Of the Street-Sellers of Braces, Belts, Hose, Trowser-straps, and Waistcoats.
The street-sellers of braces are a numerous and a mixed class. They are nearly all men, and the majority are Irishmen; but this relates only to the itinerant or public-house brace-sellers. These wares are sold also by street-traders, who make other articles the staple of their trade—such as the dog-collar-sellers.
The braces sold thirty years ago were of a very different manufacture from those vended in the streets at present. India-rubber web was then unknown as a component part of the street braces. The braces, which in some parts of the country are called “gallowses,” were, at the time specified, made of a woollen web, both washable and durable. “One pair of such braces, good ones,” said an old tailor with whom I had some talk on the subject, “would last a poor man his lifetime. Now they’re in a rope or in rags in no time.” These woollen braces were sold at from 1s. to 2s. the pair in the streets; the straps being of good firm leather. Not long after this period a much cheaper brace-web was introduced—a mixture of cotton with the woollen—and the cheap manufacture gradually supplanted the better article, as respects the street trade. The cheaper braces were made with sheepskin straps, which soon yielded to friction, and were little serviceable. The introduction of the India-rubber web was another change in the trade, and the manufacture has become lower and lower-priced until the present time.
The braces sold in the streets, or hawked in the public-houses, are, however, not all of the very inferior manufacture. Some are called “silk,” others “buck-leather,” and others “knitted cotton.” The “silk” are of a silken surface, with an admixture of cotton and India-rubber; the “buck-leather” (a kind now very little known in street sale) are of strong sheepskin, dressed buck-leather fashion; and the “knitted” cotton are woven, some kinds of them being very good and strong.
The street brace-sellers, when trying to do business in the streets, carry their goods generally with a few belts, and sometimes with hose in their hands and across their arms. They stretch them from end to end, as they invite the custom of passers by, to evince the elasticity and firmness of the web. Sometimes the braces are slung from a pole carried on the shoulder. The sellers call at the public-house bars and tap-rooms; some are admitted into the parlours; and at a well-frequented gin-palace, I was informed by a manager of one, a brace-seller will call from twelve to twenty times a day, especially on a Monday; while on a Saturday evening they will remain two, three, or four hours, accosting fresh customers. At the gin-palaces, the young and strong Irishmen offering these wares—and there are many such—are frequently scoffed at for selling “braces and things a baby can carry.”
The following account, which I received from a street brace-seller, shows the class who purchase such articles:—
“I was put to a carriage-lamp maker,” the man said, “at Birmingham, but soon ran away. Nobody saw after me, for I had only an uncle, and he left me to the parish. It was all my own fault. I was always after some idle end, though I can read very well. It seems as if I couldn’t help it, being wild, I mean. I ran away to Worcester, without knowing where I was going, or caring either. I was half starved in Worcester, for I lived as I could. I found my way to London afterwards. I’ve been in the streets ever since, at one thing or the other; how many years I can’t say. Time goes so quick sometimes, and sometimes so slow, and I’m never long in one place. I’ve sold braces off and on ever since Amato won the Derby, if you know when that was. I remember it because I went to Epsom races that year to sell race cards. When I came to London after the races I laid out 12s. in braces. I hardly remember how many pairs I bought for it, but they wasn’t such common things as I’m carrying now. I could sell a few then at from 9d. to 1s. 3d. a pair, to the ‘cads’ and people at such places as the ‘Elephant,’ and the ‘Flower Pot’ in Bishopsgate-street, which was a great ‘’bus’ place then. I used to sell, too, to the helpers in inn-yards, and a few in the mews. The helpers in the mews mostly buys knitted cotton. I’ve got 1s. and sometimes 1s. 6d. for an extra article from them, but now I don’t carry them; there’s no demand there. You see, many of them work in their shirts, and the head coachmen and grooms, which is often great Turks, would blow up if the men had dirty braces hanging to their buttons, so they uses what’ll wash. Nearly all my business now is done at public-houses. I go from one tavern to another on my round all day long, and sell in the street when I can. I think I sell as many at 5d. and at 10d. as at all other prices together, and most at 5d.; but when I have what I call a full stock I carry ’em from 4d. to 20d. The poorer sort of people, such as wears braces—for there’s a many as does without ’em—likes the 1d. out of 6d., and the others the 2d. out of the 1s.; it tempts them. It’s a tiresome life, and not so good as costermongering, for I once did tidy well in apples. But in the brace trade you ar’n’t troubled with hiring barrows, and it’s easy carried on in public-houses in wet weather, and there’s no stock to spoil. I sell all to working-people, I think. Sometimes an odd pair or two at 1s. 6d., or so, to a tradesman, that may happen to be in a bar, and likes the look and the price; or to a gentleman’s servant. I make from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a day; full 1s. 6d. if I stick close to it. I may make 2s. or 2s. 6d. a week, too, in selling belts and stockings; but I only sometimes carry stockings. Perhaps I clear 9s. a week the year round. There’s lots in the trade don’t clear 1s. a day, for they only carry low-priced things. I go for 4d. profit on every shilling’s worth I sell. I’ve only myself to keep. I pay 3d. a night at a lodging-house, and nothing on Sundays. I had a young woman with me when I was a coster, but we didn’t agree, and parted. She was too fond of lifting her hand to her mouth (‘tippling’) to please me. I mean to live very near this week, and get a few shillings if I can to try something at Greenwich next Monday.” This was said on the Tuesday in Passion-week.
