Of the Street-sellers of Boiled Puddings.
The sale of boiled puddings, meat and currant—which might perhaps be with greater correctness called dumplings—has not been known in London, I was informed by one in the trade, more than twelve or fourteen years. The ingredients for the meat puddings are not dissimilar to those I have described as required for the meat pies, but the puddings are boiled, in cotton bags, in coppers or large pans, and present the form of a round ball. The charge is a halfpenny each. Five or six years back a man embarked his means—said to be about 15l.—in the meat-pudding line, and prepared a superior article, which was kept warm in the street by means of steam, in a manner similar to that employed by the pieman. A mechanic out of work was engaged by this projector to aid him in the sale of his street luxuries, and the mechanic and his two boys made a living by this sale for two or three years. The original pudding-projector relinquished the street trade to go into business as a small shop-keeper, and the man who sold for him on a sort of commission, earning from 12s. to 18s. a week, made the puddings on his own account. His earnings, however, on his own account were not above from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a week beyond what he earned by commission, and a little while back he obtained work again at his own business, but his two boys still sell puddings in the street.
The sale of boiled meat puddings is carried on only in the autumn and winter months, and only in the evenings, except on Saturdays, when the business commences in the afternoon. The sale, I was informed by one of the parties, has been as many as forty-five dozen puddings on a Saturday evening. The tins in which the puddings are carried about hold from four to six dozen, and are replenished from the pans—the makers always living contiguous to the street where the vend takes place—as fast as the demand requires such replenishment. An average sale on a fine dry winter Saturday evening is thirty dozen, but then, as in most street callings, “the weather”—a remark often made to me—“has considerable to do with it.” A frost, I was told, helped off the puddings, and a rain kept them back. Next to Saturday the best business night is Monday; but the average sale on the Monday is barely half that on the Saturday, and on the other evenings of the week about a third. This gives a weekly sale by each street-seller of 85 dozen, or 1,020 puddings, and as I am informed there are now but six street-sellers (regularly) of this comestible, the weekly aggregate would be—allowing for bad weather—5,400, or 129,600 in a season of 24 weeks; an expenditure on the part of the street boys and girls (who are the principal purchasers), and of the poor persons who patronise the street-trade, of about 270l. per annum. The wandering street-musicians of the poorer class—such as “Old Sarey” and the Italian boys—often make their dinner off a meat pudding purchased on their rounds; for it is the rule with such people never to return home after starting in the morning till their day’s work is done.
The boys who ply their callings in the street, or are much in the open air, are very fond of these puddings, and to witness the way in which they throw the pudding, when very hot, from hand to hand, eyeing it with an expression that shows an eagerness to eat with a fear of burning the mouth, is sometimes laughable and sometimes painful, because not unfrequently there is a look of keen hunger about the—probably outcast—lad. The currant puddings are, I believe, sold only at Billingsgate and Petticoat-lane.