to "turn" a gallon. In an
hour, or in some cases two, the milk is curded,
and is ready for use. The street-sale is con-
fined to stalls; the stall, which is the ordinary
stand, being covered with a white cloth, or in
some cases an oil-cloth, and on this the curds,
in a bright tin kettle or pan, are deposited.
There are six mugs on the board, and a spoon in
each, but those who affect a more modern style
have glasses. One of the neatest stalls, as regards
the display of glass, and the bright cleanliness

[Description: 915EAF. Page 193.]

of the vessel containing the curds, is in Holborn;
but the curd-seller there has only an average
business. The mugs or glasses hold about the
third of a pint, and "the full of one" is a penny-
worth; for a halfpenny-worth the vessel is half
filled. The season is during the height of sum-
mer, and continues three or four months, or, as
one woman tersely and commercially expressed
it, "from Easter to fruit." The number of
street-saleswomen is about 100. Along with the
curds they generally sell oranges, or such early
fruit as cherries.

A woman who had sold "cruds" — as the
street-people usually call it — for eighteen years,
gave me the following account: — "Boys and
girls is my best customers for cruds, sir. Perhaps
I sell to them almost half of all I get rid of.
Very little fellows will treat girls, often bigger
than themselves, at my stall, and they have as
much chaffing and nonsense about it's being
`stunning good for the teeth,' and such like, as
if they was grown-up. Some don't much like it
at first, but they gets to like it. One boy, whose
young woman made faces at it — and it was a little
sour to be sure that morning — got quite vexed
and said, `Wot a image you're a-making on
yourself!' I don't know what sort the boys are,
only that they're the street-boys mostly. Quiet
working people are my other customers, perhaps
rather more women than men. Some has told
me they was teetotallers. Then there's the
women of the town of the poorer sort, they're good customers, — as indeed I think they are
for most cooling drinks at times, for they seem
to me to be always thirsty. I never sell to dust-
men or that sort of people. Saturday is my
best day. If it's fine and warm, I sell a gallon
then, which makes about 40 penn'orths; some-
times it brings me 3s., sometimes 3s. 6d.; it's
rather more than half profits. Take it altogether,
I sell five gallons in fine dry weeks, and half
that in wet; and perhaps there's what I call a
set down wet week for every two dry. Nobody
has a better right to pray against wet weather
than poor women like me. Ten years ago I sold
almost twice as much as I can now. There's
so many more of us at present, I think, and
let alone that there's more shops keeps it
too."

Another old woman told me, that she used,
"when days was longest," to be up all night,
and sell her "cruds" near Drury-lane theatre,
and often received in a few hours 5s. or 6s., from
"ladies and gentlemen out at night." But the
men were so rackety, she said, and she'd had her
stall so often kicked over by drunken people,
and no help for it, that she gave up the night-
trade, and she believed it was hardly ever fol-
lowed now.

To start in the curds and whey line requires
the following capital: — Saucepan, for the scald-
ing and boiling, 2s.; stall, 5s; 6 mugs, 6d.; or
6 glasses, 2s. 6d.; 6 spoons, 3d.; tin kettle on
stall, 3s. 6d.; pail for water to rinse glasses, 1s.
Then for stock-money: 1 gallon skimmed milk,
1s. 6d. or 1s. 8d.; and ½ lb. sugar, 2d. In all,
14s. 1d., reckoning the materials to be of the
better sort.

Of the whole number of street curd-sellers,
50 dispose of as much as my informant, or 12½
gallons in 3 weeks; the other 50 sell only half as
much. Taking the season at 3 months, we find
the consumption of curds and whey in the street
to be 2,812 double gallons (as regards the in-
gredient of milk), at a cost to the purchasers of
421l., half of which is the profit accruing to
the street-seller. The receipts of those having
the better description of business being 9s. 4d. weekly; those of the smaller traders being 4s. 8d.
There is a slight and occasional loss by the
"cruds" being kept until unsaleable, in which
case they are "fit for nothing but the hog-wash
man."

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF RICE-MILK.

To make rice -milk, the street-seller usually
boils four quarts, of the regular measure, of
"skim" with one pound of rice, which has been
previously boiled in water. An hour suffices
for the boiling of the milk; and the addition of
the rice, swollen by the boiling water, increases
the quantity to six quarts. No other process is
observed, except that some sweeten their rice-
milk before they offer it for sale; the majority,
however, sweeten it to the customer's liking
when he is "served," unless — to use the words
of one informant — "he have a werry, werry
sweet tooth indeed, sir; and that can't be
stood." For the sweetening of six quarts, half
a pound of sugar is used; for the "spicing,"
half an ounce of allspice, dashed over the milk
freely enough from a pepper-castor. Rice-milk
is always sold at stalls arranged for the pur-
pose, and is kept in a tin pan fitted upon a
charcoal brazier, so that the "drinkable" is
always hot. This apparatus generally stands
on the ground alongside the stall, and is
elevated only by the feet of the brazier. The
"rice-milk woman," — for the street-sellers are
generally females, — dips a large breakfast-cup,
holding half a pint, into the pan, puts a tea-
spoonful of sugar into it, browns the whole with
allspice, and receives 1d.; a halfpennyworth is,
of course, half the quantity. The rice-milk
women are also sellers of oranges, chestnuts,
apples, or some other fruit, as well as the rice-
milk; but, sometimes, when the weather is
very cold and frosty, they sell rice-milk alone.
There are fifty street-sellers of rice-milk in
London. Saturday night is the best time of
sale, when it is not uncommon for a rice-
milk woman to sell six quarts; but, in a
good trade, four quarts a day for six days of
the week is an average. The purchasers are
poor people; and a fourth of the milk is sold to
boys and girls, to whom it is often a meal. "Ah,
sir," said one woman, "you should have seen
how a poor man, last winter, swallowed a pen-
n'orth. He'd been a-wandering all night, he
said, and he looked it, and a gentleman gave
him 2d., for he took pity on his hungry look, and
he spent 1d. with me, and I gave him another

[Description: 915EAF. Page 194.]

cup for charity. `God bless the gentleman and
you!' says he, `it's saved my life; if I'd bought
a penny loaf, I'd have choked on it.' He wasn't
a beggar, for I never saw him before, and I've
never seen him again from that day to this."
The same informant told me, that she believed
no rice-milk was bought by the women of the
town: "it didn't suit the likes of them."
Neither is it bought by those who are engaged
in noisome trades. If there be any of the rice-
milk left at night, and the saleswoman have
doubts of its "keeping," it is re-boiled with
fresh rice and milk. The profit is consider-
able; for the ingredients, which cost less than
1s. 6d., are made into 96 pennyworths, and so
to realize 8s. In some of the poorer localities,
however, such as Rosemary-lane, only ½d. the
half-pint can be obtained, and 4s. is then
the amount received for six quarts, instead
of 8s.

To start "in rice-milk" requires 13s. capital,
which includes a pan for boiling the milk,
2s.; a kettle, with brazier, for stall, 4s.; stall
or stand, 5s.; six cups, 9d.; for stock-money
15½d., with which is bought 4 quarts of skim-
milk, 9d.; 1 lb. of rice, 3d.; ½ lb. of sugar,
2d.; allspice, 1d.

The season continues for four months; and
calculating — a calculation within the mark —
that one half of the 50 sellers have as good a
trade as my informant — 24 quarts weekly — and
that, of the remaining 25, one half sell 12 quarts
each weekly, at 1d. the half-pint, and the other
half vend 24 quarts at ½d. the half-pint, we find
that 320l. is annually spent in rice-milk and
about 3,000 gallons of it yearly consumed in
the streets of London.

OF WATER-CARRIERS.

It may surprise many to learn that there are
still existing water-carriers in London, and
some of them depending upon the trade for
a livelihood; while others, the "odd men" of
the neighbourhood, carry pails of spring water
to the publicans or eating-house keepers, who
may not have servants to send to the nearest
pump for it, and who require it fresh and cool
for those who drink it at their meals. Of these
men there are, as near as I can ascertain, from
100 to 150; their charge is 1d. per pail. Their
earnings per day 6d. to 1s.. Perhaps none of
them depend solely upon this labour for their
support.

It is otherwise at Highgate and Hampstead,
for in those places both men and women depend
entirely for their daily bread on water carrying.
At Hampstead the supply is derived from what
may be called a double well, known as "the
Conduit." The ground is flagged, and the
water is seen at each corner of a wall built to
the surface of the ground (about eight feet) and
surmounted by an iron rail. The water is
covered over, in one corner and not in the other,
and the carrier descends a step or two, dips in
his pails and walks away with them when filled.
The water is carried by means of a "yoke,"
in the same way as we see the milk-pails
carried in every street in London. The well
and the field in which the Hampstead water is
situated are the property of the Church, and
the water is free to any one, in any quantity,
either for sale or any other purpose, "without
leave." In droughts or frosts the supply fails,
and the carriers have sometimes to wait hours
for their "turn," and then to bale the water
into their pails with a basin. The nearest
street to which the water is carried is half a
mile distant. Some is carried three quarters of
a mile, and some (occasionally) a mile. The
two pails full, which contain seven gallons, are
sold at 1½d. The weight is about 70 lbs.
Seventeen years ago the price was 3d.; after
which it fell to 2½d., then to 2d., and has been
1½d. these five or six years, while now there are
three or four carriers who even "carry" at two
pails a-penny to the nearer places. The supply
of the well (apart from drought or frost) is fifty-
six gallons an hour. The principal customers
are the laundresses; but in wet weather their
cisterns and water-tubs are filled, and the car-
riers, or the major part of them, are idle. The
average earnings of the carriers are 5s. a week
the year through. Two of them are men of
seventy. There is a bench about midway to
Hampstead, at which these labourers rest; and
here on almost every fine day sits with them a
palsied old soldier, a pensioner of about eighty,
who regales them, almost daily, with long tales
of Vinegar Hill, and Jemmy O'Brien (the in-
former), and all the terrors of the terrible times
of the Irish rebellion of 1798; for the old man
(himself an Irishman) had served through the
whole of it. This appears to be a somewhat
curious theme for constant expatiation to a band
of London water-carriers.

