The street vendors of eatables formed no small portion of the traffic that was going on incessantly. You can get a slice of roast beef with greens (greens is what these people call cabbage, and, by the way, they call a lemonade a “lemon squash”), for a penny, and you shall see it cut from the joint, otherwise you wouldn’t know what it was. True the plate on which the satisfying food was placed had been merely dipped in cold water, and true it was that the two hundred pound woman who served it had never washed her hands since the day she was married, but that did not matter. The dish was taken and devoured, the ceremony of paying before getting it being religiously observed. There were shrimps, and snails, and lettuce salads, and moldy fruit, and everything else that the British public eats, all on the street, which is convenient, to say the least.
Sharpers were not wanting to complete this variegated scene. The thimble-rigger was there, his game being confined to a penny, so as to harmonize with the general cheapness of the locality, and, to keep it in perfect accord, his little portable table, and his thimbles were second-hand. There were street acrobats, nigger minstrels, hand organs, hurdy-gurdys, street singers, and the inevitable street brass band, made up of four sad-looking men who appeared as though there was nothing in life for them, and that they were playing in expiation of some great crime, and were compelled to play on forever. How these people live I never could make out. During the whole day I never saw a penny given them, except one which one of our party threw them. They took it up with an expression of the most intense surprise, as though it was an astounding and unlooked-for occurrence, and immediately stopped playing, and made for the nearest cook stand and invested the whole of it in a plate of beef and greens, which was divided among the four. I was about to throw them another penny, but was checked by our guide. He protested against pampering them. I understood him. The American Indian will consume a month’s provisions in a single day’s feast, and starve the other twenty-nine. Had I given them another penny they would have had another plate of beef on the spot, and then gone hungry a week. As we intended to come again next Sunday, for their own good I reserved the penny for that occasion.
Understand it is not Jews who are the purchasers of these wrecks of goods, these reminiscences of furniture and the like; they are the sellers. The purchasers are the British public proper, who come here for bargains. They get them—perhaps.
The question is, where do all these things come from? If there are more than one in the Jewish family, and whether there is or not depends upon the age, for they marry very young, and have children as rapidly as possible, all but one of them roam through the country incessantly, buying, bartering for and picking up all the stuff, which, after bought or picked up, is brought here and fixed as far as the skill and ingenuity of the purchaser and the rottenness of the material will permit. Then it is sold, at no matter what price. The motto in Petticoat Lane is, “no reasonable offer refused.”
It is not, however, only the second-hand that Petticoat Lane deals in. You see moving among the crowd here and there quite another class of Israelites from those who are vending dilapidated clothing and broken furniture. They are well dressed men, with coats buttoned up very closely. Their raven locks are surmounted with tall hats, and their boots cleaned as carefully as any swell’s in London. They are all distinctively Hebrew, there being no exception to this rule.
DIAMONDS.
Across the way is a beer-shop, kept by a Hebrew, the bar-maids and all being Hebrew. On the one side of the bar is a small dining room; back of that a kitchen, and from the bar-room is a flight of stairs. Follow your guide, who in this instance was an American Hebrew, and you find yourself in a low room just the size of the bar below, and a curious scene presents itself. These rooms, and there are scores of them in Petticoat Lane, contain on an average any number of millions of pounds that you choose to say. I could say that there were a hundred millions of wealth in each one, and perhaps wouldn’t be very much out of the way, but as I desire to be accurate, I will not. If there is anything I detest, it is exaggeration. I hope to distinguish myself by being the first tourist who adhered strictly to the naked truth.
These rooms are diamond marts. In them all the diamonds that deck out royalty and the wives of patent medicine men, gamblers, negro minstrels, and other people who are not royal, are first handled. To these dingy dens in the very heart of the worst quarter of the worst city in the world, comes the diamond merchant, and here he meets the broker who deals with the manufacturer in the city. Here all the diamonds of London are first bought and sold.
One looks at it with amazement. Enter a young Jew with the preternaturally sharp features that distinguish the race. All the merchants, and there may be a dozen, each sitting at his little table, hail him, and all in the language that the new comer speaks the best. The Hebrew speaks all languages, and all of them well. (Facts crowd upon me so fast that it is difficult to keep to my subject.) The young fellow unbuttons his coat, and then the top buttons of his vest, and takes from an inner pocket a long leather pocket-book, which he opens carefully. There are disclosed a dozen papers folded like an apothecary’s package, and he opens them. Your eyes dance as you see the contents. Diamonds! I never dreamed there were so many in the world. Each paper contains a handful of all sizes and qualities, cut and uncut, of all colors and shades known to the diamond, and the ancient Jews at the tables take these papers and examine critically the different sparklers, going over the lot as the Western farmer would his cattle. With a little steel instrument he separates this one from his fellows and puts it under a glass, and screws his eye into the stone, and then little tiny scales, which would turn under the weight of a sunbeam, are brought into requisition, and then would come more chaffering and bargaining than would suffice to buy and sell an empire.
This young fellow does not own these precious stones. He is a broker. The diamond is first brought to light in Brazil, India, or the Cape of Good Hope. From the original producer it passes into the hands of the resident buyer, who consigns it to the broker to sell, and he does it on commission the same as the elevator men handle wheat. The buyer in Petticoat Lane either cuts and sets it himself, or re-sells it to the fashionable jeweler, as he can make the most profit. Trust them for doing that. It is something the London Hebrew understands long before he cuts his teeth.