Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times

by Pritchard, R. E.

  3. The street-sellers of eatables and drinkables – including the vendors of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, ham sandwiches, pea soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum duff, meat puddings, baked potatoes, spice-cakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandyballs, coughdrops, and cat and dogs’ meat – such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of streetdrinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses’ milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water.

  4. The street-sellers of stationery, literature and the fine arts – among whom are comprised the flying-stationers, or standing and running patterers; the long-song-sellers; the wall-song-sellers (or ‘pinners-up’ as they are technically termed); the ballad sellers; the vendors of playbills, second editions of newspapers, back numbers of periodicals and old books, almanacs, pocket books, memorandum books, note paper, sealing-wax, pens, pencils, stenographic cards, valentines, engravings, manuscript music, images and gelatine cards.

  5. The street-sellers of manufactured articles, which class comprises a large number of individuals, as (a) the vendors of chemical articles of manufacture – viz., blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, grease-removing compositions, plating-balls, poison for rats, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigar-lights. (b) The vendors of metal articles of manufacture – razors and pen-knives, teatrays, dog-collars, and key-rings, hardware, birdcages, small coins, medals, jewellery, tinware, tools, card-counters, red-herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons and Dutch ovens. (c) The vendors of china and stone articles of manufacture – as cups and saucers, jugs, vases, chimney ornaments, and stone fruit. (d) The vendors of linen, cotton, tapes and thread, boot and stay-laces, haberdashery, pretended smuggled goods, shirt-buttons, etc., etc.; and (e) the vendors of miscellaneous articles of manufacture – as cigars, pipes and snuff-boxes, spectacles, combs, ‘lots’, rhubarb, sponges, wash-leather, paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol toys, sawdust and pin-cushions.

  6. The street-sellers of second-hand articles – of whom there are again four separate classes; as (a) those who sell old metal articles – viz. old knives and forks, keys, tinware, tools, and marine stores generally; (b) those who sell old linen articles – as old sheeting for towels; (c) those who sell old glass and crockery – including bottles, old pans and pitchers, old looking-glasses, etc.; and (d) those who sell old miscellaneous articles – as old shoes, old clothes, old saucepan lids, etc., etc.

  7. The street-sellers of live animals – including the dealers in dogs, squirrels, birds, gold and silver fish, and tortoises.

  8. The street-sellers of mineral productions and curiosities – as red and white sand, silver sand, coals, coke, salt, spar ornaments, and shells.

  These, so far as my experience goes, exhaust the whole class of street-sellers, and they appear to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in the streets of London.

  The next class are the Street Buyers, under which denomination come the purchasers of hare-skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass, broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.

  After these we have the Street Finders, or those who, as I said before, literally ‘pick up’ their living in the public thoroughfares. They are the ‘pure’ pickers, or those who live by gathering dogs’ dung; the cigar-end finders, or ‘hard-ups’ as they are called, who collect the refuse pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and, having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the mudlarks; the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-hunters.

  Under the fourth division, or that of the Street Performers, Artists and Showmen, are likewise many distinct callings.

  1. The street-performers, who admit of being classified into (a) mountebanks – or those who enact puppet-shows, as Punch and Judy, the fantoccini [marionettes] and the Chinese shades [shadow or silhouette puppets]. (b) The street-performers of feats of strength and dexterity – as ‘acrobats’ or posturers, ‘equilibrists’ or balancers, stiff and bending tumblers, jugglers, conjurors, sword-swallowers, ‘salamanders’ or fire-eaters, swordsmen, etc. (c) The street-performers with trained animals – as dancing dogs, performing monkeys, trained birds and mice, cats and hares, sapient pigs, dancing bears, and tame camels. (d) The street-actors – as clowns, ‘Billy Barlows’, ‘Jim Crows’ [both street clowns], and others.

  2. The street showmen, including shows of extraordinary persons – as giants, dwarfs, albinos, spotted boys and pig-faced ladies. (b) Extraordinary animals – as alligators, calves, horses and pigs with six legs or two heads, industrious fleas, and happy families. (c) Philosophic instruments – as the microscope, telescope, thaumascope [optical toy]. (d) Measuring-machines – as weighing, lifting, measuring and striking machines; and (e) Miscellaneous shows – such as peepshows, glass ships, mechanical figures, waxwork shows, pugilistic shows and fortune-telling apparatus.

  3. The street artists – as black profile-cutters, blind paper-cutters, ‘screevers’ or draughtsmen in coloured chalks on the pavement, writers without hands, and readers without eyes.

  4. The street dancers – as street Scotch girls, sailors, slack and tight-rope dancers, dancers on stilts, and comic dancers.