The braces are bought by the street-sellers at the swag-shops I have described. The prices range from 1s. 6d. (for common children’s) to 12s. a dozen; 3s., 3s. 6d., 6s. 6d., and 7s. being the most frequent prices. Higher-priced articles are also sold at the swags and by the street-sellers, but not one in twenty of these compared with the lower priced.
In London and its suburbs, and on “rounds,” of which the metropolis forms the central point, and at stands, there are, I am assured, not fewer than 500 persons vending braces. Of these a twentieth portion may be women, and a tenth old and sometimes infirm men. There are few children in the trade. The stall-keepers, selling braces with other articles, are about 100, and of the remainder of this class, those who are not Irishmen are often impoverished mechanics, such as tailors—brace-vending being easily resorted to, and carried on quietly in public-houses, and it does not entail the necessity of bawling aloud, to which a working-man, driven to a street-life, usually feels repugnance. Calculating that 500 brace-sellers clear 5s. a week each on those articles alone, and estimating the profit at 33 per cent., it shows a street expenditure of 3900l. One brace-seller considered that 500 such sellers was too low a number; but the most intelligent I met with agreed on that estimate.
The Belts sold in the street are nearly all of stout cotton web, “with India-rubber threads,” and usually of a drab colour, woollen belts being rarely ever seen now. They are procured in the same way, and sold by the same parties, as are braces. The amount expended on belts is, from the best information I can command, about an eighth of that expended on braces. The belts are sold at 1s. each, and cost 8s. the dozen, or 9d. each, if only one be purchased.
The street-sale of hose used to be far more considerable than it is now, and was, in a great measure, in the hands of a class who had personal claims to notice, independent of the goodness of their wares. These were old women, wearing, generally, large white aprons, and chintz-patterned gowns, and always scrupulously clean. They carried from door to door, in the quieter streets, and in the then suburbs, stockings of their “own knitting.” Such they often were; and those which were not were still knitted stockings, although they might be the work of old women in the country, who knitted by the fireside, needing no other light on winter evenings and at the doors of their cottages in the sunshine in summer. Of these street-sellers some were blind. Between thirty and forty years ago, I am told, there were from twelve to twenty blind knitters, but my informant could not speak with certainty, as he might probably observe the same women in different parts. The blind stocking-sellers would knit at a door as they waited. The informant I have quoted thought that the last of these knitters and street-sellers disappeared upwards of twenty years ago, as he then missed her from his door, at which she used to make her regular periodical appearance. The stockings of this trade were most frequently of white lamb’s-wool, and were sold at from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. They were long in the leg, and were suited “for gentle-people’s winter wear.” The women-sellers made in those days, I am assured, a comfortable livelihood.
The sale of stockings is now principally in the hands of the men who vend braces, &c. The kind sold is most frequently unbleached cotton. The price to a street-buyer is generally from 6d. to 9d.; but the trade is of small extent. “It’s one of the trades,” a street-seller said to me, “that we can’t compete with shop-keepers in. You shall go to a haberdashery swag-shop, and though they have ‘wholesale haberdashers,’ and ‘hawkers supplied’ on the door-post, you’ll see a pair of stockings in the window marked with a very big and very black 6, and a very little and not half black ¾; and if I was to go in, they’d very likely ask me 6s. 6d. a dozen for an inferior thing. They retail themselves, and won’t be undersold if they can help it, and so they don’t care to accommodate us in things that’s always going.”
