One of the appliances of the street sweet-stuff trade which I saw in the room of the seller before mentioned was—Acts of Parliament. A pile of these, a foot or more deep, lay on a shelf. They are used to wrap up the rock, &c., sold. The sweet-stuff maker (I never heard them called confectioners) bought his “paper” of the stationers, or at the old book-shops. Sometimes, he said, he got works in this way in sheets which had never been cut (some he feared were stolen,) and which he retained to read at his short intervals of leisure, and then used to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read through two Histories of England! He maintained a wife, two young children, and a young sister, who could attend to the stall; his wife assisted him in his manufactures. He used 1 cwt. of sugar a week on the year’s average, ½ cwt. of treacle, and 5 oz. of scents, each 8d. an oz.
The man who has the best trade in London streets, is one who, about two years ago, introduced—after much study, I was told—short sentences into his “sticks.” He boasts of his secret. When snapped asunder, in any part, the stick presents a sort of coloured inscription. The four I saw were: “Do you love me?” The next was of less touching character, “Do you love sprats?” The others were, “Lord Mayor’s Day,” and “Sir Robert Peel.” This man’s profits are twice those of my respectable informant’s.
Of the Customers of the Sweet-stuff Street-sellers.
Another sweet-stuff man, originally a baker, but who, for a fortnight before I saw him, had been attending upon an old gentleman, disabled from an accident, gave me the following account of his customers. What I heard from the other street-sellers satisfies me of the correctness of the statement. It will be seen that he was possessed of some humour and observation:
“Boys and girls are my best customers, sir, and mostly the smallest of them; but then, again, some of them’s fifty, aye, turned fifty; Lor’ love you. An old fellow, that hasn’t a stump of a tooth in front, why, he’ll stop and buy a ha’porth of hard-bake, and he’ll say, ‘I’ve a deal of the boy left about me still.’ He doesn’t show it, anyhow, in his look. I’m sometimes a thinking I’ll introduce a softer sort of toffy—boiled treacle, such as they call Tom Trot in some parts, but it’s out of fashion now, just for old people that’s ‘boys still.’ It was rolled in a ha’penny stick, sir, and sold stunnin’. The old ones wants something to suck, and not to chew. Why, when I was a lad at school, there was Jews used to go about with boxes on their backs, offering rings and pencil-cases, and lots of things that’s no real use to nobody, and they told everybody they asked to buy ‘that they sold everything,’ and us boys used to say—‘Then give’s a ha’porth of boiled treacle.’ It was a regular joke. I wish I’d stuck more to my book then, but what can’t be cured must be endured, you know. Now, those poor things that walks down there” (intimating, by a motion of the head, a thoroughfare frequented by girls of the town), “they’re often customers, but not near so good as they was ten year ago; no, indeed, nor six or eight year. They like something that bites in the mouth, such as peppermint-rock, or ginger-drops. They used to buy a penn’orth or two and offer it to people, but they don’t now, I think. I’ve trusted them ha’pennies and pennies, sometimes. They always paid me. Some that held their heads high like, might say: ‘I really have no change; I’ll pay you to-morrow.’ She hadn’t no change, poor lass, sure enough, and she hadn’t nothing to change either, I’ll go bail. I’ve known women, that seemed working men’s or little shopkeeper’s wives, buy of me and ask which of my stuffs took greatest hold of the breath. I always knew what they was up to. They’d been having a drop, and didn’t want it to be detected. Why, it was only last Saturday week two niceish-looking and niceish-dressed women, comes up to me, and one was going to buy peppermint-rock, and the other says to her: ‘Don’t, you fool, he’ll only think you’ve been drinking gin-and-peppermint. Coffee takes it off best.’ So I lost my customers. They hadn’t had a single drain that night, I’ll go bail, but still they didn’t look like regular lushingtons at all. I make farthing’s-worths of sweet-stuff, for children, but I don’t like it; it’s an injury to trade. I was afraid that when half-farthings was coined, they’d come among children, and they’d want half a farthing of brandy-balls. Now, talking of brandy-balls, there’s a gentleman that sometimes has a minute’s chat with me, as he buys a penn’orth to take home to his children—(every reasonable man ought to marry and have children for the sake of the sweet-trade, but it ain’t the women’s fault that many’s single still)—when one gentleman I knows buys brandy-balls, he says, quite grave, ‘What kind o’ brandy do you put in them?’ ‘Not a drop of British,’ says I, ‘I can assure you; not a single drop.’ He’s not finely dressed; indeed, he’s a leetle seedy, but I know he’s a gentleman, or what’s the same thing, if he ain’t rich; for a common fellow’ll never have his boots polished that way, every day of his life; his blacking bills must come heavy at Christmas. I can tell a gentleman, too, by his way of talk, ’cause he’s never bumptious. It’s the working people’s children that’s my great support, and they was a better support, by 2s. in every 10s., and more, when times was better; and next to them among my patrons is poor people. Perhaps, this last year, I’ve cleared 11s. a week, not more, all through. I make my own stuffs, except the drops, and they require machinery. I would get out of the streets if I could.”
Another of these traders told me, that he took more in farthings, than in halfpennies or pennies.
Calculating 200 sweet-stuff sellers, each clearing 10s. weekly, the outlay in rocks, candies, hard-bakes, &c., in the streets is 5,200l. yearly, or nearly two and a half millions of halfpenny-worths.
To start in the sweet-stuff business requires a capital of 35s., including a saucepan in which to boil sugar, 2s.; weights and scales, 4s.; stock-money (average), 4s.; and barrow, 25s. If the seller be not his own manufacturer, then a tray, 1s. 9d.; and stock-money, 1s. 6d.; or 3s. 3d. in all will be sufficient.
Of the Street-sellers of Cough Drops and of Medical Confectionary.
Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England” (1800), says of the Mountebank: “It is uncertain at what period this vagrant dealer in physic made his appearance in England; it is clear, however, that he figured away with much success in this country during the last two centuries.... The mountebanks usually preface the vending of their medicines with pompous orations, in which they pay as little regard to truth as to propriety.” I am informed by a gentleman observant of the matter, that within his knowledge, which extends to the commencement of the present century, no mountebank (proper) had appeared in the streets of London proclaiming the virtues of his medicines; neither with nor without his “fool.” The last seen by my informant, perhaps the latest mountebank in England, was about twenty years ago, in the vicinity of Yarmouth. He was selling “cough drops” and infallible cures for asthma, and was dressed in a periwig and an embroidered coat, with ruffles at his wrist, a sword to his side, and was a representation, in shabby genteel, of the fine gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne. The mountebank’s most legitimate successor in the street cajolery of London, as regards his “orations,” is the “Patterer,” as I shall show in my account of the street trade in stationery literature. His successor in the vending of curative confectionaries and (in a small degree) of nostrums, salves, ointments, &c., are the sellers of “cough drops” and “horehound candy,” and of the corn salves, and cures for bruises, sprains, burns, &c., &c., &c.