It is not possible to give anything like statistics as to the money realised by strawing. A well-informed man calculated that when the trade was at its best, or from 1832 to 1836, there might be generally fifty working it in the country and twenty in London; they did not confine themselves, however, to strawing, but resorted to it only on favourable opportunities. Now there are none in London—their numbers diminished gradually—and very rarely any in the country.
Of the Sham Indecent Street-trade.
This is one of those callings which are at once repulsive and ludicrous; repulsive, when it is considered under what pretences the papers are sold, and ludicrous, when the disappointment of the gulled purchaser is contemplated.
I have mentioned that one of the allurements held out by the strawer was that his paper—the words used by Jack Straw—could “not be admitted into families.” Those following the “sham indecent trade” for a time followed his example, and professed to sell straws and give away papers; but the London police became very observant of the sale of straws—more especially under the pretences alluded to—and it has, for the last ten years, been rarely pursued in the streets.
The plan now adopted is to sell the sealed packet itself, which the “patter” of the street-seller leads his auditors to believe to be some improper or scandalous publication. The packet is some coloured paper, in which is placed a portion of an old newspaper, a Christmas carol, a religious tract, or a slop-tailor’s puff (given away in the streets for the behoof of another class of gulls). The enclosed paper is, however, never indecent.
From a man who had, not long ago, been in this trade, I had the following account. He was very anxious that nothing should be said which would lead to a knowledge that he was my informant. After having expressed his sorrow that he had ever been driven to this trade from distress, he proceeded to justify himself. He argued—and he was not an ignorant man—that there was neither common sense nor common justice in interfering with a man like him, who, “to earn a crust, pretended to sell what shop-keepers, that must pay church and all sorts of rates, sold without being molested.” The word “shopkeepers” was uttered with a bitter emphasis. There are, or were, he continued, shops—for he seemed to know them all—and some of them had been carried on for years, in which shameless publications were not only sold, but exposed in the windows; and why should he be considered a greater offender than a shopkeeper, and be knocked about by the police? There are, or lately were, he said, such shops in the Strand, Fleet-street, a court off Ludgate-hill, Holborn, Drury-lane, Wych-street, the courts near Drury-lane Theatre, Haymarket, High-street, Bloomsbury, St. Martin’s-court, May’s buildings, and elsewhere, to say nothing of Holywell-street! Yet he must be interfered with!
[I may here remark, that I met with no street-sellers who did not disbelieve, or affect to disbelieve, that they were really meddled with by the police for obstructing the thoroughfare. They either hint, or plainly state, that they are removed solely to please the shop-keepers. Such was the reiterated opinion, real or pretended, of my present informant.]
I took a statement from this man, but do not care to dwell upon the subject. The trade, in the form I have described, had been carried on, he thought, for the last six years. At one time, 20 men followed it; at present, he believed there were only 6, and they worked only at intervals, and as opportunities offered: some going out, for instance, to sell almanacs or memorandum books, and, when they met with a favourable chance, offering their sealed packets. My informant’s customers were principally boys, young men, and old gentlemen; but old gentlemen chiefly when the trade was new. This street-seller’s “great gun,” as he called it, was to make up packets, as closely resembling as he could accomplish it, those which were displayed in the windows of any of the shops I have alluded to. He would then station himself at some little distance from one of those shops, and, if possible, so as to encounter those who had stopped to study the contents of the window, and would represent—broadly enough, he admitted, when he dared—that he could sell for 6d. what was charged 5s., or 2s. 6d., or whatever price he had seen announced, “in that very neighbourhood.” He sometimes ventured, also, to mutter something, unintelligibly, about the public being imposed upon! On one occasion, he took 6s. in the street in about two hours. On another evening he took 4s. 8d. in the street and was called aside by two old gentlemen, each of whom told him to come to an address given (at the West-end), and ask for such and such initials. To one he sold two packets for 2s.; to the other, five packets, each 1s.—or 11s. 8d. in one evening. The packets were in different coloured papers, and had the impressions of a large seal on red wax at the back; and he assured the old gents., as he called them, one of whom, he thought, was “silly,” that they were all different. “And very likely,” he said, chucklingly, “they were different; for they were made out of a lot of missionary tracts and old newspapers that I got dirt cheap at a ‘waste’ shop. I should like to have seen the old gent.’s face, as he opened his 5s. worth, one after another!” This trade, however, among old gentlemen, was prosperous for barely a month: “It got blown then, sir, and they wouldn’t buy any more, except a very odd one.”
This man—and he believed it was the same with all the others in the trade—never visited the public-houses, for a packet would soon have been opened and torn there, which, he said, people was ashamed to do in the public streets. As well as he could recollect, he had never sold a single packet to a girl or a woman. Drunken women of the town had occasionally made loud comments on his calling, and offered to purchase; but on such occasions, fearful of a disturbance, he always hurried away.
I have said that the straw trade is now confined to the country, and I give a specimen of the article vended there, by the patterer in the sham indecent trade. It was purchased of a man, who sold it folded in the form of a letter, and is addressed, “On Royal Service. By Express. Private. To Her Royal Highness, Victoria, Princess Royal. Kensington Palace, London. Entered at Stationer’s Hall.” The man who sold it had a wisp of straw round his neck, and introduced his wares with the following patter: