* * * * * * *
When all the Mall in leafy ruin lies,
And damsels first renew their Oyster cries.
* * * * * * *
When small coal murmurs in the hoarser throat,
From smutty dangers guard thy threatn’d coat.
* * * * * * *
What though the gathering mire thy feet besmear,
The voice of Industry is always near.
Hark! the boy calls thee to his destined stand,
And the shoe shines beneath his oily hand.
Sadly he tells the tale of a poor Apple girl who lost her life on the frozen Thames:—
Doll every day had walk’d these treacherous roads;
Her neck grew warpt beneath autumnal loads
Of various fruit: she now a basket bore;
That head, alas! shall basket bear no more.
Each booth she frequent past, in quest of gain,
And boys with pleasure heard her shrilling strain.
Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath,
And industry itself submit to death!
The cracking crystal yields; she sinks, she dies,
Her head chopt off from her lost shoulders flies;
Pippins she cry’d; but death her voice confounds;
And pip, pip, pip, along the ice resounds.
Street cries have, before now, been made the vehicle for Political Caricature, notably in The Pedlars, or Scotch Merchants of London (1763) attributed to the Marquis Townshend, which has particular reference to Lord Bute. Eliminating the political satire, we get a long list of street cries. The pedlars march two and two, carrying, of course, their wares with them. The vendors of food are numerous. One calls out “Dumplings, ho!” another, who carries a large can, wishes to know “Who’l have a dip and a wallop for a bawbee?”[A] Then come “Hogs Puddings;” “Wall Fleet Oysters;” “New Mackrel;” “Sevil Oranges and Lemons;” “Barcelona Philberts;” “Spanish Chestnuts;” “Ripe Turkey Figs;” “Heart Cakes;” “Fine Potatoes;” “New-born Eggs, 8 a groat;” “Bolognia Sausages.” Miscellaneous wants are met with “Weather Cocks for little Scotch Courtiers;” “Bonnets for to fit English heads;” “Laces all a halfpenny a piece;” “Ribbons a groat a yard;” “Fine Pomatum;” “Buy my Wash Balls, Gemmen and Ladies;” “Fine Black Balls” (Blacking); “Buy a Flesh Brush;” “Buy my Brooms;” “Buy any Saveall or Oeconomy Pans, Ladies;” “Water for the Buggs;”[7] “Buy my pack-thread;” “Hair or Combings” (for the manufacture of Wigs); “Any Kitchen Stuff;” “Buy my Matches.”
Addison accuses the London street criers of cultivating the accomplishment of crying their wares so as not to be understood; and in that curious medley of bons-mots and biographical sketches, “The Olio,” by Francis Grose,—dated 1796, but written probably some twenty years earlier,—the author says, “The variety of cries uttered by the retailers of different articles in the streets of London make no inconsiderable part in its novelty to strangers and foreigners. An endeavour to guess at the goods they deal in through the medium of language would be a vain attempt, as few of them convey any articulate sound. It is by their tune and the time of day that the modern cries of London are to be discriminated.”
J. T. Smith says that the no longer heard cry of “Holloway Cheese-Cakes” was pronounced “All my Teeth Ache;” and an old woman who sold mutton dumplings in the neighbourhood of Gravel Lane called, “Hot Mutton Trumpery;” while a third crier, an old man who dealt in brick-dust, used to shout something that sounded exactly like “Do you want a lick on the head?” Another man—a vendor of chickweed—brayed like an ass; while a stentorian bawler, who was described as a great nuisance, shouted “Cat’s Meat,” though he sold cabbages.