In one branch of the street trade alone, it will be interesting to give some statistics which may be deemed reliable, as having been collected by Mr. Henry Mayhew. There are shops and stands included in this trade alone—
| In Drury Lane and streets adjacent, | 50 | shops. |
| Seven Dials, " " | 100 | " |
| Monmouth Street, " " | 40 | " |
| Hanway Court, Oxford Street, | 4 | " |
| Lisson-grove, " " | 100 | " |
| Paddington, " " | 30 | " |
| Petticoat Lane, " " | 200 | " |
| Somerstown, | 50 | " |
| Field Lane, Saffron Hill, | 40 | " |
| Clerkenwell, | 50 | " |
| Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, | 100 | " |
| Rosemary Lane and vicinity, | 30 | " |
| —— | ||
| 744 | shops. |
About two thousand five hundred men are employed mending and patching shoes. Then there are hundreds of poor men and women who gain subsistence, but barely subsistence, by collecting the old material of all articles that are made of leather, and selling it to those who keep shops or stands.
I visited the lodgings of a man, in Cutler street, who paid his landlord a weekly rent of 1s. 8d. for the use of one bare room, which had no furniture with the exception of a three-legged chair upon which he sat—and a heap of straw and dirty rags, which served him as a bed. On the bare mantel-piece was a broken loaf of brown-bread, and a cooked kidney, with a broken mustard-pot.
The man was named Ferguson, and had only one eye, the other having been obliterated by the small pox. He was a cheerful old fellow, this peddler of second-hand boots and shoes, and seemed to take the world as it came without thought of the morrow. I told him that I was in search of information, and statistics in regard to the working people of London, and he offered me very politely his only stool. I declined the courtesy and sat on the heap of rags while he told his story.
"Ye need not be afeered of the bugs, yer honor, in the bed. The place is not warm enough for them to stay here.
"Stistiks ye want is it? Well, I don't know how I can give ye stistiks, but I can tell you my own story.
"I began life a shoemaker's apprentice, in Edinburgh, although I am by birth an Englishman. My master's name was Mac Donald, and when he drank whiskey his temper generally ruz, and the divil couldn't stand him or get the better of him. So I listed for a soldier and went to furrin parts, and after I sarved my time I came back a good deal wiser but not a penny richer of it all.
THE DOG FANCIER.