Of the Swag-shops of the Metropolis.

By those who are not connected with the street trade, the proprietors of the swag-shops are often called “warehousemen” or “general dealers,” and even “slaughterers.” These descriptions apply but partially. “Warehousemen” or “general dealers” are vague terms, which I need not further notice. The wretchedly under-paid and over-worked shoe-makers, cabinet-makers and others call these places “slaughter-houses,” when the establishment is in the hands of tradesmen who buy their goods of poor workmen without having given orders for them. On Saturday afternoons pale-looking men may be seen carrying a few chairs, or bending under the weight of a cheffonier or a chest of drawers, in Tottenham-court Road, and thoroughfares of a similar character in all parts. These are “small masters,” who make or (as one man said to me, “No, sir, I don’t make these drawers, I put them together, it can’t be called making; it’s not workmanship”) who “put together” in the hastiest manner, and in any way not positively offensive to the eye, articles of household furniture. The “slaughterers” who supply all the goods required for the furniture of a house, buy at “starvation prices” (the common term), the artificer being often kept waiting for hours, and treated with every indignity. One East-end “slaughterer” (as I ascertained in a former inquiry) used habitually to tell that he prayed for wet Saturday afternoons, because it put 20l. extra into his pocket! This was owing to the damage sustained in the appearance of any painted, varnished, or polished article, by exposure to the weather; or if it had been protected from the weather, by the unwillingness of the small master to carry it to another slaughter-house in the rain. Under such circumstances—and under most of the circumstances of this unhappy trade—the poor workman is at the mercy of the slaughterer.

I describe this matter more fully than I might have deemed necessary, had I not found that both the “small masters” spoken of—for I called upon some of them again—and the street-sellers, very frequently confounded the “swag-shop” and the “slaughter-house.” The distinction I hold to be this:—The slaughterer buys as a rule, with hardly an exception, the furniture, or whatever it may be, made for the express purpose of being offered to him on speculation of sale. The swag shop-keeper orders his goods as a rule, and buys, as an exception, in the manner in which the slaughterer buys ordinarily. The slaughterer sells by retail; the swag-shop keeper only by wholesale.

Most of the articles, of the class of which I now treat, are “Brummagem made.” An experienced tradesman said to me: “All these low-priced metal things, fancy goods and all, which you see about, are made in Birmingham; in nineteen cases out of twenty at the least. They may be marked London, or Sheffield, or Paris, or any place—you can have them marked North Pole if you will—but they’re genuine Birmingham. The carriage is lower from Birmingham than from Sheffield—that’s one thing.”

The majority of the swag-shop proprietors are Jews. The wares which they supply to the cheap shops, the cheap John’s, and the street-sellers, in town and country, consist of every variety of article, apart from what is eatable, drinkable, or wearable, in which the trade class I have specified can deal. As regards what is wearable, indeed, such things as braces, garters, &c., form a portion of the stock of the swag-shop.

In one street (a thoroughfare at the east-end of London) are twenty-three of these establishments. In the windows there is little attempt at display; the design aimed at seems to be rather to crowd the window—as if to show the amplitude of the stores within, “the wonderful resources of this most extensive and universal establishment”—than to tempt purchasers by exhibiting tastefully what may have been tastefully executed by the artificer, or what it is desired should be held to be so executed.

In one of these windows the daylight is almost precluded from the interior by what may be called a perfect wall of “pots.” A street-seller who accompanied me called them merely “pots” (the trade term), but they were all pot ornaments. Among them were great store of shepherdesses, of greyhounds of a gamboge colour, of what I heard called “figures” (allegorical nymphs with and without birds or wreaths in their hands), very tall-looking Shaksperes (I did not see one of these windows without its Shakspere, a sitting figure), and some “pots” which seem to be either shepherds or musicians; from what I could learn, at the pleasure of the seller, the buyer, or the inquirer. The shepherd, or musician is usually seated under a tree; he wears a light blue coat, and yellow breeches, and his limbs, more than his body, are remarkable for their bulk; to call them merely fat does not sufficiently express their character, and in some “pots,” they are as short and stumpy as they are bulky. On my asking if the dogs were intended for Italian greyhounds, I was told, “No, they are German.” I alluded however to the species of the animal represented; my informant to the place of manufacture, for the pots were chiefly German. A number of mugs however, with the Crystal Palace very well depicted upon them, were unmistakably English. In another window of the same establishment was a conglomeration of pincushions, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps (all in bone), cribbage-boards and boxes (including a pack of cards), necklaces, and strings of beads.

