SMITHFIELD PUDDING.
Plate XXIX.
It would be almost criminal to proceed in my account of the present cry without passing a due encomium on the subject of it. The good qualities of an English pudding, more especially when it happens to be enriched with the due portion of enticing plums, are well known to most of us. It is a luxury to which our Gallic neighbours are entire strangers, and an article of cookery worth any dozen of their harlequin kick-shaws.
The justly-celebrated comedian, Ned Shuter, was so passionately fond of this article that he would never dine without it, and anything that led to the bare mention of a pudding would burst the silence of a couple of hours’ smoking; he was on one occasion known to lay down his pipe, and to exclaim, that the dinner the gentleman had just described would have been a very good one if there had but been a plum-pudding. The places where this excellent commodity is chiefly exposed to sale in the manner described in the engraving, are those of the greatest traffic or publicity, such as Smithfield on a market morning, where waggoners, butchers, and drovers, are sure to find their pence for a slice of hot pudding. Fleet Market, Leadenhall, Honey Lane, and Spital Fields, have each their hot-pudding men. In the lowest neighbourhoods in Westminster, where the soldiers reside, cook-shops find great custom for their pudding. The stalls, near the Horse Guards always have large quantities ready cut into penny slices, piled up like boards in a timber-yard.
At the time of relieving guard, vendors of pudding are always to be found on the parade. There is a black man, a handsome, well-made fellow, remarkably clean in his person, and always drest in the neatest manner, who never fails to sell his pudding; he also frequents the Regent’s Park on a Sunday afternoon, and, though he has no wit, his nonsense pleases the crowd. This person, who is now at the top of his calling, had a predecessor of the name of Eglington, who likewise carried on the business of a tailor.
He was a well-made and very active man, and by reason of his being seen in various parts of London nearly at the same time, was denominated the “Flying Pudding Man.” His principal walk was in the neighbourhood of Fleet Market and Holborn Bridge, and his smartness of dress and quickness of repartee gained the attention of his customers; he seldom appeared but in a state of perfect sobriety, and many curious anecdotes are related of him.
On the approach of Edmonton Fair, wishing to see the sports and pastimes of the place, he ordered his wife to make as many puddings as to fill a hackney coach. This being done, on the morning of the opening of the fair a coach was hired for the puddings, and the pudding man and pudding lady took their seats by the side of the coachman. On their arrival at the fair he put on his well-known dress, and instantly commenced his cry of “pudding,” whilst the lady supplied him from the coach. In a few hours’ time, when his stock was all disposed of, he resumed his best attire, and with his fair spouse proceeded to visit the various shows.
His well-known features were soon recognized by thousands who frequented the fair, and their jeers of “hot, hot, smoking hot,” resounded from booth to booth. At the close of the day this constant couple walked home well laden with the profits they had made. There is hardly a fight on the Scrubs,[19] nor a walking match on Blackheath, that are not visited by the pudding men.
When malefactors were executed at Tyburn, the pudding men of the day were sure to be there, and indeed so many articles were sold, and the cries of new milk, curds and whey, spice cakes, barley sugar, and hot spice gingerbread, were so numerous and loud, that this place on the day of execution was usually designated by the thousands of blackguards who attended it under the appellation of Tyburn Fair. The reader may see a faithful representation of this melancholy and humourous scene by the inimitable Hogarth, in the Execution Plate of his Idle Apprentice. In this engraving he will also find a correct figure of the triangular gallows, commonly called the “Three-legged Mare,” and which stood upon the site afterwards occupied by the turnpike house, at the end of Oxford Street.
In many instances the pudding sold in the streets has a favourable aspect, and under some circumstances perhaps proves a delicious treat to the purchaser.
Nothing can be more gratifying than to enable a poor little chimney-sweeper to indulge his appetite with a luxury before which he has for some minutes been standing with a longing inclination; and as this gratification can be accomplished at a very trifling expense, it were surely much better to behold it realized than to see the canting Tabernacle beggar carry away the pennies he has obtained to the gin shop. It gives the writer great pleasure to state to the readers of Jonas Hanway’s little tract in defence of chimney-sweepers, that, after witnessing with the most painful sensations the great and wanton cruelty which has for years been exercised upon that defenceless object the infant chimney-sweeper, he has of late frequently visited several houses of their masters, where he found in some instances that they had much better treatment than formerly, and, to the credit of many of the masters, that the boys had been as well taken care of, as to bedding and food, as the nature of their wretched calling could possibly admit of. By three or four of the principal master chimney-sweepers, the boys were regaled on Sundays with the old English fare of roast beef and plum pudding. Whatever may be the opinion of grave and elderly persons with respect to the lads of the present day, who as soon as they are indulged with a dandy coat by their silly mothers strut about like jackdaws and attempt to look big, even upon their grandfathers, yet we must declare, and perhaps to the satisfaction of these little men of sixteen, that they do not stand alone, for even some of the chimney-sweepers’ boys, particularly those of the higher masters, regard the custom of dancing about the streets on May-day as low and vulgar, and prefer visiting the tea gardens, where they can display their shirt collars drawn up to their eyes.
Certain it is that the greater number of those who now perambulate the streets as chimney-sweeps on May-day, are in reality disguised gypsies, cinder-sifters, and nightmen. Nor is the protraction of this ceremony in modern times from one to three days, even by its legitimate owners, unworthy of notice in this place; inasmuch as there is good reason for supposing that the money collected during the first two of those days is transferred to the pockets of the masters, instead of being applied for the benefit of the poor boys, whilst the well-meant benevolence of the public is shamefully deluded.