Of the Hawking of Tea.
“Persons hawking tea without a licence” (see Chitty’s Edition of “Burn’s Justice,” vol. ii. p. 1113) “are liable to a penalty, under 50 Geo. III., cap. 41.; and, even though they had a licence, they would be liable to a penalty for selling tea in an unentered place.” The penalty under this act is 10l., but the prohibition in question has long been commonly, if not very directly, evaded.
The hawking of tea in London cannot be considered as immediately a street-trade, but it is in some respects blended with street callings and street traffic, so that a brief account is necessary.
I will first give a short history of what is, or was, more intimately a portion of the street-trade.
Until about eight or ten years ago, tea was extensively hawked—from house to house almost—“on tally.” The tally system is, that wherein “weekly payments” are taken in liquidation of the cost of the article purchased, and the trade is one embodying much of evil and much of trickery. At the present time the tallymen are very numerous in London, and in the tally trade there are now not less than 1000 hawkers of, or travellers in, tea; but they carry on their business principally in the suburbs. When I come to treat of the class whom I have called “distributors,” I shall devote an especial inquiry to the tally trade, including, of course, the tea trade. Mr. M’Culloch mentions that a Scotchman’s “tally-walk”—and the majority of the tallymen are Scotchmen—is worth 15 per cent. more than an Englishman’s.
The branch of the tea trade closely connected with the street business is that in tea-leaves. The exhausted leaves of the tea-pot are purchased of servants or of poor women, and they are made into “new” tea. One gentleman—to whose information, and to the care he took to test the accuracy of his every statement, I am bound to express my acknowledgments—told me that it would be fair to reckon that in London 1500 lbs. of tea-leaves were weekly converted into new tea, or 78,000 lbs. in the year! One house is known to be very extensively and profitably concerned in this trade, or rather manufacture, and on my asking the gentleman who gave me the information if the house in question (he told me the name) was accounted respectable by their fellow-citizens, the answer was at once, “Highly respectable.”
The old tea-leaves, to be converted into new, are placed by the manufacturers on hot plates, and are re-dried and re-dyed. To give the “green” hue, a preparation of copper is used. For the “black” no dye is necessary in the generality of cases. This tea-manufacture is sold to “cheap” or “slop” shopkeepers, both in town and country, and especially for hawking in the country, and is almost always sold ready mixed.
The admixture of sloe-leaves, &c., which used to be gathered for the adulteration of tea, is now unknown, and has been unknown since tea became cheaper, but the old tea-leaf trade, I am assured, carried on so quietly and cleverly, that the most vigilant excise-officers are completely in the dark; a smaller “tea-maker” was, however, fined for tea-leaf conversion last year.
Into this curious question, concerning the purposes for which the old tea-leaves are now purchased by parties in the street, I shall enter searchingly when I treat of the street-buyers. The information I have already received is of great curiosity and importance, nor shall I suppress the names of those dishonest traders who purchase the old dried tea-leaves, as a means of cheating their customers.
Into the statistics of this strange trade I will not now enter, but I am informed that great quantities of tea-leaves are sent from the country to London. Perhaps of the 1500 lbs. weekly manufactured, three quarters may be collected in the metropolis.
I may here add, that the great bulk of the tea now hawked throughout the metropolis is supplied from the handsome cars, or vans, of well-known grocers and tea-dealers. Of these—it was computed for me—there are, on no day, fewer than 100 in the streets of London, and of its contiguous and its more remote suburbs, such as Woolwich, and even Barnet. One tradesman has six such cars. The tea is put up in bags of 7, 14, and 21 lbs., duly apportioned in quarter, half, and whole pounds; a quarter of a pound being the smallest quantity vended in this manner. The van and its contents are then entrusted to a driver, who has his regular round, and very often his regular customers. The customers purchase the tea from their faith in the respectability of the firm—generally well known through extensive advertising. The teas are supplied by the house which is pronounced to supply them; for the tradesman is the capitalist in the matter, his carman is the labourer, and the house is responsible for the quality of the article. When a new connection has to be formed, or an “old connection” to be extended, circulars (bonâ fide) are sent round, and the carman afterwards calls: and, “in some genteel streets,” I was told, “calls, oft enough, at every house, and, in many districts, at every decent-looking house in every street.” So far, then, even this part of the traffic may be considered one of the streets. The remuneration of the street-traveller in, or hawker of, tea, is usually 1d. per lb. on the lower-priced kinds, 2d. on the higher (but more often 1d.) and, very rarely indeed, 3d. on the highest. The trade is one peculiar to great cities—and most peculiar, I am assured, to London—for the tradesman does not know so much as the name of his customer; nor, perhaps, does the carman, but merely as “Number such-an-one.” The supply is for ready money, or, if credit be given, it is at the risk of the carman, who has a weekly wage in addition to his perquisites. Every evening, when the vehicle is driven back to the premises of its owner, “stock is taken,” and the money taken by the carman—minus what may be called the “poundage”—is paid over to the proper party.
A man who had driven, or, as he called it, “managed,” one of these vans, told me that he made this way, 2s. to 2s. 6d. a day; “but,” he added, “if you make a good thing of it that way, you have all the less salary.” These carmen are men of good character and good address, and were described to me, by a gentleman familiar with the trade, as “of the very best class of porters.”
