"Oh, no! we don't prosecute now," a pleasant shop-walker said in answer to my inquiries on the subject: "It is too risky altogether; the thing isn't worth it. And we lost £500, one year, by getting hold of the wrong person ... it's so easy to mistake, in the crowd. No, we just place detectives here and there, where the biggest crushes are ... they are dressed like ordinary customers, and carry parcels; so that no one could discover their business.... Then, if a detective happens to see a suspicious-looking individual, he marks her or him—(it is generally her), and follows, from one counter to another, to see if he is right. He doesn't speak until he is perfectly sure; but, when he is, he just goes up to the person and says politely, 'Please, would you kindly follow me for a moment into the office?' Once in the office, the shop-lifter is made very quietly to disgorge.... It's nearly always a lady—very well connected some of them are, too.... She's never one of our reg'lar customers—sale-folks seem a kind of class by themselves, and we see nothing of them from one sale-day to another. Some of them make hay then, and no mistake.... Why, madam," said the shop-walker, warming to his narrative, "why, I've seen ladies go into that office, quite stout persons, and come out of it so thin, you'd hardly know 'em again.... They just wear cloaks with deep inside pockets all round."
"And don't they ever object, or make a commotion in the shop?" I inquired.
"No, they go as quiet as lambs mostly ... and other customers don't notice anything.... You see, they know there's no help for 'em, no use for 'em to brazen it out, lined with silks, and laces and stuffs as they are. Afterwards, we just warn 'em kindly, and let 'em go. They rarely do it twice in the same shop."
"What sort of things do they generally take?" I asked.
"Why, lace, and bits o' ribbon, put up in odd lots for sale, things lying about loose on the counter, like they are at sale times. Well-dressed they are, too, you wouldn't think they could want 'em badly. 'Oh, it must 'a got up my sleeve,' some of 'em say, looking most innocent, with perhaps two or three yards of brocade or surah hangin' out of their golf-capes.... They've got a kind of a fancy, as well, for religious books: no knowing why, for religion," added the shop-walker thoughtfully, "has evidently done them no good."
With which reflection I cordially agreed.
Sales, however tempting, should be avoided by the unwary shopper, for they are dangerous as spiders' webs. They usually occur twice a year, in January and July; in January, they relieve the tedium of the winter fogs; in July, they are a very midsummer madness. The sales vary in honesty. Some of them are really held in order to clear out, at a sacrifice, the "old stock"; some, especially in the smaller shops, are simply quick sales of "cheap lines," bought in on purpose, and strewn about heterogeneously on the counters. Sale days are truly terrible experiences to the uninitiated. If you happened, unwittingly, to go to some familiar shop on one of these yearly occasions, the mass of crowded, struggling, gasping humanity, nearly all pushing, and nearly all fat, would lead you to imagine that life and death, at least, were intimately concerned in the tussle, instead of merely the question of securing the "first choice" of "Remnants."
The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the shopping of the very poor is quite another. Most interesting, to those who care to study the book of human nature, are the "street-markets" of the people, those rows of noisy booths and barrows which have stood from time immemorial, by traditional right, in certain streets, and where jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-lights display the kaleidoscopic stock-in-trade. Among such streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road; Leather Lane, Holborn; or, to descend to a yet lower social depth, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Booths and barrows are, as everybody knows, not allowed to obstruct the majority of streets, being generally limited to slums or wretched paved alleys; here, however, the authorities evidently make exceptions in favour of certain ancient vested rights. In Goodge Street fruit and vegetables are mainly sold; in Leather Lane, tools, appliances, pedlars' wares, butchers' meat; everything, in fact, in infinite variety; in Spitalfields, birds and live-stock, together with old clothes, and second-hand articles generally. In such street-markets, from eight to ten on Saturday night is the gala time for business. M. Gabriel Mourey says:
"These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the bric-à-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon; everyone walks in the middle of the street. Dealers and brokers offer shoes, clothing, hats, boots, plates and dishes, all at ridiculous prices."
Curious, indeed, are the bits of life and character that are to be met with on these London by-ways. Not changed one whit in essentials since Dickens's time, they recall his wonderful insight, observation, and inimitable cockney touches. There are small differences, of course; the street matrons, for instance, have changed their former floppy caps for battered sailor hats, or other articles of damaged head-gear; the use of their nails, as an offensive weapon, for the more formidable "hat-pin." The traditional dress of the self-respecting feminine street-dealer is, however, still as sternly conventional in its way as the Mayfair belle's. At the present day it consists, usually, of a black cloth or plush jacket, a vividly red or blue skirt, a large white apron, a black hat of either the "feather" or "sailor" variety, slovenly boots down at heel, and,—most important point of all—long and conspicuous gold earrings. Thus attired, the lady street-vendor haggles and chaffers all day in a conscious elegance and propriety. The ladies of the profession generally monopolize the itinerant greengrocery trade; and among their customers you may still see some Mrs. Prig, carefully selecting a juicy "cowcumber" for the supper of her "friend and pardner, Sairey Gamp"; while yonder, perhaps, is some Mrs. Tibbs, or Mrs. Todgers, carefully appraising the piece of steak destined for the dinner of her rapacious boarders, and weighed down by all the distracting cares of paying guests. Near by, perhaps Jo, that poor vagrant, finger in mouth, eyes wistfully a juicy plateful of shellfish that the "winkle-barrow" man has just got ready for a customer. Then, maybe, a hansom rattles by with a jaded diner-out, yawning from a sense of the emptiness, not of his stomach, but of society and life, and you recall almost unconsciously Molloy's haunting words: