The London cat and dogs’-meat carriers or sellers—nearly all men—number at the least 1,000.
The slaughtermen are said to reap large fortunes very rapidly—indeed, the carriers say they coin the money. Many of them retire after a few years, and take large farms. One, after 12 years’ business, retired with several thousand pounds, and has now three large farms. The carriers are men, women, and boys. Very few women do as well as the men at it. The carriers “are generally sad drunkards.” Out of five hundred, it is said three hundred at least spend 1l. a head a week in drink. One party in the trade told me that he knew a carrier who would often spend 10s. in liquor at one sitting. The profit the carriers make upon the meat is at present only a penny per pound. In the summer time the profit per pound is reduced to a halfpenny, owing to the meat being dearer on account of its scarcity. The carriers give a great deal of credit—indeed, they take but little ready money. On some days they do not come home with more than 2s. One with a middling walk pays for his meat 7s. 6d. per day. For this he has half a hundred-weight. This produces him as much as 11s. 6d., so that his profit is 4s.; which, I am assured, is about a fair average of the earnings of the trade. One carrier is said to have amassed 1,000l. at the business. He usually sold from 1½ to 2 cwt. every morning, so that his profits were generally from 16s. to 1l. per day. But the trade is much worse now. There are so many at it, they say, that there is barely a living for any. A carrier assured me that he seldom went less than 30, and frequently 40 miles, through the streets every day. The best districts are among the houses of tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers. The coachmen in the mews at the back of the squares are very good customers. “The work lays thicker there,” said my informant. Old maids are bad, though very plentiful, customers. They cheapen the carriers down so, that they can scarcely live at the business. “They will pay one halfpenny and owe another, and forget that after a day or two.” The cats’ meat dealers generally complain of their losses from bad debts. Their customers require credit frequently to the extent of 1l. “One party owes me 15s. now,” said a carrier to me, “and many 10s.; in fact, very few people pay ready money for the meat.”
The carriers frequently serve as much as ten pennyworths to one person in a day. One gentleman has as much as 4 lbs. of meat each morning for two Newfoundland dogs; and there was one woman—a black—who used to have as much as 16 pennyworth every day. This person used to get out on the roof of the house and throw it to the cats on the tiles. By this she brought so many stray cats round about the neighbourhood, that the parties in the vicinity complained; it was quite a nuisance. She would have the meat always brought to her before ten in the morning, or else she would send to a shop for it, and between ten and eleven in the morning the noise and cries of the hundreds of stray cats attracted to the spot was “terrible to hear.” When the meat was thrown to the cats on the roof, the riot, and confusion, and fighting, was beyond description. “A beer-shop man,” I was told, “was obliged to keep five or six dogs to drive the cats from his walls.” There was also a mad woman in Islington, who used to have 14 lbs. of meat a day. The party who supplied her had his money often at 2l. and 3l. at a time. She had as many as thirty cats at times in her house. Every stray one that came she would take in and support. The stench was so great that she was obliged to be ejected. The best days for the cats’ meat business are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays. A double quantity of meat is sold on the Saturday; and on that day and Monday and Tuesday the weekly customers generally pay.
“My father was a baker by trade,” said a carrier to me, “but through an enlargement of the heart he was obliged to give up working at his trade; leaning over the trough increased his complaint so severely, that he used to fall down, and be obliged to be brought home. This made him take to the cats’ and dogs’ meat trade, and he brought me up to it. I do pretty comfortably. I have a very good business, having been all my life at it. If it wasn’t for the bad debts I should do much better; but some of the people I trust leave the houses, and actually take in a double quantity of meat the day before. I suppose there is at the present moment as much as 20l. owing to me that I never expect to see a farthing of.”
The generality of the dealers wear a shiny hat, black plush waistcoat and sleeves, a blue apron, corduroy trousers, and a blue and white spotted handkerchief round their necks. Some, indeed, will wear two and three handkerchiefs round their necks, this being fashionable among them. A great many meet every Friday afternoon in the donkey-market, Smithfield, and retire to a public-house adjoining, to spend the evening.
A “cats’ meat carrier” who supplied me with information was more comfortably situated than any of the poorer classes that I have yet seen. He lived in the front room of a second floor, in an open and respectable quarter of the town, and his lodgings were the perfection of comfort and cleanliness in an humble sphere. It was late in the evening when I reached the house. I found the “carrier” and his family preparing for supper. In a large morocco leather easy chair sat the cats’ meat carrier himself; his “blue apron and black shiny hat” had disappeared, and he wore a “dress” coat and a black satin waistcoat instead. His wife, who was a remarkably pretty woman, and of very attractive manners, wore a “Dolly Varden” cap, placed jauntily at the back of her head, and a drab merino dress. The room was cosily carpeted, and in one corner stood a mahogany “crib” with cane-work sides, in which one of the children was asleep. On the table was a clean white table-cloth, and the room was savoury with the steaks, and mashed potatoes that were cooking on the fire. Indeed, I have never yet seen greater comfort in the abodes of the poor. The cleanliness and wholesomeness of the apartment were the more striking from the unpleasant associations connected with the calling.
It is believed by one who has been engaged at the business for 25 years, that there are from 900 to 1,000 horses, averaging 2 cwt. of meat each—little and big—boiled down every week; so that the quantity of cats’ and dogs’ meat used throughout London is about 200,000 lbs. per week, and this, sold at the rate of 2½d. per lb., gives 2,000l. a week for the money spent in cats’ and dogs’ meat, or upwards of 100,000l. a year, which is at the rate of 100l.-worth sold annually by each carrier. The profits of the carriers may be estimated at about 50l. each per annum.
The capital required to start in this business varies from 1l. to 2l. The stock-money needed is between 5s. and 10s. The barrow and basket, weights and scales, knife and steel, or black-stone, cost about 2l. when new, and from 15s. to 4s. second-hand.
Of the Street-sale of Drinkables.
The street-sellers of the drinkables, who have now to be considered, belong to the same class as I have described in treating of the sale of street-provisions generally. The buyers are not precisely of the same class, for the street-eatables often supply a meal, but with the exception of the coffee-stalls, and occasionally of the rice-milk, the drinkables are more of a luxury than a meal. Thus the buyers are chiefly those who have “a penny to spare,” rather than those who have “a penny to dine upon.” I have described the different classes of purchasers of each potable, and perhaps the accounts—as a picture of street-life—are even more curious than those I have given of the purchasers of the eatables—of (literally) the diners out.