  5. The street musicians – as the street bands (English and German), players of the guitar, harp, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, musical bells, cornet, tomtom, etc.

  6. The street singers, – as the singers of glees, ballads, comic songs, nigger melodies, psalms, serenades, reciters and improvisatori.

  7. The proprietors of street games, as swings, highflyers, roundabouts, puff-and-darts, rifle shooting, down the dolly, spin-’em-rounds, prick the garter, thimble-rig, etc.

  Then comes the Fifth Division of the Street-folk, viz., the Street Artisans, or Working Pedlars . . .

  1. Of those who make things in the streets there are the following varieties: (a) the metal workers – such as toasting-fork makers, pin-makers, engravers, tobacco-stopper makers. (b) The textile workers – stocking-weavers, cabbage-net makers, nightcap knitters, doll-dress knitters. (c) The miscellaneous workers – the wooden spoon makers, the leather brace and garter makers, the printers and the glass-blowers.

  2. Those who mend things in the streets consist of broken china and glass menders, clock menders, umbrella menders, kettle menders, chair menders, grease removers, hat cleaners, razor and knife grinders, travelling bell hangers and knife cleaners.

  3. Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets are (a) the wood workers – as the makers of clothes-pegs, clothes-props, skewers, needle-cases, foot-stools and clothes-horses, chairs and tables, tea-caddies, writing-desks, drawers, workboxes, dressing-cases, pails and tubs. (b) The trunk, hat and bonnet-box makers, and the cane and rush basket makers. (c) The toy makers – such as Chinese roarers, children’s windmills, flying birds and fishes, feathered cocks, black velvet cats and sweeps, paper houses, cardboard carriages, little copper pans and kettles, tiny tin fireplaces, children’s watches, Dutch dolls, buy-a-brooms, and gutta-percha heads. (d) The apparel makers – viz., the makers of women’s caps, boys’ and men’s cloth caps, nightcaps, straw bonnets, children’s dresses, watch-pockets, bonnet shapes, silk bonnets and gaiters. (e) The metal workers – as the makers of fire-guards, birdcages, the wire workers. (f) The miscellaneous workers – or makers of ornaments for stoves, chimney ornaments, artificial flowers in pots and in nosegays, plaster-of-Paris night-shades, brooms, brushes, mats, rugs, hearthstones, firewood, rush matting and hassocks.

  Of the last division, or Street Labourers, there are four classes:

  1. The cleansers – such as scavengers, nightmen [removers of ‘nightsoil’], flushermen [sewer-cleaners], chimney-sweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, ‘street-orderlies’, labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts.

  2. The lighters and waterers – or the turncocks and the lamplighters.

  3. The street-advertisers – viz., the bill-st
ickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement stencillers.

  4. The street-servants – as horse holders, linkmen, coach-hirers, street-porters, shoeblacks. . . .

  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, gooseberries, plums, damsons, cherries, raspberries or rhubarb, according to the season – and occasionally of mincemeat. 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, etc. . . .

  The London piemen, who may number about forty in winter, and twice that number in summer, are seldom stationary. They go along with their pie-cans in 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 separate 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. . . .

  The piedealers usually make the pies themselves. 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 [public] 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.’

  COFFEE-STALL KEEPERS

  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 the way to their day’s labour. The best ‘pitch’ in London is supposed 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 [720 halfpennies, £1 10s]. . . . 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, sandwiches and cake. It is lighted by three large oil-lamps, with bright brass mountings, and covered in with an oilcloth roof. . . .

  Some of the stall-keepers make their appearance 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 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. . . .

  OF THE TRADES AND LOCALITIES OF THE STREET-JEWS

  The trades which the Jews most affect, I was told by one of themselves, are those in which, as they describe it, ‘there’s a chance’; that is, they prefer a trade in such commodity as is not subjected to a fixed price, so that there may be abundant scope for speculation, and something like a gambler’s chance for profit or loss. . . .

  Of course a wealthy Jew millionaire – merchant, stock-jobber or stockbroker – resides where he pleases – in a villa near the Marquis of Hertford’s in the Regent’s Park, a mansion near the Duke of Wellington’s in Piccadilly, a house and grounds at Clapham or Stamford Hill; but these are exceptions. The quarters of the Jews are not difficult to describe. The trading class in the capacity of shopkeepers, warehousemen, or manufacturers, are the thickest in Houndsditch, Aldgate and the Minories, more especially as regards the ‘swag-shops’ and the manufacture and sale of wearing apparel. The Hebrew dealers in second-hand garments and second-hand wares generally, are located about Petticoat Lane . . .

