Muscidæ—Flies.
Among the instances recorded of Flies appearing in immense numbers, the following are the most remarkable:
“When the Creole frigate was lying in the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, in 1819, at a distance of six miles from the land, her decks and rigging were suddenly covered with thousands of Flies and grains of sand. The sides of the vessel had just received a fresh coat of paint, to which the insects adhered in such numbers as to spot and disfigure the vessel, and to render it necessary partially to renew the paint. Capt. W. H. Smyth was obliged to repaint his vessel, the Adventure, in the Mediterranean, from the same cause. He was on his way from Malta to Tripoli, when a southern wind blowing from the coast of Africa, then one hundred miles distant, drove such myriads of Flies upon the fresh paint that not the smallest point was left unoccupied by the insects.”[965]
“In May, 1699, at Kerton,” records Mrs. Thoresby, p. 15, “in Lincolnshire, the sky seemed to darken north-westward at a little distance from the town, as though it had been a shower of hailstones or snow; but when it came near the town, it appeared to be a prodigious swarm of Flies, which went with such a force toward the south-east that persons were forced to turn their backs of them.”[966]
On the morning of the 17th of September, 1831, a small dipterous insect, belonging to Meigen’s genus Chlorops, and nearly allied to, if not identical with, his C. læta, appeared suddenly, and in such immense quantities, in one of the upper rooms of the Provost’s Lodge, in King’s College, Cambridge, that the greater part of the ceiling toward the window of the room was so thickly covered as not to be visible. They entered by a window looking due north, while the wind was blowing steadily N. N. W. So it appears they came from the direction of the River Cam, or rather came with its current.[967]
In the summer of 1834, which season was remarkable in England for its swarms and shoals of insects, the air was
constantly filled, says a writer in The Mirror, with millions of small delicate Flies, and the sea in many places, particularly on the Norfolk coasts, was perfectly blackened by the amazing shoals. The length of these masses was not determined; but they were, it is asserted, at least a league broad. It is said the oldest fishermen of those seas never remembered having seen or heard of such a phenomenon.[968]
Capt. Dampier calls the natives of New Holland the “poor winking people of New Holland,” and concludes his description of them with the following observations: “Their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the Flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to one’s face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off they will creep into one’s nostrils, and mouth, too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that from their infancy, being thus annoyed with these insects, they do never open their eyes as other people, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads, as if they were looking at something over them.”[969]
In a house at Zaffraan-craal, Dr. Sparrman suffered so much from the common House-fly, Musca domestica, which, in the south of Africa, frequently appears in such prodigious numbers as to cover almost entirely the walls and ceilings, that, as he asserts, it was impossible for him to keep within doors for any length of time. To get rid of these troublesome pests, the natives resort to a very ingenious contrivance. It is thus related by the above-mentioned traveler: “Bunches of herbs are hung up all over the ceiling, on which the Flies settle in great numbers; a person then takes a linen net or bag, of a considerable depth, fixed to a long handle, and, inclosing in it every bunch, shakes it about, so that the Flies fall down to the bottom of the bag: when, after several applications of it in this manner, they are killed by a pint or a quart at a time, by dipping the bag into scalding hot water.”[970]
Rhasis, Avicen, and Albertus say: “Bury the tail of a wolf in the house, and the Flies will not come into it.”[971]
Berytius says: “Flies will never rest on dumb animals if they are rubbed with the fat of a lion.”[972]
Pliny says: “At Rome yee shall not have a Flie or dog that will enter into the chappell of Hercules standing in the beast market.”[973]
Plutarch, in the Eighth Book of his Symposiaques, learnedly discourses upon the tamableness of the Fly. His opinion is that it cannot be tamed.[974]
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: “Many ways doth nature also by Flies play with the fancies of men in dreams, if we may credit Apomasaris in his Apotelesms. For the Indians, Persians, and Ægyptians do teach, that if Flies appear to us in our sleep, it doth signifie an herauld at arms, or an approaching disease. If a general of an army, or a chief commander, dream that at such or such a place he should see a great company of Flies, in that very place, wherever it shall be, there he shall be in anguish and grief for his soldiers that are slain, his army routed, and the victory lost. If a mean or ordinary man dream the like, he shall fall into a violent fever, which likely may cost him his life. If a man dream in his sleep that Flies went into his mouth or nostrils, he is to expect with great sorrow and grief imminent destruction from his enemies.”[975]
In an English North country chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream-book, we find: “To dream of Flies or other vermin, denotes enemies of all sorts.”[976]
“When we see,” says Hollingshed, “a great number of Flies in a yeare, we naturallie iudge it like to be a great plague.”[977]
Among the deep-sea fishermen of Greenock (Scotland), there is a most comical idea that if a Fly falls into a glass from which any one has been drinking, or is about to drink, it is considered a sure omen of good luck to the drinker, and is always noticed as such by the company.[978] Has this
any connection with our saying of “taking a glass with a fly in it?”
