London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The street-sellers who “brew their own beer” generally prepare half a gross (six dozen) at a time. For a “good quality” or the “penny bottle” trade, the following are the ingredients and the mode of preparation:—3 gallons of water; 1 lb. of ginger, 6d.; lemon-acid, 2d.; essence of cloves, 2d.; yeast, 2d.; and 1 lb. of raw sugar, 7d. This admixture, the yeast being the last ingredient introduced, stands 24 hours, and is then ready for bottling. If the beverage be required in 12 hours, double the quantity of yeast is used. The bottles are filled only “to the ridge,” but the liquid and the froth more than fill a full-sized half-pint glass. “Only half froth,” I was told, “is reckoned very fair, and it’s just the same in the shops.” Thus, 72 bottles, each to be sold at 1d., cost—apart from any outlay in utensils, or any consideration of the value of labour—only 1s. 7d., and yield, at 1d. per bottle, 6s. For the cheaper beverage—called “playhouse ginger-beer” in the trade—instead of sugar, molasses from the “private distilleries” is made available. The “private” distilleries are the illicit ones: “‘Jiggers,’ we call them,” said one man; “and I could pass 100 in 10 minutes’ walk from where we’re talking.” Molasses, costing 3d. at a jigger’s, is sufficient for a half-gross of bottles of ginger-beer; and of the other ingredients only half the quantity is used, the cloves being altogether dispensed with, but the same amount of yeast is generally applied. This quality of “beer” is sold at ½d. the glass.

About five years ago “fountains” for the production of ginger-beer became common in the streets. The ginger-beer trade in the open air is only for a summer season, extending from four to seven months, according to the weather, the season last year having been over in about four months. There were then 200 fountains in the streets, all of which, excepting 20 or 30 of the best, were hired of the ginger-beer manufacturers, who drive a profitable trade in them. The average value of a street-fountain, with a handsome frame or stand, which is usually fixed on a wheeled and movable truck, so as one man’s strength may be sufficient to propel it, is 7l.; and, for the rent of such a fountain, 6s. a week is paid when the season is brisk, and 4s. when it is slack; but last summer, I am told, 4s. 6d. was an average. The largest and handsomest ginger-beer fountain in London was—I speak of last summer—in use at the East-end, usually standing in Petticoat-lane, and is the property of a dancing-master. It is made of mahogany, and presents somewhat the form of an upright piano on wheels. It has two pumps, and the brass of the pump-handles and the glass receivers is always kept bright and clean, so that the whole glitters handsomely to the light. Two persons “serve” at this fountain; and on a fine Sunday morning, from six to one, that being the best trading time, they take 7l. or 8l. in halfpennies—for “the beer” is ½d. a glass—and 2l. each other day of the week. This machine, as it may be called, is drawn by two ponies, said to be worth 10l. a-piece; and the whole cost is pronounced—perhaps with a sufficient exaggeration—to have been 150l. There were, in the same neighbourhood, two more fountains on a similar scale, but commoner, each drawn by only one pony instead of the aristocratic “pair.”

The ingredients required to feed the “ginger-beer” fountains are of a very cheap description. To supply 10 gallons, 2 quarts of lime-juice (as it is called, but it is, in reality, lemon-juice), costing 3s. 6d., are placed in the recess, sometimes with the addition of a pound of sugar (4d.); while some, I am assured, put in a smaller quantity of juice, and add two-pennyworth of oil of vitriol, which “brings out the sharpness of the lime-juice.” The rest is water. No process of brewing or fermentation is necessary, for the fixed air pumped into the liquid as it is drawn from the fountain, communicates a sufficient briskness or effervescence. “The harder you pumps,” said one man who had worked a fountain, “the frothier it comes; and though it seems to fill a big glass—and the glass an’t so big for holding as it looks—let it settle, and there’s only a quarter of a pint.” The hirer of a fountain is required to give security. This is not, as in some slop-trades, a deposit of money; but a householder must, by written agreement, make himself responsible for any damage the fountain may sustain, as well as for its return, or make good the loss: the street ginger-beer seller is alone responsible for the rent of the machine. It is however, only men that are known, who are trusted in this way. Of the fountains thus hired, 50 are usually to be found at the neighbouring fairs and races. As the ginger-beer men carry lime-juice, &c., with them, only water is required to complete the “brewing of the beer” and so conveyance is not difficult.

There is another kind of “ginger-beer,” or rather of “small acid tiff,” which is sold out of barrels at street-stalls at ½d. the glass. To make 2½ gallons of this, there is used 1/2lb. tartaric, or other acid, 1s.; ½ lb. alkali (soda), 10d.; ½ lb. lump sugar, bruised fine, 4d.; and yeast 1d. Of these “barrel-men” there are now about one hundred.

