Of the Street-Sellers of Rice-milk.
To make rice-milk, the street-seller usually boils four quarts, of the regular measure, of “skim” with one pound of rice, which has been previously boiled in water. An hour suffices for the boiling of the milk; and the addition of the rice, swollen by the boiling water, increases the quantity to six quarts. No other process is observed, except that some sweeten their rice-milk before they offer it for sale; the majority, however, sweeten it to the customer’s liking when he is “served,” unless—to use the words of one informant—“he have a werry, werry sweet tooth indeed, sir; and that can’t be stood.” For the sweetening of six quarts, half a pound of sugar is used; for the “spicing,” half an ounce of allspice, dashed over the milk freely enough from a pepper-castor. Rice-milk is always sold at stalls arranged for the purpose, and is kept in a tin pan fitted upon a charcoal brazier, so that the “drinkable” is always hot. This apparatus generally stands on the ground alongside the stall, and is elevated only by the feet of the brazier. The “rice-milk woman,”—for the street-sellers are generally females,—dips a large breakfast-cup, holding half a pint, into the pan, puts a tea-spoonful of sugar into it, browns the whole with allspice, and receives 1d.; a halfpennyworth is, of course, half the quantity. The rice-milk women are also sellers of oranges, chestnuts, apples, or some other fruit, as well as the rice-milk; but, sometimes, when the weather is very cold and frosty, they sell rice-milk alone. There are fifty street-sellers of rice-milk in London. Saturday night is the best time of sale, when it is not uncommon for a rice-milk woman to sell six quarts; but, in a good trade, four quarts a day for six days of the week is an average. The purchasers are poor people; and a fourth of the milk is sold to boys and girls, to whom it is often a meal. “Ah, sir,” said one woman, “you should have seen how a poor man, last winter, swallowed a penn’orth. He’d been a-wandering all night, he said, and he looked it, and a gentleman gave him 2d., for he took pity on his hungry look, and he spent 1d. with me, and I gave him another cup for charity. ‘God bless the gentleman and you!’ says he, ‘it’s saved my life; if I’d bought a penny loaf, I’d have choked on it.’ He wasn’t a beggar, for I never saw him before, and I’ve never seen him again from that day to this.” The same informant told me, that she believed no rice-milk was bought by the women of the town: “it didn’t suit the likes of them.” Neither is it bought by those who are engaged in noisome trades. If there be any of the rice-milk left at night, and the saleswoman have doubts of its “keeping,” it is re-boiled with fresh rice and milk. The profit is considerable; for the ingredients, which cost less than 1s. 6d., are made into 96 pennyworths, and so to realize 8s. In some of the poorer localities, however, such as Rosemary-lane, only ½d. the half-pint can be obtained, and 4s. is then the amount received for six quarts, instead of 8s.
To start “in rice-milk” requires 13s. capital, which includes a pan for boiling the milk, 2s.; a kettle, with brazier, for stall, 4s.; stall or stand, 5s.; six cups, 9d.; for stock-money 15½d., with which is bought 4 quarts of skim-milk, 9d.; 1 lb. of rice, 3d.; ½ lb. of sugar, 2d.; allspice, 1d.
The season continues for four months; and calculating—a calculation within the mark—that one half of the 50 sellers have as good a trade as my informant—24 quarts weekly—and that, of the remaining 25, one half sell 12 quarts each weekly, at 1d. the half-pint, and the other half vend 24 quarts at ½d. the half-pint, we find that 320l. is annually spent in rice-milk and about 3,000 gallons of it yearly consumed in the streets of London.