“Vy, you see, sir,” he said, “there’s sets off. At the Market (Haymarket), now, there’s this: there’s only one front, so you may look sharp about for there goes, boxes, pit, and gallery. The ’Delphis as good that way, and so is the Surrey, but them one’s crowded too much. The Lyceum’s built shocking orkered. Vy, the boxes is in one street, and the pit in another, and the gallery in another! It’s true, sir. The pit’s the best customer in most theatres, I think. Ashley’s and the Wick is both spoiled that way—Ashley’s perticler—as the gallery’s a good step from the pit and boxes; at the Wick it’s round the corner. But the shilling gallery aint so bad at Ashley’s. Sadler’s Wells I never tried, it’s out of the way, and I can’t tell you much about the ’Lympic or the Strand. The Lane is middling. I don’t know that either plays or actors makes much difference to me. Perhaps it’s rather vorser ven it’s anything werry prime, as everybody seems to know every think about it aforehand. No, sir, I can’t say, sir, that Mr. Macready did me much good. I sometimes runs along by a cab because I’ve got a sixpence from a swell for doing it stunnin’, but werry seldom, and I don’t much like it; though ven you’re at it you don’t think of no fear. I makes 3s. or rather more a week at bill-selling, and as much other vays. I never saw a play but once at the Wick. I’d rather be at a Free and Heasy. I don’t know as I knows any of the actors or actresses, either hes or shes.”
The sellers of play-bills purchase their stock of the printer, at 3s. 4d. the hundred, or in that proportion for half or quarter-hundreds. If a smaller quantity be purchased, the charge is usually thirteen for 6d.; though they used to be only twelve for 6d. These sellers are among the poorest of the poor; after they have had one meal, they do not know how to get another. They reside in the lowest localities, and some few are abandoned and profligate in character. They reckon it a good night to earn 1s. clear, but upon an average they clear but 3s. per week. They lose sometimes by not selling out their nightly stock. What they have left, they are obliged to sell for waste-paper at 2d. per lb. Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide are generally their best times—they will then make 9d. per night clear. The printer of the play-bills prints but a certain number, the demand being nearly ascertained week by week. These are all sold (by the printer or some person appointed) to the regular customers, in preference to others, but the “irregulars” can get supplied, though often not without trouble. The profit on all sold is rather more than cent. per cent. As I have intimated, when some theatres are closed, the bill-sellers are driven to others; and as the demand is necessarily limited, a superflux of sellers affects the profits, and then 2s. 6d. is considered a good week’s work. During the opera season, I am told, a few mechanics, out of work, will sell bills there and books of the opera, making about 6s. a week, and doing better than the regular hands, as they have a better address and are better clad.
Taking the profits at 3s. a week at cent. per cent. on the outlay, and reckoning 200 sellers, including those at the saloons, concert-rooms, &c., we find that 60l. is now expended weekly on play-bills purchased in the streets of London.
Of the Street-sellers of Periodicals, Pamphlets, Tracts, Books, etc.
These street-sellers are a numerous body, and the majority of them show a greater degree of industry and energy than is common to many classes of street-folk. They have been for the most part connected with the paper, newspaper, or publishing trade, and some of them have “known better days.” One intelligent man I met with, a dealer in “waste” (paper), had been brought up as a compositor, but late hours and glaring gas-lights in the printing-office affected his eyes, he told me; and as a half-blind compositor was about of as little value, he thought, as a “horse with a wooden leg,” he abandoned his calling for out-of-door labour. Another had been a gun-smith, and when out of his apprenticeship was considered a “don hand at hair triggers, for hair triggers were more wanted then,” but an injury to his right hand and arm had disabled him as a mechanic, and he had recourse to the streets. A third had been an ink-maker’s “young man,” and had got to like the streets by calling for orders, and delivering bottles of ink, at the shops of the small stationers and chandlers, and so he had taken to them for a living. Of the book-stall-keepers I heard of one man who had died a short time before, and who “once had been in the habit of buying better books for his own pleasure than he had afterwards to sell for his bread.” Of the book-stall proprietors, I have afterwards spoken more fully.
All the street-sellers in question are what street estimation pronounces to be educated men; they can all, as far as I could ascertain, read and write, and some of them were “keenish politicians, both free-traders, and against free-trade when they was a-talking of the better days when they was young.” Nearly all are married men with families.
The divisions into which these street traffickers may be formed are—Odd Number-sellers—Steamboat Newsvendors—Railway Newsvendors, (though the latter is now hardly a street traffic),—the Sellers of Second Editions (which I have already given as a portion of the patterers)—Board-workers (also previously described, and for the same reason)—Tract-sellers (of whom I have given the number, character, &c., and who are regarded by the other street-sellers as the idlers, beggars, and pretenders of the trade),—the Sellers of Childrens’ Books and Song Books—Book-auctioneers, and Book-stall-keepers.
Of the Street-sale of Back Numbers.
This trade is carried on by the same class of patterers as work race-cards, second editions, &c. The collectors of waste-paper frequently find back numbers of periodicals in “a lot” they may have purchased at a coffee-shop. These they sell to warehousemen who serve the street-sellers. The largest lot ever sold at one time was some six or seven years ago, of the Pictorial Times, at least a ton weight. A dealer states—
“I lost the use of this arm ever since I was three months old. My mother died when I was ten years of age, and after that my father took up with an Irishwoman, and turned me and my youngest sister (she was two years younger than me) out into the streets. My youngest sister got employment at my father’s trade, but I couldn’t get no work because of my crippled arm. I walked about, till I fell down in the streets for want. At last, a man, who had a sweetmeat-shop, took pity on me. His wife made the sweetmeats, and minded the shop while he went out a juggling in the streets, in the Ramo Samee line. He told me as how, if I would go round the country with him and sell a few prints while he was a juggling in the public-houses, he’d find me in wittles, and pay my lodging. I joined him, and stopped with him two or three year. After that I went to work for a werry large waste-paper dealer. He used to buy up all the old back numbers of the cheap periodicals and penny publications, and send me out with them to sell at a farden’ a piece. He used to give me 4d. out of every shilling, and I done very well with that, till the periodicals came so low, and so many on ’em, that they wouldn’t sell at all. Sometimes I could make 15s. on a Saturday night and a Sunday morning, a-selling the odd numbers of periodicals,—such as tales; ‘Tales of the Wars,’ ‘Lives of the Pirates,’ ‘Lives of the Highwaymen,’ &c. I’ve often sold as many as 2,000 numbers on a Saturday night in the New-cut, and the most of them was works about thieves, and highwaymen, and pirates. Besides me, there was three others at the same business. Altogether, I dare say my master alone used to get rid of 10,000 copies of such works on a Saturday night and a Sunday morning. Our principal customers was young men. My master made a good bit of money at it. He had been about eighteen years in the business, and had begun with 2s. 6d. I was with him fifteen year, on and off, and at the best time. I used to earn my 30s. a week full at that time. But then I was foolish, and didn’t take care of my money. When I was at the ‘odd number business,’ I bought a peep-show, and left the trade to go into that line.”