If Flies die in great numbers in a house, it is believed by the common people to be a sure sign of death to some one in the family occupying it; if throughout the country, an omen of general pestilence. It is positively asserted that Flies always die before the breaking out of the cholera, and believed that they die of this disease.
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: “When the Flies bite harder than ordinary, making at the face and eyes of men, they foretell rain or wet weather, from whence Politian hath it:
Thirsty for blood the Fly returns,
And with his sting the skin he burns.
Perhaps before rain they are most hungry, and therefore, to asswage their hunger, do more diligently seek after their food. This also is to be observed, that a little before a showre or a storme comes, the Flies descend from the upper region of the air to the lowest, and do fly, as it were, on the very surface of the earth. Moreover, if you see them very busie about sweet-meats or unguents, you may know that it will presently be a showre. But if they be in all places many and numerous, and shall so continue long (if Alexander Benedict and Johannes Damascenus say true), they foretell a plague or pestilence, because so many of them could not be bred of a little putrefaction of the air.”[979] Elsewhere Moufet states: “Neither are Flies begotten of dung only, but of any other filthy matter putrefied by heat in the summer time, and after the same way spoken of before, as Grapaldus and Lonicerus have very well noted.”[980]
Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 135, says: “Flies in the spring or summer season, if they grow busier or blinder than at other times, or that they are observed to shroud themselves in warm places, expect then quickly to follow either hail, cold storms of rain, or very much wet weather; and if these little creatures are noted early in autumn to repair into their winter quarters, it presages frosty mornings, cold storms, with the approach of hoary winter. Atomes of Flies swarming together, and sporting themselves in the sunbeams, is a good omen of fair weather.”[981]
In Gayton’s Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, p. 99, speaking of Sancho Panza’s having converted a cassock into a wallet, our pleasant annotator observes: “It was serviceable, after this greasie use, for nothing but to preach at a carnivale or Shrove Tuesday, and to tosse Pancakes in after the exercise; or else, if it could have been conveighed thither, nothing more proper for a man that preaches the Cook’s sermon at Oxford, when that plump society rides upon their governour’s horses to fetch in the Enemie, the Flie.” That there was such a custom at Oxford, let Peshall, in his history of that city, be a voucher, who, speaking of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, p. 280, says: “To this Hospital cooks from Oxford flocked, bringing in on Whitsun-week the Fly.” Aubrey saw this ceremony performed in 1642. He adds: “On Michaelmas-day, they rode thither again to carry the Fly away.”[982]
Plutarch, in his disquisition on the Art of Discerning a Flatterer from a Friend, makes the following curious comparison: “The Gad-Flie (as they say) which useth to plague bulles and oxen, setteth about their eares, and so doth the tick deal by dogges: after the same manner, flatterers take hold of ambitious mens eares, and possesse them with praises; and being once set fast there, hardly are they to be removed and chased away.”[983]
Plautus twice compares envious and inquisitive persons to Flies.[984]
In a narrative of unheard-of Popish cruelties toward
Protestants beyond Seas, printed in 1680, we find the insinuating detectives of the Spanish Inquisition under the name of Flies.[985]
Flies are mentioned somewhere in Lyndwood as the emblem of unclean thoughts.[986]
Flies were driven away when a woman was in labor, for fear she should bring forth a daughter.[987]
Flies are found represented in the pottery of the ancient Egyptians.[988]
Flies (Cuspi) were sacrificed to the Sun by the ancient Peruvians.[989]
“To let a Flee (Fly) stick i’ the wa’” is, in Scotland, not to speak on some particular topic, to pass it over without remark.[990]
