About five thousand parrots are imported and sold annually in London. They are chiefly brought from Africa, and a fine parrot will bring as high as a pound. Quite a number of these birds die on the homeward voyage, and this makes the price of parrots very high. Birds' nests are also sold in the streets by Italian and Savoyard boys in great numbers.
Squirrels, rabbits, and gold and silver fish may be also found for sale in the streets, the latter being bought to keep in glass globes as ornaments.
At every railroad station, in and outside of London, a person can be weighed for a penny. A man named Read has at least one hundred weighing chairs, which he rents out to men and boys at a certain rate of the gross receipts. On the different bridges cripples and retired soldiers may be found with brass instruments for testing the lungs and power of a man's arms, and also machines are to be found in front of well-known public houses, and in the parks and squares, for measuring the height of pedestrians.
There was one old fellow with whom I became acquainted, who kept a measuring and a weighing machine.
His station was on the Middlesex side of the Waterloo Bridge. He told me that he had been a pot-boy in a cheap eating house for five years, and then was a helper in a gentleman's stable for six years. One of his arms was rendered useless from an attack of paralysis, and finding that he could not any longer work as a helper, he borrowed enough money to purchase the weighing and measuring machines.
Having some curiosity to know the average weight and height of his many customers, I made a bargain with him, as he could read and write, to keep a record of his experience for three days of the physique of those who patronized his machines.
His patrons were chiefly laboring men on the new Thames Embankment, boatmen plying on the river, clerks going and coming to their business over Waterloo Bridge, and soldiers.
COKE SELLERS.
His largest income was on Saturday nights, when the laboring people were flush of copper pennies, and as nearly every third man was sure to be drunk going over the bridge on Saturday night, he was certain to reap a good harvest from their generous pockets.