There are now twenty individuals, fourteen
men and six women, carrying at Hampstead, and
twice that number at Highgate. Some leave the
carrying when they get better work, — but three-
fourths of the number live by it entirely. The
women are the wives and widows of carriers.
The men have been either mechanics or labour-
ers, except six or eight youths (my informant
was not certain which) who had been "brought
up to the water, but would willingly get away
from it if they could."

A well-spoken and intelligent-looking man,
dressed in thick fustian, old and greasy, "but
good enough for the carrying," gave me the fol-
lowing account.

"I was a copper-plate printer," he said,
"and twenty years ago could earn my 25s. a
week. But employment fell off. The litho-
graphic injured it, and at last I could get very
little work, and then none at all, so I have been
carrying now between three and four years. My
father-in-law was in the trade, and that made
me think of it. My best day's work, and it's the
same with all, is 2s., which is sixteen turns.
It's not possible to do more. If that could be
done every day it would be very well, but in
wet weather when the laundresses, who are my

[Description: 915EAF. Page 195.]

customers, don't want water, I can't make 1s. a
week. Then in a drought or a frost one has to
wait such a long time for his turn, that it's not
6d. a day; a dry spring's the worst. Last
March I had many days to wait six turns, and
it takes well on to an hour for a turn then. We
sit by the well and talk when we're waiting.
O, yes, sir, the Pope has had his turn of talk.
There's water companies both at Hampstead
and Highgate, but our well water (Hampstead)
is asked for, for all that. It's so with Highgate.
It is beautiful water, either for washing or
drinking. Perhaps it's better with a little drop
of spirit for drinking, but I seldom taste it that
way. The fatigue's so great that we must take
a little drop of spirit on a long day. No, sir, we
don't mix it; that spoils two good things. I've
been at the well first light in the morning, and
in summer I've been at work at it all night.
There's no rule among us, but it's understood
that every one has his turn. There's a little
chaff sometimes, and some get angry at having
to wait, but I never knew a fight. I have a wife
and three children. She works for a laundress,
and has 2s. 6d. a day. She has two days regular
every week, and sometimes odd turns as well.
I think that the women earn more than the
men in Hampstead. My rent is 1s. 6d. a week
for an unfurnished room. There is no trade on
Sundays, but on fine summer Sundays old —
attends at the well and sells glasses of cool
water. He gets 2s. 6d. some days. He makes
no charge; just what any one pleases to give.
Any body might do it, but the old gentleman
would grumble that they were taking his post."

Computing the number of water carriers at the
two places at sixty, and their average earnings
through the year at 5s. a week, it appears that
these men receive 1,452l. yearly. The capital
required to start in the business is 9s., the cost
of a pair of pails and a yoke.

The old man who sells water on the summer
Sunday mornings, generally leaving off his sale
at church-time, told me that his best customers
were ladies and gentlemen who loved an
early walk, and bought of him "as it looked
like a bit of country life," he supposed, more
than from being thirsty. When such customers
were not inhabitants of the neighbourhood, they
came to him to ask their way, or to make
inquiries concerning the localities. Sometimes
he dispensed water to men who "looked as if
they had been on the loose all night." One
gentleman," he said, "looks sharp about him,
and puts a dark-coloured stuff — very likely it's
brandy — into the two or three glasses of water
which he drinks every Sunday, or which he used
to drink rather, for I missed him all last summer,
I think. His hand trembled like a aspen; he
mostly gave me 6d." The water-seller spoke
with some indignation of boys, and sometimes
men, going to the well on a Sunday morning
and "drinking out of their own tins that they'd
taken with 'em."

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PASTRY AND
CONFECTIONARY.

The cooked provisions sold in the streets, it has
been before stated, consist of three kinds —
solids, liquids, and pastry and confectionary.
The two first have now been fully described,
but the last still remains to be set forth.

The street pastry may be best characterised as
of a strong flavour. This is, for the most part,
attributable to the use of old or rancid butter, —
possessing the all-important recommendation of
cheapness, — or to the substitution of lard, drip-
ping, or some congenial substance. The "strong"
taste, however, appears to possess its value in
the estimation of street pastry-buyers, especially
among the boys. This may arise from the
palates of the consumers having been unaccus-
tomed to more delicate flavours, and having
become habituated to the relish of that which
is somewhat rank; just in the same way as the
"fumet" of game or venison becomes dear to
the palate of the more aristocratic gourmand. To
some descriptions of street pastry the epithet
strong-flavoured may seem inappropriate, but
it is appropriate to the generality of these comes-
tibles, — especially to the tarts, which constitute a
luxury, if not to the meat pies or puddings that
may supply a meal.

The articles of pastry sold in the London
streets are meat and fruit pies, boiled meat
and kidney puddings, plum "duff" or pud-
ding, and an almost infinite variety of tarts,
cakes, buns, and biscuits; while the confection-
ary consists of all the several preparations in-
cluded under the wide denomination of "sweet-
stuff," as well as the more "medicinal" kind
known as "cough drops;" in addition to these
there are the more "aristocratic" delicacies re-
cently introduced into street traffic, viz., penny
raspberry creams and ices.

OF STREET PIEMEN.

The itinerant trade in pies is one of the most
ancient of the street callings of London. The
meat pies are made of beef or mutton; the fish
pies of eels; the fruit of apples, currants, goose-
berries, plums, damsons, cherries, raspberries,
or rhubarb, according to the season — and occa-
sionally of mince-meat. A few years ago the
street pie-trade was very profitable, but it has
been almost destroyed by the "pie-shops,"
and further, the few remaining street-dealers
say "the people now haven't the pennies to
spare." Summer fairs and races are the best
places for the piemen. In London the best times
are during any grand sight or holiday-making,
such as a review in Hyde-park, the Lord Mayor's
show, the opening of Parliament, Greenwich
fair, &c. Nearly all the men of this class, whom
I saw, were fond of speculating as to whether
the Great Exposition would be "any good" to
them, or not.

The London piemen, who may number about
forty in winter, and twice that number in sum-
mer, are seldom stationary. They go along with

[Description: 915EAF. Page 196.]

their pie-cans on their arms, crying, "Pies all
'ot! eel, beef, or mutton pies! Penny pies,
all 'ot — all 'ot!" The "can" has been
before described. The pies are kept hot by
means of a charcoal fire beneath, and there
is a partition in the body of the can to sepa-
rate the hot and cold pies. The "can" has
two tin drawers, one at the bottom, where the hot
pies are kept, and above these are the cold pies.
As fast as the hot dainties are sold, their place
is supplied by the cold from the upper drawer.

A teetotal pieman in Billingsgate has a pony
and "shay cart." His business is the most ex-
tensive in London. It is believed that he sells
20s. worth or 240 pies a day, but his brother
tradesmen sell no such amount. "I was out
last night," said one man to me, "from four in
the afternoon till half-past twelve. I went
from Somers-town to the Horse Guards, and
looked in at all the public-houses on my way,
and I didn't take above 1s. 6d. I have been
out sometimes from the beginning of the even-
ing till long past midnight, and haven't taken
more than 4d., and out of that I have to pay 1d. for charcoal."

The pie-dealers usually make the pies them-
selves. The meat is bought in "pieces," of the
same part as the sausage-makers purchase —
the "stickings" — at about 3d. the pound.
"People, when I go into houses," said one
man, "often begin crying, `Mee-yow,' or `Bow-
wow-wow!' at me; but there's nothing of
that kind now. Meat, you see, is so cheap."
About five-dozen pies are generally made at a
time. These require a quartern of flour at 5d. or 6d.; 2 lbs. of suet at 6d.; 1½ lb. meat at 3d., amounting in all to about 2s. To this must be
added 3d. for baking; 1d. for the cost of keep-
ing hot, and 2d. for pepper, salt, and eggs with
which to season and wash them over. Hence the
cost of the five dozen would be about 2s. 6d., and
the profit the same. The usual quantity of meat
in each pie is about half an ounce. There are
not more than 20 hot-piemen now in London.
There are some who carry pies about on a tray
slung before them; these are mostly boys, and,
including them, the number amounts to about
sixty all the year round, as I have stated.

The penny pie-shops, the street men say, have
done their trade a great deal of harm. These shops
have now got mostly all the custom, as they make
the pies much larger for the money than those
sold in the streets. The pies in Tottenham-
court-road are very highly seasoned. "I
bought one there the other day, and it nearly
took the skin off my mouth; it was full of
pepper," said a street-pieman, with consider-
able bitterness, to me. The reason why so
large a quantity of pepper is put in is, because
persons can't exactly tell the flavour of the
meat with it. Piemen generally are not very
particular about the flavour of the meat they
buy, as they can season it up into anything.
In the summer, a street pieman thinks he is
doing a good business if he takes 5s. per day,
and in the winter if he gets half that. On a
Saturday night, however, he generally takes 5s. in the winter, and about 8s. in the summer.
At Greenwich fair he will take about 14s. At
a review in Hyde-park, if it is a good one,
he will sell about 10s. worth. The generality
of the customers are the boys of London. The
women seldom, if ever, buy pies in the streets.
At the public-houses a few pies are sold, and
the pieman makes a practice of "looking in"
at all the taverns on his way. Here his cus-
tomers are found principally in the tap-room.
"Here's all 'ot!" the pieman cries, as he
walks in; "toss or buy! up and win 'em!"
This is the only way that the pies can be got
rid of. "If it wasn't for tossing we shouldn't
sell one."