As this vehicular-itinerant business has now become an integral part of the general tea-trade, I need not further dwell upon it, but reserve it until I come to treat of the shopmen of grocers and tea-dealers, and thence of the tea-trade in general. I may add, however, that the tea thus hawked is, as regards, perhaps, three-fourths of the quantity sold, known as “mixed,” and sold at 4s. per lb.—costing, at a tea-broker’s, from 2s. 11d. to 3s. 3d. It is announced, as to its staple or entire compound, to be “congou,” but is in reality a tea known as “pouchong.” Some old ladies are still anxious, I was told, for a cup of good strong bohea; and though bohea has been unknown to the tea-trade since the expiration of the East India Company’s Charter in 1834, the accommodating street-traveller will undertake to supply the genuine leaf to which the old lady had been so long accustomed. The green teas thus sold (and they are not above a fiftieth part of the other) are common twankays and common young hysons, neither of them—I can state on excellent authority—accounted in the trade to be “true teas,” but, as in the case of some other green tea, “Canton made.” The “green” is sold from the vans generally at 4s. 6d.; sometimes, but rarely, as high as 5s. 6d. What is sold at 4s. 6d. may cost, on the average, 3s. 5d. I may add, also, that when a good article is supplied, such profits in the tea-trade are not accounted at all excessive.
But the more usual mode of tea hawking is by itinerant dealers who have a less direct connection with the shop whereat they purchase their goods. To this mode of obtaining a livelihood, the hawkers are invited by all the persuasive powers of advertising eloquence: “To persons in want of a genteel and lucrative employment”—“To Gentlemen of good address and business habits,” &c., &c. The genteel and lucrative employment is to hawk tea under the auspices of this “company” or the other. The nature of this business, and of the street tea-trade generally, is shown in the following statement:—“About twelve years ago I came to London in expectation of a situation as tide-waiter; I did not succeed, however, and not being able to obtain any other employment, and trusting to the promises of gentlemen M.P.s for too long a time, my means were exhausted, and I was at length induced to embark in the tea business. To this I was persuaded by a few friends who advanced me some money, considering that it would suit me well, while my friends would endeavour to get me a connection, that is, procure me customers. I accordingly went to a well-known Tea Company in the City, a firm bearing a great name. Their advertisements put forth extraordinary statements, of so many persons realizing independencies from selling their teas, and in very short spaces of time. I was quite pleased at the prospect presented to me in such glowing terms, and, depending not a little on my own industry and perseverance, I embraced the opportunity and introduced myself forthwith to the Company. They advised me in the first place to take out a licence for selling teas, to secure me against any risk of fines or forfeitures. The cost of a licence, after payment of 2s. 11½d. preliminary expenses, is 11s. per annum, to be paid quarterly, as it becomes due, and it is paid by the Company for their agents. The licence is granted for the place of abode of the ‘traveller,’ and strictly prohibits him from hawking or exposing his wares for sale at places other than at such place of abode, but he may of course supply his customers where he will, and serve them at their places of abode respectively. Everything thus prepared, I commenced operations, but soon found that this tea dealing was not so advantageous as I had anticipated. I found that the commission allowed by the Company on cheap teas was very low. For those generally used by the working people, ‘4s. tea,’ for instance, or that at 4s. per pound, I had to pay to the Company 3s. 6d. per pound, thus allowing the travelling dealer or agent for commission only 6d. in the pound, or 1½d. per quarter. Now 80 or 100 customers is considered a fair connection for a dealer, and allowing each customer to take a quarter of a pound at an average, 80 good customers at that rate would bring him 10s., or 100 customers 12s. 6d. clear profit weekly. But many customers do not require so much as a quarter of a pound weekly, while others require more, so that I find it rather awkward to subdivide it in portions to suit each customer, as the smallest quantity made at the warehouse is a quarter of a pound, and every quarter is done up in a labelled wrapper, with the price marked on it. So that to break or disturb the package in any way might cause some customers to suspect that it had been meddled with unfairly.
“Another disadvantage was in dealing with the ‘Tea Company.’ No sugars are supplied by them, which makes it more inconvenient for the travelling dealer, as his customers find it difficult to get sugars, most retail grocers having an objection to sell sugars to any but those who are purchasers of teas as well. However, I was not confined to deal with this Company, and so I tried other places, and found a City house, whose terms were preferable. Here I could get tea for 3s. 3d., as good as that for which the Company charged 3s. 6d., besides getting it done up to order in plain paper, and in quantities to suit every variety of customer. There were also sugars, which must be had to accommodate the customers, at whatever trouble or inconvenience to the traveller; for it is very lumbersome to carry about, and leaves scarcely any profit at all.