“Certes, a strange thing it is of these Flies,” says Pliny, “which are taken to be as senselesse and witlesse creatures, yea, and of as little capacity and understanding as any other whatsoever: and yet at the solemne games and plaies holden every fifth yeare at Olympia, no sooner is the bull sacrificed there to the Idoll or god of the Flies called Myiodes, but a man shall see (a wonderful thing to tell) infinit thousand of flies depart out of that territorie by flights, as it were thick clouds.”[991]
This Myiodes or Maagrus, the “Fly-catcher,” was the name of a hero, invoked at Aliphera, at the festivals of Athena, as the protector against Flies. It was also a surname of Hercules.
The following rendering of the second verse of the first chapter of the Second Book of Kings, by Josephus, contains an allusion to the worship of Baalzebub under the form of a Fly: “Now it happened that Ahaziah, as he was coming down from the top of his house, fell down from it, and in his sickness sent to the Fly (Baalzebub), which was the god of Ekron, for that was this god’s name, to enquire about his recovery.”[992]
With reference to this worship, we read in Purchas’s
Pilgrims: “At Accaron was worshipped Baalzebub, that is, the Lord of the Flies, either of contempt of his idolatrie, so called; or rather of the multitude of Flies, which attended the multitude of his sacrifices, when from the sacrifices at the Temple of Jerusalem, as some say, they were wholly free: or for that hee was their Larder-god (as the Roman Hercules) to drive away flies: or for that from a forme of a Flie, in which he was worshipped.… But for Beelzebub, he was their Æsculapius or Physicke god, as appeareth by Ahaziah who sent to consult with him in his sickness. And perhaps from this cause the blaspheming Pharisies, rather applyed the name of this then any other Idoll to our blessed Saviour (Math. x. 25) whom they saw indeed to performe miraculous cures, which superstition had conceived of Baalzebub: and if any thing were done by that Idoll, it could by no other cause bee effected but by the Devill, as tending (like the popish miracles) to the confirmation of Idolatrie.”[993]
This god of the Flies was so called, thinks Whiston, as was Jove among the Greeks, from his supposed power over Flies, in driving them away from the flesh of their sacrifices, which otherwise would have been very troublesome to them.[994]
It has been conjectured that the Fly, under which Baalzebub was represented, was the Tumble-bug, Scarabæus pilluarius; in which case, says Dr. Smith, Baalzebub and Beelzebub might be used indifferently.[995]
“Urspergensis saith that the Devil did very frequently appear in the form of a Fly; whence it was that some of the heathens called their familiar spirit Musca or Fly: perchance alluding to that of Plautus:
Hic pol musca est, mi pater,
Sive profanum, sive publicum, nil clam illum haberi potest:
Quin adsit ibi illico, et rem omnem tenet.—
This man, O my father, is a Fly, nothing can be concealed from him, be it secret or publick, he is presently there, and knowes all the matter.”[996]
Loke, the deceiver of the gods, is fabled in the Northern Mythology, to have metamorphosed himself into a Fly: and demons, in the shape of Flies, were kept imprisoned by the Finlanders, to be let loose on men and beasts.[997]
In Scotland, a tutelary Fly, believed immortal, presided over a fountain in the county of Banff: and here also a large blue Fly, resting on the bark of trees, was distinguished as a witch.[998]
Among the games and plays of the ancient Greeks was the Χαλκη Μυῖα, or Brazen Fly:—a variety of blind-man’s-buff, in which a boy having his eyes bound with a fillet, went groping round, calling out, “I am seeking the Brazen Fly.” His companions replied, “You may seek, but you will not find it”—at the same time striking him with cords made of the inner bark of the papyros; and thus they proceeded till one of them was taken.[999]
This is most probably an allusion to some species of Fly of a bronze color which is most difficult to catch, as, for instance, the little fly found in summer beneath arbors, apparently standing motionless in the air.