To "toss the pieman" is a favourite pastime
with costermongers' boys and all that class;
some of whom aspire to the repute of being
gourmands, and are critical on the quality of
the comestible. If the pieman win the toss,
he receives 1d. without giving a pie; if he lose,
he hands it over for nothing. The pieman
himself never "tosses," but always calls head
or tail to his customer. At the week's end it
comes to the same thing, they say, whether
they toss or not, or rather whether they win
or lose the toss: "I've taken as much as
2s. 6d. at tossing, which I shouldn't have had if
I had'nt done so. Very few people buy without
tossing, and the boys in particular. Gentlemen
`out on the spree' at the late public-houses will
frequently toss when they don't want the pies, and
when they win they will amuse themselves by
throwing the pies at one another, or at me.
Sometimes I have taken as much as half-a-
crown, and the people of whom I had the
money has never eaten a pie. The boys has
the greatest love of gambling, and they seldom,
if ever, buys without tossing." One of the
reasons why the street boys delight in tossing,
is, that they can often obtain a pie by such
means when they have only a halfpenny where-
with to gamble. If the lad wins he gets a
penny pie for his halfpenny.

For street mince-meat pies the pieman usually
makes 5lb. of mince-meat at a time, and for this
he will put in 2 doz. of apples, 1lb. of sugar,
1lb. of currants, 2lb. of "critlings" (critlings
being the refuse left after boiling down the
lard), a good bit of spice to give the critlings
a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the
mince-meat look rich.

The "gravy" which used to be given with
the meat-pies was poured out of an oil-can,
and consisted of a little salt and water browned.
A hole was made with the little finger in the
top of the meat pie, and the "gravy" poured
in until the crust rose. With this gravy a per-
son in the line assured me that he has known
pies four days old to go off very freely, and be
pronounced excellent. The street piemen are
mostly bakers, who are unable to obtain em-
ployment at their trade. "I myself," said one,
"was a bread and biscuit baker. I have been
at the pie business now about two years and a

[Description: 915EAF. Blank Page.]

[Description: 915EAF. Page 197.]

half, and I can't get a living at it. Last week
my earnings were not more than 7s. all the
week through, and I was out till three in the
morning to get that." The piemen seldom
begin business till six o'clock, and some re-
main out all night. The best time for the sale
of pies is generally from ten at night to one in
the morning.

Calculating that there are only fifty street
piemen plying their trade in London, the year
through, and that their average earnings are
8s. a week, we find a street expenditure ex-
ceeding 3,000l., and a street consumption of
pies amounting nearly to three quarters of
a million yearly.

To start in the penny pie business of the
streets requires 1l. for a "can," 2s. 6d. for a
"turn-halfpenny" board to gamble with, 12s. for a gross of tin pie-dishes, 8d. for an apron,
and about 6s. 6d. for stock money — allowing
1s. for flour, 1s. 3d. for meat, 2d. for apples,
4d. for eels, 2s. for pork flare or fat, 2d. for
sugar, ½d. for cloves, 1d. for pepper and salt,
1d. for an egg to wash the pies over with,
6d. for baking, and 1d. for charcoal to keep
the pies hot in the streets. Hence the capital
required would be about 2l. in all.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BOILED
PUDDINGS.

The sale of boiled puddings, meat and currant
— which might perhaps be with greater cor-
rectness called dumplings — has not been known
in London, I was informed by one in the trade,
more than twelve or fourteen years. The
ingredients for the meat puddings are not
dissimilar to those I have described as re-
quired for the meat pies, but the puddings are
boiled, in cotton, bags, in coppers or large pans,
and present the form of a round ball. The
charge is a halfpenny each. Five or six years
back a man embarked his means — said to be
about 15l. — in the meat-pudding line, and pre-
pared a superior article, which was kept warm
in the street by means of steam, in a manner
similar to that employed by the pieman. A
mechanic out of work was engaged by this
projector to aid him in the sale of his street
luxuries, and the mechanic and his two boys
made a living by this sale for two or three years.
The original pudding-projector relinquished the
street trade to go into business as a small shop-
keeper, and the man who sold for him on a sort
of commission, earning from 12s. to 18s. a week,
made the puddings on his own account. His
earnings, however, on his own account were not
above from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a week beyond what he
earned by commission, and a little while back
he obtained work again at his own business, but
his two boys still sell puddings in the street.

The sale of boiled meat puddings is carried
on only in the autumn and winter months, and
only in the evenings, except on Saturdays, when
the business commences in the afternoon. The
sale, I was informed by one of the parties, has
been as many as forty-five dozen puddings on
a Saturday evening. The tins in which the
puddings are carried about hold from four to
six dozen, and are replenished from the pans —
the makers always living contiguous to the
street where the vend takes place — as fast as
the demand requires such replenishment. An
average sale on a fine dry winter Saturday even-
ing is thirty dozen, but then, as in most street
callings, "the weather" — a remark often made
to me — "has considerable to do with it." A
frost, I was told, helped off the puddings, and
a rain kept them back. Next to Saturday the
best business night is Monday; but the average
sale on the Monday is barely half that on the
Saturday, and on the other evenings of the week
about a third. This gives a weekly sale by each
street-seller of 85 dozen, or 1,020 puddings,
and as I am informed there are now but six
street-sellers (regularly) of this comestible, the
weekly aggregate would be — allowing for bad
weather — 5,400, or 129,600 in a season of
24 weeks; an expenditure on the part of the
street boys and girls (who are the principal
purchasers), and of the poor persons who
patronise the street-trade, of about 270l. per
annum. The wandering street-musicians of
the poorer class — such as "Old Sarey" and
the Italian boys — often make their dinner off a
meat pudding purchased on their rounds; for it
is the rule with such people never to return home
after starting in the morning till their day's
work is done.

The boys who ply their callings in the street,
or are much in the open air, are very fond of
these puddings, and to witness the way in which
they throw the pudding, when very hot, from
hand to hand, eyeing it with an expression that
shows an eagerness to eat with a fear of burning
the mouth, is sometimes laughable and some-
times painful, because not unfrequently there
is a look of keen hunger about the — probably
outcast — lad. The currant puddings are, I
believe, sold only at Billingsgate and Petticoat-
lane.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PLUM "DUFF"
OR DOUGH.

Plum dough is one of the street-eatables —
though perhaps it is rather a violence to class
it with the street-pastry — which is usually
made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled
plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest
description. It is sometimes made in the
rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more
frequently in the "roly-poly" style. Hot pud-
ding used to be of much more extensive sale in
the streets. One informant told me that twenty
or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire, pud-
ding, "with plums in it," was a popular street
business. The "plums," as in the orthodox
plum-puddings, are raisins. The street-vendors
of plum "duff" are now very few, only six as
an average, and generally women, or if a man be
the salesman he is the woman's husband. The
sale is for the most part an evening sale, and
some vend the plum dough only on a Saturday

[Description: 915EAF. Page 198.]

night. A woman in Leather-lane, whose trade
is a Saturday night trade, is accounted "one of
the best plum duffs" in London, as regards the
quality of the comestible, but her trade is not
considerable.

The vendors of plum dough are the street-
sellers who live by vending other articles, and
resort to plum dough, as well as to other things,
"as a help." This dough is sold out of baskets
in which it is kept hot by being covered with
cloths, sometimes two and even three, thick;
and the smoke issuing out of the basket, and the
cry of the street-seller, "Hot plum duff, hot
plum," invite custom. A quartern of flour, 5d.; ½ lb. Valentia raisins, 2d.; dripping and suet in
equal proportions, 2½d.; treacle, ½d.; and all-
spice, ½d. — in all 10½d.; supply a roly-poly of
twenty pennyworths. The treacle, however, is
only introduced "to make the dough look rich
and spicy," and must be used sparingly.

The plum dough is sold in slices at ½d. or
1d. each, and the purchasers are almost exclu-
sively boys and girls — boys being at least three-
fourths of the revellers in this street luxury.
I have ascertained — as far as the information of
the street-sellers enables me to ascertain — that
take the year through, six "plum duffers" take
1s. a day each, for four winter months, including
Sundays, when the trade is likewise prosecuted.
Some will take from 4s. to 10s. (but rarely 10s.)
on a Saturday night, and nothing on other
nights, and some do a little in the summer. The
vendors, who are all stationary, stand chiefly in
the street-markets and reside near their stands,
so that they can get relays of hot dough.

If we calculate then 42s. a week as the takings
of six persons, for five months, so including the
summer trade, we find that upwards of 200l. is expended in the street purchase of plum
dough, nearly half of which is profit. The trade,
however, is reckoned among those which will
disappear altogether from the streets.

The capital required to start is: basket,
1s. 9d.; cloths, 6d.; pan for boiling, 2s.; knife,
2d.; stock-money, 2s.; in all about, 7s. 6d.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CAKES,
TARTS, &c.

These men and boys — for there are very few
women or girls in the trade — constitute a some-
what numerous class. They are computed (in-
cluding Jews) at 150 at the least, all regular
hands, with an addition, perhaps, of 15 or 20,
who seek to earn a few pence on a Sunday,
but have some other, though poorly remune-
rative, employment on the week-days. The
cake and tart-sellers in the streets have been,
for the most part, mechanics or servants; a fifth
of the body, however, have been brought up to
this or to some other street-calling.

The cake-men carry their goods on a tray slung
round their shoulders when they are offering
their delicacies for sale, and on their heads when
not engaged in the effort to do business. They
are to be found in the vicinity of all public
places. Their goods are generally arranged in
pairs on the trays; in bad weather they are
covered with a green cloth.

None of the street-vendors make the articles
they sell; indeed, the diversity of those articles
renders that impossible. Among the regular
articles of this street-sale are "Coventrys," or
three-cornered puffs with jam inside; raspberry
biscuits; cinnamon biscuits; "chonkeys," or a
kind of mince-meat baked in crust; Dutch
butter-cakes; Jews' butter-cakes; "bowlas,"
or round tarts made of sugar, apple, and bread;
"jumbles," or thin crisp cakes made of treacle,
butter, and flour; and jams, or open tarts with
a little preserve in the centre.