“The trade is anything but agreeable, and the customers are often exacting. They seem to fancy, however cheaply and well they may be supplied, that the tea-seller is under obligations to them; that their custom will be the making of him, and, therefore, they expect some compliment in return. The consequence is, that very often, unless he be willing to be accounted a ‘shabby man,’ the tea-dealer is obliged, of a Saturday night, to treat his customers, to ensure a continuance of their custom. Other customers take care to be absent at the time he calls. Those who are anxious to run up bills, perhaps, keep out of the way purposely for two or more successive nights of the dealer’s calling, who, notwithstanding, cannot very well avoid serving such customers. This is another evil, and if the tea-man’s capital be not sufficient to enable him to carry on the business in this manner, giving credit (for it is unavoidable), he is very soon insolvent, and compelled to give up the business. I had to give it up at last, after having carried it on for four years, leaving 8l. or 9l. due to me, in small sums, varying from 1s. to 10s., one shilling of which I never expect to be paid. I could not have continued it so long, for my means would not allow me to give credit; but getting partial employment at the last-mentioned house, where I dealt, enabled me to do so. When, however, I got permanently employed, I grew tired of tea-dealing, and gave it up.
“In my opinion the business would best suit persons casually employed, such as dockmen and others, who might have leisure to go about; those also who get other commissions and hawk about other commodities, such as soft wares, might do very well by it; otherwise, in most cases, ’t is only resorted to as a make-shift where no other employment can be obtained.
“I do not know how many persons are in the trade. I have, however, heard it asserted, that there were between 4000 and 5000 persons in London engaged in the business, who are, with but few exceptions, Scotchmen; they, of all others, manage to do the best in this line.
“A man, to undertake the tea business, requires a double capital, because in the first place, he has to purchase the tea, then he must give credit, and be able to support himself till such time as he can get in his money. Some of the tea-dealers manage to eke out their profits by mixing tea-leaves, which have been used, with the genuine commodity. They spread the old tea-leaves on tins which they have for the purpose, and, by exposing them either to the action of the air or the heat of the fire, the leaves crisp up as they had been before they were used, and are not distinguishable from the rest. I never vended such an article, and that may be one reason why I could not succeed in the business.”
I believe the career thus detailed is a common one among the hawkers of tea, or rather the “travellers” in the tea trade. Many sell it on tally.
OF THE WOMEN STREET-SELLERS.
As the volume is now fast drawing to a close, and a specific account has been furnished of almost every description of street-seller (with the exception of those who are the makers of the articles they vend), I purpose giving a more full and general history and classification than I have yet done of the feminine portion of the traders in the streets.
The women engaged in street-sale are of all ages and of nearly all classes. They are, however, chiefly of two countries, England and Ireland. There are (comparatively) a few Jewesses, and a very few Scotchwomen and Welchwomen who are street-traders; and they are so, as it were, accidentally, from their connection, by marriage or otherwise, with male street-sellers. Of foreigners there are German broom-women, and a few Italians with musical instruments.
The first broad and distinctive view of the female street-sellers, is regarding them nationally, that is to say, either English or Irish women—two classes separated by definite characteristics from each other.
The Irishwomen—to avoid burthening the reader with an excess of subdivisions—I shall speak of generally; that is to say, as one homogeneous class, referring those who require a more specific account to the description before given of the street-sellers.
The Englishwomen selling in the streets appear to admit of being arranged into four distinct groups, viz.:—
1. The Wives of Street-Sellers.
2. Mechanics’ or Labourers’ Wives, who go out Street-Selling (while their husbands are at work) as a means of helping out the family income.
3. Widows of former Street-Sellers.
4. Single Women.
I do not know of any street-trade carried on exclusively by women. The sales in which they are principally concerned are in fish (including shrimps and oysters), fruit and vegetables (widows selling on their own account), fire-screens and ornaments, laces, millinery, artificial flowers (but not in any great majority over the male traders), cut flowers, boot and stay-laces and small wares, wash-leathers, towels, burnt linen, combs, bonnets, pin-cushions, tea and coffee, rice-milk, curds and whey, sheeps’-trotters, and dressed and undressed dolls.
What may be called the “heavier” trades, those necessitating the carrying of heavy weights, or the pushing of heavily-laden barrows, are in the hands of men; and so are, even more exclusively, what may be classed as the more skilled trades of the streets, viz. the sale of stationery, of books, of the most popular eatables and drinkables (the coffee-stalls excepted), and in every branch dependent upon the use of patter. In such callings as root-selling, crock-bartering, table-cover selling, mats, game, and poultry, the wife is the helpmate of her husband; if she trade separately in these things, it is because there is a full stock to dispose of, which requires the exertions of two persons, perhaps with some hired help just for the occasion.
The difference in the street-traffic, as carried on by Englishwomen and Irishwomen, is marked enough. The Irishwoman’s avocations are the least skilled, and the least remunerative, but as regards mere toil, such as the carrying of a heavy burthen, are by far the most laborious. An Irishwoman, though not reared to the streets, will carry heavy baskets of oranges or apples, principally when those fruits are cheap, along the streets while her English co-trader (if not a costermonger) may be vending laces, millinery, artificial flowers, or other commodities of a “light,” and in some degree of street estimation a “genteel” trade. Some of the less laborious callings, however, such as that in wash-leathers, are principally in the hands of young and middle-aged Irishwomen, while that in sheeps’-trotters, which does not entail heavy labour, are in the hands mostly of elderly Irishwomen. The sale of such things as lucifer-matches and water-cresses, and any “stock” of general use, and attainable for a few pence, is resorted to by the very poor of every class. The Irishwoman more readily unites begging with selling than the Englishwoman, and is far more fluent and even eloquent; perhaps she pays less regard to truth, but she unquestionably pays a greater regard to chastity. When the uneducated Irishwoman, however, has fallen into licentious ways, she is, as I once heard it expressed, the most “savagely wicked” of any.
