Of the Street-Sellers of Whips, etc.
These traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If one be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher’s cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort.
The commonest of the whips sold to cart-drivers is sometimes represented as whalebone covered with gut; but the whalebone is a stick, and the flexible part is a piece of leather, while the gut is a sort of canvas, made to resemble the worked gut of the better sort of whips, and is pasted to the stock; the thong—which in the common sort is called “four strands,” or plaits—being attached to the flexible part. Some of these whips are old stocks recovered, and many are sad rubbish; but for any deceit the street-seller can hardly be considered responsible, as he always purchases at the shop of a wholesale whipmaker, who is in some cases a retailer at the same price and under the same representations as the street-seller. The retail price is 1s. each; the wholesale, 8s. and 9s. a dozen. Some of the street whip-sellers represent themselves as the makers, but the whips are almost all made in Birmingham and Walsall.
THE STREET-SELLER OF WALKING-STICKS.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
Of these traders very few are the ordinary street-sellers. Most of them have been in some way or other connected with the care of horses, and some were described to me as “beaten-out countrymen,” who had come up to town in the hope of obtaining employment, and had failed. One man, of the last-mentioned class, told me that he had come to London from a village in Cambridgeshire, bringing with him testimonials of good character, and some letters from parties whose recommendation he expected would be serviceable to him; but he had in vain endeavoured for some months to obtain work with a carrier, omnibus proprietor, or job-master, either as driver or in charge of horses. His prospects thus failing him, he was now selling whips to earn his livelihood. A friend advised him to do this, as better than starving, and as being a trade that he understood:—
“I often thought I’d be forced to go back home, sir,” he said, “and I’d have been ashamed to do ’t, for I would come to try my luck in London, and would leave a place I had. All my friends—and they’re not badly off—tried to ’suade me to stop at home another year or two, but come I would, as if I must and couldn’t help it. I brought good clothes with me, and they’re a’most all gone; and I’d be ashamed to go back so shabby, like the prodigal’s son; you know, sir. I’ll have another try yet, for I get on to a cab next Monday, with a very respectable cab-master. As I’ve only myself, I know I can do. I was on one, but not with the same master, after I’d been six weeks here; but in two days I was forced to give it up, for I didn’t know my way enough, and I didn’t know the distances, and couldn’t make the money I paid for my cab. If I asked another cabman, he was as likely to tell me wrong as right. Then the fares used to be shouting out, ‘I say, cabby, where the h—— are you going? I told you Mark-lane, and here we are at the Minories. Drive back, sir.’ I know my way now well enough, sir. I’ve walked the streets too long not to know it. I notice them on purpose now, and know the distances. I’ve written home for a few things for my new trade, and I’m sure to get them. They don’t know I’m selling whips. There would be such a laugh against me among all t’ young fellows if they did. Me as was so sure to do well in London!
“It’s a poor trade. A carman’ll bid me 6d. for such a whip as this, which is 4s. 3d. the half dozen wholesale. ‘I have to find my own whips,’ my last customer said, ‘though I drives for a stunning grocer, and be d——d to him.’ They’re great swearers some of them. I make 7s. or 8s. in a week, for I can walk all day without tiring. I one week cleared 14s. Next week I made 3s. I have slept in cheap lodging-houses—but only in three: one was very decent, though out of the way; one was middling; and the t’other was a pig-sty. I’ve seen very poor places in the country, but nothing to it. I now pay 2s. a week for a sort of closet, with a bed in it, at the top of a house, but it’s clean and sweet; and my landlord’s a greengrocer and coal-merchant and firewood-seller;—he’s a good man—and I can always earn a little against the rent with him, by cleaning his harness, and grooming his pony—he calls it a pony, but it’s over 15 hands—and greasing his cart-wheels, and mucking out his stable, and such like. I shall live there when I’m on my cab.”
Other carmen’s whips are 1s. 6d., and as high as 2s. 6d., but the great sale is of those at 1s. The principal localities for the trade are at the meat-markets, the “green markets,” Smithfield, the streets leading to Billingsgate when crowded in the morning, the neighbourhood of the docks and wharfs, and the thoroughfares generally.
The trade in the other kind of whips is again in the hands of another class, in that of cabmen who have lost their licence, who have been maimed, and the numerous “hands” who job about stables—especially cab-horse stables—when without other employment. The price of the inferior sort of “gig-whips” is 1s. to 1s. 6d., the wholesale price being from 9s. 6d. to 14s. 6d. the dozen. Some are lower than 9s. 6d., but the cabmen, I am told, “will hardly look at them; they know what they’re a-buying of, and is wide awake, and that’s one reason why the profit’s so small.” Occasionally, one whip-seller told me, he had sold gig-whips at 2s. or 2s. 6d. to gentlemen who had broken their “valuable lance-wood,” or “beautiful thorn,” and who made a temporary purchase until they could buy at their accustomed shops. “A military gent, with mustachers, once called to me in Piccadilly,” the same man stated, “and he said, ‘Here, give me the best you can for half-a-crown, I’ve snapped my own. I never use the whip when I drive, for my horse is skittish and won’t stand it, but I can’t drive without one.’”
In the height of the season, two, and sometimes three men, sell handsome gig-whips at the fashionable drives or the approaches. “I have taken as much as 30s. in a day, for three whips,” said one man, “each 10s.; but they were silver-mounted thorn, and very cheap indeed; that’s 8 or 9 years back; people looks oftener at 10s. now. I’ve sold horse-dealers’ whips too, with loaded ends. Oh, all prices. I’ve bought them, wholesale, at 8s. a dozen, and 7s. 6d. a piece. Hunting whips are never sold in the streets now. I have sold them, but it’s a good while ago, as riding whips for park gentlemen. The stocks were of fine strong lancewood—such a close grain! with buck horn handles, and a close-worked thong, fastened to the stock by an ‘eye’ (loop), which it’s slipped through. You could hear its crack half a mile off. ‘Threshing machines,’ I called them.”
All the whip-sellers in a large way visit the races, fairs, and large markets within 50 miles of London. Some go as far as Goodwood at the race-time, which is between 60 and 70 miles distant. On a well-thronged race-ground these men will take 3l. or 4l. in a day, and from a half to three-fourths as much at a country fair. They sell riding-whips in the country, but seldom in town.
An experienced man knew 40 whip-sellers, as nearly as he could call them to mind, by sight, and 20 by name. He was certain that on no day were there fewer than 30 in the streets, and sometimes—though rarely—there were 100. The most prosperous of the body, including their profits at races, &c., make 1l. a week the year through; the poorer sort from 5s. to 10s., and the latter are three times as numerous as the others. Averaging that only 30 whip-sellers take 25s. each weekly (with profits of from 5s. to 10s.) in London alone, we find 1,950l. expended in the streets in whips.
Some of the whip-sellers vend whipcord, also, to those cabmen and carters who “cord” their own whips. The whipcord is bought wholesale at 2s. the pound (sometimes lower), and sold at ½d. the knot, there being generally six dozen knots in a pound.
Another class “mend” cabmen’s whips, re-thonging, or “new-springing” them, but these are street-artisans.