A few pairs of women’s stockings are hawked by women, and sold to servant-maids; but the trade in these goods, I am informed, including all classes of sellers—of whom there may be fifty—does not exceed (notwithstanding the universality of the wear), the receipt of 6s. weekly per individual, with a profit of from 1s. 4d. to 2s., and an aggregate expenditure of about 800l. in the year. The trade is an addition to some other street trade.
The brace-sellers used to carry with their wares another article, of which India-rubber web formed the principal part. These were trowser-straps, “with leather buttonings and ingy-spring bodies.” It was only, however, the better class of brace-sellers who carried them; those who, as my informant expressed it, “had a full stock;” and their sale was insignificant. At one time, the number of brace-sellers offering these straps was, I am informed, from 70 to 100. “It was a poor trade, sir,” said one of the class. “At first I sold at 4d., as they was 6d. in middling shops, and 1s. in the toppers, if not 1s. 6d.; but they soon came down to 3d., and then to 2d. My profit was short of 3d. in 1s. My best customers for braces didn’t want such things; plain working-men don’t. And grooms, and stable-keepers generally, wears boots or knee-gaiters, and footmen sports knee-buckles and stockings. All I did sell to was, as far as I can judge, young mechanics as liked to turn out like gents on a Sunday or an evening, and real gents that wanted things cheap. I very seldom cleared more than 1s. a week on them. The trade’s over now. If you see a few at a stand, it’s the remains of an old stock, or some that a swag-shop has pushed out for next to nothing to be rid of them.”
The sale of waistcoats is confined to Smithfield, as regards the class I now treat of—the sellers of articles made by others. Twelve or fourteen years back, there was a considerable sale in what was a branch of duffing. Waistcoats were sold to countrymen, generally graziers’ servants, under the pretence that they were of fine silk plush, which was then rather an object of rustic Sunday finery. A drover told me that a good many years ago he saw a countryman, with whom he was conversing at the time, pay 10s. 6d. for a “silk plush waistcoat,” the vendor having asked 15s., and having walked away—no doubt remarking the eagerness of his victim—when the countryman refused to give more than 10s. “He had a customer set for it,” he said, “at half-a-guinea.” On the first day the waistcoat was worn—the drover was afterwards told by the purchaser—it was utterly spoiled by a shower of rain; and when its possessor asked the village tailor the value of the garment, he was told that it had no value at all; the tailor could not even tell what it was made of, but he never saw anything so badly made in his life; never. Some little may be allowed for the natural glee of a village tailor on finding one of his customers, who no doubt was proud of his London bargain, completely taken in; but these waistcoats, I am assured by a tailor who had seen them, were the veriest rubbish. The trade, however, has been unknown, unless with a few rare exceptions at a very busy time—such as the market for the show and sale of the Christmas stock—since the time specified.
The waistcoats now sold in Smithfield market, or in the public-houses connected with it, are, I am told, and also by a tailor, very paltry things; but the price asked removes the trade from the imputation of duffing. These garments are sold at from 1s. to 4s. 6d. each; but very rarely 4s. 6d. The shilling waistcoats are only fit for boys—or “youths,” as the slop-tailors prefer styling them—but 1s. 6d. is a common price enough; and seven-eighths of the trade, I am informed, is for prices under, or not exceeding, 2s. The trade is, moreover, very small. There are sometimes no waistcoat-sellers at all; but generally two, and not unfrequently three. The profits of these men are 1s. on a bad, and 2s. 6d. on a good day. As, at intervals, these street-sellers dispose of a sleeve-waistcoat (waistcoat with sleeves) at from 4s. 6d. to 6s., we may estimate the average earnings in the trade at 5s. per market day, or 10s. in the week. This shows an outlay of 78l. in the year, as the profits of these street traders may be taken at 33 per cent.; or, as it is almost invariably worded by such classes, “4d. in the 1s.” The material is of a kind of cotton made to look as stout as possible, the back, &c., being the commonest stuff. They are supplied by a slop-house at the East End, and are made by women, or rather girls.
The sale of waistcoats in the street, markets, &c., is of second-hand goods, or otherwise in the hands of a distinct class. There are other belts, and other portions of wearing apparel, which, though not of textile fabrics, as they are often sold by the same persons as I have just treated of, may be described here. These are children’s “patent leather” belts, trowser-straps, and garters.
