London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

Of the Street-Sellers of Gutta-Percha Heads.

There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. These are usually things which are grotesque or amusing, but of no utility, and they are supplanted by some more attractive novelty—a main attraction being that it is a novelty.

Among such matters of street-trade are the elastic toys called “gutta-percha heads;” these, however, have no gutta-percha in their composition, but consist solely of a composition made of glue and treacle—the same as is used for printer’s rollers. The heads are small coloured models of the human face, usually with projecting nose and chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit of being squeezed into a different form of features, their elasticity causing them to return to the original caste. The trade carried on in the streets in these toys was at one time extensive, but it seems now to be gradually disappearing. On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there was not one “head” exposed for sale in any of the four great street markets of Leather-lane, the Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the Hampstead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.

The trade became established in the streets upwards of two years ago. At first, I am told by a street-seller, himself one of the first, there were six “head-sellers,” who “worked” the parks and their vicinity. My informant one day sold a gross of heads in and about Hyde-park, and a more fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1½ gross. The heads were recommended, whenever opportunity offered, by a little patter. “Here,” one man used to say, “here’s the Duke of Wellington’s head for 1d. It’s modelled from the statty on horseback, but is a improvement. His nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel’s only 1d. Anybody you please is 1d.; a free choice and no favour. The Queen and all the Royal Family 1d. apiece.” As the street-seller offered to dispose of the model of any eminent man’s head and face, he held up some one of the most grotesque of the number. Another man one Saturday evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers and others in the street markets “pattering” them off as the likenesses of any policeman who might be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was when the trade was new. The number of sellers was a dozen in the second week; it was soon twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of the heads; besides these the heads were offered to the street-buying public by many of the stationary street-folk, whose stock partook of a miscellaneous character. The men carrying on this traffic were of the class of general street-sellers.

“The trade was spoiled, sir,” said an informant, “by so many going into it, but I’ve heard that it’s not bad in parts of the country now. The sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and Sundays was the best days. I don’t pretend to be learned about religion, but I know that many a time after I’d earned next to nothing in a wet week, it came a fine Sunday morning, and I took as much as got me and my wife and children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and sometimes, when we could depend on it, smoking hot from the baker’s oven; and I then felt I had something to thank God for. You see, sir, when a man’s been out all the week, and often with nothing to call half a dinner, and his wife’s earnings only a few pence by sewing at home, with three young children to take care of, you’re nourished and comforted, and your strength keeps up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in your own room. But them as eats their dinner without having to earn it, can’t understand about that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped, the police drive us about like dogs, not gentlemen’s dogs, but stray or mad dogs. And it seems there’s some sort of a new police. I can’t understand a bit of it, and I don’t want to, for the old police is trouble enough.”

The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the “English and German” swag-shops. A few are made by the men who sell them in the streets. The “swag” price is 1s. the gross; at one time the swag man demurred to sell less than half a gross, but now when the demand is diminished, a dozen is readily supplied for 8d. The street price retail, is and always was 1d. a head. The principal purchasers in the street are boys and young men, with a few tradesmen or working people, “such as can afford a penny or two,” who buy the “gutta-percha” heads for their children. There used to be a tolerable trade in public houses, where persons enjoying themselves bought them “for a lark,” but this trade has now dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the “larks,” an informant knew to be practised, was to attach the head to a piece of paper or card, write upon it some one’s name, make it up into a parcel, and send it to the flattered individual. The same man had sold heads to young women, not servant-maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid employment, and he believed, from their manner when buying, for some similar purpose of “larking.” When the heads were a novelty, he sold a good many to women of the town.

There are now no street-folks who depend upon the sale of these gutta-percha heads, but they sell them occasionally. The usual mode is to display them on a tray, and now, generally with other things. One man showed me his box, which, when the lid was raised, he carried as a tray slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-percha heads, exhibition medals, and rings and other penny articles of jewellery.

There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons selling gutta-percha heads in the streets, some of them confining their business solely to those articles. In this number, however, I do not include those who are both makers and sellers. Their average receipts, I am assured, do not exceed 5s. a week each, for, though some may take 15s. a week, others, and generally the stationary head-sellers, do not take 1s. The profit to the street retailer is one third of his receipts. From this calculation it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue, 390l. is spent yearly in these street toys. At one time it was far more than twice the amount.