Petrus Ramus tells us of an iron Fly, made by Regiomontanus, a famous mathematician of Nuremberg, which, at a feast, to which he had invited his familiar friends, flew forth from his hand, and taking a round, returned to his hand again, to the great astonishment of the beholders. Du Bartas thus expresses this:
Once as this artist, more with mirth than meat,
Feasted some friends whom he esteemed great,
Forth from his hand an iron Fly flew out;
Which having flown a perfect round-about,
With weary wings return’d unto her master:
And as judicious on his arm he plac’d her.
O! wit divine, that in the narrow womb
Of a small fly, could find sufficient room
For all those springs, wheels, counterpoise and chains,
Which stood instead of life, and blood, and veins![1000]
We find also in a work bearing the title “Apologie pour les Grands Homines Accusés de Magie,” that “Jean de Montroyal presented to the Emperor Charles V. an iron
Fly, which made a solemn circuit round its inventor’s head, and then reposed from its fatigue on his arm.”—Probably the same automaton, since Regiomontanus and Montroyal are the same.
Such a Fly as the above is rather extraordinary, yet I have something better to tell—still about a Fly.
Gervais, Chancellor to the Emperor Otho III., in his book entitled “Otia Imperatoris,” informs us that “the sage Virgilius, Bishop of Naples, made a brass Fly, which he placed on one of the city gates, and that this mechanical Fly, trained like a shepherd’s dog, prevented any other fly entering Naples; so much so, that during eight years the meat exposed for sale in the market was never once tainted!”[1001]
“Varro affirmeth,” says Pliny, “that the heads of Flies applied fresh to the bald place, is a convenient medicine for the said infirmity and defect. Some use in this case the bloud of flies: others mingle their ashes with the ashes of paper used in old time, or els of nuts; with this proportion, that there be a third part only of the ashes of flies to the rest, and herewith for ten days together rubb the bare places where the hair is gone. Some there be againe, who temper and incorporat togither the said ashes of Flies with the juice of colewort and brest-milke: others take nothing thereto but honey.”[1002]
Mucianus, who was thrice consul, carried about him a living Fly, says Pliny, wrapped in a piece of white linen, and strongly asserted that to the use of this expedient he owed his preservation from ophthalmia.[1003]
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto says: “In our travels with the ambassador of the King of Bramaa to the Calaminham, we saw in a grot men of a sect of one of their Saints, named Angemacur: these lived in deep holes, made in the mider of the rock, according to the rule of their wretched order, eating nothing but Flies, Ants, Scorpions, and Spiders, with the juice of a certain herb, much like to sorrel.”[1004]
Says Moufet, in his Theater of Insects: “Plutarch, in his Artaxerxes, relates that it was a law amongst a certain
people, that whosoever should be so bold as to laugh at and deride their lawes and constitutions of state, was bound for twenty daies together in an open chest naked, all besmeared with honey and milk, and so became a prey to the Flies and Bees, afterward when the days were expired he was put into a woman’s habit and thrown headlong down a mountain.… Of which kinde of punishment also Suidas makes mention in his Epicurus. There was likewise for greater offenders, a punishment of Boats, so called. For that he that was convict of high treason, was clapt between two boats, with his head, hands, and feet hanging out: for his drink he had milk and honey powred down his throat, with which also his head and hands were sprinkled, then being set against the sun, he drew to him abundance of stinging Flies, and within being full of their worms, he putrefied by little and little, and so died. Which kinde of examples of severity as the ancients shewed to the guilty and criminous offenders; so on the other side the Spaniards in the Indies, used to drive numbers of the innocents out of their houses, as the custome is among them, naked, all bedawbed with honey, and expose them in open air to the biting of most cruel Flies.”[1005]
Mr. Henry Mayhew, in that part of his interesting work on London Labor and London Poor devoted to the London Street-folk, has given us the narratives of several “Catch-’em-Alive” sellers—a set of poor boys who sell prepared papers for the purpose of catching Flies. He discovered, as he relates, a colony of these “Catch-’em-alive” boys residing in Pheasant-court, Gray’s-inn-lane. They were playing at “pitch-and-toss” in the middle of the paved yard, and all were very willing to give him their statements; indeed, the only difficulty he had was in making his choice among the youths.