Another class of street-sellers obtain their stock of ginger-beer from the manufacturers. One of the largest manufacturers for the street-trade resides near Ratcliffe-highway, and another in the Commercial-road. The charge by the wholesale traders is 8d. the doz., while to a known man, or for ready money, 13 are given to the dozen. The beer, however, is often let out on credit—or in some cases security is given in the same way as for the fountains—and the empty bottles must be duly returned. It is not uncommon for two gross of beer to be let out in this way at a time. For the itinerant trade these are placed on a truck or barrow, fitted up with four shelves, on which are ranged the bottles. These barrows are hired in the same way as the costers’ barrows. Some sell their beer at stalls fitted up exclusively for the trade, a kind of tank being let into the centre of the board and filled with water, in which the glasses are rinsed or washed. Underneath the stall there is usually a reserve of the beer, and a keg containing water. Some of the best frequented stalls were in Whitechapel, Old-street-road, City-road, Tottenham-court-road, the New-cut, Elephant and Castle, the Commercial-road, Tower-hill, the Strand, and near Westminster-bridge.

The stationary beer business is, for the most part, carried on in the more public streets, such as Holborn and Oxford-street, and in the markets of Covent-garden, Smithfield, and Billingsgate; while the peripatetic trade, which is briskest on the Sundays—when, indeed, some of the stationary hands become itinerant—is more for the suburbs; Victoria-park, Battersea-fields, Hampstead-heath, Primrose-hill, Kennington-common, and Camberwell-green, being approved Sunday haunts.

The London street-sellers of ginger-beer, say the more experienced, may be computed at 3,000—of whom about one-third are women. I heard them frequently estimated at 5,000, and some urged that the number was at least as near 5,000 as 3,000. For my own part I am inclined to believe that half the smaller number would be nearer the truth. Judging by the number of miles of streets throughout the metropolis, and comparing the street-sellers of ginger-beer with the fruit-stall keepers, I am satisfied that in estimating the ginger-beer-sellers at 1,500 we are rather over than under the truth. This body of street-sellers were more numerous five years back by 15 or 20 per cent., but the introduction of the street fountains, and the trade being resorted to by the keepers of coal-sheds and the small shopkeepers—who have frequently a stand with ginger-beer in front of their shops—have reduced the amount of the street-sellers. In 1842, there were 1,200 ginger-beer sellers in the streets who had attached to their stalls or trucks labels, showing that they were members—or assumed to be members—of the Society of Odd Fellows. This was done in hopes of a greater amount of custom from the other members of the Society, but the expectation was not realised—and so the Odd Fellowship of the ginger-beer people disappeared. Of the street-traders 200 work fountains; and of the remaining portion the stationary and the itinerant are about equally divided. Of the whole number, however, not above an eighth confine themselves to the trade, but usually sell with their “pop” some other article of open-air traffic—fruit, sweet-stuff, or shell-fish. There are of the entire number about 350, who, whenever the weather permits, stay out all night with their stands or barrows, and are to be found especially in all the approaches to Covent-garden, and the other markets to which there is a resort during the night or at day-break. These men, I was told by one of their body, worked from eight in the evening to eight or ten next morning, then went to bed, rose at three, and “plenty of ’em then goes to the skittles or to get drunk.”

The character of the ginger-beer-sellers does not differ from what I have described as pertaining to the costermonger class, and to street-traders generally. There is the same admixture of the reduced mechanic, the broken-down gentleman’s servant, the man of any class in life who cannot brook the confinement and restraint of ordinary in-door labour, and of the man “brought up to the streets.” One experienced and trustworthy man told me that from his own knowledge he could count up twenty “classical men,” as he styled them, who were in the street ginger-beer-trade, and of these four had been, or were said to have been “parsons,” two being of the same name (Mr. S ——); but my informant did not know if they stood in any degree of consanguinity one to another. The women are the wives, daughters, or other connections of the men.

Some of the stalls at which ginger-beer is sold—and it is the same at the coal-sheds and the chandlers’ shops—are adorned pictorially. Erected at the end of a stall is often a painting, papered on a board, in which a gentleman, with the bluest of coats, the whitest of trousers, the yellowest of waistcoats, and the largest of guard-chains or eye-glasses, is handing a glass of ginger-beer, frothed up like a pot of stout, and containing, apparently, a pint and a half, to some lady in flowing white robes, or gorgeous in purple or orange.

To commence in this branch of the street business requires, in all 18s. 3d.: six glasses, 2s. 9d.; board, 5s.; tank, 1s.; keg, 1s.; gross of beer, 8s. (this is where the seller is not also the maker); and for towels, &c., 6d.; if however the street-seller brew his own beer, he will require half a gross of bottles, 5s. 6d.; and the ingredients I have enumerated, 1s. 7d.