All these things are made for the street-sellers
by about a dozen Jew pastry-cooks, the most of
whom reside about Whitechapel. They confine
themselves to the trade, and make every descrip-
tion. On a fine holiday morning their shops, or
rather bake-houses, are filled with customers,
as they supply the small shops as well as the
street-sellers of London. Each article is made
to be sold at a halfpenny, and the allowance by
the wholesale pastry-cook is such as to enable
his customers to realise a profit of 4d. in 1s.; thus he charges 4d. a dozen for the several
articles. Within the last seven years there has
been, I am assured, a great improvement in the
composition of these cakes, &c. This is attri-
butable to the Jews having introduced superior
dainties, and, of course, rendered it necessary for
the others to vie with them: the articles vended
by these Jews (of whom there are from 20 to 40
in the streets) are still pronounced, by many
connoisseurs in street-pastry, as the best. Some
sell penny dainties also, but not to a twentieth
part of the halfpenny trade. One of the whole-
sale pastry-cooks takes 40l. a week. These
wholesale men, who sometimes credit the street-
people, buy ten, fifteen, or twenty sacks of flour
at a time whenever a cheap bargain offers. They
purchase as largely in Irish butter, which they
have bought at 3d. or 2½d. the pound. They
buy also "scrapings," or what remains in the
butter-firkins when emptied by the butter-sellers
in the shops. "Good scrapings" are used for
the best cakes; the jam they make themselves.
To commence the wholesale business requires a
capital of 600l. To commence the street-selling
requires a capital of only 10s.; and this in-
cludes the cost of a tray, about 1s. 9d.; a cloth
1s.; and a leathern strap, with buckle, to go
round the neck, 6d.; while the rest is for stock,
with a shilling, or two as a reserve. All the
street-sellers insist upon the impossibility of
any general baker making cakes as cheap as
those they vend. "It's impossible, sir," said
one man to me; "it's a trade by itself; nobody
else can touch it. They was miserable little
things seven years ago."

An acute-looking man, decently dressed, gave
me the following account. He resided with his
wife — who went out charing — in a decent little
back-room at the East-end, for which he paid
1s. a week. He had no children: —

"I'm a `translator' (a species of cobbler) by

[Description: 915EAF. Page 199.]

trade," he said, "but I've been a cake and a
tart-seller in the streets for seven or eight years.
I couldn't make 1s. 3d. a day of twelve hours'
work, and sometimes nothing, by translating.
Besides, my health was failing; and, as I used
to go out on a Sunday with cakes to sell for a
cousin of mine, I went into the trade myself,
because I'd got up to it. I did middling the
first three or four years, and I'd do middling
still, if it wasn't for the bad weather and
the police. I've been up three times for
`obstructing.' Why, sir, I never obstructed a
quarter as much as the print-shops and news-
paper-shops down there" (pointing to a narrow
street in the City). "But the keepers of them
shops can take a sight at the Lord Mayor
from behind their tills. The first time I was
up before the Lord Mayor — it's a few years
back — I thought he talked like an old wife.
`You mustn't stand that way,' he says, `and you
mustn't do this, and you mustn't do that.'
`Well, my lord,' says I, `then I mustn't live
honestly. But if you'll give me 9s. a week, I'll
promise not to stand here, and not to stand there;
and neither to do this, nor that, nor anything at
all, if that pleases you better.' They was
shocked, they said, at my impudence — so young
a fellow, too! I got off each time, but a
deal of my things was spoiled. I work the City
on week-days, and Victoria Park on Sundays.
In the City, my best customers is not children,
but young gents; real gents, some of them with
gold watches. They buys twopenn'orth, mostly
— that's four of any sort, or different sorts.
They're clerks in banks and counting-houses, I
suppose, that must look respectable like on a
little, and so feeds cheap, poor chaps! for they
dine or lunch off it, never doubt. Or they
may be keeping their money for other things.
To sell eleven dozen is a first-rate days' work;
that's 1s. 9d. or 1s. 10d. profit. But then comes
the wet days, and I can't trade at all in the
rain; and so the things get stale, and I have to
sell them in Petticoat-lane for two a halfpenny.
Victoria Park — I'm not let inside with my tray
— is good and bad as happens. It's chiefly a
tossing trade there. Oh, I dare say I toss
100 times some Sundays. I don't like tossing
the coster lads, they're the wide-awakes that
way. The thieves use `grays.' They're ha'-
pennies, either both sides heads or both tails.
Grays sell at from 2d. to 6d. I'm not often
had that way, though. Working-people buy
very few of me on Sundays; it's mostly boys;
and next to the gents., why, perhaps, the boys
is my best customers in the City. Only on
Monday a lad, that had been lucky `fiddling' "
(holding horses, or picking up money anyhow)
"spent a whole shilling on me. I clear, I think
— and I'm among the cakes that's the top
of the tree — about 10s. a week in summer,
and hardly 7s. a week in winter. My old
woman and me makes both ends meet, and
that's all."

Reckoning 150 cake-sellers, each clearing 6s. a week, a sufficiently low average, the street
outlay will be 2,340l., representing a street-
consumption of 1,123,200 cakes, tarts, &c.

OF OTHER CAKE-SELLERS IN THE STREETS.

The street cake-selling of London is not alto-
gether confined to the class I have described;
but the others engaged in it are not regular
pursuers of the business, and do not exceed
thirty in number. Some stock their trays with
flare-cakes, which are round cakes, made of
flour and "unrendered" (unmelted) lard, and
stuck over freely with currants. They are sold
at a farthing and a halfpenny each. Others,
again, carry only sponge-cakes, made of flour
and eggs, packed closely and regularly toge-
ther, so as to present an uniform and inviting
surface. Others carry only gingerbread, made
of flour and treacle. These small trades are
sometimes resorted to for a temporary purpose,
rather than a street-seller's remaining in com-
pulsory idleness. I learned also that cake-
sellers in the regular line, when unable to
command sufficient capital to carry on their
trade in the way they have been accustomed to,
sell "flayers," so called from being made with
pig's or sheep's "flay," or any other cheap
cakes, and so endeavour to retrieve themselves.
The profits on these plainer sorts is 1d. in 1s. more than that on the others, but the sale
rarely exceeds half as much. I heard, how-
ever, of one man who deposited in pence, in
eight days, 1s. 10d. with a wholesale pastry-
cook. He had saved this sum by almost
starving himself, on the sale of the inferior
cakes, and the dealer trusted him the 10d. to make up eight dozen in the regular cake
business. To commence the street sale of
cheap cakes requires a capital of less than 5s.; for tray, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 6d.; strap, 6d.; and
stock-money, 1s. 6d.

Three or four men are occupied in selling
plum-cakes. These are generally sold in half-
penny and penny lots. The plum-cake is made
by the same class of pastrycooks whom I have
described as supplying the tarts, puffs, &c., and
sold on the same terms. The profits are fifty
per cent. — what cost 4s. bringing in 6s. One
man who travels to all the fairs and races, and
is more in the country than town in the summer
and autumn, sells large quantities of plum-cake
in Smithfield when in town, sometimes having
2l. worth and more on his stall. He sells cakes
of a pound (ostensibly) at 4d., 6d., and 8d., according to quality. He sometimes supplies
the street-sellers on the same terms as the
pastrycooks, for he was once a baker.

From the best data at my command, it appears
that the sale of these inferior cakes does not
realise above a fifth of that taken by the other
sellers, of whom I have treated, amounting to
about 450l. in all.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GINGERBREAD-
NUTS, &c.

The sale of gingerbread, as I have previously
observed, was much more extensive in the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 200.]

streets than it is at present. Indeed, what was
formerly known in the trade as "toy" ginger-
bread is now unseen in the streets, except occa-
sionally, and that only when the whole has not
been sold at the neighbouring fairs, at which it
is still offered. But, even at these fairs, the
principal, and sometimes the only, toy ginger-
bread that is vended is the "cock in breeches;"
a formidable-looking bird, with his nether gar-
ments of gold. Twenty or thirty years ago,
"king George on horseback" was popular in
gingerbread. His Majesty, wearing a gilt
crown, gilt spurs, and a gilt sword, bestrode the
gilt saddle of his steed, and was eaten with
great relish by his juvenile subjects. There
were also sheep, and dogs, and other animals,
all adorned in a similar manner, and looking as
if they had been formed in close and faithful
imitation of children's first attempts at cattle
drawing. These edible toys were then sold in
"white," as well as in "brown" gingerbread,
the white being the same in all other respects
as the brown, except that a portion of sugar was
used in its composition instead of treacle.

There are now only two men in London who
make their own gingerbread-nuts for sale in
the streets. This preparation of gingerbread is
called by the street-sellers, after a common
elliptical fashion, merely "nuts." From the
most experienced man in the street trade I had
the following account: he was an intelligent,
well-mannered, and well-spoken man, and when
he laughed or smiled, had what may be best
described as a pleasant look. After he had
initiated me into the art and mystery of ginger-
bread making — which I shall detail separately
— he said,

"I've been in the `nut' trade 25 years, or
thereabouts, and have made my own nuts for
20 years of that time. I bought of a ginger-
bread baker at first — there was plenty of them
in them days — and the profit a living profit,
too. Certainly it was, for what I bought for 5s. I could sell for 16s. I was brought up a baker,
but the moment I was out of my time I started
in the street nut trade for myself. I knew the
profits of it, and thought it better than the
slavery of a journeyman baker's life. You've
mentioned, sir, in your work, a musical sort of
a street-crier of gingerbread (see p. 160), and I
think, and indeed I'm pretty certain, that it's
the same man as was my partner 20 years back;
aye, more than 20, but I can't tell about years."
[The reader will have remarked how frequently
this oblivion as to dates and periods characterises
the statements of street-sellers. Perhaps no
men take less note of time.] "At that time he
was my partner in the pig trade. Dairy-fed,
d'you say, sir? Not in the slightest. The
outsides of the hanimals was paste, and the
insides on 'em was all mince-meat. Their
eyes was currants. We two was the original
pigs, and, I believe, the only two pigs in the
streets. We often made 15s. between us, in a
day, in pigs alone. The musical man, as you
call him — poor fellow, he dropped down dead in
the street one day as he was crying; he was
regular worn out — cried himself into his grave
you may say — poor fellow, he used to sing out

