Calculating that there are only fifty street piemen plying their trade in London, the year through, and that their average earnings are 8s. a week, we find a street expenditure exceeding 1,040l., and a street consumption of pies amounting nearly to three quarters of a million yearly.
To start in the penny pie business of the streets requires 1l. for a “can,” 2s. 6d. for a “turn-halfpenny” board to gamble with, 12s. for a gross of tin pie-dishes, 8d. for an apron, and about 6s. 6d. for stock money—allowing 1s. for flour, 1s. 3d. for meat, 2d. for apples, 4d. for eels, 2s. for pork flare or fat, 2d. for sugar, ½d. for cloves, 1d. for pepper and salt, 1d. for an egg to wash the pies over with, 6d. for baking, and 1d. for charcoal to keep the pies hot in the streets. Hence the capital required would be about 2l. in all.
Of the Street-sellers of Boiled Puddings.
The sale of boiled puddings, meat and currant—which might perhaps be with greater correctness called dumplings—has not been known in London, I was informed by one in the trade, more than twelve or fourteen years. The ingredients for the meat puddings are not dissimilar to those I have described as required for the meat pies, but the puddings are boiled, in cotton bags, in coppers or large pans, and present the form of a round ball. The charge is a halfpenny each. Five or six years back a man embarked his means—said to be about 15l.—in the meat-pudding line, and prepared a superior article, which was kept warm in the street by means of steam, in a manner similar to that employed by the pieman. A mechanic out of work was engaged by this projector to aid him in the sale of his street luxuries, and the mechanic and his two boys made a living by this sale for two or three years. The original pudding-projector relinquished the street trade to go into business as a small shop-keeper, and the man who sold for him on a sort of commission, earning from 12s. to 18s. a week, made the puddings on his own account. His earnings, however, on his own account were not above from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a week beyond what he earned by commission, and a little while back he obtained work again at his own business, but his two boys still sell puddings in the street.
The sale of boiled meat puddings is carried on only in the autumn and winter months, and only in the evenings, except on Saturdays, when the business commences in the afternoon. The sale, I was informed by one of the parties, has been as many as forty-five dozen puddings on a Saturday evening. The tins in which the puddings are carried about hold from four to six dozen, and are replenished from the pans—the makers always living contiguous to the street where the vend takes place—as fast as the demand requires such replenishment. An average sale on a fine dry winter Saturday evening is thirty dozen, but then, as in most street callings, “the weather”—a remark often made to me—“has considerable to do with it.” A frost, I was told, helped off the puddings, and a rain kept them back. Next to Saturday the best business night is Monday; but the average sale on the Monday is barely half that on the Saturday, and on the other evenings of the week about a third. This gives a weekly sale by each street-seller of 85 dozen, or 1,020 puddings, and as I am informed there are now but six street-sellers (regularly) of this comestible, the weekly aggregate would be—allowing for bad weather—5,400, or 129,600 in a season of 24 weeks; an expenditure on the part of the street boys and girls (who are the principal purchasers), and of the poor persons who patronise the street-trade, of about 270l. per annum. The wandering street-musicians of the poorer class—such as “Old Sarey” and the Italian boys—often make their dinner off a meat pudding purchased on their rounds; for it is the rule with such people never to return home after starting in the morning till their day’s work is done.
The boys who ply their callings in the street, or are much in the open air, are very fond of these puddings, and to witness the way in which they throw the pudding, when very hot, from hand to hand, eyeing it with an expression that shows an eagerness to eat with a fear of burning the mouth, is sometimes laughable and sometimes painful, because not unfrequently there is a look of keen hunger about the—probably outcast—lad. The currant puddings are, I believe, sold only at Billingsgate and Petticoat-lane.
Of the Street-sellers of Plum “Duff” or Dough.
Plum dough is one of the street-eatables—though perhaps it is rather a violence to class it with the street-pastry—which is usually made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest description. It is sometimes made in the rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more frequently in the “roly-poly” style. Hot pudding used to be of much more extensive sale in the streets. One informant told me that twenty or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire, pudding, “with plums in it,” was a popular street business. The “plums,” as in the orthodox plum-puddings, are raisins. The street-vendors of plum “duff” are now very few, only six as an average, and generally women, or if a man be the salesman he is the woman’s husband. The sale is for the most part an evening sale, and some vend the plum dough only on a Saturday night. A woman in Leather-lane, whose trade is a Saturday night trade, is accounted “one of the best plum duffs” in London, as regards the quality of the comestible, but her trade is not considerable.
The vendors of plum dough are the street-sellers who live by vending other articles, and resort to plum dough, as well as to other things, “as a help.” This dough is sold out of baskets in which it is kept hot by being covered with cloths, sometimes two and even three, thick; and the smoke issuing out of the basket, and the cry of the street-seller, “Hot plum duff, hot plum,” invite custom. A quartern of flour, 5d.; ½ lb. Valentia raisins, 2d.; dripping and suet in equal proportions, 2½d.; treacle, ½d.; and allspice, ½d.—in all 10½d.; supply a roly-poly of twenty pennyworths. The treacle, however, is only introduced “to make the dough look rich and spicy,” and must be used sparingly.
The plum dough is sold in slices at ½d. or 1d. each, and the purchasers are almost exclusively boys and girls—boys being at least three-fourths of the revellers in this street luxury. I have ascertained—as far as the information of the street-sellers enables me to ascertain—that take the year through, six “plum duffers” take 1s. a day each, for four winter months, including Sundays, when the trade is likewise prosecuted. Some will take from 4s. to 10s. (but rarely 10s.) on a Saturday night, and nothing on other nights, and some do a little in the summer. The vendors, who are all stationary, stand chiefly in the street-markets and reside near their stands, so that they can get relays of hot dough.