“Please, sir,” said one with teeth ribbed like celery, to him, “I’ve been at it longer than him.”
“Please, sir, he ain’t been out this year with the papers,” said another, who was hiding a handful of buttons behind his back.
“He’s been at shoe-blacking, sir; I’m the only reg’lar fly-boy,” shouted a third, eating a piece of bread as dirty as London snow.
A big lad with a dirty face, and hair like hemp, was the first of the “catch-’em-alive” boys who gave him his account of his trade. He was a swarthy featured boy, with a broad nose like a negro’s, and on his temple was a big half-healed scar, which he accounted for by saying that “he had been runned over” by a cab, though, judging from the blackness of one eye, it seemed to Mr. Mayhew to have been the result of some street fight. He said:
“I’m an Irish boy, and nearly turned sixteen, and I’ve been silling fly-papers for between eight and nine year. I must have begun to sill them when they first come out. Another boy first tould me of them, and he’d been silling them about three weeks before me. He used to buy them of a party as lives in a back-room near Drury-lane, what buys paper and makes the catch ’em alive for himself. When they first come out they used to charge sixpence a dozen for ’em, but now they’ve got ’em to twopence ha’penny. When I first took to silling ’em, there was a tidy lot of boys at the business, but not so many as now, for all the boys seem at it. In our court alone I should think there was about twenty boys silling the things.
“At first, when there was a good time, we used to buy three or four gross together, but now we don’t no more than half a gross. As we go along the streets we call out different cries. Some of us says, ‘Fly-papers, fly-papers, ketch ’em all alive.’ Others make a kind of song of it, singing out, ‘Fly-paper, ketch ’em all alive, the nasty flies, tormenting the baby’s eyes. Who’d be fly-blow’d, by all the nasty blue-bottles, beetles, and flies?’ People likes to buy of a boy as sings out well, ’cos it makes ’em laugh.
“I don’t think I sell so many in town as I do in the borders of the country, about Highbury, Croydon, and Brentford. I’ve got some regular customers in town about the City-prison and the Caledonian-road; and after I’ve served them and the town custom begins to fall off, then I goes to the country. We goes two of us together, and we takes about three gross. We keep on silling before us all the way, and we comes back the same road. Last year we sould very well in Croydon, and it was the best place for gitting the best price for them; they’d give a penny a piece for ’em there, for they didn’t know nothing about them. I went off one day at ten o’clock and didn’t come home till
two in the morning. I sould eighteen dozen out in that d’rection the other day, and got rid of them before I had got half-way. But flies are very scarce at Croydon this year, and we haven’t done so well. There ain’t half as many flies this summer as last.
“Some people says the papers draws more flies than they ketches, and that when one gets in, there’s twenty others will come to see him. It’s according to the weather as the flies is about. If we have a fine day it fetches them out, but a cold day kills more than our papers.