After these broad distinctions I proceed to details.
1. From the best information at my command it may be affirmed that about one-half of the women employed in the diverse trades of the streets, are the wives or concubines (permanently or temporarily) of the men who pursue a similar mode of livelihood—the male street-sellers. I may here observe that I was informed by an experienced police-officer—who judged from his personal observation, without any official or even systematic investigation—that the women of the town, who survived their youth or their middle age, did not resort to the sale of any commodity in the streets, but sought the shelter of the workhouse, or died, he could not tell where or under what circumstances. Of the verity of this statement I have no doubt, as a street-sale entails some degree of industry or of exertion, for which the life of those wretched women may have altogether unfitted them.
In the course of the narratives and statements I have given, it is shown that some wives pursue one (itinerant or stationary) calling, while the husband pursues another. The trades in which the husband and wife (and I may here remark that when I speak of “wives,” I include all, so regarded in street life, whether legally united or not)—the trades in which the woman is, more than in any others, literally the help-mate of the man, are the costermonger’s (including the flower, or root, sellers) and the crockery-ware people. To the costermonger some help is often indispensable, and that of a wife is the cheapest and the most honest (to say nothing of the considerations connected with a home) which can be obtained. Among the more prosperous costermongers too, especially those who deal in fish, the wife attends to the stall while the husband goes “a round,” and thus a greater extent of business is transacted. In the root and crockery-trades the woman’s assistance is necessary when barter takes place instead of sale, as the husband may be ignorant of the value of the old female attire which even “high-hip ladies,” as they were described to me, loved to exchange for a fuchsia or a geranium; for a glass cream-jug or a china ornament. Of the married women engaged in any street-trade, I believe nineteen-twentieths are the wives of men also pursuing some street avocation.
2. There are, however, large classes of female street-sellers who may be looked upon as exceptions, the wife selling in the streets while the husband is engaged in some manual labour, but they are only partially exceptions. In the sale of wash-leathers, for instance, are the wives of many Irish bricklayers’ labourers; the woman may be constantly occupied in disposing of her wares in the streets or suburbs, and the man labouring at any building; but in case of the deprivation of work, such a man will at once become a street-seller, and in the winter many burly Irish labourers sell a few nuts or “baked taties,” or a few pairs of braces, or some article which seems little suitable for the employment of men of thews and muscle. In the course of my present inquiry I have, in only very rare instances, met with a poor Irishman, who had not a reason always at his tongue’s end to justify anything he was doing. Ask a bricklayer’s labourer why, in his youth and strength, he is selling nuts, and he will at once reply: “Sure thin, your honnur, isn’t it better than doin’ nothing? I must thry and make a pinny, ’til I’m in worruk again, and glory be to God, I hope that’ll be soon.”
An experienced man, who knows all the street-folk trading in Whitechapel and its neighbourhood, and about Spitalfields, told me that he could count up 100 married women, in different branches of open-air commerce, and of them only two had husbands who worked regularly in-doors. The husband of one woman works for a slop-tailor, the other is a bobbin turner; the tailor’s wife sells water-cresses every morning and afternoon; the turner’s wife is a “small-ware woman.” The tailor, however, told my informant that his eyesight was failing him, that his earnings became less and less, that he was treated like dirt, and would go into some street-trade himself before long. When the man and his wife are both in the street-trade, it is the case in three instances out of four (excluding of course the costermongers, root-sellers, and crock-man’s pursuits) that the couple carry on different callings.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
In the full and specific accounts I gave of the largest body of street-sellers, viz., the costermongers, I showed that concubinage among persons of all ages was the rule, and marriage the exception. It was computed that, taking the mass of costermongers, only one couple in twenty, living together, were married, except in Clerkenwell, where the costers are very numerous, and where the respected incumbent at certain seasons marries poor persons gratuitously; there one couple in ten were really man and wife.
Of the other classes of women street-sellers, directly the reverse is the case; of those living as man and wife, one couple in twenty may be unmarried. An intelligent informant thought this average too high, and that it was more probably one in sixteen. But I incline to the opinion of one in twenty, considering how many of the street-traders have “seen better days,” and were married before they apprehended being driven to a street career. In this enumeration I include only street-traders. Among such people as ballad singers, concubinage, though its wrongfulness is far better understood than among ignorant costermongers, is practised even more fully; and there is often among such classes even worse than concubinage—a dependance, more or less, on the wages of a woman’s prostitution, and often a savage punishment to the wretched woman, if those wages of sin are scant or wanting.
3. The widows in the street-trades are very generally the widows of street-sellers. I believe that very few of the widows of mechanics, when left unprovided for on their husbands’ demise, resort to street traffic. If they have been needle-women before marriage, they again seek for employment at needle-work; if they have been servants, they become charwomen, or washerwomen, or again endeavour to obtain a livelihood in domestic service.