"When I was first in the trade, I sold twice
as many nuts as I do now, though my nuts was
only 12 a penny then, and they're now 40. A
little larger the 12 were, but not very much. I
have taken 20s. and 24s. many and many a
Saturday. I then made from 2l. to 2l. 10s. a
week by sticking to it, and money might have
been saved. I've taken between 7l. and 8l. at a
Greenwich Fair in the three days, in them times,
by myself. Indeed, last Easter, my wife and
me — for she works as well as I do, and sells
almost as much — took 5l. But gingerbread was
money in the old times, and I sold `lumps' as
well as `nuts;' but now lumps won't go off —
not in a fair, no how. I've been in the trade
ever since I started in it, but I've had turns at
other things. I was in the service of a Custom-
house agency firm; but they got into bother
about contrabands, and the revenue, and cut off
to America — I believe they took money with
them, a good bit of it — and I was indicted, or
whatever they call it, in the Court of Exche-
quer — I never was in the Court in my life — and
was called upon, one fine day, to pay to the
Crown 1,580l., and some odd pounds and shil-
lings besides! I never understood the rights of
it, but it was about smuggling. I was indicted
by myself, I believe. When Mr. Candy, and
other great houses in the City, were found
out that way, they made it all right; paid some-
thing, as I've heard, and sacked the profits.
Well; when I was called on, it wasn't, I assure
you, sir — ha, ha, ha! — at all convenient for a
servant — and I was only that — to pay the fifteen
hundred and odd; so I served 12 months and 2
days in prison for it. I'd saved a little money,
and wasn't so uncomfortable in prison. I could
get a dinner, and give a dinner. When I came
out, I took to the nuts. It was lucky for me
that I had a trade to turn to; for, even if I
could have shown I wasn't at all to blame about
the Exchequer, I could never have got another
situation — never. So the streets saved me: my
nuts was my bread.

"At this present time, sir, if I make, the year
through, 9s. a week, and my wife 1s. or 2s. less,
that's the extent. When the Queen opened
Parliament, the two on us took 10s. The Queen's
good for that, anyhow, in person. If the opening
was by proclamation" [so he called it, three or
four times], "it wouldn't have been worth while
going to — not at all. If there's not a crowd,
the police interfere, and `move on!' is the order.
The Queen's popular with me, for her opening
Parliament herself. I count it her duty. The
police are a great trouble. I can't say they
disturb me in the place (never mind mentioning
it, sir) where you've seen me, but they do in

[Description: 915EAF. Page 201.]

other places. They say there's no rest for the
wicked; but, in the streets, there's no rest for a
man trying to make an honest living, as I'm sure
I do. I could pitch anywhere, one time.

"My chief dependence is on working-men,
who buys my nuts to take home to their young
'uns. I never sell for parties, or desserts, that
I know of. I take very little from boys — very
little. The women of the town buy hardly any
of me. I used to sell a good many pigs to them,
in some of the streets about Brunswick-square;
kept misses, and such like — and very pleasant
customers they was, and good pay: but that's
all over now. They never 'bated me — never."

To make about 56 lbs. of the gingerbread-nuts
sold by my informant, takes 28 lbs. of treacle,
7s.; 48 lbs. of flour, 14s.; ½ lb. of ginger, 4d.; and ½ lb. of allspice, 4d. From 18 to 20
dozen of small nuts go to the pound. This
quantity, at 40 a penny, reckoning 18 dozen to
a pound, realises about 5d. per pound; or about
25s. for an outlay of 11s. 8d. The expense of
baking, however, and of "appurtenances," re-
duces the profit to little more than cent. per-
cent.

The other nut-sellers in the streets vend the
"almond nuts." Of these vendors there are
not less than 150; of them, 100 buy their goods
of the bakers (what they sell for 1s. costing them
4d.), and the other 50 make their own. The
materials are the same as those of the ginger-
bread, with the addition of 4 lbs. of butter, 8d. per lb.; 1 lb. of almonds, 1s. 4d.; and 2 lbs. of
volatile salts, 8d. Out of this material, 60 lbs.
of "almond nuts" may be made. A split
almond is placed in the centre of each of these
nuts; and, as they are three times as large as
the gingerbread nuts, 12 a penny is the price.
To sell 36 dozen a day — and so clearing 2s. — is
accounted a "very tidy day's work." With the
drawback of wet weather, the average weekly
earnings of the almond nut-sellers are, perhaps,
the same as the gingerbread nut man's — 9s. weekly. These almond nut-sellers are, for the
most part, itinerant, their localities of sale being
the same as in the "cake and tart" line. They
carry their goods, neatly done up in paper, on
trays slung from the shoulder. The gingerbread-
nuts are carried in a large basket, and are ready
packed in paper bags.

Some of the "almond" men call at the pub-
lic-houses, but the sale in such places is very
small. Most of those who make their own nuts
have been brought up as bakers — a class of
workmen who seem to resort and adapt them-
selves to a street trade more readily than others.
The nuts are baked in the usual way, spread on
tin trays. To erect a proper oven for the pur-
pose costs about 5l., but most of the men hire
the use of one.

I have already specified the materials required
to make 56 lb. of gingerbread nuts, the cost
being 11s. 8d. To that, the capital required to
start in the business must be added, and this
consists of basket, 6s.; baize cloth, 1s.; pan for
dough, 1s.; rolling-pin, 3d., and baking-tins, 1s. In all about 21s. To begin in a small way in
the "almond" line, buying the nuts ready made,
requires as capital: tray, 2s.; leather strap, 6d.; baize, 1s.; stock-money, 1s. 6d. — in all 5s. The
sale is prosecuted through the year, but hot
weather is unfavourable to it, as the nuts then
turn soft.

Calculating that 150 of these street-dealers
take 17s. each weekly (clearing 9s.), we find
6,630l. spent yearly in "spice" nuts in the
streets of London.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF HOT-CROSS
BUNS, AND OF CHELSEA BUNS.

Perhaps no cry — though it is only for one
morning — is more familiar to the ears of a
Londoner, than that of "One-a-penny, two-a-
penny, hot-cross buns," on Good Friday. The
sale is unknown in the Irish capital; for among
Roman Catholics, Good Friday, I need hardly
say, is a strict fast, and the eggs in the buns
prevent their being used. One London gentle-
man, who spoke of fifty years ago, told me
that the street-bun-sellers used to have a not
unpleasing distich. On reflection, however,
my informant could not be certain whether he
had heard this distich cried, or had remem-
bered hearing the elders of his family speak of
it as having been cried, or how it was impressed
upon his memory. It seems hardly in accord-
ance with the usual style of street poetry: —

A tradesman who had resided more than
fifty years in the Borough had, in his boyhood,
heard, but not often, this ridiculous cry: —

The sellers of the Good Friday buns are
principally boys, and they are of mixed classes
— costers' boys, boys habitually and boys occa-
sionally street-sellers, and boys street-sellers for
that occasion only. One great inducement to
embark in the trade is the hope of raising a
little money for the Greenwich Fair of the fol-
lowing Monday.

I am informed that 500 persons are employed
on Good Friday in the streets of London in the
sale of hot-cross buns, each itinerant selling
upon the day's average six dozen halfpenny,
and seven dozen penny buns, for which he will
take 12s. 6d. (his profits being 3d. in the shilling
or 3s. 1½d.). One person informed me that last
Good Friday he had sold during the day forty
dozen penny buns, for which he received 50s.

The bun-selling itinerants derive their sup-
plies principally from the wholesale pastry-
cooks, and, in a less degree, from the small
bakers and pastrycooks, who work more for
"the trade" than themselves. The street hot-
cross bun trade is less than it was seven or eight

[Description: 915EAF. Page 202.]

years ago, as the bakers have entered into it
more freely, and send round for orders: so that
the itinerants complain that they have lost many
a good customer. One informant (a master pastry-
cook, who had been in the business nearly fifty
years) said to me: "Times are sadly altered to
what they were when I was a boy. Why I have
known my master to bake five sacks of flour in
nothing but hot-cross buns, and that is sufficient
for 20,000 buns" (one sack of flour being used
for 4,000 buns, or 500 lbs. of raw material to
the same quantity of buns). The itinerants
carry their baskets slung on their arm, or borne
upon the head. A flannel or green baize is
placed at the bottom of the basket and brought
over the buns, after which a white cloth is spread
over the top of the baize, to give it a clean ap-
pearance.

A vendor of "hot-cross buns" has to provide
himself with a basket, a flannel (to keep the
buns warm), and a cloth, to give a clean appear-
ance to his commodities. These articles, if
bought for the purpose, cost — basket, 2s. 6d.; flannel and cloth, 2s.; stock-money, average, 5s. (largest amount 15s., smallest 2s. 6d.); or about
10s. in all.

There is expended in one day, in hot-cross
buns purchased in the London streets, 300l., and
nearly 100,000 buns thus bought.

The Chelsea buns are now altogether super-
seded by the Bath and Alexander's buns. "Peo-
ple," the street-sellers say, "want so much for
their money." There are now but two Chelsea
bun-houses; the one at Pimlico, and the other
at Chelsea. The principal times Chelsea buns
were sold in the streets was Good Friday,
Easter, and Whitsuntide; and, with the excep-
tion of Good Friday, the great sales were at
Greenwich Fair, and then they were sold with
other cakes and sweetmeats. I am informed
that twenty years ago there was one man, with a
rich musical voice, who sold these buns, about
Westminster principally, all the year round; his
cry — which was one of the musical ones — was,
"One a penny, two a penny, hot Chelsea buns!
Burning hot! smoking hot! r-r-r-reeking hot!
hot Chelsea buns!"

OF MUFFIN AND CRUMPET-SELLING IN
THE STREETS.

The street-sellers of muffins and crumpets
rank among the old street-tradesmen. It is
difficult to estimate their numbers, but they
were computed for me at 500, during the winter
months. They are for the most part boys, young
men, or old men, and some of them infirm.
There are a few girls in the trade, but very few
women.