“We sills the most papers to little cook-shops and sweet-meat shops. We don’t sill so many at private houses. The public-houses is pretty good customers, ’cos the beer draws the flies. I sould nine dozen at one house—a school—at Highgate, the other day. I sould ’em two for three-ha’ pence. That was a good hit, but then t’other days we loses. If we can make a ha’penny each we thinks we does well.
“Those that sills their papers at three a-penny buys them at St. Giles’s, and pays only three ha’pence a dozen for them, but they ain’t half as big and good as those we pays tuppence-ha’penny a dozen for.
“Barnet is a good place for fly-papers; there’s a good lot of flies down there. There used to be a man at Barnet as made ’em, but I can’t say if he do now. There’s another at Brentford, so it ain’t much good going that way.
“In cold weather the papers keep pretty well, and will last for months with just a little warming at the fire; for they tears on opening when they are dry. You see we always carry them with the stickey sides doubled up together like a sheet of writing-paper. In hot weather, if you keep them folded up, they lasts very well; but if you opens them, they dry up. It’s easy opening them in hot weather, for they comes apart as easy as peeling a horrange. We generally carries the papers in a bundle on our arm, and we ties a paper as is loaded with flies round our cap, just to show the people the way to ketch ’em. We get a loaded paper given to us at a shop.
“When the papers come out first, we use to do very well with fly-papers; but now it’s hard work to make our own money for ’em. Some days we used to make six shillings a day regular. But then we usen’t to go out every day, but take a rest at home. If we do well one day, then we might stop idle another day, resting. You see, we had to do our
twenty or thirty miles silling them to get that money, and then the next day we was tired.
“The silling of papers is gradual falling off. I could go out and sill twenty dozen wonst where I couldn’t sill one now. I think I does a very grand day’s work if I yearns a shilling. Perhaps some days I may lose by them. You see, if it’s a very hot day, the papers gets dusty; and besides, the stuff gets melted and oozes out; though that don’t do much harm, ’cos we gets a bit of whitening and rubs ’em over. Four years ago we might make ten shillings a day at the papers, but now, taking from one end of the fly-season to the other, which is about three months, I think we makes about one shilling a day out of papers, though even that ain’t quite certain. I never goes out without getting rid of mine, somehow or another, but then I am obleeged to walk quick and look about me.
“When it’s a bad time for silling the papers, such as a wet, could day, then most of the fly-paper boys goes out with brushes, cleaning boots. Most of the boys is now out hopping. They goes reg’lar every year after the season is give over for flies.
“The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and turpentine and resin. It’s seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes after it gets on the paper, and then it’s as dead as a house. The blue-bottles is tougher, but they don’t last long, though they keeps on fizzing as if they was trying to make a hole in the paper. The stuff is only p’isonous for flies, though I never heard of anybody as ever eat a fly-paper.”
A second lad, in conclusion, said: “There’s lots of boys going selling ‘ketch-’em-alive oh’s’ from Golden-lane, and White-chapel and the Borough. There’s lots, too, comes out of Gray’s-inn-lane and St. Giles’s. Near every boy who has nothing to do goes out with fly-papers. Perhaps it ain’t that the flies is falled off that we don’t sill so many papers now, but because there’s so many boys at it.”
A third, of the lot the most intelligent and gentle in his demeanor, though the smallest in stature, said:
“I’ve been longer at it than the last boy, though I’m only getting on for thirteen, and he’s older than I’m; ’cos I’m little and he’s big, getting a man. But I can sell them quite as well as he can, and sometimes better, for I can holler out just as loud, and I’ve got reg’lar places to go to. I
was a very little fellow when I first went out with them, but I could sell them pretty well then, sometimes three or four dozen a day. I’ve got one place, in a stable, where I can sell a dozen at a time to country people.
