Amongst later prints of the London Cries, none are at present so highly prized as the folio set engraved in the early part of this century by Schiavonetti and others after Wheatley. Treated in the sentimentally pretty style of the period, they make, when framed, wall decorations which accord well with the prevailing old-fashioned furniture. If in good condition, the set of twelve will now readily fetch £20 at Christie’s; and if coloured, £30 would not be considered too high a price, though five-and-twenty years ago they might easily have been picked up for as many shillings. Their titles are as follows:—
Knives, scissors, and razors to grind!
Old chairs to mend!
Milk below, maids!
Strawberrys, scarlet strawberrys!
Two bundles a penny, primroses, two bundles a penny!
Do you want any matches?
Round and sound, fivepence a pound, Duke cherries!
Sweet China oranges!
Hot spiced gingerbread, smoking hot!
Fresh gathered peas, young Hastings!
A new love song, only a halfpenny apiece!
Turnips and carrots, oh!
In connection with the last cry, here is Dr. Johnson’s humorous reference thereto:—
If the man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
’Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than a father!
The modern bootblack with his “Clean yer boots, shine ’em, sir?” is the successor of the obsolete shoeblack, whose stock-in-trade consisted of liquid blacking, an old wig for removing dust or wet, a knife for use on very muddy days, and brushes. Towards the end of the last century, Finsbury Square—then an open field—was a favourite place for shoeblacks, who intercepted the city merchants and their clerks in their daily walks to and from their residences in the villages of Islington and Hoxton. At that time tight breeches and shoes were worn; and the shoeblack was careful not to smear the buckles or soil the fine white stockings of his patrons. In a print of this period the cry is “Japan your shoes, your honour?” Cake blacking, introduced by that famous, but, as regards the last mentioned, somewhat antagonistic trio, Day, Martin, and Warren, “the most poetical of blacking makers and most transparent of poets,” which was quickly taken into general use, snuffed out the shoeblack; and from about 1820 until the time of the first Exhibition in 1851, when the shoeblack brigade in connection
‘Fresh and sweet!’
with ragged schools was started, London may be said to have blacked its own boots.