The ringing of the muffin-man's bell — at-
tached to which the pleasant associations are not
a few — was prohibited by a recent Act of Par-
liament, but the prohibition has been as inope-
rative as that which forbad the use of a drum
to the costermonger, for the muffin bell still
tinkles along the streets, and is rung vigorously
in the suburbs. The sellers of muffins and
crumpets are a mixed class, but I am told that
more of them are the children of bakers, or
worn-out bakers, than can be said of any other
calling. The best sale is in the suburbs. "As
far as I know, sir," said a muffin-seller, "it's
the best Hackney way, and Stoke Newington,
and Dalston, and Balls Pond, and Islington;
where the gents that's in banks — the steady
coves of them — goes home to their teas, and the
missuses has muffins to welcome them; that's
my opinion."

I did not hear of any street-seller who made
the muffins or crumpets he vended. Indeed, he
could not make the small quantity required, so
as to be remunerative. The muffins are bought
of the bakers, and at prices to leave a profit
of 4d. in 1s. Some bakers give thirteen to the
dozen to the street-sellers whom they know.
The muffin-man carries his delicacies in a
basket, wherein they are well swathed in
flannel, to retain the heat: "People likes them
warm, sir," an old man told me, "to satisfy
them they're fresh, and they almost always
are fresh; but it can't matter so much about
their being warm, as they have to be toasted
again. I only wish good butter was a sight
cheaper, and that would make the muffins go.
Butter's half the battle." The basket and
flannels cost the muffin-man 2s. 6d. or 3s. 6d. His bell stands him in from 4d. to 2s., "accord-
ing as the metal is." The regular price of good-
sized muffins from the street-sellers is a half-
penny each; the crumpets are four a penny.
Some are sold cheaper, but these are generally
smaller, or made of inferior flour. Most of the
street-sellers give thirteen, and some even four-
teen to the dozen, especially if the purchase be
made early in the day, as the muffin-man can
then, if he deem it prudent, obtain a further
supply.

A sharp London lad of fourteen, whose father
had been a journeyman baker, and whose mother
(a widow) kept a small chandler's shop, gave me
the following account: —

"I turns out with muffins and crumpets, sir,
in October, and continues until it gets well into
the spring, according to the weather. I carries
a fust-rate article; werry much so. If you was
to taste 'em, sir, you'd say the same. If I sells
three dozen muffins at ½d. each, and twice that
in crumpets, it's a werry fair day, werry fair; all
beyond that is a good day. The profit on the
three dozen and the others is 1s., but that's a
great help, really a wonderful help, to mother, for
I should be only mindin' the shop at home.
Perhaps I clears 4s. a week, perhaps more, per-
haps less; but that's about it, sir. Some does
far better than that, and some can't hold a
candle to it. If I has a hextra day's sale,
mother'll give me 3d. to go to the play, and that
hencourages a young man, you know, sir. If
there's any unsold, a coffee-shop gets them
cheap, and puts 'em off cheap again next morn-
ing. My best customers is genteel houses, 'cause
I sells a genteel thing. I likes wet days best,
'cause there's werry respectable ladies what don't

[Description: 915EAF. Page 203.]

keep a servant, and they buys to save them-
selves going out. We're a great conwenience
to the ladies, sir — a great conwenience to them
as likes a slap-up tea. I have made 1s. 8d. in a day; that was my best. I once took
only 2½d. — I don't know why — that was my
worst. The shops don't love me — I puts their
noses out. Sunday is no better day than others,
or werry little. I can read, but wish I could
read easier."

Calculating 500 muffin-sellers, each clearing
4s. a week, we find 300l. a week expended on
the metropolitan street sale of muffins; or, in
the course of twenty weeks, 2,000l. Five shil-
lings, with the price of a basket, &c., which is
about 3s. 6d. more, is the capital required for a
start.

OF THE STREET SALE OF SWEET-STUFF.

In this sale there are now engaged, as one of
the most intelligent of the class calculated,
200 individuals, exclusive of twenty or thirty
Jew boys. The majority of the sellers are also
the manufacturers of the articles they vend.
They have all been brought up to the calling,
their parents having been in it, or having been
artizans (more especially bakers) who have
adopted it for some of the general reasons I
have before assigned. The non-makers buy of
the cheap confectioners.

The articles now vended do not differ mate-
rially, I am informed by men who have known
the street trade for forty years, from those
which were in demand when they began selling
in the streets.

A very intelligent man, who had succeeded
his father and mother in the "sweet-stuff"
business — his father's drunkenness having kept
them in continual poverty — showed me his ap-
paratus, and explained his mode of work. His
room, which was on the second-floor of a house
in a busy thoroughfare, had what I have fre-
quently noticed in the abodes of the working
classes — the decency of a turn-up bedstead. It
was a large apartment, the rent being 3s. 6d. a
week, unfurnished. The room was cheerful with
birds, of which there were ten or twelve. A re-
markably fine thrush was hopping in a large
wicker cage, while linnets and bullfinches
showed their quick bright eyes from smaller
cages on all sides. These were not kept for
sale but for amusement, their owner being
seldom able to leave his room. The father and
mother of this man cleared, twenty years ago,
although at that time sugar was 6d. or 7d. the pound, from 2l. to 3l. a week by the sale
of sweet-stuff; half by keeping a stall, and
half by supplying small shops or other stall-
keepers. My present informant, however, who
has — not the best — but one of the best busi-
nesses in London, makes 24s. or 25s. a week
from October to May, and sarcely 12s. a week
during the summer months, "when people love
to buy any cool fresh fruit instead of sweet-
stuff." The average profits of the generality of
the trade do not perhaps exceed 10s. 6d. or
12s. a week, take the year round. They reside
in all parts.

Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the
manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff. "Hard-
bake," "almond toffy," "halfpenny lollipops,"
"black balls," the cheaper "bulls eyes," and
"squibs" are all made of treacle. One in-
formant sold more of treacle rock than of any-
thing else, as it was dispensed in larger half-
pennyworths, and no one else made it in the
same way. Of peppermint rock and sticks he
made a good quantity. Half-a-crown's worth,
as retailed in the streets, requires 4 lbs. of rough
raw sugar at 4¼d. per lb., 1½d. for scent (essence
of peppermint), 1½d. for firing, and ½d. for
paper — in all 1s. 8½d. calculating nothing for
the labour and time expended in boiling and
making it. The profit on the other things was
proportionate, except on almond rock, which
does not leave 2½d. in a shilling — almonds
being dear. Brandy balls are made of sugar,
water, peppermint, and a little cinnamon. Rose
acid, which is a "transparent" sweet, is com-
posed of loaf sugar at 6½d. per lb., coloured
with cochineal. The articles sold in "sticks"
are pulled into form along a hook until they
present the whitish, or speckled colour desired.
A quarter of a stone of materials will, for
instance, be boiled for forty minutes, and then
pulled a quarter of an hour, until it is suffi-
ciently crisp and will "set" without waste. The
flavouring — or "scent" as I heard it called in
the trade — now most in demand is peppermint.
Gibraltar rock and Wellington pillars used to
be flavoured with ginger, but these "sweeties"
are exploded.

Dr. Pereria, in his "Treatise on Diet," enu-
merates as many as ten different varieties and
preparations of sugar used for dietetical pur-
poses. These are (1) purified or refined sugar;
(2) brown or raw sugar; (3) molasses or treacle
— or fluid sugar; (4) aqueous solutions of su-
gar — or syrups; (5) boiled sugars, or the softer
kinds of confectionary; (6) sugar-candy, or
crystallized cane sugar; (7) burnt sugar, or
caramel; (8) hard confectionary; (9) liquorice;
(10) preserves. The fifth and eighth varieties
alone concern us here.

Of the several preparations of boiled sugar, the Doctor thus speaks, "If a small quan-
tity of water be added to sugar, the mixture
heated until the sugar dissolves, and the solu-
tion boiled to drive off part of the water,
the tendency of the sugar to crystallise is
diminished, or, in some cases, totally destroyed.
To promote this effect, confectioners sometimes
add a small portion of cream of tartar to the
solution while boiling. Sugar, thus altered by
heat, and sometimes variously flavoured, con-
stitutes several preparations sold by the confec-
tioner. Barley-sugar and acidulated drops are
prepared in this way from white sugar: pow-
dered tartaric acid being added to the sugar
while soft. Hardbake and toffee are made by
a similar process from brown sugar. Toffee
differs from hardbake from containing butter.

[Description: 915EAF. Page 204.]

The ornamented sugar pieces, or caramel-tops,
with which pastrycooks decorate their tarts,
&c., are prepared in the same way. If the
boiled and yet soft sugar be rapidly and re-
peatedly extended, and pulled over a hook, it
becomes opaque and white, and then constitutes
pulled sugar, or penides. Pulled sugar, variously
flavoured and coloured, is sold in several forms
by the prepares of hard confectionary.

"Concerning this hard confectionary," Dr.
Pereira says, "sugar constitutes the base of an
almost innumerable variety of hard confection-
ary, sold under the names of lozenges, bril-
liants, pipe, rock, comfits, nonpareils, &c. Besides
sugar, these preparations contain some flavour-
ing ingredient, as well as flour or gum, to give
them cohesiveness, and frequently colouring
matter. Carraway, fruits, almonds, and pine
seeds, constitute the nuclei of some of these
preparations."

One of the appliances of the street sweet-
stuff trade which I saw in the room of the
seller before mentioned was — Acts of Parlia-
ment. A pile of these, a foot or more deep, lay
on a shelf. They are used to wrap up the rock,
&c., sold. The sweet-stuff maker (I never heard
them called confectioners) bought his "paper"
of the stationers, or at the old book-shops.
Sometimes, he said, he got works in this way
in sheets which had never been cut (some he
feared were stolen,) and which he retained to read
at his short intervals of leisure, and then used
to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read
through two Histories of England! He main-
tained a wife, two young children, and a young
sister, who could attend to the stall; his wife
assisted him in his manufactures. He used
1 cwt. of sugar a week on the year's average,
½ cwt. of treacle, and 5 oz. of scents, each 8d. an oz.