“I calls out in the streets, and I goes into the shops, too, and calls out, ‘Ketch ’em alive, ketch ’em alive; ketch all the nasty black-beetles, blue-bottles, and flies; ketch ’em from teasing the baby’s eyes.’ That’s what most of us boys cries out. Some boys who is stupid only says, ‘Ketch ’em alive,’ but people don’t buy so well from them.
“Up in St. Giles’s there is a lot of fly-boys, but they’re a bad set, and will fling mud at gentlemen, and some prigs the gentlemen’s pockets. Sometimes, if I sell more than a big boy, he’ll get mad and hit me. He’ll tell me to give him a halfpenny and he won’t touch me, and that if I don’t he’ll kill me. Some of the boys takes an open fly-paper, and makes me look another way, and then they sticks the ketch-’em-alive on my face. The stuff won’t come off without soap and hot water, and it goes black, and looks like mud. One day a boy had a broken fly-paper, and I was taking a drink of water, and he come behind me and slapped it up in my face. A gentleman as saw him give him a crack with a stick and me twopence. It takes your breath away, until a man comes and takes it off. It all sticked to my hair, and I couldn’t rack (comb) right for some time.…
“I don’t like going along with other boys, they take your customers away; for perhaps they’ll sell ’em at three a penny to ’em, and spoil the customers for you. I won’t go with the big boy you saw, ’cos he’s such a blackgeyard; when he’s in the country he’ll go up to a lady and say, ‘Want a fly-paper, marm?’ and if she says ‘No,’ he’ll perhaps job his head in her face—butt at her like.
“When there’s no flies, and the ketch-’em-alive is out, then I goes tumbling. I can turn a cat’enwheel over on one hand. I’m going to-morrow to the country, harvesting and hopping—for, as we says, ‘Go out hopping, come in jumping.’ We start at three o’clock to-morrow, and we shall get about twelve o’clock at night at Dead Man’s Barn. It was left for poor people to sleep in, and a man was buried there in a corner. The man had got six farms of hops; and if his son hadn’t buried him there, he wouldn’t have had none of the riches.
“The greatest number of fly-papers I’ve sold in a day is
about eight dozen. I never sells no more than that; I wish I could. People won’t buy ’em now. When I’m at it I makes, taking one day with another, about ten shillings a week. You see, if I sold eight dozen, I’d make four shillings. I sell ’em at a penny each, at two for three-ha’pence, and three for twopence. When they gets stale I sells ’em for three a penny. I always begin by asking a penny each, and perhaps they’ll say, ‘Give me two for three ha’pence?’ I’ll say, ‘Can’t, ma’am,’ and then they pulls out a purse full of money and gives a penny.
“The police is very kind to us, and don’t interfere with us. If they see another boy hitting us they’ll take off their belts and hit ’em. Sometimes I’ve sold a ketch-’em-alive to a policeman; he’ll fold it up and put it into his pocket to take home with him. Perhaps he’s got a kid, and the flies teazes its eyes.
“Some ladies like to buy fly-cages better than ketch-em-alive’s, because sometimes when they’re putting ’em up they falls in their faces, and then they screams.”
The history of the manufacture of Fly-papers was thus given to Mr. Mayhew by a manufacturer, whom he found in a small attic-room near Drury-lane: “The first man as was the inventor of these fly-papers kept a barber’s shop in St. Andrew-street, Seven Dials, of the name of Greenwood or Greenfinch, I forget which. I expect he diskivered it by accident, using varnish and stuff, for stale varnish has nearly the same effect as our composition. He made ’em and sold ’em at first at threepence and fourpence a piece. Then it got down to a penny. He sold the receipt to some other parties, and then it got out through their having to employ men to help ’em. I worked for a party as made ’em, and then I set to work making ’em for myself, and afterwards hawking them. They was a greater novelty then than they are now, and sold pretty well. Then men in the streets, who had nothing to do, used to ask me where I bought ’em, and then I used to give ’em my own address, and they’d come and find me.”[1006]