Of the Street Sale of Sweet-stuff.
In this sale there are now engaged, as one of the most intelligent of the class calculated, 200 individuals, exclusive of twenty or thirty Jew boys. The majority of the sellers are also the manufacturers of the articles they vend. They have all been brought up to the calling, their parents having been in it, or having been artizans (more especially bakers) who have adopted it for some of the general reasons I have before assigned. The non-makers buy of the cheap confectioners.
The articles now vended do not differ materially, I am informed by men who have known the street trade for forty years, from those which were in demand when they began selling in the streets.
A very intelligent man, who had succeeded his father and mother in the “sweet-stuff” business—his father’s drunkenness having kept them in continual poverty—showed me his apparatus, and explained his mode of work. His room, which was on the second-floor of a house in a busy thoroughfare, had what I have frequently noticed in the abodes of the working classes—the decency of a turn-up bedstead. It was a large apartment, the rent being 3s. 6d. a week, unfurnished. The room was cheerful with birds, of which there were ten or twelve. A remarkably fine thrush was hopping in a large wicker cage, while linnets and bullfinches showed their quick bright eyes from smaller cages on all sides. These were not kept for sale but for amusement, their owner being seldom able to leave his room. The father and mother of this man cleared, twenty years ago, although at that time sugar was 6d. or 7d. the pound, from 2l. to 3l. a week by the sale of sweet-stuff; half by keeping a stall, and half by supplying small shops or other stall-keepers. My present informant, however, who has—not the best—but one of the best businesses in London, makes 24s. or 25s. a week from October to May, and scarcely 12s. a week during the summer months, “when people love to buy any cool fresh fruit instead of sweet-stuff.” The average profits of the generality of the trade do not perhaps exceed 10s. 6d. or 12s. a week, take the year round. They reside in all parts.
Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff. “Hardbake,” “almond toffy,” “halfpenny lollipops,” “black balls,” the cheaper “bulls eyes,” and “squibs” are all made of treacle. One informant sold more of treacle rock than of anything else, as it was dispensed in larger halfpennyworths, and no one else made it in the same way. Of peppermint rock and sticks he made a good quantity. Half-a-crown’s worth, as retailed in the streets, requires 4 lbs. of rough raw sugar at 4¼d. per lb., 1½d. for scent (essence of peppermint), 1½d. for firing, and ½d. for paper—in all 1s. 8½d. calculating nothing for the labour and time expended in boiling and making it. The profit on the other things was proportionate, except on almond rock, which does not leave 2½d. in a shilling—almonds being dear. Brandy balls are made of sugar, water, peppermint, and a little cinnamon. Rose acid, which is a “transparent” sweet, is composed of loaf sugar at 6½d. per lb., coloured with cochineal. The articles sold in “sticks” are pulled into form along a hook until they present the whitish, or speckled colour desired. A quarter of a stone of materials will, for instance, be boiled for forty minutes, and then pulled a quarter of an hour, until it is sufficiently crisp and will “set” without waste. The flavouring—or “scent” as I heard it called in the trade—now most in demand is peppermint. Gibraltar rock and Wellington pillars used to be flavoured with ginger, but these “sweeties” are exploded.
Dr. Pereria, in his “Treatise on Diet,” enumerates as many as ten different varieties and preparations of sugar used for dietetical purposes. These are (1) purified or refined sugar; (2) brown or raw sugar; (3) molasses or treacle—or fluid sugar; (4) aqueous solutions of sugar—or syrups; (5) boiled sugars, or the softer kinds of confectionary; (6) sugar-candy, or crystallized cane sugar; (7) burnt sugar, or caramel; (8) hard confectionary; (9) liquorice; (10) preserves. The fifth and eighth varieties alone concern us here.
Of the several preparations of boiled sugar, the Doctor thus speaks, “If a small quantity of water be added to sugar, the mixture heated until the sugar dissolves, and the solution boiled to drive off part of the water, the tendency of the sugar to crystallise is diminished, or, in some cases, totally destroyed. To promote this effect, confectioners sometimes add a small portion of cream of tartar to the solution while boiling. Sugar, thus altered by heat, and sometimes variously flavoured, constitutes several preparations sold by the confectioner. Barley-sugar and acidulated drops are prepared in this way from white sugar: powdered tartaric acid being added to the sugar while soft. Hardbake and toffee are made by a similar process from brown sugar. Toffee differs from hardbake from containing butter. The ornamented sugar pieces, or caramel-tops, with which pastrycooks decorate their tarts, &c., are prepared in the same way. If the boiled and yet soft sugar be rapidly and repeatedly extended, and pulled over a hook, it becomes opaque and white, and then constitutes pulled sugar, or penides. Pulled sugar, variously flavoured and coloured, is sold in several forms by the preparers of hard confectionary.
“Concerning this hard confectionary,” Dr. Pereira says, “sugar constitutes the base of an almost innumerable variety of hard confectionary, sold under the names of lozenges, brilliants, pipe, rock, comfits, nonpareils, &c. Besides sugar, these preparations contain some flavouring ingredient, as well as flour or gum, to give them cohesiveness, and frequently colouring matter. Carraway, fruits, almonds, and pine seeds, constitute the nuclei of some of these preparations.”
One of the appliances of the street sweet-stuff trade which I saw in the room of the seller before mentioned was—Acts of Parliament. A pile of these, a foot or more deep, lay on a shelf. They are used to wrap up the rock, &c., sold. The sweet-stuff maker (I never heard them called confectioners) bought his “paper” of the stationers, or at the old book-shops. Sometimes, he said, he got works in this way in sheets which had never been cut (some he feared were stolen,) and which he retained to read at his short intervals of leisure, and then used to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read through two Histories of England! He maintained a wife, two young children, and a young sister, who could attend to the stall; his wife assisted him in his manufactures. He used 1 cwt. of sugar a week on the year’s average, ½ cwt. of treacle, and 5 oz. of scents, each 8d. an oz.
The man who has the best trade in London streets, is one who, about two years ago, introduced—after much study, I was told—short sentences into his “sticks.” He boasts of his secret. When snapped asunder, in any part, the stick presents a sort of coloured inscription. The four I saw were: “Do you love me?” The next was of less touching character, “Do you love sprats?” The others were, “Lord Mayor’s Day,” and “Sir Robert Peel.” This man’s profits are twice those of my respectable informant’s.