Of the Street-Sellers of Cigars.
Cigars, I am informed, have constituted a portion of the street-trade for upwards of 20 years, having been introduced not long after the removal of the prohibition on their importation from Cuba. It was not, however, until five or six years later that they were at all extensively sold in the streets; but the street-trade in cigars is no longer extensive, and in some respects has ceased to exist altogether.
I am told by experienced persons that the cigars first vended in the streets and public-houses were really smuggled. I say “really” smuggled, as many now vended under that pretence never came from the smuggler’s hands. “Well, now, sir,” said one man, “the last time I sold Pickwicks and Cubers a penny apiece with lights for nothing, was at Greenwich Fair, on the sly rather, and them as I could make believe was buying a smuggled thing, bought far freer. Everybody likes a smuggled thing.” [This remark is only in consonance with what I have heard from others of the same class.] “In my time I’ve sold what was smuggled, or made to appear as sich, but far more in the country than town, to all sorts—to gentlemen, and ladies, and shopkeepers, and parsons, and doctors, and lawyers. Why no, sir, I can’t say as how I ever sold anything in that way to an exciseman. But smuggling’ll always be liked; it’s sich a satisfaction to any man to think he’s done the tax-gatherer.”
The price of a cigar, in the earlier stages of the street-traffic, was 2d. and 3d. One of the boxes in which these wares are ordinarily packed was divided by a partition, the one side containing the higher, and the other the lower priced article. The division was often a mere trick of trade—in justification of which any street-seller would be sure to cite the precedent of shopkeepers’ practices—for the cigars might be the same price (wholesale) but the bigger and better-looking were selected as “threepennies,” the “werry choicest and realest Hawanners, as mild as milk, and as strong as gunpowder,” for such, I am told, was the cry of a then well-known street-trader. The great sale was of the “twopennies.” As the fuzees, now so common, were unknown, and lucifer matches were higher-priced, and much inferior to what they are at present, the cigar seller in most instances carried tow with him, a portion of which he kept ignited in a sort of tinder-box, and at this the smokers lighted their cigars; or the vender twisted together a little tow and handed it, ignited, to a customer, that if he were walking on he might renew his “light,” if the cigar “wouldn’t draw.”
A cheaper cigar soon found its way into street commerce, “only a penny apiece, prime cigars;” and on its first introduction, a straw was fitted into it, as a mouth-piece. “Cigar tubes” were also sold in the streets; they were generally of bone, and charged from 2d. to 1s. each. The cigar was fitted into the tube, and they were strongly recommended on the score of economy, as “by means of this tube, any gen’l’man can smoke his cigar to half a quarter of an inch, instead of being forced to throw it away with an inch and a half left.” These tubes have not for a long time been vended in the streets. I am told by a person, who himself was then engaged in the sale, that the greatest number of penny cigars ever sold in the streets in one day was on that of her Majesty’s coronation (June 28, 1838). Of this he was quite positive from what he had experienced, seen, and heard.
“In my opinion,” said another street-seller, “the greatest injury the street-trade in such things had was when the publicans took to selling cigars. They didn’t at first, at least not generally; I’ve sold cigars myself, at the bars of respectable houses, to gentlemen that was having their glass of ale with a friend, and one has said to another, ‘Come, we’ll have a smoke,’ and has bought a couple. O, no; I never was admitted to offer them in a parlour or tap-room; that would have interfered with the order for ‘screws’ (penny papers of tobacco), which is a rattling good profit, I can tell you. Indeed, I was looked shy at, from behind the bar; but if customers chose to buy, a landlord could hardly interfere. Now, it’s no go at all in such places.”
One common practice among the smarter street-seller, when “on cigars,” was, until of late years, and still is, occasionally at races and fairs, to possess themselves of a few really choice “weeds,” as like as they could procure them to their stock-in-trade, and to smoke one of them, as they urged their traffic.
The aroma was full and delicate, and this was appealed to if necessary, or, as one man worded it, the smell was “left to speak for itself.” The street-folk who prefer the sale of what is more or less a luxury, become, by the mere necessities of their calling, physiognomists and quick observers, and I have no reason to doubt the assertion of one cigar-vendor, when he declared that in the earlier stages of this traffic he could always, and most unerringly in the country, pick out the man on whose judgment others seemed to rely, and by selling him one of his choice reserve, procure a really impartial opinion as to its excellence, and so influence other purchasers. When the town trade “grew stale”—the usual term for its falling-off—the cigar-sellers had a remunerative field in many parts of the country.
In London, before railways became the sole means of locomotion to a distance, the cigar-sellers frequented the coaching-yards; and the “outsides” frequently “bought a cigar to warm their noses of a cold night,” and sometimes filled their cases, if the cigar-seller chanced to have the good word of the coachman or guard.
The cigar street-trade was started by two Jews, brothers, named Benasses, who were “licensed to deal in tobacco,” and vended good articles. When they relinquished the open-air business, they supplied the other street-sellers, whose numbers increased very rapidly. The itinerant cigar-vending was always principally in the hands of the Jews, but the general street-traders resorted to the traffic on all occasions of public resort,—“sich times,” observed one, “as fairs and races, and crownations, and Queen’s weddings; I wish they came a bit oftener for the sake of trade.” The manufacture of the cigars sold at the lowest rates, is now almost entirely in the hands of the Jews, and I am informed by a distinguished member of that ancient faith, that when I treat of the Hebrew children, employed in making cigars, there will be much to be detailed of which the public have little cognisance and little suspicion.
The cigars in question are bought (wholesale) in Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Ailie-street, Tenter-ground, in Goodman’s-fields, and similar localities. The kinds in chief demand are Pickwicks, 7s. and 8s. per lb.; Cubas, 8s. 6d.; common Havannahs and Bengal Cheroots, the same price; but the Bengal Cheroots are not uncommonly smuggled.
“The best places for cigar-selling,” one man stated, “I’ve always found to be out of town; about Greenwich and Shooter’s Hill, and to the gents going to Kensington Gardens, and such like places. About the Eagle Tavern was good, too, as well as the streets leading to the Surrey Zoological—one could whisper, ‘cheap cigar, sir, half what they’ll charge you inside.’ I’ve known young women treat their young men to cigars as they were going to Cremorne, or other public places; but there’s next to no trade that way now, and hasn’t been these five or six years. I don’t know what stopped it exactly. I’ve heard it was shop-keepers that had licences, complaining of street people as hadn’t, and so the police stopped the trade as much as they could.”
At all the neighbouring races and fairs, and at any great gathering of people in town, cigars are sold, more with the affectation than the reality of its being done, “quite on the sly.” The retail price is 1d. each, and three for 2d. Some of the cheap cigars are made to run 200, and even as high as 230 to the pound. A fuzee is often given into the bargain.
I am told that, on all favourable opportunities, there are still 100 persons who vend cigars in the streets of London, while a greater number of “London hands” carry on the trade at Epsom and Ascot races. At other periods the business is all but a nonentity. To clear 1l. a week is considered “good work.” At one period, on every fine Sunday, there were not, I am assured, fewer than 500 persons selling cigars in the open air in London and its suburbs.