The sellers of children’s and men’s belts and trowser-straps are less numerous than they were, for both these things, I am told, but only on street authority, are going out of fashion. From one elderly man who had “dropped belts, and straps, and all that, for oranges,” I heard bitter complaints of the conduct of the swag shop-keepers who supplied these wares. The substance of his garrulous and not very lucid complaint was that when boys’ patent leather belts came into fashion, eleven, twelve, or thirteen years back, he could not remember which, the usual price in the shops was 1s., and they were soon to be had in the streets for 6d. each. The belt-sellers “did well” for a while. But the “swags” who, according to my informant, at first supplied belts of patent horse-leather, came to substitute patent sheep-leather for them, which were softer, and looked as well. The consequence was, that whenever the sheep-leather belts were wet, or when there was any “pull” upon them, they stretched, and “the polish went to cracks.” After having been wet a few times, too, they were easily torn, and so the street trade became distrusted. It was the same with trowser-straps.
The belt trade is now almost extinct in the streets, and the strap trade, which was chiefly in the hands of old and infirm, and young people, is now confined to the sellers of dog-collars, &c. The trowser-straps are not glazed or patent-leather, now, but “plain calf;” sold at 2d. a pair generally, and bought at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 4d. the dozen pairs. Many readers will remember how often they used to hear the cry, “Three pair for sixpence! Three pair for sixpence!” A cry now, I believe, never heard.
Among the belt and strap-sellers were some blind persons. One man counted to me three blind men whom he knew selling them, and one sells them still, attached to the rails by St. Botolph’s church, Bishopsgate.
The same persons who sold straps, &c., not including the present sellers, the dog-collar men, &c., had lately no small traffic in the vending of garters. The garter-sellers were, however, far more numerous than ever were the strap-sellers. At one time, I am told, there were 200 garter sellers; all old or infirm, or poor women, or children, and chiefly Irish children. As these children were often stockingless and shoeless, their cry of “Penny a pair! India-rubber garters, penny a pair!” was sometimes pitiful enough, as they were offering a cheap article, unused by themselves. The sudden influx of garters, so to speak, was owing, I am told, to a manufacturer having discovered a cheap way of “working the India-rubber threads,” and having “thrown a lot into the market through the swag shops.” The price was at first 8s. a gross (8d. a dozen), but as the demand increased, it was raised to 9s. and 9s. 6d. The trade continued about six weeks, but has now almost entirely ceased. The stock of garters still offered for sale is what stall-keepers have on hand, or what swag shop-keepers tempt street-sellers to buy by reducing the price. The leather garter-trade, 1d. a pair being the usual price for sheep-skin garters, is now almost unknown. It was somewhat extensive.
Of the Street-Sellers of Boot and Stay-Laces, &c.
Like many street-callings which can be started on the smallest means, and without any previous knowledge of the article sold being necessary to the street-vendor, the boot and stay-lace trade has very many followers. I here speak of those who sell boot-laces, and subsist, or endeavour to subsist, by the sale, without mixing it up with begging. The majority, indeed the great majority, of these street traders are women advanced in years, and, perhaps, I may say the whole of them are very poor. An old woman said to me, “I just drag on, sir, half-starving on a few boot-laces, rather than go into the workhouse, and I know numbers doing the same.”
The laces are bought at the haberdashery swag-shops I have spoken of, and amongst these old women I found the term “swag-shop” as common as among men who buy largely at such establishments. The usual price for boot-laces to be sold in the streets is 1d. a dozen. Each lace is tagged at both ends, sufficing for a pair of boots. The regular retail price is three a penny, but the lace-sellers are not unfrequently compelled to give four, or lose a customer. A better quality is sold at 1½d. and 2d. a dozen, but these are seldom meddled with by the street lace-sellers. It is often a matter of strong endeavour for a poor woman to make herself mistress of 11d., the whole of which she can devote to the purchase of boot-laces, as for 11d. she can procure a gross, so saving 1d. in twelve dozen.
The stay-laces, which are bought at the same places, and usually sold by the same street-traders, are 2d. and 2½d. the dozen. I am told that there are as many of the higher as of the lower priced stay-laces bought for street sale, “because,” one of the street-sellers told me “there’s a great many servant girls, and others too, that’s very particular about their stay-laces.” The stay-laces are retailed at ½d. each.
