London, as a commercial city, has numbers of visitors and residents to whom quiet is of vital importance. The street cries, it is alleged, constitute a nuisance to the public, particularly to numbers of day-time-alone occupants, to whom time and thought is money. It is the same thing repeated with many of the suburban residents, in what is generally known as quiet neighbourhoods. Discounting duly the rhetorical exaggeration, it is to be feared the charge must be admitted. Therefore, the shopkeepers argue, let us put down the hawking of everything and everybody. But this does not follow at all. Not only so, but the proposed remedy is ridiculously inadequate to the occasion. Admit the principle, however, for the sake of argument and let us see whither it will lead us. At early morn how often are our matutinal slumbers disturbed by a prolonged shriek, as of some unfortunate cat in mortal agony, but which simply signifies that Mr. Skyblue, the milkman, is on his rounds. The milkman, it is evident, must be abolished. People can easily get their breakfast milk at any respectable dairyman’s shop, and get it, too, with less danger of an aqueous dilution. After breakfast—to say nothing of German bands and itinerant organ grinders—a gentleman with a barrow wakens the echoes by the announcement of fresh mackerel, salmon, cod, whiting, soles or plaice, with various additional epithets, descriptive of their recent arrival from the sea. The voice is more loud than melodious, the repetition is frequent, and the effect is the reverse of pleasing to the public ear. Accordingly we must abolish fish hawking: any respectable fishmonger will supply us with better fish without making so much noise over it; and if he charges a higher price it is only the indubitable right of a respectable tradesman and a ratepayer. Then comes on the scene, and determined to have a voice—and a loud one, too, in the morning’s hullabaloo, the costermonger—Bill Smith, he declares with stentorian lungs that his cherries, plums, apples, pears, turnips, carrots, cabbages, cowcumbers, sparrow-grass, colly-flow-ers, inguns, ru-bub, and taters, is, and allus vos rounder, sounder, longer, stronger, heavier, fresher, and ever-so-much cheaper than any shopkeeping greengrocer as ever vos: Why? “Vy? cos he don’t keep not no slap-up shop vith all plate-glass vinders and a ’andsom sixty-five guinea ’oss and trap to take the missus and the kids out on-a-arternoon, nor yet send his sons and darters to a boarding school to larn French, German, Greek, nor playing on the pianoforte.” All this may be very true; but Bill Smith, the costermonger, is a noisy vulgar fellow; therefore must be put down. Mrs. Curate, Mrs. Lawyer, Mrs. Chemist, and Miss Seventy-four must be taught to go to the greengrocer of the district, Mr. Manners, a highly respectable man, a Vestryman and a Churchwarden, who keeps:—
Plate, Waiters, and Linen for Hire.
N.B.—Evening Parties Attended.
As the morning wears on we have:—“I say!—I say!! Old hats I buy,” “Rags or bones,” “Hearthstones,” “Scissors to grind—pots, pans, kettles or old umbrellas to mend,” “Old clo! clo,” “Cat or dog’s meat,” “Old china I mend,” “Clothes props,” “Any old chairs to mend?” “Any ornaments for your fire stove,” “Ripe strawberries,” “Any hare skins,”—“rabbit skins,” “Pots or pans—jugs or mugs,” “I say, Bow! wow! and they are all a-growing and a-blowing—three pots for sixpence,” and other regular acquaintances, with the occasional accompaniment of the dustman’s bell, conclude the morning’s performance, which, altogether is reminiscent of the “Market Chorus” in the opera of Masaniello; and if the public quiet is to be protected, our sapient Town Councillors would abolish one and all of these, dustman included. One of the latest innovations upon the peace and happiness of an invalid, an author, or a quiet-loving resident, is the street vendor of coals. “Tyne Main,” or “Blow-me-Tight’s,” Coals! “C-o-a-l-s, one and tuppence a underd—see’em weighed.” This is the New Cry. Small waggons, attended by a man and a boy, go to our modern railway sidings to be filled or replenished with sacks containing 56 lbs. or 112 lbs. of coals, and then proceed to the different suburban quiet neighbourhoods, where the man and boy commence a kind of one done the other go on duet to the above words, which is enough to drive the strongest trained one crazy. All the great coal merchants seem to have adopted this method of retailing coals, and have thus caused the almost total abolition of coal sheds, and the greengrocer and general dealer to abandon the latter part of his calling. Our afternoon hours, after the passing of the muffin bell, are made harmonious by public references to shrimps, fine Yarmouth bloaters, haddocks, periwinkles, boiled whelks, and watercreases, which are too familiar to need description; and our local governors in their wisdom would bid us no longer be luxurious at our tea, or else go to respectable shops and buy our “little creature comforts.” Professing an anxiety to put down street cries, our police persecute one class out of a multitude, and leave all the rest untouched. It is not only an inadequate remedy, but the remedy is sought in the wrong direction. The fact is, that the street noises are an undoubted evil, and in the interests of the public, action should be taken not to put them down, but to regulate them by local bye-laws, leaving the course of trade otherwise free. It is a plan adopted in most of the greater towns which have in any way dealt with the subject.
THE DEMONS OF PIMLICO.
[From Punch.]
Edwin is a Young Bard, who has taken a lodging in a Quiet Street in Belgravia, that he may write his Oxford Prize Poem. The interlocutors are Demons of both Sexes.
Here—Edwin goes Mad.
And Our Work Comes to a Timely