George Cruikshank’s London Barrow-woman (“Ripe Cherries”), “Tiddy Diddy Doll,” and other cuts, are from the original illustrations to Hone’s delightful “Every-Day Book,” recently republished by Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.
The cuts illustrating modern cries—“Sw-e-e-p!”; “Dust, O!”; “Ow-oo!”; “Fresh Cabbidge!”; and “Stinking Fish!” are from the facile pencil of Mr. D. McEgan.
Finally, in regard to the business card of pussy’s butcher, the veracious chronicler is inclined to think that an antiquarian might hesitate in pronouncing it to be quite so genuine as it looks. This opinion coincides with his own. In fact he made it himself. As a set-off, however, to the confession, let it be said that this is the sole fantaisie d’occasion set down herein.
A P P E N D I X.
From “Notes and Queries.”
London Street Cry.—What is the meaning of the old London cry, “Buy a fine mousetrap, or a tormentor for your fleas”? Mention of it is found in one of the Roxburghe ballads dated 1662, and, amongst others, in a work dated about fifty years earlier. The cry torments me, and only its elucidation will bring ease.
Andrew W. Tuer.
The Leadenhall Press, E.C.
London Street Cry (6th S. viii. 348).—Was not this really a “tormentor for your flies”? The mouse-trap man would probably also sell little bunches of butcher’s broom (Ruscus, the mouse-thorn of the Germans), a very effective and destructive weapon in the hands of an active butcher’s boy, when employed to guard his master’s meat from the attacks of flies.