The proprietor of this establishment, after he had obligingly given me the information I required, invited me to walk round his premises unaccompanied, and observe how the business was conducted. The premises are extensive, and are situated, as are nearly all branches of the great trade connected with hides and skins, in Bermondsey. The trotter business is kept distinct from the general fellmongering. Within a long shed are five coppers, each containing, on an average, 250 “sets,” a set being the complement of the sheep’s feet, four. Two of these coppers, on my visit, were devoted to the scalding, and three to the boiling of the trotters. They looked like what one might imagine to be witches’ big caldrons; seething, hissing, boiling, and throwing forth a steam not peculiarly grateful to the nostrils of the uninitiated. Thus there are, weekly, “cooking” in one form or other, the feet of 20,000 sheep for the consumption of the poorer classes, or as a relish for those whose stomachs crave after edibles of this description. At one extremity of this shed are the boys, who work in a place open at the side, but the flues and fires make all parts sufficiently warm. The women have a place to themselves on the opposite side of the yard. The room where they work has forms running along its sides, and each woman has a sort of bench in front of her seat, on which she scrapes the trotters. One of the best of these workwomen can scrape 150 sets, or 600 feet in a day, but the average of the work is 500 sets a week, including women and girls. I saw no girls but what seemed above seventeen or eighteen, and none of the women were old. They were exceedingly merry, laughing and chatting, and appearing to consider that a listener was not of primary consequence, as they talked pretty much altogether. I saw none but what were decently dressed, some were good-looking, and none seemed sickly.
In this establishment are prepared, weekly, 20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet; a yearly average of 4,160,000 trotters, or the feet of 1,040,000 sheep. Of this quantity the street-folk buy seven-eighths; 3,640,000 trotters yearly, or 70,000 weekly. The number of sheep trotter-sellers may be taken at 300, which gives an average of nearly sixty sets a week per individual.
The wholesale price, at the “trotter yard,” is five a penny, which gives an outlay by the street-sellers of 3,033l. 6s. 8d. yearly.
But this is not the whole of the trade. Lamb’s trotters are also prepared, but only to one-twentieth of the quantity of sheep’s trotters, and that for only three months of the year. These are all sold to the street-sellers. The lamb’s foot is usually left appended to the leg and shoulder of lamb. It is weighed with the joint, but the butcher’s man or boy will say to the purchaser: “Do you want the foot?” As the answer is usually in the negative, it is at once cut off and forms a “perquisite.” There are some half dozen men, journeymen butchers not fully employed, who collect these feet, prepare and sell them to the street-people, but as the lamb’s feet are very seldom as fresh as those of the sheep carried direct from the skin market to—so to speak—the great trotter kitchen, the demand for “lamb’s” falls off yearly. Last year the sale may be taken at about 14,000 sets, selling, wholesale, at about 46l., the same price as the sheep.
The sellers of trotters, who are stationary at publichouse and theatre doors, and at street corners, and itinerant, but itinerant chiefly from one public house to another are a wretchedly poor class. Three fourths of them are elderly women and children, the great majority being Irish people, and there are more boys than girls in the trade. The capital required to start in the business is very small. A hand basket of the larger size costs 1s. 9d., but smaller or second-hand only 1s., and the white cotton cloth on which the trotters are displayed costs 4d. or 6d.; stock-money need not exceed 1s., so that 3s. is all that is required. This is one reason, I heard from several trotter-sellers, why the business is over-peopled.
Statements of Sheep’s Trotter Women.
