Of Periwinkle Selling in the Streets.
There are some street people who, nearly all the year through, sell nothing but periwinkles, and go regular rounds, where they are well known. The “wink” men, as these periwinkle sellers are called, generally live in the lowest parts, and many in lodging-houses. They are forced to live in low localities, they say, because of the smell of the fish, which is objected to. The city district is ordinarily the best for winkle-sellers, for there are not so many cheap shops there as in other parts. The summer is the best season, and the sellers then make, upon the average, 12s. a week clear profit; in the winter, they get upon the average, 5s. a week clear, by selling mussels and whelks—for, as winkles last only from March till October, they are then obliged to do what they can in the whelk and mussel way. “I buy my winks,” said one, “at Billingsgate, at 3s. and 4s. the wash. A wash is about a bushel. There’s some at 2s., and some sometimes as low as 1s. the wash, but they wouldn’t do for me, as I serve very respectable people. If we choose we can boil our winkles at Billingsgate by paying 4d. a week for boiling, and ½d. for salt, to salt them after they are boiled. Tradesmen’s families buy them for a relish to their tea. It’s reckoned a nice present from a young man to his sweetheart, is winks. Servant girls are pretty good customers, and want them cheaper when they say it’s for themselves; but I have only one price.”
One man told me he could make as much as 12s. a week—sometimes more and sometimes less.
He made no speeches, but sung—“Winketty-winketty-wink-wink-wink—wink-wink—wicketty-wicketty-wink—fine fresh winketty-winks wink wink.” He was often so sore in the stomach and hoarse with hallooing that he could hardly speak. He had no child, only himself and wife to keep out of his earnings. His room was 2s. a week rent. He managed to get a bit of meat every day, he said, “somehow or ’nother.”
Another, more communicative and far more intelligent man, said to me concerning the character of his customers: “They’re people I think that like to daddle” (dawdle, I presume) “over their teas or such like; or when a young woman’s young man takes tea with her mother and her, then they’ve winks; and then there’s joking, and helping to pick winks, between Thomas and Betsy, while the mother’s busy with her tea, or is wiping her specs, ’cause she can’t see. Why, sir, I’ve known it! I was a Thomas that way myself when I was a tradesman. I was a patten-maker once, but pattens is no go now, and hasn’t been for fifteen year or more. Old people, I think, that lives by themselves, and has perhaps an annuity or the like of that, and nothing to do pertickler, loves winks, for they likes a pleasant way of making time long over a meal. They’re the people as reads a newspaper, when it’s a week old, all through. The other buyers, I think, are tradespeople or working-people what wants a relish. But winks is a bad trade now, and so is many that depends on relishes.”
One man who “works” the New Cut, has the “best wink business of all.” He sells only a little dry fish with his winks, never wet fish, and has “got his name up,” for the superiority of that shell-fish—a superiority which he is careful to ensure. He pays 8s. a week for a stand by a grocer’s window. On an ordinary afternoon he sells from 7s. to 10s. worth of periwinkles. On a Monday afternoon he often takes 20s.; and on the Sunday afternoon 3l. and 4l. He has two coster lads to help him, and sometimes on a Sunday from twenty to thirty customers about him. He wraps each parcel sold in a neat brown paper bag, which, I am assured, is of itself, an inducement to buy of him. The “unfortunate” women who live in the streets contiguous to the Waterloo, Blackfriars, and Borough-roads, are among his best customers, on Sundays especially. He is rather a public character, getting up dances and the like. “He aint bothered—not he—with ha’p’orths or penn’orths of a Sunday,” said a person who had assisted him. “It’s the top of the tree with his customers; 3d. or 6d. at a go.” The receipts are one-half profit. I heard from several that he was “the best man for winks a-going.”
The quantity of periwinkles disposed of by the London street-sellers is 3,600,000 pints, which, at 1d. per pint, gives the large sum of 15,000l. expended annually in this street luxury. It should be remembered, that a very large consumption of periwinkles takes place in public-houses and suburban tea-gardens.