University of Virginia Library

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."