Of the Street-Sellers of Snails, Frogs, Worms, Snakes, Hedgehogs, etc.
I class together these several kinds of live creatures, as they are all “gathered” and sold by the same persons—principally by the men who supply bird-food, of whom I have given accounts in my statements concerning groundsel, chickweed, plaintain, and turf-selling.
The principal snail-sellers, however, are the turf-cutters, who are young and active men, while the groundsel-sellers are often old and infirm and incapable of working all night, as the necessities of the snail-trade often require. Of turf-cutters there were, at the time of my inquiry last winter, 42 in London, and of these full one-third are regular purveyors of snails, such being the daintier diet of the caged blackbirds and thrushes. These men obtain their supply of snails in the market-gardens, the proprietors willingly granting leave to any known or duly recommended person who will rid them of these depredators. Seven-eighths of the quantity gathered are sold to the bird-dealers, to whom the price is 2d. a quart. The other eighth is sold on a street round at from 3d. to 6d. the quart. A quart contains at least 80 snails, not heaped up, their shells being measured along with them. One man told me there were “100 snails to a fair quart.”
When it is moonlight at this season of the year, the snail gatherers sometimes work all night; at other times from an hour before sunset to the decline of daylight, the work being resumed at the dawn. To gather 12 quarts in a night, or a long evening and morning, is accounted a prosperous harvest. Half that quantity is “pretty tidy.” An experienced man said to me:—
“The best snail grounds, sir, you may take my word for it, is in Putney and Barnes. It’s the ‘greys’ we go for, the fellows with the shells on ’em; the black snails or slugs is no good to us. I think snails is the slowest got money of any. I don’t suppose they get’s scarcer, but there’s good seasons for snails and there’s bad. Warm and wet is best. We don’t take the little ’uns. They come next year. I may make 1l. a year, or a little more, in snails. In winter there’s hardly anything done in them, and the snails is on the ground; in summer they’re on the walls or leaves. They’ll keep six months without injury; they’ll keep the winter round indeed in a proper place.”
I am informed that the 14 snail gatherers on the average gather six dozen quarts each in a year, which supplies a total of 12,096 quarts, or individually, 1,189,440 snails. The labourers in the gardens, I am informed, may gather somewhat more than an equal quantity,—all being sold to the bird-shops; so that altogether the supply of snails for the caged thrushes and blackbirds of London is about two millions and a half. Computing them at 24,000 quarts, and only at 2d. a quart, the outlay is 200l. per annum.
The Frogs sold by street-people are, at the rate of about 36 dozen a year, disposed of in equal proportion to University and King’s Colleges. Only two men collect the frogs, one for each hospital. They are charged 1d. each:—“I’ve sometimes,” said one of the frog-purveyors, “come on a place where I could have got six or seven dozen in a day, but that’s mostly been when I didn’t want them. At other times I’ve gone days without collaring a single frog. I only want them four times a year, and four or five dozen at a time. The low part of Hampstead’s the best ground for them, I think. The doctors like big fellows. They keep them in water ’til they’re wanted to dissect.” One man thought that there might be 50 more frogs or upwards ordered yearly, through the bird-shops, for experiments under air-pumps, &c. This gives about 500 frogs sold yearly by the street-people. One year, however, I was told, the supply was larger, for a Camberwell gentleman ordered 40 frogs to stock a watery place at the foot of his garden, as he liked to hear and see them.
The Toad trade is almost a nonentity. One man, who was confident he had as good a trade in that line as any of his fellows, told me that last year he only supplied one toad; in one year, he forgot the precise time, he collected ten. He was confident that from 12 to 24 a year was now the extent of the toad trade, perhaps 20. There was no regular price, and the men only “work to order.” “It’s just what the shopkeeper, mostly a herbalist, likes to give.” I was told, from 1d. to 6d. according to size. “I don’t know what they’re wanted for, something about the doctors, I believe. But if you want any toads, sir, for anything, I know a place between Hampstead and Willesden, where there’s real stunners.”
Worms are collected in small quantities by the street-sellers, and very grudgingly, for they are to be supplied gratuitously to the shopkeepers who are the customers of the turf-cutters, and snail and worm collectors. “They expects it as a parquisite, like.” One man told me that they only gathered ground worms for the bird-fanciers.
Of the Snakes and Hedgehogs I have already spoken, when treating of the collection of birds’-nests. I am told that some few glow-worms are collected.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES.
The class of which I have now to treat, including as it does the street-sellers of coal, coke, tan-turf, salt, and sand, seem to have been called into existence principally by the necessities of the poorer classes. As the earnings of thousands of men, in all the slop, “slaughter-house,” or “scamping” branches of tailoring, shoe-making, cabinet-making, joining, &c. have become lower and lower, they are compelled to purchase the indispensable articles of daily consumption in the smallest quantities, and at irregular times, just as the money is in their possession. This is more especially the case as regards chamber-masters and garret-masters (among the shoemakers) and cabinet-makers, who, as they are small masters, and working on their own account, have not even such a regularity of payment as the journeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor artizans, moreover, the wife must slave with the husband, and it is often an object with them to save the time lost in going out to the chandler’s-shop or the coal-shed, to have such things as coal, and coke brought to their very doors, and vended in the smallest quantities. It is the same with the women who work for the slop-shirt merchants, &c., or make cap-fronts, &c., on their own account, for the supply of the shopkeepers, or the wholesale swag-men, who sell low-priced millinery. The street-sellers of the class I have now to notice are, then, the principal purveyors of the very poor.
The men engaged in the street-sale of coal and coke—the chief articles of this branch of the street-sale—are of the costermonger class, as, indeed, is usually the case where an exercise of bodily strength is requisite. Costermongers, too, are better versed than any other street-folk in the management of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or horses, so that when these vehicles and these animals are a necessary part of any open-air business, it will generally be found in the hands of the coster class.
Nor is this branch of the street-traffic confined solely to articles of necessity. Under my present enumeration will be found the street-sale of shells, an ornament of the mantel-piece above the fire-grate to which coal is a necessity.
The present division will complete the subject of Street Sale in the metropolis.