There are some to whom those resources are but starvation, or a step from starvation, or whom they fail entirely, and then they “must try the streets,” as they will describe it. If they are young and reckless, they become prostitutes; if in more advanced years, or with good principles, they turn street-sellers; but this is only when destitution presses sharply.
4. The single women in the street-callings are generally the daughters of street-sellers, but their number is not a twentieth of the others, excepting they are the daughters of Irish parents. The costermongers’ daughters either help their parents, with whom they reside, or carry on some similar trade; or they soon form connections with the other sex, and easily sever the parental tie, which very probably has been far too lax or far too severe. I made many inquiries, but I did not hear of any unmarried young woman, not connected with street-folk by birth or rearing, such as a servant maid,—endeavouring to support herself when out of work or place by a street avocation. Such a person will starve on slop millinery or slop shirt-making; or will, as much or more from desperation than from viciousness, go upon the town. With the Irish girls the case is different: brought up to a street-life, used to whine and blarney, they grow up to womanhood in street-selling, and as they rarely form impure connections, and as no one may be induced to offer them marriage, their life is often one of street celibacy. A young Irishwoman, to whom I was referred in the course of my inquiry among fruit-sellers, had come to London in the hopes of meeting her brother, with whom she was to emigrate; but she could learn nothing of him, and, concluding that he was dead, became an apple-seller. She sat, when I saw her, on cold wintry days, at the corner of a street in the Commercial-road, seemingly as much dead as alive, and slept with an aunt, also a single woman, who was somewhat similarly circumstanced; and thus these two women lived on about 6d. a day each. Their joint bed was 1s. a week, and they contrived to subsist on what remained when this shilling was paid. The niece referred me, not without a sense of pride, to her priest, as to her observance of her religious duties, and declared that where she lodged there were none but women lodgers, and those chiefly her own countrywomen. I believe such cases are not uncommon. A few, who have had the education of ladies (as in the case of an envelope-seller whose statement I gave), are driven to street-trading, but it is as a desperate grasp at something to supply less bitter bread, however little of it, than is supplied in the workhouse. I have many a time heard poor women say: “God knows, sir, I should live far better, and be better lodged and better cared for in the house (they seldom call it workhouse), but I’d rather live on 2d. a day.” Into the question of out and in-door relief I need not now enter, but the prevalent feeling I have indicated is one highly honourable to the English poor. I have heard it stated that the utter repugnance to a workhouse existence was weaker than it used to be among the poor, but I have not met with anything to uphold such an opinion.
Such constitute the several classes of women street-sellers. I shall now proceed to speak of the habits and characters of this peculiar portion of the street-folk.
As regards the religion of the women in street-trades, it is not difficult to describe it. The Irishwomen are Roman Catholics. Perhaps I am justified in stating that they are all of that faith. The truth of this assertion is proved, moreover, to as full a demonstration as it very well can be proved without actual enumeration, by the fact that the great majority of the Irishwomen in the streets are from the Catholic provinces of Connaught, Leinster, and Munster; there are very few from Ulster, and not one-twentieth of the whole from any one of the other provinces. Perhaps, again, it is not extravagant to estimate that three-fourths of the women and girls from the sister island, now selling things in the streets, have been, when in their own country, connected through their husbands or parents with the cultivation of the land. It is not so easy to speak of what the remaining fourth were before they became immigrants. Some were the wives of mechanics, who, when their husbands failing to obtain work in London became street-traders, had adopted the same pursuits. I met with one intelligent man having a stall of very excellent fruit in Battle-bridge, who had been a brogue-maker. He had been in business on his own account in Tralee, but mended the indifferent profits of brogue-making by a little trade in “dry goods.” This, he told me with a cautious glance around him and in a half whisper, though it was twenty-eight years since he left his country, meant smuggled tobacco. He found it advisable, on account of being “wanted” by the revenue officers, to leave Tralee in great haste. He arrived in London, got employment as a bricklayer’s labourer, and sent for his wife to join him. This she did, and from her first arrival, sold fruit in the streets. In two or three years the husband’s work among the builders grew slack, and he then took to the streets. Another man, a shoemaker, who came from Dublin to obtain work in London, as he was considered “a good hand,” could not obtain it, but became a street-seller, and his wife, previously to himself, had resorted to a street-trade in fruit. He became a widower and married as “his second,” the daughter of an Irish carpenter who had been disappointed in emigrating from London, and whose whole family had become fruit-sellers. A third man, who had worked at his trade of a tailor in Cork, Waterford, Wicklow, and Dublin (he “tramped” from Cork to Dublin) had come to London and been for many years a street-seller in different capacities. His wife and daughter now assist him, or trade independently, in selling “roots.” “Rayther,” this man said, “than put up wid the wages and the ter-ratement (said very emphatically) o’ thim slop masters at the Aist Ind, I’d sill myself as a slave. The sthraits doesn’t degrade a man like thim thieves o’ the worruld.” This man knew, personally, ten Irish mechanics who were street-sellers in London, as were their wives and families, including some five-and-twenty females.
I adduce these and the following details somewhat minutely, as they tend to show by what class of Irish immigrants the streets of the imperial metropolis are stocked with so large a body of open-air traders.
