London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The capital required to start is what may suffice to “lay in” a stock of books—5s. generally.

Of the Street-sellers of Fine Arts.

These traders may be described as partaking more of the characteristics of the street stationers than of the “paper-workers,” as they are not patterers. The trade is less exclusively than the “paper-trade” in the hands of men. Those carrying on this branch of the street-traffic may be divided into the sellers of pictures in frames, and of engravings (of all kinds), in umbrellas. Under this head may also be ranked the street-artists (though this is a trade associated with street-life rather than forming an integrant part of it), I allude more particularly to the illustrated “boards” which are prepared for the purposes of the street-patterers, and are adapted for no other use. The same artist that executes the greater portion of the street-art, also prepares the paintings which decorate the exterior of shows. There are also the writers of manuscript music, and the makers and sellers of “images” of all descriptions, but this branch of the subject I shall treat under the head of the street-Italians. Under the same curious head I shall also speak of the artists whose skill produces the street-sold medallions, in wax or plaster, they being of the same class as the “image” men. In both “images” and “casts” and “moulded” productions of all kinds the change and improvement that have taken place, from the pristine rudeness of “green parrots” is most remarkable and creditable to the taste of working people, who are the chief purchasers of the smaller articles.

Of Street Art.

The artists who work for the street-sellers are less numerous than the poets for the same trade. Indeed, there is now but one man who can be said to be solely a street-artist. The inopportune illustration of ballads of which specimens have already been given—or of any of the street papers—are the work of cheap wood-engravers, who give the execution of these orders to their boys. But it is not often that illustrations are prepared expressly for anything but what I have described as “Gallows literature.” Of these, samples have also been furnished. The one of a real murder, and the other of a fabulous one, or “cock,” together with a sample (in the case of Mr. Patrick Connor) of the portraits given in such productions. The cuts for the heading of ballads are very often such as have been used for the illustration of other works, and are “picked up cheap.”

The artist who works especially for the street trade—as in the case of the man who paints the patterers’ boards—must address his art plainly to the eye of the spectator. He must use the most striking colours, be profuse in the application of scarlet, light blue, orange—not yellow I was told, it ain’t a good candlelight colour—and must leave nothing to the imagination. Perspective and back-grounds are things of but minor consideration. Everything must be sacrificed for effect.

These paintings are in water colours, and are rubbed over with a solution of some gum-resin to protect them from the influence of rainy weather. Two of the subjects most in demand of late for the patterers’ boards were “the Sloanes” and “the Mannings.” The treatment of Jane Wilbred was “worked” by twenty boardmen, each with his “illustration” of the subject. The illustrations were in six “compartments.” In the first Mr. and Mrs. Sloane are “picking out” the girl from a line of workhouse children. She is represented as plump and healthy, but with a stupid expression of countenance. In another compartment, Sloane is beating the girl, then attenuated and wretched-looking, with a shoe, while his wife and Miss Devaux (a name I generally heard pronounced among the street-people as it is spelt to an English reader) look approvingly on. The next picture was Sloane compelling the girl to swallow filth. The fourth represented her as in the hospital, with her ribs protruding from her wasted body—“just as I’ve worked Sarah Simpole,” said a patterer, “who was confined in a cellar and fed on ’tato peels. Sarah was a cock, sir, and a ripper.” Then came the attack of the people on Sloane, one old woman dressed after the fashion of Mrs. Gamp, “prodding” him with a huge and very green umbrella. The sixth and last was, as usual, the trial.

I have described the “Sloanes’ board” first, as it may be more fresh in the remembrance of any reader observant of such things. In the “Mannings’ board” there were the same number of compartments as in the Sloanes’; showing the circumstances of the murder, the discovery of the body of Connor, the trial, &c. One standing patterer, who worked a Mannings’ board, told me that the picture of Mrs. Manning, beautifully “dressed for dinner” in black satin, with “a low front,” firing a pistol at Connor, who was “washing himself,” while Manning, in his shirt sleeves, looked on in evident alarm, was greatly admired, especially out of town. “The people said,” observed the patterer, “‘O, look at him a-washing hisself; he’s a doing it so nattral, and ain’t a-thinking he’s a-going to be murdered. But was he really so ugly as that? Lor! such a beautiful woman to have to do with him.’ You see, sir, Connor weren’t flattered, and perhaps Mrs. Manning was. I have heard the same sort of remarks both in town and country. I patters hard on the women such times, as I points them out on my board in murders or any crimes. I says: ‘When there’s mischief a woman’s always the first. Look at Mrs. Manning there on that werry board—the work of one of the first artists in London—it’s a faithful likeness, taken from life at one of her examinations, look at her. She fires the pistol, as you can see, and her husband was her tool.’ I said, too, that Sloane was Mrs. Sloane’s tool. It answers best, sir, in my opinion, going on that patter. The men likes it, and the women doesn’t object, for they’ll say: ‘Well, when a woman is bad, she is bad, and is a disgrace to her sex.’ There’s the board before them when I runs on that line of patter, and when I appeals to the ’lustration, it seems to cooper the thing. They must believe their eyes.”

When there is “a run” on any particular subject, there are occasionally jarrings—I was informed by a “boardman”—between the artist and his street-customers. The standing patterers want “something more original” than their fellows, especially if they are likely to work in the same locality, while the artist prefers a faithful copy of what he has already executed. The artist, moreover, and with all reasonableness, will say: “Why, you must have the facts. Do you want me to make Eliza Chestney killing Rush?” The matter is often compromised by some change being introduced, and by the characters being differently dressed. One man told me, that in town and country he had seen Mrs. Jermy shot in the following costumes, “in light green welwet, sky-blue satin, crimson silk, and vite muslin.” It was the same with Mrs. Manning.

For the last six or eight years, I am told, the artist in question has prepared all the boards in demand. Previously, the standing patterers prepared their own boards, when they fancied themselves capable of such a “reach of art,” or had them done by some unemployed painter, whom they might fall in with at a lodging-house, or elsewhere. This is rarely done now, I am told; not perhaps more than six times in a twelvemonth, and when done it is most frequently practised of “cock-boards;” for, as was said to me, “if a man thinks he’s getting up a fakement likely to take, and wants a board to help him on with it, he’ll try and keep it to hisself, and come out with it quite fresh.”