The window of a neighbouring swag-shop presented, in the like crowding, and in greater confusion, an array of brooches (some in coloured glass to imitate rubies, topazes, &c., some containing portraits, deeply coloured, in purple attire, and red cheeks, and some being very large cameos), time-pieces (with and without glasses), French toys with moveable figures, telescopes, American clocks, musical boxes, shirt-studs, backgammon-boards, tea-trays (one with a nondescript bird of most gorgeous green plumage forming a sort of centrepiece), razor-strops writing-desks, sailors’ knives, hair-brushes, and tobacco-boxes.

Another window presented even a more “miscellaneous assortment;” dirks (apparently not very formidable weapons), a mess of steel pens, in brown-paper packages and cases, and of black-lead pencils, pipe-heads, cigar-cases, snuff-boxes, razors, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps, metal tea-pots, metal tea-spoons, glass globes with artificial flowers and leaves within the glass (an improvement one man thought on the old ornament of a reel in a bottle), Peel medals, Exhibition medals, roulette-boxes, scent bottles, quill pens with artificial flowers in the feathery part, fans, side-combs, glass pen-holders, and pot figures (caricatures) of Louis Philippe, carrying a very red umbrella, Marshal Haynau, with some instrument of torture in his hand, while over all boomed a huge English seaman, in yellow waistcoat and with a brick-coloured face.

Sometimes the furniture of a swag-shop window is less plentiful, but quite as heterogenous. In one were only American clocks, French toys (large), opera-glasses, knives and forks, and powder-flasks.

In some windows the predominant character is jewellery. Ear-drops (generally gilt), rings of all kinds, brooches of every size and shade of coloured glass, shawl-pins, shirt-studs, necklaces, bead purses, small paintings of the Crystal-palace, in “burnished ‘gold’ frames,” watch-guards, watch-seals (each with three impressions or mottoes), watch-chains and keys, “silver” tooth-picks, medals, and snuff-boxes. It might be expected that the jewellery shops would present the most imposing display of any; they are, on the contrary, among the dingiest, as if it were not worth the trouble to put clean things in the window, but merely what sufficed to characterise the nature of the trade carried on.

Of the twenty-three swag-shops in question, five were confined to the trade in all the branches of stationery. Of these I saw one, the large window of which was perfectly packed from bottom to top with note-paper, account and copy-books, steel-pens, pencils, sealing-wax, enamelled wafers (in boxes), ink-stands, &c.

Of the other shops, two had cases of watches, with no attempt at display, or even arrangement. “Poor things,” I was told by a person familiar with the trade in them, “fit only to offer to countrymen when they’ve been drinking at a fair, and think themselves clever.”

I have so far described the exterior of these street-dealers’ bazaars, the swag-shops, in what may be called their head-quarters. Upon entering some of these places of business, spacious rooms are seen to extend behind the shop or warehouse which opens to the street. Some are almost blocked up with what appears a litter of packing-cases, packages, and bales—but which are no doubt ordered systematically enough—while the shelves are crammed with goods in brown paper, or in cases or boxes. This uniformity of package, so to speak, has the effect of destroying the true character of these swag store-rooms; for they present the appearance of only three or four different kinds of merchandise being deposited on a range of shelves, when, perhaps, there are a hundred. In some of these swag-shops it appears certain, both from what fell under my own observation, and from what I learned through my inquiries of persons long familiar with such places, that the “litter” I have spoken of is disposed so as to present the appearance of an affluence of goods without the reality of possession.