These articles are vended at street-stalls, along with other things for female use; but the most numerous portion of the lace-sellers are itinerant, walking up and down a street market, or going on a round in the suburbs, calling at every house where they are known, or where, as one woman expressed it, “we make bold to venture.” Those frequenting the street-markets, or other streets or thoroughfares, usually carry the boot-laces in their hands, and the stay-laces round their necks, and offer them to the females passing. Their principal customers are the working-classes, the wives and daughters of small shop-keepers, and servant-maids. “Ladies, of course,” said one lace-seller, “won’t buy of us.” Another old woman whom I questioned on the subject, and who had sold laces for about fourteen years, gave me a similar account; but she added:—“I’ve sold to high-up people though. Only two or three weeks back, a fine-dressed servant maid stopped me and said, ‘Here, I must have a dozen boot-laces for mistress, and she says, she’ll only give 3d. for them, as it’s a dozen at once. A mean cretur she is. It’s grand doings before faces, and pinchings behind backs, at our house.’”
Among the lace-sellers having rounds in the suburbs are some who “have known better days.” One old woman had been companion and housekeeper to a lady, who died in her arms, and whose legacy to her companion-servant enabled her to furnish a house handsomely. This she let out in apartments at “high-figures,” and anything like a regular payment by her lodgers would have supplied her with a comfortable maintenance. But fine gentlemen, and fine ladies too, went away in her debt; she became involved, her furniture was seized, and step by step she was reduced to boot-lace selling. Her appearance is still that of “the old school;” she wears a very large bonnet of faded black silk, a shawl of good material, but old and faded, and always a black gown. The poor woman told me that she never ventured to call even at the houses where she was best received if she saw any tax-gatherer go to or from the house: “I know very well what it is,” she continued, “it’s no use my calling; they’re sure to be cross, and the servants will be cross too, because their masters or mistresses are cross with them. If the tax-gatherer’s not paid, they’re cross at being asked; if he is paid, they’re cross at having had to part with their money. I’ve paid taxes myself.”
The dress of the boot lace-sellers generally is that of poor elderly women, for the most part perhaps a black chip, or old straw bonnet (often broken) and a dark-coloured cotton gown. Their abodes are in the localities in all parts of the metropolis, which I have frequently specified as the abodes of the poor. They live most frequently in their own rooms, but the younger, and perhaps I may add, coarser, of the number, resort to lodging-houses. It is not very uncommon, I was told by one of the class, for two poor women, boot-lace sellers or in some similar line, “to join” in a room, so saving half the usual rent of 1s. 6d. for an unfurnished room. This arrangement, however, is often of short duration. There is always arising some question, I was told, about the use or wear of this utensil or the other, or about washing, or about wood and coals, if one street-seller returned an hour or two before her companion. This is not to be wondered at, when we bear in mind that to these people every farthing is of consequence. From all that I can learn, the boot-lace sellers (I speak of the women) are poor and honest, and that, as a body, they are little mixed up with dishonest characters and dishonest ways. The exceptions are, I understand, among some hale persons, such as I have alluded to as sojourning in the lodging-houses. Some of these traders receive a little parochial relief.
One intelligent woman could count up 100 persons depending chiefly upon the sale of boot and stay-laces, in what she called her own neighbourhood. This comprised Leather-lane, Holborn, Tottenham Court-road, the Hampstead-road, and all the adjacent streets. From the best data at my command, I believe there are not fewer than 500 individuals selling these wares in London. Several lace-sellers agreed in stating that they sold a dozen boot-laces a-day, and a dozen stay-laces, and 2 dozen extra on Saturday nights; but the drawbacks of bad weather, &c., reduce the average sale to not more than 6 dozen a week, or 1,872,000 boot-laces in a year, at an outlay to the public of 3,900l. yearly; from a half to three-fourths of the receipts being the profit of the street-sellers.
The same quantity of stay-laces sold at 6d. a dozen shows an outlay of 3,900l., with about an equally proportional profit to the sellers.
Most of these traders sell tapes and other articles as well as laces. The tapes cost 3d. and 3½d. the dozen, and are sold at ½d. a knot. A dozen in 2 days is an average sale, but I have treated more expressly of those who depend principally upon boot-lace selling for their livelihood. Their average profits are about 3s. a week, on laces alone. The trade, I am told, was much more remunerative a few years back, and the decline was attributed “to so many getting into the trade, and the button boots becoming as fashionable as the Adelaides.”