The man who has the best trade in London
streets, is one who, about two years ago, intro-
duced — after much study, I was told — short
sentences into his "sticks." He boasts of his
secret. When snapped asunder, in any part,
the stick presents a sort of coloured inscription.
The four I saw were: "Do you love me?" The
next was of less touching character, "Do you
love sprats?" The others were, "Lord Mayor's
Day," and "Sir Robert Peel." This man's
profits are twice those of my respectable infor-
mant's.

OF THE CUSTOMERS OF THE SWEET-STUFF
STREET-SELLERS.

Another sweet-stuff man, originally a baker,
but who, for a fortnight before I saw him, had
been attending upon an old gentleman, disabled
from an accident, gave me the following ac-
count of his customers. What I heard from
the other street-sellers satisfies me of the cor-
rectness of the statement. It will be seen that
he was possesed of some humour and observa-
tion:

"Boys and girls are my best customers, sir,
and mostly the smallest of them; but then,
again, some of them's fifty, aye, turned fifty;
Lor' love you. An old fellow, that hasn't a
stump of a tooth in front, why, he 'll stop and
buy a ha'porth of hard-bake, and he'll say,
`I've a deal of the boy left about me still.'
He doesn't show it, anyhow, in his look. I'm
sometimes a thinking I'll introduce a softer
sort of toffy — boiled treacle, such as they call
Tom Trot in some parts, but it's out of fashion
now, just for old people that's `boys still.' It
was rolled in a ha'penny stick, sir, and sold
stunnin'. The old ones wants something to suck,
and not to chew. Why, when I was a lad at
school, there was Jews used to go about with
boxes on their backs, offering rings and pencil-
cases, and lots of things that's no real use to
nobody, and they told everybody they asked to
buy `that they sold everything, and us boys
used to say — `Then give's a ha'porth of boiled
treacle.' It was a regular joke. I wish I'd
stuck more to my book then, but what can't
be cured must be endured, you know. Now,
those poor things that walks down there"
(intimating, by a motion of the head, a
thoroughfare frequented by girls of the town),
"they're often customers, but not near so
good as they was ten year ago; no, indeed, nor
six or eight year. They like something that
bites in the mouth, such as peppermint-rock, or
ginger-drops. They used to buy a penn'orth or
two and offer it to people, but they don't now, I
think. I've trusted them ha'pennies and pennies,
sometimes. They always paid me. Some that
held their heads high like, might say: `I
really have no change; I'll pay you to-morrow.'
She hadn't no change, poor lass, sure enough,
and she hadn't nothing to change either, I'll go
bail. I've known women, that seemed working
men's or little shopkeeper's wives, buy of me
and ask which of my stuffs took greatest hold
of the breath. I always knew what they was
up to. They'd been having a drop, and didn't
want it to be detected. Why, it was only last
Saturday week two niceish-looking and niceish-
dressed women, comes up to me, and one was
going to buy peppermint-rock, and the other
says to her: `Don't, you fool, he'll only think
you've been drinking gin-and-peppermint.
Coffee takes it off best.' So I lost my custom-
ers. They hadn't had a single drain that night,
I'll go bail, but still they didn't look like regular
lushingtons at all. I make farthing's-worths
of sweet-stuff, for children, but I don't like
it; it's an injury to trade. I was afraid that
when half-farthings was coined, they'd come
among children, and they'd want half a farthing
of brandy-balls. Now, talking of brandy-balls,
there's a gentleman that sometimes has a mi-
nute's chat with me, as he buys a penn'orth to
take home to his children — (every reasonable
man ought to marry and have children for the
sake of the sweet-trade, but it ain't the women's
fault that many's single still) — when one gen-
tleman I knows buys brandy-balls, he says,
quite grave, `What kind o'brandy do you put
in them?' `Not a drop of British,' says I, `I

[Description: 915EAF. Page 205.]

can assure you; not a single drop.' He's not
finely dressed; indeed, he's a leetle seedy, but
I know he's a gentleman, or what's the same
thing, if he ain't rich; for a common fellow 'll
never have his boots polished that way, every
day of his life; his blacking bills must come
heavy at Christmas. I can tell a gentleman,
too, by his way of talk, 'cause he's never bump-
tious. It's the working people's children that's
my great support, and they was a better support,
by 2s. in every 10s., and more, when times was
better; and next to them among my patrons
is poor people. Perhaps, this last year, I've
cleared 11s. a week, not more, all through. I
make my own stuffs, except the drops, and they
require machinery. I would get out of the
streets if I could."

Another of these traders told me, that he
took more in farthings, than in halfpennies or
pennies.

Calculating 200 sweet-stuff sellers, each
clearing 10s. weekly, the outlay in rocks, can-
dies, hard-bakes, &c., in the streets is 5,200l. yearly, or nearly two and a half millions of
halfpenny-worths.

To start in the sweet-stuff business requires
a capital of 35s., including a saucepan in which
to boil sugar, 2s.; weights and scales, 4s.; stock-money (average), 4s.; and barrow, 25s.
If the seller be not his own manufacturer, then
a tray, 1s. 9d.; and stock-money, 1s. 6d.; or
3s. 3d. in all will be sufficient.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF COUGH DROPS
AND OF MEDICAL CONFECTIONARY.

Mr. Strutt, in his "Sports and Pastimes of
the People of England" (1800), says of the
Mountebank: "It is uncertain at what period
this vagrant dealer in physic made his appear-
ance in England; it is clear, however, that he
figured away with much success in this country
during the last two centuries... The
mountebanks usually preface the vending of
their medicines with pompous orations, in which
they pay as little regard to truth as to pro-
priety." I am informed by a gentleman ob-
servant of the matter, that within his knowledge,
which extends to the commencement of the
present century, no mountebank (proper) had
appeared in the streets of London proclaiming
the virtues of his medicines; neither with nor
without his "fool." The last seen by my in-
formant, perhaps the latest mountebank in Eng-
land, was about twenty years ago, in the vicinity
of Yarmouth. He was selling "cough drops"
and infallible cures for asthma, and was dressed
in a and an embroidered coat, with ruf-
fles at his wrist, a sword to his side, and was a
representation, in shabby genteel, of the fine
gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne. The
mountebank's most legitimate successor in the
street cajolery of London, as regards his "ora-
tions," is the "Patterer," as I shall show in
my account of the street trade in stationery
literature. His successor in the vending of
curative confectionaries and (in a small degree)
of nostrums, salves, ointments, &c., are the
sellers of "cough drops" and "horehound
candy," and of the corn salves, and cures for
bruises, sprains, burns, &c., &c., &c.

The street-traders in cough drops and their
accompaniments, however, do not now exceed
six, and of them only two — who are near relatives
— manufacture their own stock-in-trade. I here
treat of the street trade in "cough drops," as a
branch of the itinerant sweet-stuff trade. The
"mountebank" part of the business — that is to
say, "the prefacing the vending of the medicines
with pompous orations," I shall reserve till its
proper place — viz. the "pattering" part of the
street trade, of which an account will be given
in the next Chapter.

The two principal vendors of cough drops
wheel their stalls, which are fixed upon barrows,
to different parts of town, but one principal
stand is in Holborn. On their boards are dis-
played the cough cures, both in the form of
"sticks" and "drops," and a model of a small
distillery. The portion inclosing the still is
painted to resemble brick-work, and a tin tube,
or worm, appears to carry the distillation to a
receiver. Horehound, colts-foot, and some
other herbs lie in a dried state on the stall, but
principally horehound, to which popular (street)
opinion seems to attach the most and the greatest
virtues. There are also on the stalls a few bottles,
tied up in the way they are dispensed from a
regular practitioner, while the cough drops are
in the form of sticks (½d. each), also neatly
wrapped in paper. The cry is both expressive
and simply descriptive — "Long life candy!
Candy from herbs!"

From the most experienced person in this
curious trade, I had the following statement.
He entertained a full assurance, as far as I
could perceive, of the excellence of his reme-
dies, and of the high art and mystery of his
calling. In persons of his class, professing to
heal, no matter in what capacity, or what may
be the disease, this is an important element of
success. My informant, whether answering my
questions or speaking of his own accord, always
took time to consider, and sometimes, as will be
seen, declined replying to my inquiries. From
him I received the following account: —

"The cough drop and herb trade is nothing
now to what it was long ago. Thirty or forty
years ago, it was as good as 3l. or 4l. a week to
a person, and was carried on by respectable men.
I know nothing of any `humbugs' in the re-
spectable part of the trade. What's done by
those who are ignorant, and not respectable, is
nothing to me. I don't know how many there
were in the trade thirty or forty years ago; but
I know that, ten or eleven years since, I supplied
seven persons who sold cough drops, and such
like, in the streets, and now I supply only myself
and another. I sell only four or five months in
the year — the cold months, in course; for, in
the summer, people are not so subject to coughs
and colds. I am the `original' maker of my
goods. I will cure any child of the hooping-

[Description: 915EAF. Page 206.]

cough, and very speedily. I defy any medical
man to dispute it, and I'll do it — `no cure, no
pay.' I never profess to cure asthma. Nobody
but a gravedigger can put an end to that there;
but I can relieve it. It's the same with con-
sumption; it may be relieved, but the grave-
digger is the only man as can put a stop to it.
Many have tried to do it, but they've all failed.
I sell to very respectable people, and to educated
people, too; and, what's more, a good deal (of
cough drops) to medical men. In course, they
can analyse it, if they please. They can taste
the bitter, and judge for themselves, just as they
can taste wine in the Docks. Perhaps the wives
of mechanics are among my best customers.
They are the most numerous, but they buy only
ha'porths and penn'orths. Very likely, they
would think more of the remedy if they had to
pay 13½d. for it, instead of the 1½d. The Govern-
ment stamp makes many a stuff sell. Oh! I
know nothing about quackery: you must inquire
at the Stamp-office, if you want to know about
them kind of medicines. They're the people
that help to sell them. Respectable people will
pay me 1s. or 2s. at a time; and those who buy
once, buy again. I'm sent to from as far off
as Woolwich. I'll undertake to cure, or afford
relief, in coughs, colds, or wind in the chest, or
forfeit 1s. I can dispel wind in two minutes. I
sell bottles, too, for those cures (as well as the
candy from herbs): I manufacture them myself.
They're decoctions of herbs, and the way to pre-
pare them is my secret. I sell them at from 2d. to 1s. Why, I use one article that costs 24s. a
pound, foreign, and twice that English. I've
sold hundred weights. The decoctions are my
secret. I will instruct any person — and have
instructed a good many — when I'm paid for it.
In course, it would never do to publish it in
your work, for thousands would then learn it for
2d. My secret was never given to any person —
only with what you may call a fee — except one,
and only to him when he got married, and
started in the line. He's a connection of mine.
All we sell is genuine.