In no warehouses (properly “swag,” or wholesale traders) is there any arranged display of the wares vended. “Ve don’t vant people here,” one street-seller had often heard a swag-shopkeeper say, “as looks about them, and says, ‘’Ow purty!—Vot nice things!’ Ve vants to sell, and not to show. Ve is all for bisness, and be d——d.” All of these places which I saw were dark, more or less so, in the interior, as if a customer’s inspection were uncared for.

Some of the swag-shop people present cards, or “circulars with prices,” to their street and other customers, calling attention to the variety of their wares. These circulars are not given without inquiry, as if it were felt that one must not be wasted. On one I find the following enumeration:—

Shopkeepers and Dealers supplied with the following Articles:—

Clocks—American, French, German, and English eight-day dials.

Watches—Gold and Silver.

Musical Boxes—Two, Four, Six, and Eight Airs.

Watch-Glasses—Common Flint, Geneva, and Lunettes.

Main-Springs—Blue and Straw-colour, English and Geneva.

Watch Materials—Of every description.

Jewellery—A general assortment.

Spectacles—Gold, Silver, Steel, Horn, and Metal Frames, Concave, Convex, Coloured, and Smoked Eyes.

Telescopes—One, two, and three draws.

Mathematical Instruments.

Combs—Side, Dressing, Curl, Pocket, Ivory, Small-Tooth, &c.

Musical Instruments—Violins, Violincellos, Bows, &c., Flutes, Clarionets, Trombones, Ophoclides, Cornopeans, French-Horns, Post-Horns, Trumpets, and Passes, Violin Tailboards, Pegs, and Bridges.

Accordions—French and German of every size and style.

It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of “fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only the “windows” and outward appearances of these places—the interior being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers, General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens, and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”

Table Cutlery.
s.d.
Common knives and forks, per doz.20
Ivory-handle table knives and fork, per set of fifty-pieces300
Tables, per doz.150
Desserts, per doz.113
Carvers, per pair40
Fire-Irons.
Strong wrought-iron for kitchens, per set 2s. to60
Ditto for parlours or libraries, bright pans, 4s. 6d. to70
Fenders.
Kitchen fenders, 3 ft. long, with sliding bar30
Green ditto, brass tops, for bed rooms18

“Britannia Metal Goods” (tea-pots, &c.), “German Silver Goods” (tea-spoons, 1s. to 2s. per dozen, &c.).

Bellows.
Kitchen, each10d. to20
Parlour ditto, brass pipes and nails2s. 3d. to30

Japanned goods, brass goods, iron saucepans, oval iron pots, iron tea-kettles, &c., iron stew-pans, &c. The prices here run very systematically:—

One quart12
Three pints18
Two quarts20
Three quarts30
Four quarts39
Five quarts40

Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans, tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods (kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove, shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools, plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical instruments (accordions from 1s. to 5s., &c.). Then come dials and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera glasses, each 10d. to 10s., China ornaments, lamps, sundries (these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping and goffering-machines, from 14s., looking-glasses, pictures, &c., beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols, powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6d. to 2s., nut-cracks, 6d. to 1s. 6d., folding measures, each 2s. to 4s., silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2s. to 10s., carpet bags, each 3s. to 10s., egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.

Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the “Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest “swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.

The swag-shops (of which I state the numbers in a parenthesis) are in Houndsditch (their principal locality) (23), Minories (4), Whitechapel (2), Ratcliffe-highway (20), Shoreditch (1), Long-lane, Smithfield (4), Fleet-lane (2), Holywell-street, Strand (1), Tothill-street (4), Compton-street, Soho (1), Hatton-garden (2), Clerkenwell (10), Kent-street, Borough (8), New-cut (6), Blackman-street (2), Tooley-street (3), London-road (3), Borough-road (1), Waterloo-road (4)—in all 101; but a person who had been upwards of twenty years a frequenter of these places counted up fifty others, many of them in obscure courts and alleys near Houndsditch, Ratcliffe Highway, &c., &c. These “outsiders” are generally of a smaller class than those I have described; “and I can tell you, sir,” the same man said, “some of them—ay, and some of the big ones, too—are real swag-shops still,—partly so, that is; you understand me, sir.” The word “swag,” I should inform my polite readers, means in slang language, “plunder.”

