University of Virginia Library

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

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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.