The steam-boat paper-seller steps on board a few minutes before the boat starts, when there are a sufficient number of voyagers assembled. He traverses the deck and dives into the cabins, offering his “papers,” the titles of which he announces: “Punch, penny Punch, real Punch, last number for 3d.—comic sheets, a penny—all the London periodicals—Guide to the Thames.”
From one of these frequenters of steam-boats for the purposes of his business, I had the following account:
“I was a news-agent’s boy, sir, near a pier, for three or four year, then I got a start for myself, and now I serve a pier. It’s not such a trade as you might think, still it’s bread and cheese and a drop of beer. I go on board to sell my papers. It’s seldom I sell a newspaper; there’s no call for it on the river, except at the foreign-going ships—a few as is sold to them—but I don’t serve none on ’em. People reads the news for nothing at the coffee-shops when they breakfasts, I s’pose, and goes on as if they took in the Times, Chron, and ’Tiser—pubs. we calls the ’Tiser—all to their own cheek. It’s penny works I sell the most of; indeed, it’s very seldom I offer anything else, ’cause it’s little use. Penny Punches is fair sale, and I calls it ‘Punch’—just Punch. It’s dead now, I believe, but there’s old numbers; still they’ll be done in time. The real Punch—I sell from six to twelve a week—I call that there as the reel Punch. Galleries of Comicalities is a middling sale; people take them home with them, I think. Guides to the Thames is good in summer. They’re illustrated; but people sometimes grumbles and calls them catchpennies. It ain’t my fault if they’re not all that’s expected, but people expects everything for 1d. Joe Millers and ’Stophelees” (Mephistopheles) “I’ve sold, and said they was oppositions to Punch; that’s a year or more back, but they was old, and to be had cheap. I sell Lloyd’s and Reynolds’s pennies—fairish, both of them; so’s the Family Herald and the London Journal—very fair. I don’t venture on any three-halfpenny books on anything like a spec., acause people says at once: ‘A penny—I’ll give you a penny.’ I sell seven out of eight of what I do sell to gents.; more than that, perhaps; for you’ll not often see a woman buy nothing wots intended to improve her mind. A young woman, like a maid of all work, buys sometimes and looks hard at the paper; but I sometimes thinks it’s to show she can read. A summer Sunday’s my best time, out and out. There’s new faces then, and one goes on bolder. I’ve known young gents. buy, just to offer to young women, I’m pretty well satisfied. It’s a introduction. I have met with real gentlemen. They’ve looked over all I offered for sale and then said: ‘Nothing I want, my good fellow, but here’s a penny for your trouble.’ I wish there was more of them. I do sincerely. Sometimes I’ve gone on board and not sold one paper. I buy in the regular way, 9d. for a dozen (sometimes thirteen to the dozen) of penny pubs. I don’t know what I make, for I keep no count; perhaps a sov. in a good week and a half in another.”
I am informed that the average earnings of these traders, altogether, may be taken at 15s. weekly; calculating that twelve carry on the trade the year through, we find that (assuming each man to sell at thirty-three per cent. profit—though in the case of old works it will be cent. per cent.) upwards of 1,500l. are expended annually in steam-boat papers.
Of the Sale of Newspapers, Books, &c., at the Railway Stations.
Although the sale of newspapers at the railway termini, &c., cannot strictly be classed as a street-sale, it is so far an open-air traffic as to require some brief notice, and it has now become a trade of no small importance.
The privilege of selling to railway-passengers, within the precincts of the terminus, is disposed of by tender. At present the newsvendor on the North-Western Line, I am informed, pays to the company, for the right of sale at the Euston-square terminus, and the provincial stations, as large a sum as 1,700l. per annum. The amount usually given is of course in proportion to the number of stations, and the traffic of the railway.
The purchaser of this exclusive privilege sends his own servants to sell the newspapers and books, which he supplies to them in the quantity required. The men thus engaged are paid from 20s. to 30s. a week, and the boys receive from 6s. to 10s. 6d. weekly, but rarely 10s. 6d.
All the morning and evening papers are sold at the Station, but of the weekly press, those are sent for sale which in the manager’s judgment are likely to sell, or which his agent informs him are “asked for.” It is the same with the weekly unstamped publications. The reason seems obvious; if there be more than can be sold, a dead loss is incurred, for the surplusage, as regards newspapers, is only saleable as waste paper.
The books sold at railways are nearly all of the class best known as “light reading,” or what some account light reading. The price does not often exceed 1s.; and among the books offered for sale in these places are novels in one volume, published at 1s.—sometimes in two volumes, at 1s. each; “monthly parts” of works issued in weekly numbers; shilling books of poetry; but rarely political or controversial pamphlets. One man, who understood this trade, told me that “a few of the pamphlets about the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman sold at first; but in a month or six weeks, people began to say, ‘A shilling for that! I’m sick of the thing.’”