"I sell herbs, too, but it's not a street sale: I
supply them to orders from my connection. It's
not a large trade. I sell horehound, for tea or
decoctions; coltsfoot, for smoking as herb to-
bacco (I gather the coltsfoot myself, but buy the
horehound of a shopkeeper, as it's cultivated);
ground-ivy is sold only for the blood (but little
of it); hyssop for wind; and Irish moss for
consumption. I'm never asked for anything
improper. They won't ask me for — or — .
And I'm never asked for washes or cosmetics;
but a few nettles are ordered of me for com-
plexions.

"Well, sir, I'd rather not state the quantities
I sell, or my profits, or prices. I make what
keeps myself, my wife, and seven children, and
that's all I need say about it. I'd rather say no
more on that part of the business: and so, I'm
sure you won't press me. I don't know what
others in the trade make. They buy of confec-
tioners, and are only imitators of me. They buy
coltsfoot-candy, and such like; how it's made
so cheap, I don't know. In the summer, I give
up cough-drop selling, and take to gold fish."

I am told that the cough-drop-makers, who
are also street-sellers, prepare their sticks, &c.,
much in the same method as the manufacturers
of the ordinary sweet-stuff (which I have de-
scribed), using the decoction, generally of hore-
hound or coltsfoot, as the "scents" are used.
In the old times, it would appear that the pre-
paration of a medicinal confection was a much
more elaborate matter, if we may judge by the
following extract from an obsolete medical work
treating of the matter. The author styles such
preparations "lohochs," which is an Arabic
word, he says, and signifies "a thing to be
licked." It would appear that the lohoch was
not so hard as the present cough-drop. The
following is one of the receipts, "used generally
against diseases in the breast and lungs:" —

Without wishing to infringe upon professional
secrets, I may mention that the earnings of the
principal man in the trade may be taken at 30s. a week for 20 weeks; that of another at 15s. for
the same period; and those of the remaining four
at 5s. each, weekly; but the latter sell acid
drops, and other things bought of the chemists.
Allowing the usual cent. per cent., we then find
130l. expended by street-buyers on cough-drops.

The best cough-drop stall seen in the streets
is a kind of barrow, which can be shut up like a
piano: it cost 3l. 10s. complete with the dis-
tilling apparatus before described. Scales and
weights cost 5s., and the stock-money for the
supply of such a stall need not exceed 10s.; or,
in all, about 4l. 10s. For an ordinary trade —
ready-made articles forming the stock — the
capital would be, stall and trestle, 7s.; scales
and weights (which are not always used),
3s. 6d., and stock-money, 2s. 6d.; in all, 13s

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF ICES AND OF
ICE CREAMS.

I have already treated of the street luxury of
pine-apples, and have now to deal with the
greater street rarity of ice-creams.

A quick-witted street-seller — but not in the
"provision" line — conversing with me upon
this subject, said: "Ices in the streets! Aye,
and there'll be jellies next, and then mock
turtle, and then the real ticket, sir. I don't
know nothing of the difference between the real
thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap
mock in an eating-house, and it tasted like
stewed tripe with a little glue. You'll keep

[Description: 915EAF. Page 207.]

your eyes open, sir, at the Great Exhibition;
and you'll see a new move or two in the streets,
take my word for it. Penny glasses of cham
pagne, I shouldn't wonder."

Notwithstanding the sanguine anticipations
of my street friend, the sale of ices in the
streets has not been such as to offer any great
encouragement to a perseverance in the traffic.

The sale of ice-creams was unknown in the
streets until last summer, and was first intro-
duced, as a matter of speculation, by a man who
was acquainted with the confectionary business,
and who purchased his ices of a confectioner in
Holborn. He resold these luxuries daily to
street-sellers, sometimes to twenty of them, but
more frequently to twelve. The sale, however,
was not remunerative, and had it not been
generally united with other things, such as
ginger-beer, could not have been carried on as
a means of subsistence. The supplier of the
street-traders sometimes went himself, and some-
times sent another to sell ice-cream in Green-
wich Park on fine summer days, but the sale
was sometimes insufficient to pay his railway
expenses. After three or four weeks' trial, this
man abandoned the trade, and soon afterwards
emigrated to America.

Not many weeks subsequent to "the first
start," I was informed, the trade was entered into
by a street-seller in Petticoat-lane, who had be-
come possessed, it was said, of Masters's Freez-
ing Apparatus. He did not vend the ices himself
for more than two or three weeks, and moreover
confined his sale to Sunday mornings; after a
while he employed himself for a short time
in making ices for four or five street-sellers,
some of whom looked upon the preparation as a
wonderful discovery of his own, and he then
discontinued the trade.

There were many difficulties attending the
introduction of ices into street-traffic. The
buyers had but a confused notion how the ice
was to be swallowed. The trade, therefore,
spread only very gradually, but some of the
more enterprising sellers purchased stale ices
from the confectioners. So little, however, were
the street-people skilled in the trade, that a
confectioner told me they sometimes offered
ice to their customers in the streets, and could
supply only water! Ices were sold by the
street-vendors generally at 1d. each, and the
trade left them a profit of 4d. in 1s., when they
served them "without waste," and some of the
sellers contrived, by giving smaller modicums,
to enhance the 4d. into 5d.; the profit, how-
ever, was sometimes what is expressively
called "nil." Cent. per cent. — the favourite
and simple rate known in the streets as "half-
profits" was rarely attained.

From a street-dealer I received the following
account: —

"Yes, sir, I mind very well the first time as
I ever sold ices. I don't think they'll ever
take greatly in the streets, but there's no say-
ing. Lord! how I've seen the people splntter
when they've tasted them for the first time.
I did as much myself. They get among the
teeth and make you feel as if you tooth-ached
all over. I sold mostly strawberry ices. I
haven't an idee how they're made, but it's a
most wonderful thing in summer — freezing
fruits in that way. One young Irish fellow — I
think from his look and cap he was a printer's
or stationer's boy — he bought an ice of me, and
when he had scraped it all together with the
spoon, he made a pull at it as if he was a drink-
ing beer. In course it was all among his teeth
in less than no time, and he stood like a stattey
for a instant, and then he roared out, — `Jasus!
I'm kilt. The could shivers is on to me!' But
I said, `O, you're all right, you are;' and he
says, `What d'you mane, you horrid horn,* by
selling such stuff as that. An' you must have
the money first, bad scran to the likes o' you!'

"The persons what enjoyed their ices most,"
the man went on, "was, I think, servant maids
that gulped them on the sly. Pr'aps they'd been
used, some on 'em, to get a taste of ices on the
sly before, in their services. We sees a many
dodges in the streets, sir — a many. I knew one
smart servant maid, treated to an ice by her
young man — they seemed as if they was keeping
company — and he soon was stamping, with the
ice among his teeth, but she knew how to take
hern, put the spoon right into the middle of her
mouth, and when she'd had a clean swallow she
says: `O, Joseph, why didn't you ask me to tell
you how to eat your ice?' The conceit of sar-
vant gals is ridiculous. Don't you think so,
sir? But it goes out of them when they gets
married and has to think of how to get broth
before how to eat ices. One hot day, about
eleven, a thin tall gentleman, not very young,
threw down 1d. to me, and says, says he, `As
much ice as you can make for that.' He knew
how to take it. When he'd done, he says, says
he, `By G — , my good feller, you've saved my
life. I've been keeping it up all night, and I
was dying of a burnt-up throat, after a snooze,
and had only 1d. So sick and hot was my
stomach, I could have knelt down and taken a
pull at the Thames' — we was near it at the
time — `You've saved my life, and I'll see you
again.' But I've never see'd him since. He
was a gentleman, I think. He was in black,
and wore a big black and gold ring — only one.

"The rest of my customers for ices, was peo-
ple that bought out of curiosity, and there was
gentlemen's servants among 'em, very little
fellows some of 'em; and doctors' boys; and
mechanics as was young and seemed of a
smartish sort; and boys that seemed like
schoolboys; and a few women of the town, —
but mine's not much of a pitch for them."

From the information I obtained, I may state

[Description: 915EAF. Page 208.]

that, if the sale of street ices be calculated at
twenty persons taking, not earning, 1s. 6d. daily
for four weeks, it is as near the mark as possible.
This gives an expenditure of 42l. in street ices,
with a profit to the vendors of from 10 to 25 per
cent. I am told that an unsuccessful start has
characterised other street trades — rhubarb for
instance, both in the streets and markets — which
have been afterwards successful and remune-
rative.

For capital in the ice trade a small sum was
necessary, as the vendors had all stalls and sold
other commodities, except the "original street
ice man," who was not a regular street trader,
but a speculator. A jar — in which the ices
were neither sufficiently covered nor kept
cooled, though it was often placed in a vessel
or "cooler," containing cold water — cost 1s., three cups, 3d. (or three glasses, 1s.), and
three spoons, 3d., with 2s. stock-money; the
total is, presuming glasses were used, 4s., or,
with a vessel for water, 5s.

* I inquired as to what was meant by the reproach-
ful appellation, "horrid horn," and my informant
declared that "to the best of his hearing," those were
the words used; but doubtless the word was "omad-
haun," signifying in the Erse tongue, a half-witted
fellow. My informant had often sold fruit to the
same lad, and said he had little of the brogue, or of
"old Irish words," unless "his temper was riz, and
then it came out powerful.'