“Barnet is a good place for fly-papers; there’s a good lot of flies down there. There used to be a man at Barnet as made ’em, but I can’t say if he do now. There’s another at Brentford, so it ain’t much good going that way.
“In cold weather the papers keep pretty well, and will last for months with just a little warming at the fire; for they tears on opening when they are dry. You see we always carry them with the stickey sides doubled up together like a sheet of writing-paper. In hot weather, if you keep them folded up, they lasts very well; but if you opens them, they dry up. It’s easy opening them in hot weather, for they comes apart as easy as peeling a horrange. We generally carries the papers in a bundle on our arm, and we ties a paper as is loaded with flies round our cap, just to show the people the way to ketch ’em. We get a loaded paper given to us at a shop.
“When the papers come out first, we use to do very well with fly-papers; but now it’s hard work to make our own money for ’em. Some days we used to make six shillings a day regular. But then we usen’t to go out every day, but take a rest at home. If we do well one day, then we might stop idle another day, resting. You see, we had to do our
twenty or thirty miles silling them to get that money, and then the next day we was tired.
“The silling of papers is gradual falling off. I could go out and sill twenty dozen wonst where I couldn’t sill one now. I think I does a very grand day’s work if I yearns a shilling. Perhaps some days I may lose by them. You see, if it’s a very hot day, the papers gets dusty; and besides, the stuff gets melted and oozes out; though that don’t do much harm, ’cos we gets a bit of whitening and rubs ’em over. Four years ago we might make ten shillings a day at the papers, but now, taking from one end of the fly-season to the other, which is about three months, I think we makes about one shilling a day out of papers, though even that ain’t quite certain. I never goes out without getting rid of mine, somehow or another, but then I am obleeged to walk quick and look about me.
“When it’s a bad time for silling the papers, such as a wet, could day, then most of the fly-paper boys goes out with brushes, cleaning boots. Most of the boys is now out hopping. They goes reg’lar every year after the season is give over for flies.
“The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and turpentine and resin. It’s seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes after it gets on the paper, and then it’s as dead as a house. The blue-bottles is tougher, but they don’t last long, though they keeps on fizzing as if they was trying to make a hole in the paper. The stuff is only p’isonous for flies, though I never heard of anybody as ever eat a fly-paper.”
A second lad, in conclusion, said: “There’s lots of boys going selling ‘ketch-’em-alive oh’s’ from Golden-lane, and White-chapel and the Borough. There’s lots, too, comes out of Gray’s-inn-lane and St. Giles’s. Near every boy who has nothing to do goes out with fly-papers. Perhaps it ain’t that the flies is falled off that we don’t sill so many papers now, but because there’s so many boys at it.”
A third, of the lot the most intelligent and gentle in his demeanor, though the smallest in stature, said:
“I’ve been longer at it than the last boy, though I’m only getting on for thirteen, and he’s older than I’m; ’cos I’m little and he’s big, getting a man. But I can sell them quite as well as he can, and sometimes better, for I can holler out just as loud, and I’ve got reg’lar places to go to. I