  Fifty years ago the appearance of the street-Jews, engaged in the purchase of second-hand clothes, was different to what it is at the present time. The Jew then had far more of the distinctive garb and aspect of a foreigner. He not infrequently wore the gabardine, which is never seen now in the streets, but some of the long loose frock coats worn by the Jew clothes buyers resemble it. At that period, too, the Jew’s long beard was far more distinctive than it is in this hirsute generation.

  In other respects the street-Jew is unchanged. Now, as during the last century, he traverses every street, square and road, with the monotonous cry, sometimes like a bleat, of ‘Clo’! Clo’!’ . . .

  MUDLARKS

  There is another class who may be termed river-finders, although their occupation is connected only with the shore; they are commonly known by the name of ‘mudlarks’, from being compelled, in order to obtain the articles they seek, to wade sometimes up to their middle through the mud left on the shore by the retiring tide. These poor creatures are certainly about the most deplorable in their appearance of any I have met with in the course of my inquiries. They may be seen of all ages, from mere childhood to positive decrepitude, crawling among all the barges at the various wharfs along the river; it cannot be said that they are clad in rags, for they are scarcely half covered by the tattered indescribable things that serve them for clothing; their bodies are grimed with the foul soil of the river, and their torn garments stiffened up like boards with dirt of every possible description. . . .

  When the tide is sufficiently low they scatter themselves along the shore, separating from each other, and soon disappear among the craft lying about in every direction. . . . The mudlarks themselves, however, know only those who reside near them, and whom they are accustomed to meet in their daily pursuits; indeed, with but few exceptions, these people are dull, and apparently stupid; this is observable particularly among the boys and girls, who, when engaged in searching the mud, hold but little converse one with another. The men and women may be passed and re-passed, but they notice no one; they never speak, but with a stolid look of wretchedness they plash their way through the mire, their bodies bent down while they peer anxiously about, and occasionally stoop to pick up some paltry treasure that falls in their way.

  The mudlarks collect whatever they happen to find, such as coals, bits of old iron, rope, bones, and copper nails that drop from ships while lying or repairing along the shore. . . .

  At one of the stairs in the neighbourhood of the Pool [of London], I collected about a dozen of these unfortunate children; there was not one of them over twelve years of age, and many of them were but six. . . . The muddy slush was dripping from their clothes and utensils, and forming a puddle in which they stood. There did not appear to be among the whole group as many filthy cotton rags to their backs as, when stitched together, would have been sufficient to form the material of one shirt. On questioning one, he said his father was a coal-backer; he had been dead eight years; the boy was nine years old. His mother was alive; she went out charing and washing when she could get any such work to do. She had one shilling a day when she could get employment, but that was not often; he remembered once to have had a pair of shoes, but it was a long time since. ‘It is very cold in winter,’ he said, ‘to stand in the mud without shoes,’ but he did not mind it in summer. He had been three years mudlarking, and supposed he should remain a mudlark all his life. What else could he be? For there was nothing else he knew
how to do. Some days he earned one penny, and some days four pence; he never earned eight pence in one day, that would have been a ‘jolly lot of money’. . . . Some time ago he had gone to the Ragged School, but he no longer went there, for he forgot it. He could neither read nor write, and did not think he could learn if he tried ‘ever so much’. He didn’t know what religion his father and mother were, nor did he know what religion meant. God was God, he said. He had heard he was good, but didn’t know what good he was to him. . . . London was England, and England, he said, was in London, but he couldn’t tell in what part. He could not tell where he would go to when he died, and didn’t believe anyone could tell that. . . .

  As for the females growing up under such circumstances, the worst may be anticipated of them; and in proof of this I have found, upon inquiry, that very many of the unfortunate creatures who swell the tide of prostitution in Ratcliff Highway, and other low neighbourhoods in the east of London, have originally been mudlarks; and only remained at that occupation till such time as they were capable of adopting the more easy and more lucrative life of the prostitute. . . .

  DUST THOU ART . . .

  A dust-heap . . . may be briefly said to be composed of the following things, which are severally applied to the following uses:

  1. ‘Soil’, or fine dust, sold to brickmakers for making bricks, and to farmers for manure, especially for clover.

  2. ‘Brieze’, or cinders, sold to brickmakers for burning bricks.

  3. Rags, bones and old metal, sold to marine-store dealers.

  4. Old tin and iron vessels, sold for ‘clamps’ to trunks, etc., and for making copperas.

  5. Old bricks and oyster shells, sold to builders for sinking foundations and forming roads.

  6. Old boots and shoes, sold to Prussian-blue manufacturers.