There is also another class of women who, I am informed on good authority, sometimes become street-sellers, though I met with no instance myself. The orphan children of poor Irish parents are, on the demise of their father and mother sometimes taken into a workhouse and placed out as domestic servants. So, as regards domestic servants, are the daughters of Irish labourers, by their friends or the charitable. As the wages of these young girls are small and sometimes nominal, the work generally hard, and in no few instances the food scanty and the treatment severe, domestic service becomes distasteful, and a street life “on a few oranges and limmons” is preferred. There is, moreover, with some of this class another cause which almost compels the young Irish girl into the adoption of some street calling. A peevish mistress, whose numerous family renders a servant necessary, but whose means are small or precarious, becomes bitterly dissatisfied with the awkwardness or stupidity of her Irish handmaiden; the girl’s going, or “teasing to go,” every Sunday morning to mass is annoying, and the girl is often discharged, or discharges herself “in a huff.” The mistress, perhaps, with the low tyranny dear to vulgar minds, refuses her servant a character, or, in giving one, suppresses any good qualities, and exaggerates the failings of impudence, laziness, lying, and dirtiness. Thus the girl cannot obtain another situation, and perforce perhaps she becomes a street-seller.
The readiness with which young Irish people thus adapt themselves to all the uncertainties and hardships of a street life is less to be wondered at when we consider that the Irish live together, or at any rate associate with one another, in this country, preserving their native tastes, habits, and modes of speech. Among their tastes and habits, a dislike to a street life does not exist as it does among English girls.
The poor Irish females in London are for the most part regular in their attendance at mass, and this constant association in their chapels is one of the links which keeps the street-Irish women so much distinct from the street-English. In the going to and returning from the Roman Catholic chapels, there is among these people—I was told by one of the most intelligent of them—a talk of family and secular matters,—of the present too high price of oranges to leave full 6d. a day at two a penny, and the probable time when cherries would be “in” and cheap, “plaze God to prosper them.” In these colloquies there is an absence of any interference by English street-sellers, and an unity of conversation and interest peculiarly Irish. It is thus that the tie of religion, working with the other causes, keeps the Irish in the London streets knitted to their own ways, and is likely to keep them so, and, perhaps, to add to their number.
It was necessary to write somewhat at length of so large a class of women who are professors of a religion, but of the others the details may be brief; for, as to the great majority, religion is almost a nonentity. For this absence of religious observances, the women street-sellers make many, and sometimes, I must confess, valiant excuses. They must work on a Sunday morning, they will say, or they can’t eat; or else they tell you, they are so tired by knocking about all the week that they must rest on a Sunday; or else they have no clothes to go to church in, and ar’n’t a-going there just to be looked down upon and put in any queer place as if they had a fever, and for ladies to hold their grand dresses away from them as they walked in to their grand pews. Then, again, some assert they are not used to sit still for so long a time, and so fall asleep. I have heard all these causes assigned as reasons for not attending church or chapel.
A few women street-sellers, however, do attend the Sunday service of the Church of England. One lace-seller told me that she did so because it obliged Mrs. ———, who was the best friend and customer she had, and who always looked from her pew in the gallery to see who were on the poor seats. A few others, perhaps about an equal number, attend dissenting places of worship of the various denominations—the Methodist chapels comprising more than a half. If I may venture upon a calculation founded on the result of my inquiries, and on the information of others who felt an interest in the matter, I should say that about five female street-sellers attended Protestant places of worship, in the ratio of a hundred attending the Roman Catholic chapels.
The localities in which the female street-sellers reside are those (generally) which I have often had occasion to specify as the abodes of the poor. They congregate principally, however, in the neighbourhood of some street-market. The many courts in Ray-street, Turnmill-street, Cow-cross, and other parts of Clerkenwell, are full of street-sellers, especially costermongers, some of those costermongers being also drovers. Their places of sale are in Clerkenwell-green, Aylesbury-street, and St. John-street. Others reside in Vine-street (late Mutton-hill), Saffron-hill, Portpool Lane, Baldwin’s-gardens, and the many streets or alleys stretching from Leather-lane to Gray’s-inn-lane, with a few of the better sort in Cromer-street. Their chief mart is Leather-lane, now one of the most crowded markets in London. The many who use the Brill as their place of street-traffic, reside in Brill-row, in Ossulston-street, Wilstead-street, Chapel-street, and in the many small intersecting lanes and alleys connected with those streets, and in other parts of Somers-town. The saleswomen in the Cripplegate street-markets, such as Whitecross-street, Fore-street, Golden-lane, &c., reside in Play-house-yard, and in the thick congregation of courts and alleys, approximating to Aldersgate-street, Fore-street, Bunhill-row, Chiswell-street, Barbican, &c., &c. Advancing eastward, the female street-sellers in Shoreditch (including the divisions of the Bishopsgate-streets Within and Without, Norton Folgate, and Holywell-street) reside in and about Artillery-lane, Half-moon-street, and the many narrow “clefts” (as they are called in one of Leigh Hunt’s essays) stretching on the right hand as you proceed along Bishopsgate-street, from its junction with Cornhill; “clefts” which, on my several visits, have appeared to me as among the foulest places in London. On the left-hand side, proceeding in the same direction, the street-sellers reside in Long-alley, and the many yards connected with that, perhaps narrowest, in proportion to its length, of any merely pedestrian thoroughfare in London. Mixed with the poor street-sellers about Long-alley, I may observe, are a mass of the tailors and shoemakers employed by the east-end slop-masters; they are principally Irish workmen, carrying on their crafts many in one room, to economise the rent, while some of their wives are street-sellers.
