Of Running Patterers.
Few of the residents in London—but chiefly those in the quieter streets—have not been aroused, and most frequently in the evening, by a hurly-burly on each side of the street. An attentive listening will not lead any one to an accurate knowledge of what the clamour is about. It is from a “mob” or “school” of the running patterers (for both those words are used), and consists of two, three, or four men. All these men state that the greater the noise they make, the better is the chance of sale, and better still when the noise is on each side of a street, for it appears as if the vendors were proclaiming such interesting or important intelligence, that they were vieing with one another who should supply the demand which must ensue. It is not possible to ascertain with any certitude what the patterers are so anxious to sell, for only a few leading words are audible. One of the cleverest of running patterers repeated to me, in a subdued tone, his announcements of murders. The words “Murder,” “Horrible,” “Barbarous,” “Love,” “Mysterious,” “Former Crimes,” and the like, could only be caught by the ear, but there was no announcement of anything like “particulars.” If, however, the “paper” relate to any well-known criminal, such as Rush, the name is given distinctly enough, and so is any new or pretended fact. The running patterers describe, or profess to describe, the contents of their papers as they go rapidly along, and they seldom or ever stand still. They usually deal in murders, seductions, crim.-cons., explosions, alarming accidents, “assassinations,” deaths of public characters, duels, and love-letters. But popular, or notorious, murders are the “great goes.” The running patterer cares less than other street-sellers for bad weather, for if he “work” on a wet and gloomy evening, and if the work be “a cock,” which is a fictitious statement or even a pretended fictitious statement, there is the less chance of any one detecting the ruse. But of late years no new “cocks” have been printed, excepting for temporary purposes, such as I have specified as under its appropriate head in my account of “Death and Fire-Hunters.” Among the old stereotyped “cocks” are love-letters. One is well known as “The Husband caught in a Trap,” and being in an epistolary form subserves any purpose: whether it be the patterer’s aim to sell the “Love Letters” of any well-known person, such as Lola Montes, or to fit them for a local (pretended) scandal, as the “Letters from a Lady in this neighbourhood to a Gentleman not 100 miles off.”
Of running patterers there are now in London from 80 to 100. They reside—some in their own rooms, but the majority in lodging-houses—in or near Westminster, St Giles’s, Whitechapel, Stratford, Deptford, Wandsworth, and the Seven Dials. The “Dials,” however, is their chief locality, being the residence of the longest-established printers, and is the “head meet” of the fraternity.
It is not easy to specify with exactitude the number of running or flying patterers at any one time in London. Some of these men become, occasionally, standing patterers, chaunters, or ballad-singers—classes I shall subsequently describe—and all of them resort at intervals to country rounds. I heard, also, many complaints of boys having of late “taken to the running patter” when anything attractive was before the public, and of ignorant fellows—that wouldn’t have thought of it at one time—“trying their hands at it.” Waiving these exceptional augmentations of the number, I will take the body of running patterers, generally employed in their peculiar craft in London, at 90. To ascertain their earnings presents about the same difficulties as to ascertain their number; for as all they earn is spent—no patterer ever saving money—they themselves are hardly able to tell their incomes. If any new and exciting fact be before the public, these men may each clear 20s. a week; when there is no such fact, they may not earn 5s. The profit is contingent, moreover, upon their being able to obtain 1d., or only ½d., for their paper. Some represented their average weekly earnings at 12s. 6d. the year through; some at 10s. 6d.; and others at less than half of 12s. 6d. Reckoning, however, that only 9s. weekly is an average profit per individual, and that 14s. be taken to realise that profit, we find 3,276l. expended yearly on running patterers in London; but in that sum the takings of the chaunters must be included, as they are members of the same fraternity, and work with the patterers.
The capital required to commence as a running patterer is but the price of a few papers—from 2d. to 1s. The men have no distinctive dress: “our togs,” said one of them, “is in the latest fashion of Petticoat-lane;” unless on the very rare occasions, when some character has to be personated, and then coloured papers and glazed calicoes are made available. But this is only a venture of the old hands.
LONG-SONG SELLER.
“Two under fifty for a fardy’!”
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]