Of the Experience and Customers of a Ginger-beer Seller.
A slim, well-spoken man, with a half-military appearance, as he had a well trimmed moustache, and was very cleanlily dressed, gave me the following account: “I have known the ginger-beer trade for eight years, and every branch of it. Indeed I think I’ve tried all sorts of street business. I’ve been a costermonger, a lot-seller, a nut-seller, a secret-paper-seller (with straws, you know, sir), a cap-seller, a street-printer, a cakeman, a clown, an umbrella-maker, a toasting-fork maker, a sovereign seller, and a ginger-beer seller. I hardly know what I haven’t been. I made my own when last I worked beer. Sunday was my best day, or rather Sunday mornings when there’s no public-houses open. Drinking Saturday nights make dry Sunday mornings. Many a time men have said to me: ‘Let’s have a bottle to quench a spark in my throat,’ or ‘My mouth’s like an oven.’ I’ve had to help people to lift the glass to their lips, their hands trembled so. They couldn’t have written their names plain if there was a sovereign for it. But these was only chance customers; one or two in a morning, and five or six on a Sunday morning. I’ve been a teetotaller myself for fifteen years. No, sir, I didn’t turn one—but I never was a drinker—not from any great respect for the ginger-beer trade, but because I thought it gave one a better chance of getting on. I once had saved money, but it went in a long sickness. I used to be off early on Sunday mornings sometimes to Hackney Marsh, and sell my beer there to gentlemen—oldish gentlemen some of them—going a fishing. Others were going there to swim. One week I took 35s. at 1d. a bottle, by going out early in a morning; perhaps 20s. of it was profit, but my earnings in the trade in a good season wasn’t more than 12s. one week with another. All the trades in the streets are bad now, I think. Eight years back I could make half as much more in ginger-beer as could be made last summer. Working people and boys were my other customers. I stuck to ginger-beer in the season and then went into something else, for I can turn my hand to anything. I began a street life at eight years old by selling memorandum-books in the bull-ring at Birmingham. My parents were ill and hadn’t a farthing in the house. I began with 1d. stock-money, and I bought three memorandum-books for it at Cheap Jack’s thatched house. I’ve been in London seventeen or eighteen years. I’m a roulette-maker now; I mean the roulette boxes that gentlemen take with them to play with when travelling on a railway or such times. I make loaded dice, too, and supply gaming-houses. I think I know more gaming-houses than any man in London. I’ve sold them to gentlemen and to parsons, that is ministers of religion. I can prove that. I don’t sell those sort of things in the streets. I could do very well in the trade, but it’s so uncertain and so little’s wanted compared to what would keep a man going, and I have a mother that’s sixty to support. Altogether my present business is inferior to the ginger-beer; but the fountains will destroy all the fair ginger-beer trade.”