It may be safely calculated, then, that there are 150 swag-shops to which the different classes of street-sellers resort for the purchase of stock. Among these establishments are pot swag, stationery swag, haberdashery swag, jewellery swag, and miscellaneous swag—the latter comprise far more than half of the entire number, and constitute the warehouses which are described by their owners as “Birmingham and Sheffield,” or “English and Foreign,” or “English and German.” It is in these last-mentioned “swags” that the class I now treat of—the street-sellers of metal manufactures—find the commodities of their trade. To this, however, there is one exception. Tins for household use are not sold at the general swag-shops; but “fancy tins,” such as japanned and embellished trays, are vended there extensively. The street-sellers of this order are supplied at the “tin-shops,”—the number of the wholesale tin-men supplying the street-sellers is about fifty. The principle on which the business is conducted is precisely that of the more general swag-shop; but I shall speak of them when I treat of the street-sellers of tins.

An intelligent man, who had been employed in different capacities in some of the principal swag-shops, told me of one which had been carried on by the same family, from father to son, for more than seventy years. In the largest of the “swags” about 200 “hands” are employed, in the various capacities of salesmen, buyers, clerks, travellers, unpackers, packers, porters, &c., &c. On some mornings twenty-five large packages—some of small articles entirely—are received from the carriers. In one week, when my informant assisted in “making up the books,” the receipts were upwards of 3000l. “In my opinion, sir,” he said, “and it’s from an insight into the business, Mr. ——’s profit on that 3000l. was not less than thirty-five per cent.; for he’s a great capitalist, and pays for everything down upon the nail; that’s more than 1000l. profit in a week. Certainly it was an extra week, and there’s the 200 hands to pay,—but that wouldn’t range higher than 300l., indeed, not so high; and there’s heavy rent and taxes, and rates, no doubt, and he (the proprietor is a Jew) is a fair man to the trade, and not an uncharitable man—but he will drive a good bargain where it’s possible; so considering everything, sir, the profits must be very great, and they are mostly made out of poor buyers, who sell it to poor people in the streets, or in small shops. It’s a wonderful trade.”

From the best information I could obtain I come to the conclusion that, including small and large shops, 3000l. yearly is the average receipt of each—or, as it is most frequently expressed, that sum is “turned over” by the swag-shop keepers yearly. There is great competition in the trade, and much of what is called “cutting,” or one tradesman underselling another. The profit consequently varies from twenty to thirty-five and (rarely) fifty per cent. Sometimes a swag-shop proprietor is “hung-up” with a stock the demand for which has ceased, and he must dispose of it as “a job lot,” to make room for other goods, and thus is necessarily “out of pocket.” The smaller swag-shops do not “turn over” 500l. a year. The calculation I have given shows an outlay, yearly, of 450,000l. at the swag-shops of London; “but,” said a partner in one of these establishments, “what proportion of the goods find their way into the streets, what to the shops, what to the country, and what for shipping, I cannot form even a guess, for we never ask a customer for what purpose he wants the goods, though sometimes he will say, ‘I must have what is best for such or such a trade.’ Say half a million turned over in a year, sir, by the warehousemen who sell to the street-people, among others, and you’re within the mark.”

I found the street-sellers characterize the “swags” as hard and grinding men, taking every advantage “in the way of trade.” There is, too, I was told by a man lately employed in a swag-shop a constant collision of clamour and bargaining, not to say of wits, between the smarter street-sellers—the pattering class especially—and the swag-men with whom they are familiar.

The points in which the “swag-shops” resemble the “slaughter-houses,” are in the traffic in work-boxes, desks, and dressing-cases.