Concerning the history and character of our street and public-house literature, I shall treat hereafter, when I can comprise the whole, and after the descriptions of the several classes engaged in the trade will have paved the way for the reader’s better appreciation of the curious and important theme. I say, important; because the street-ballad and the street-narrative, like all popular things, have their influence on masses of the people. Specimens will be found adduced, as I describe the several classes, or in the statements of the patterers.
It must be borne in mind that the street author is closely restricted in the quality of his effusion. It must be such as the patterers approve, as the chaunters can chaunt, the ballad-singers sing, and—above all—such as street-buyers will buy. One chaunter, who was a great admirer of the “Song of the Shirt,” told me that if Hood himself had written the “Pitiful Case of Georgy Sloan and his Wife,” it would not have sold so well as a ballad he handed to me, from which I extract a verse:
“Jane Willbred we did starve and beat her very hard
I confess we used her very cruel,
But now in a jail two long years we must bewail,
We don’t fancy mustard in the gruel.”
What I have said of the necessity which controls street authorship, may also be said of the art which is sometimes called in to illustrate it.
The paper now published for the streets is classed as quarter sheets, which cost (wholesale) 1s. a gross; half sheets, which cost 2s.; and whole or broad sheets (such as for executions), which cost 3s. 6d. a gross the first day, and 3s. the next day or two, and afterwards, but only if a ream be taken, 5s. 6d.; a ream contains forty dozen. When “illustrated,” the charge is from 3d. to 1s. per ream extra. The books, for such cases as the Sloanes, or the murder of Jael Denny, are given in books—which are best adapted for the suburban and country trade, when London is “worked” sufficiently—are the “whole sheet” printed so as to fold into eight pages, each side of the paper being then, of course, printed upon. A book is charged from 6d. to 1s. extra (to a whole sheet) per gross, and afterwards the same extra per ream.