Of the whole number of street curd-sellers, 50 dispose of as much as my informant, or 12½ gallons in 3 weeks; the other 50 sell only half as much. Taking the season at 3 months, we find the consumption of curds and whey in the street to be 2,812 double gallons (as regards the ingredient of milk), at a cost to the purchasers of 421l., half of which is the profit accruing to the street-seller. The receipts of those having the better description of business being 9s. 4d. weekly; those of the smaller traders being 4s. 8d. There is a slight and occasional loss by the “cruds” being kept until unsaleable, in which case they are “fit for nothing but the hog-wash man.”
Of the Street-Sellers of Rice-milk.
To make rice-milk, the street-seller usually boils four quarts, of the regular measure, of “skim” with one pound of rice, which has been previously boiled in water. An hour suffices for the boiling of the milk; and the addition of the rice, swollen by the boiling water, increases the quantity to six quarts. No other process is observed, except that some sweeten their rice-milk before they offer it for sale; the majority, however, sweeten it to the customer’s liking when he is “served,” unless—to use the words of one informant—“he have a werry, werry sweet tooth indeed, sir; and that can’t be stood.” For the sweetening of six quarts, half a pound of sugar is used; for the “spicing,” half an ounce of allspice, dashed over the milk freely enough from a pepper-castor. Rice-milk is always sold at stalls arranged for the purpose, and is kept in a tin pan fitted upon a charcoal brazier, so that the “drinkable” is always hot. This apparatus generally stands on the ground alongside the stall, and is elevated only by the feet of the brazier. The “rice-milk woman,”—for the street-sellers are generally females,—dips a large breakfast-cup, holding half a pint, into the pan, puts a tea-spoonful of sugar into it, browns the whole with allspice, and receives 1d.; a halfpennyworth is, of course, half the quantity. The rice-milk women are also sellers of oranges, chestnuts, apples, or some other fruit, as well as the rice-milk; but, sometimes, when the weather is very cold and frosty, they sell rice-milk alone. There are fifty street-sellers of rice-milk in London. Saturday night is the best time of sale, when it is not uncommon for a rice-milk woman to sell six quarts; but, in a good trade, four quarts a day for six days of the week is an average. The purchasers are poor people; and a fourth of the milk is sold to boys and girls, to whom it is often a meal. “Ah, sir,” said one woman, “you should have seen how a poor man, last winter, swallowed a penn’orth. He’d been a-wandering all night, he said, and he looked it, and a gentleman gave him 2d., for he took pity on his hungry look, and he spent 1d. with me, and I gave him another cup for charity. ‘God bless the gentleman and you!’ says he, ‘it’s saved my life; if I’d bought a penny loaf, I’d have choked on it.’ He wasn’t a beggar, for I never saw him before, and I’ve never seen him again from that day to this.” The same informant told me, that she believed no rice-milk was bought by the women of the town: “it didn’t suit the likes of them.” Neither is it bought by those who are engaged in noisome trades. If there be any of the rice-milk left at night, and the saleswoman have doubts of its “keeping,” it is re-boiled with fresh rice and milk. The profit is considerable; for the ingredients, which cost less than 1s. 6d., are made into 96 pennyworths, and so to realize 8s. In some of the poorer localities, however, such as Rosemary-lane, only ½d. the half-pint can be obtained, and 4s. is then the amount received for six quarts, instead of 8s.
To start “in rice-milk” requires 13s. capital, which includes a pan for boiling the milk, 2s.; a kettle, with brazier, for stall, 4s.; stall or stand, 5s.; six cups, 9d.; for stock-money 15½d., with which is bought 4 quarts of skim-milk, 9d.; 1 lb. of rice, 3d.; ½ lb. of sugar, 2d.; allspice, 1d.
The season continues for four months; and calculating—a calculation within the mark—that one half of the 50 sellers have as good a trade as my informant—24 quarts weekly—and that, of the remaining 25, one half sell 12 quarts each weekly, at 1d. the half-pint, and the other half vend 24 quarts at ½d. the half-pint, we find that 320l. is annually spent in rice-milk and about 3,000 gallons of it yearly consumed in the streets of London.
Of Water-Carriers.
It may surprise many to learn that there are still existing water-carriers in London, and some of them depending upon the trade for a livelihood; while others, the “odd men” of the neighbourhood, carry pails of spring water to the publicans or eating-house keepers, who may not have servants to send to the nearest pump for it, and who require it fresh and cool for those who drink it at their meals. Of these men there are, as near as I can ascertain, from 100 to 150; their charge is 1d. per pail. Their earnings per day 6d. to 1s. Perhaps none of them depend solely upon this labour for their support.
It is otherwise at Highgate and Hampstead, for in those places both men and women depend entirely for their daily bread on water carrying. At Hampstead the supply is derived from what may be called a double well, known as “the Conduit.” The ground is flagged, and the water is seen at each corner of a wall built to the surface of the ground (about eight feet) and surmounted by an iron rail. The water is covered over, in one corner and not in the other, and the carrier descends a step or two, dips in his pails and walks away with them when filled. The water is carried by means of a “yoke,” in the same way as we see the milk-pails carried in every street in London. The well and the field in which the Hampstead water is situated are the property of the Church, and the water is free to any one, in any quantity, either for sale or any other purpose, “without leave.” In droughts or frosts the supply fails, and the carriers have sometimes to wait hours for their “turn,” and then to bale the water into their pails with a basin. The nearest street to which the water is carried is half a mile distant. Some is carried three quarters of a mile, and some (occasionally) a mile. The two pails full, which contain seven gallons, are sold at 1½d. The weight is about 70 lbs. Seventeen years ago the price was 3d.; after which it fell to 2½d., then to 2d., and has been 1½d. these five or six years, while now there are three or four carriers who even “carry” at two pails a-penny to the nearer places. The supply of the well (apart from drought or frost) is fifty-six gallons an hour. The principal customers are the laundresses; but in wet weather their cisterns and water-tubs are filled, and the carriers, or the major part of them, are idle. The average earnings of the carriers are 5s. a week the year through. Two of them are men of seventy. There is a bench about midway to Hampstead, at which these labourers rest; and here on almost every fine day sits with them a palsied old soldier, a pensioner of about eighty, who regales them, almost daily, with long tales of Vinegar Hill, and Jemmy O’Brien (the informer), and all the terrors of the terrible times of the Irish rebellion of 1798; for the old man (himself an Irishman) had served through the whole of it. This appears to be a somewhat curious theme for constant expatiation to a band of London water-carriers.
There are now twenty individuals, fourteen men and six women, carrying at Hampstead, and twice that number at Highgate. Some leave the carrying when they get better work,—but three-fourths of the number live by it entirely. The women are the wives and widows of carriers. The men have been either mechanics or labourers, except six or eight youths (my informant was not certain which) who had been “brought up to the water, but would willingly get away from it if they could.”
A well-spoken and intelligent-looking man, dressed in thick fustian, old and greasy, “but good enough for the carrying,” gave me the following account.