The street-sellers in Spitalfields and Bethnal-green are so mixed up as to their abodes with the wretchedly underpaid cabinet-makers who supply the “slaughter-houses;” with slop-employed tailors and shoemakers (in the employ of a class, as respects shoemakers, known as “garret-masters” or middle-men, between the workman and the wholesale warehouse-man), bobbin-turners, needle-women, slop-milliners, &c., that I might tediously enumerate almost every one of the many streets known, emphatically enough, as the “poor streets.” These poor streets are very numerous, running eastward from Shoreditch to the Cambridge-road, and southward from the Bethnal-green-road to Whitechapel and the Mile End-road. The female street-sellers in Whitechapel live in Wentworth-street, Thrawl-street, Osborne-street, George-yard, and in several of their interminglements with courts and narrow streets. The Petticoat-lane street-dealers are generally Jews, and live in the poorer Jewish quarters, in Petticoat-lane and its courts, and in the streets running on thence to Houndsditch. Rosemary-lane has many street-sellers, but in the lane itself and its many yards and blind alleys they find their domiciles. Westward in the metropolis one of the largest street-markets is in Tottenham-court-road; and in the courts between Fitzroy-market and Tottenham-court-road are the rooms of the women vending their street goods. Those occupying the Hampstead-road with their stalls—which is but a continuation of the Tottenham-court-road market—live in the same quarters. In what is generally called the St. George’s-market, meaning the stalls at the western extremity of Oxford-street, the women who own those stalls reside in and about Thomas-street, Tom’s-court, and the wretched places—the very existence of which is perhaps unknown to their aristocratic neighbourhood—about Grosvenor-square; some of them lamentably wretched places. It might be wearisome to carry on this enumeration further. It may suffice to observe, that in the populous parts of Southwark, Lambeth, and Newington, wherever there is a street-market, are small or old streets inhabited by the street-sellers, and at no great distance. From the Obelisk at the junction, or approximate junction, of the Westminster, Waterloo, Blackfriars, Borough, and London-roads, in pretty well every direction to the banks of the Thames, are a mass of private-looking streets—as far as the absence of shops constitutes the privacy of a street—old and half-ruinous, or modern and trim, in all of which perhaps may be found street-sellers, and in some of which are pickpockets, thieves, and prostitutes.
Of course it must be understood that these specified localities are the residence of the male, as well as the female street-sellers, both adults and children.
The proportion of female street-traders who reside in lodging-houses may be estimated at one-tenth of the entire number. This may appear a small proportion, but it must be remembered that the costermongering women do not reside in lodging-houses—so removing the largest class of street-folk from the calculation of the numbers thus accommodated—and that the Irish who pursue street callings with any regularity generally prefer living, if it be two or three families in a room, in a place of their own. The female street-folk sleeping in lodging-houses, and occasionally taking their meals there, are usually those who are itinerant; the women who have a settled trade, especially a “pitch,” reside in preference in some “place of their own.” Of the number in lodging-houses one half may be regular inmates, some having a portion of a particular room to themselves; the others are casual sojourners, changing their night’s shelter as convenience prompts.
Of the female street-sellers residing in houses of ill fame there are not many; perhaps not many more than 100. I was told by a gentleman whose connection with parochial matters enabled him to form an opinion, that about Whitecross-street, and some similar streets near the Cornwall-road, and stretching away to the Blackfriars and Borough-roads—(the locality which of any in London is perhaps the most rank with prostitution and its attendant evils)—there might be 600 of those wretched women and of all ages, from 15 to upwards of 40; and that among them he believed there were barely a score who occupied themselves with street-sale. Of women, and more especially of girl, street-sellers, such as flower-girls, those pursuing immoral courses are far more numerous than 100, but they do not often reside in houses notoriously of ill-fame, but in their own rooms (and too often with their parents) and in low lodging-houses. For women who are street-sellers, without the practice of prostitution, to reside in a house of ill-fame, would be a reckless waste of money; as I am told that in so wretched a street as White-horse-street, the rent of a front kitchen is 4s. 6d. a week; of a back kitchen, 3s. 6d.; of a front parlour, 6s.; and of a back parlour, 4s. 6d.; all being meagrely furnished and very small. This is also accounted one of the cheapest of all such streets. The rent of a street-seller’s unfurnished room is generally 1s. 6d. or even 1s. a week; a furnished room is 3s. or 2s. 6d.
