University of Virginia Library

OF " STRAWING."

I have already alluded to " strawing," which
can hardly be described as quackery. It is
rather a piece of mountebankery. Many a
quack — confining the term to its most common
signification, that of a " quack doctor" — has
faith in the excellence of his own nostrums,
and so proffers that which he believes to be
curative: the strawer, however, sells what he
knows is not what he represents it.

The strawer offers to sell any passer by in
the streets a straw and to give the purchaser a
paper which he dares not sell. Accordingly as
he judges of the character of his audience, so he
intimates that the paper is political, libellous,
irreligious, or indecent.

I am told that as far back as twenty-five or
twenty-six years, straws were sold, but only in
the country, with leaves from the Republican, a
periodical published by Carlile, then of Fleet-
street, which had been prosecuted by the govern-
ment; but it seems that the trade died away,
and was little or hardly known again until the
time of the trial of Queen Caroline, and then
but sparingly. The straw sale reached its
highest commercial pitch at the era of the
Reform Bill. The most successful trader in
the article is remembered among the patterers
as " Jack Straw," who was oft enough repre-
sented to me as the original strawer. If I
inquired further, the answer was: " He was the
first in my time." This Jack Straw was, I
am told, a fine-looking man, a natural son of
Henry Hunt, the blacking manufacturer. He
was described to me as an inveterate drunkard
and a very reckless fellow. One old hand was
certain that this man was Hunt's son, as he
himself had " worked" with him, and was
sometimes sent by him when he was " in trou-
ble," or in any strait, to 32, Broadwall, Black-
friars, for assistance, which was usually ren-
dered. (This was the place where Hunt's
" Matchless Blacking" and " Roasted Corn"
were vended.) Jack Straw's principal " pitch"
was at Hyde Park Corner, " where," said the
man whom I have mentioned as working with
him, "he used to come it very strong against
Old Nosey, the Hyde Park bully as he called
him. To my knowledge he's made 10s., and
he's made 15s. on a night. O, it didn't matter
to him what he sold with his straws, religion or
anything. There was no three-pennies (three-
penny newspapers) then, and he had had a
gentleman's education, and knew what to say,
and so the straws went off like smoke." The
articles which this man " durst not sell" were
done up in paper, so that no one could very well
peruse them on the spot, as a sort of stealth
was implied. On my asking Jack Straw's co-
worker if he had ever drank with him, " Drank
with him!" he answered, " Yes, many a
time. I've gone out and pattered, or chaunted,
or anything, to get money to buy him two
glasses of brandy — and good brandy was very
dear then — before he could start, for he was all
of a tremble until he had his medicine. If
I couldn't get brandy, it was the best rum,
'cause he had all the tastes of a gentleman.
Ah! he's been bead some years, sir, but where
he died I don't know. I only heard of his
death. He was a nice kindly fellow."

The ruse in respect of strawing is not remark-
able for its originality. It was an old smug-
gler's trick to sell a sack and give the keg of
contraband spirit placed within it and padded
out with straw so as to resemble a sack of corn.
The hawkers, prior to 1826, when Mr. Huskis-
son introduced changes into the Silk Laws, gave " real Ingy handkerchiefs" (sham) to a cus-
tomer, and sold him a knot of tape for about 4s. The price of a true Bandana, then prohibited,
and sold openly in the draper's shops, was about
8s. The East India Company imported about
a million of Bandanas yearly; they were sold by
auction for exportation to Hamburgh, &c., at
about 4s. each, and were nearly all smuggled
back again to England, and disposed of as I
have stated.

It is not possible to give anything like sta-
tistics as to the money realised by strawing. A
well-informed man calculated that when the

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trade was at its best, or from 1832 to 1836,
there might be generally fifty working it in the
country and twenty in London; they did not
confine themselves, however, to strawing, but
resorted to it only on favourable opportunities.
Now there are none in London — their numbers
diminished gradually — and very rarely any in
the country.