From one woman, who, I am assured, may be taken as a fair type of the better class of trotter-sellers—some of the women being sottish and addicted to penn’orths of gin beyond their means—I had the following statement. I found her in the top room of a lofty house in Clerkenwell. She was washing when I called, and her son, a crippled boy of 16, with his crutch by his side, was cleaning knives, which he had done for many months for a family in the neighbourhood, who paid for his labour in what the mother pronounced better than money—broken victuals, because they were of such good, wholesome quality. The room, which is of a good size, had its red-brown plaster walls, stained in parts with damp, but a great portion was covered with the cheap engravings “given away with No. 6” (or any other number) of some periodical “of thrilling interest;” while the narrow mantel-shelf was almost covered with pot figures of dumpy men, red-breeched and blue-coated, and similar ornaments. I have often noted such attempts to subdue, as it were, the grimness of poverty, by the poor who had “seen better days.” The mother was tall and spare, and the boy had that look of premature sedateness, his face being of a sickly hue, common to those of quiet dispositions, who have been afflicted from their childhood:—
“I’m the widow of a sawyer, sir,” said Mrs. ——, with a very slight brogue, for she was an Irishwoman, “and I’ve been a widow 18 long years. I’m 54, I believe, but that 18 years seems longer than all the rest of my life together. My husband earned hardly ever less than 30s. a week, sometimes 3l., and I didn’t know what pinching was. But I was left destitute with four young children, and had to bring them up as well as I could, by what I could make by washing and charing, and a hard fight it was. One of my children went for a soldier, one’s dead, another’s married, and that’s the youngest there. Ah! poor fellow, what he’s gone through! He’s had 18 abscesses, one after another, and he has been four times in Bartholomew’s. There’s only God above to help him when I’m gone. My health broke six years ago, and I couldn’t do hard work in washing, and I took to trotter selling, because one of my neighbours was in that way, and told me how to go about it. My son sells trotters too; he always sits at the corner of this street. I go from one public-house to another, and sometimes stand at the door, or sit inside, because I’m known and have leave. But I can’t either sit, or stand, or walk long at a time, I’m so rheumatic. No, sir, I can’t say I was ever badly insulted in a public-house; but I only go to those I know. Others may be different. We depend mostly on trotters, but I have a shilling and my meat, for charing, a day in every week. I’ve tried ’winks and whelks too, ’cause I thought they might be more in my pocket than trotters, but they don’t suit a poor woman that’s begun a street-trade when she’s not very young. And the trotters can be carried on with so little money. It’s not so long ago that I’ve sold three-penn’orth of trotters—that is, him and me has—pretty early in the evening; I’d bought them at Mr. ——’s, in Bermondsey, in the afternoon, for we can buy three penn’orth, and I walked there again—perhaps it’s four miles there and back—and bought another 3d. worth. The first three-pence was all I could rise. It’s a long weary way for me to walk, but some walk from Poplar and Limehouse. If I lay out 2s. on the Saturday—there’s 15 sets for 1s., that’s 60 trotters—they’ll carry us on to Monday night, and sometimes, if they’ll keep, to Tuesday night. Sometimes I could sell half-a-crown’s worth in less time. I have to go to Bermondsey three or four times a week. The trade was far better six years ago, though trotters were dearer then, only 13 sets 1s., then 14, now 15. For some very few, that’s very fine and very big, I get a penny a piece; for some I get 1½d. for two; the most’s ½d. each; some’s four for 1½d.; and some I have to throw into the dust-hole. The two of us earns 5s. a week on trotters, not more, I’m sure. I sell to people in the public-houses; some of them may be rather the worse for drink, but not so many; regular drunkards buys nothing but drink. I’ve sold them too to steady, respectable gentlemen, that’s been passing in the street, who put them in their pockets for supper. My rent’s 1s. a week.”
I then had some conversation with the poor lad. He’d had many a bitter night, he told me, from half-past five to twelve, for he knew there was no breakfast for his mother and him if he couldn’t sell some trotters. He had a cry sometimes. He didn’t know any good it did him, but he couldn’t help it. The boys gathered round him sometimes, and teased him, and snatched at his crutch; and the policeman said that he must make him “move on,” as he encouraged the boys about him. He didn’t like the boys any more than they were fond of the policemen. He had often sad thoughts as he sat with his trotters before him, when he didn’t cry; he wondered if ever he would be better off; but what could he do? He could read, but not write; he liked to read very well when he had anything to read. His mother and he never missed mass.
Another old woman, very poorly, but rather tidily dressed, gave me the following account, which shows a little of public-house custom:—