The state of education among the female street-sellers is very defective. Perhaps it may be said that among the English costers not one female in twenty can read, and not one in forty can write. But they are fond of listening to any one who reads the newspaper or any exciting story. Among the street-selling Irish, also, education is very defective. As regards the adults, who have been of woman’s estate before they left Ireland, a knowledge of reading and writing may be as rare as among the English costerwomen; but with those who have come to this country sufficiently young, or have been born here, education is far more diffused than among the often more prosperous English street children. This is owing to the establishment of late years of many Roman Catholic schools, at charges suited to the poor, or sometimes free, and of the Irish parents having availed themselves (probably on the recommendation of the priest) of such opportunities for the tuition of their daughters, which the English costers have neglected to do with equal chances. Of the other classes whom I have specified as street-sellers, I believe I may say that the education of the females is about the average of that of “servants of all work” who have been brought up amidst struggles and poverty; they can read, but with little appreciation of what they read, and have therefore little taste for books, and often little leisure even if they have taste. As to writing, a woman told me that at one time, when she was “in place,” and kept weekly accounts, she had been complimented by her mistress on her neat hand, but that she and her husband (a man of indifferent character) had been street-sellers for seven or eight years, and during all that time she had only once had a pen in her hand; this was a few weeks back, in signing a petition—something about Sundays, she said—she wrote her name with great pain and difficulty, and feared that she had not even spelled it aright! I may here repeat that I found the uneducated always ready to attribute their want of success in life to their want of education; while the equally poor street-sellers, who were “scholars,” are as apt to say, “It’s been of no manner of use to me.” In all these matters I can but speak generally. The male street-sellers who have seen better days have of course been better educated, but the most intelligent of the street class are the patterers, and of them the females form no portion.
The diet of the class I am describing is, as regards its poorest members, tea and bread or bread and grease; a meal composed of nothing else is their fare twice or thrice a day. Sometimes there is the addition of a herring—or a plaice, when plaice are two a penny—but the consumption of cheap fish, with a few potatoes, is more common among the poor Irish than the poor English female street-sellers. “Indeed, sir,” said an elderly woman, who sold cakes of blacking and small wares, “I could make a meal on fish and potatoes, cheaper than on tea and bread and butter, though I don’t take milk with my tea—I’ve got to like it better without milk than with it—but if you’re a long time on your legs in the streets and get to your bit of a home for a cup of tea, you want a bit of rest over it, and if you have to cook fish it’s such a trouble. O, no, indeed, this time of year there’s no ’casion to light a fire for your tea—and tea ’livens you far more nor a herring—because there’s always some neighbour to give a poor woman a jug of boiling water.” Married women, who may carry on a trade distinct from that of their husbands, live as well as their earnings and the means of the couple will permit: what they consider good living is a dinner daily off “good block ornaments” (small pieces of meat, discoloured and dirty, but not tainted, usually set for sale on the butcher’s block), tripe, cow-heel, beef-sausages, or soup from a cheap cook-shop, “at 2d. a pint.” To this there is the usual accompaniment of beer, which, in all populous neighbourhoods, is “3d. a pot (quart) in your own jugs.” From what I could learn, it seems to me that an inordinate or extravagant indulgence of the palate, under any circumstances, is far less common among the female than the male street-sellers.
During the summer and the fine months of the spring and autumn, there are, I am assured, one-third of the London street-sellers—male and female—“tramping” the country. At Maidstone Fair the other day, I was told by an intelligent itinerant dealer, there were 300 women, all of whose faces he believed he had seen at one time or other in London. The Irish, however, tramp very little into the country for purposes of trade, but they travel in great numbers from one place to another for purposes of mendicancy; or, if they have a desire to emigrate, they will tramp from London to Liverpool, literally begging their way, no matter whether they have or have not any money. The female street-sellers are thus a fluctuating body.
The beggars among the women who profess to be street-traders are chiefly Irishwomen, some of whom, though otherwise well-conducted, sober and chaste, beg shamelessly and with any mendacious representation. It is remarkable enough, too, that of the Irishwomen who will thus beg, many if employed in any agricultural work, or in the rougher household labours, such as scouring or washing, will work exceedingly hard. To any feeling of self-respect or self-dependence, however, they seem dead; their great merit is their chastity, their great shame their lying and mendicancy.
The female street-sellers are again a fluctuating body, as in the summer and autumn months. A large proportion go off to work in market-gardens, in the gathering of peas, beans, and the several fruits; in weeding, in hay-making, in the corn-harvest (when they will endeavour to obtain leave to glean if they are unemployed more profitably), and afterwards in the hopping. The women, however, thus seeking change of employment, are the ruder street-sellers, those who merely buy oranges at 4d. to sell at 6d., and who do not meddle with any calling mixed up with the necessity of skill in selection, or address in recommending. Of this half-vagrant class, many are not street-sellers usually, but are half prostitutes and half thieves, not unfrequently drinking all their earnings, while of the habitual female street-sellers, I do not think that drunkenness is now a very prevalent vice. Their earnings are small, and if they become habituated to an indulgence in drink, their means are soon dissipated; in which case they are unable to obtain stock-money, and they cease to be street-sellers.
If I may venture upon an estimation, I should say that the women engaged in street sale—wives, widows, and single persons—number from 25,000 to 30,000, and that their average earnings run from 2s. 6d. to 4s. a week.
I shall now proceed to give the histories of individuals belonging to each of the above class of female street-sellers, with the view of illustrating what has been said respecting them generally.