One elderly man, long familiar with this branch of the street-trade, expressed to me his conviction that when a mechanic sought his livelihood in the streets, he naturally “gave his mind to sell what he understood. Now, in my own case,” continued my informant, “I was born and bred a tinman, and when I was driven to a street-life, I never thought of selling anything but tins. How could I, if I wished to do the thing square and proper?—it would be like trying to speak another language. If I’d started on slippers—and I knew a poor man who was set up in the streets by a charitable lady on a stock of gentlemen’s slippers—what could I have done? Why, no better than he told me he did. He was a potter down at Deptford, and knew of nothing but flower-pots, and honey-jars for grocers, and them red sorts of pottery. Poor fellow, he might have died of hunger, only the cholera came quickest. But when I’m questioned about my tins, I’m my own man; and it’s a great thing, I’m satisfied, in a street-trade, when there’s so many cheap shops, and the police and all again you, to understand the goods you’re talking about.”
This statement, I may repeat, is undoubtedly correct, so far as that a “beaten-out” mechanic, when driven to the streets, in the first instance offers to the public wares of which he understands the value and quality. Afterwards, in the experience or vagaries of a street-life, other commodities may be, or may appear to be, more remunerative, and for such the mechanic may relinquish his first articles of street-traffic. “Why, sir,” I was told, “there was one man who left razors for cabbages; ’cause one day a costermonger wot lived in the same house with him and was taken ill, asked him to go out with a barrow of summer cabbages—the costermonger’s boy went with him—and they went off so well that Joe [the former razor-seller] managed to start in the costering line, he was so encouraged.”
The street-trade in metal manufactured articles is principally itinerant. Perhaps during the week upwards of three-fourths of those carrying it on are itinerant, while on a Saturday night, perhaps, all are stationary, and almost always in the street-markets. The itinerant trade is carried on, and chiefly in the suburbs, by men, women, and children; but the children are always, or almost always, the offspring of the adult street-sellers.
The metal sold in the street may be divided into street-hardware, street-tinware, and street-jewellery. I shall begin with the former.
The street-sellers of hardware are, I am assured, in number about 100, including single men and families; for women “take their share” in the business, and children sell smaller things, such as snuffers or bread-baskets. The people pursuing the trade are of the class I have above described, with the exception of some ten or twelve who formerly made a living as servants to the gaming-booths at Epsom, Ascot, &c., &c., and “managed to live out of the races, somehow, most of the year;” since the gaming-booths have been disallowed, they have “taken to the street hardware.”
All these street-sellers obtain their supplies at “the swag-shops;” of which I shall speak hereafter. The main articles of their trade are tea-boards, waiters, snuffers, candlesticks, bread-baskets, cheese-trays, Britannia metal tea-pots and spoons, iron kettles, pans, and coffee-pots. The most saleable things, I am told by a man who has been fifteen years in this and similar street trades, are at present 18-in. tea-boards, bought at “the swags” at from 10s. 6d. a doz., to 4s. each; 24-in. boards, from 20s. the doz. to 5s. each; bread-baskets, 4s. 6d. the doz.; and Britannia metal tea-pots, 10s. the doz. These tea-pots have generally what is called “loaded bottoms;” the lower part of the vessel is “filled with composition, so as to look as if there was great weight of metal, and as if the pot would melt for almost the 18d. which is asked for it, and very often got.”
I learned from the same man, however, and from others in the trade, that it is far more difficult now than it was a few years ago, to sell “rubbish.” There used to be also, but not within these six or eight years, a tolerable profit realised by the street-sellers of hardware in the way of “swop.” It was common to take an old metal article, as part payment for a new one; and if the old article were of good quality, it was polished and tinkered up for sale in the Saturday evening street-markets, and often “went off well.” This traffic, however, has almost ceased to exist, as regards the street-sellers of hardware, and has been all but monopolised by the men who barter “crocks” for wearing-apparel, or any old metal. Some hardware-men who have become well known on their “rounds”—for the principal trade is in the suburbs—sell very good wares, and at moderate profits.
“It’s a poor trade, sir, is the hardware,” said one man carrying it on, “and street trades are mostly poor trades, for I’ve tried many a one of them. I was brought up a clown, I may say; my father died when I was a child, and I might have been a clown still but for an accident (a rupture). That’s long ago,—I can’t say how long; but I know that before I was fifteen, I many a time wished I was dead, and I have many a time since. Why the day before yesterday, from 9 in the morning to 11 at night, I didn’t take a farthing. Some days I don’t earn 1s., and I have a mother depending upon me who can do little or nothing. I’m a teetotaller; if I wasn’t we shouldn’t have a meal a day. I never was fond of drink, and if I’m ever so weary and out of sorts, and worried for a meal’s meat, I can’t say I ever long for a drop to cheer me up. Sometimes I can’t get coffee, let alone anything else. O, I suffer terribly. Day after day I get wet through, and have nothing to take home to my mother at last. Our principal food is bread and butter, and tea. Not fish half so often as many poor people. I suppose, because we don’t care for it. I know that our living, the two of us, stands to less than 1s. a day,—not 6d. a piece. Then I have two rents to pay. No, sir, not for two places; but I pay 2s. a week for a room, a tidy bit of a chamber, furnished, and 1s. a week rent,—I call it rent, for a loan of 5s. I’ve paid 1s. a week for four weeks on it, and must keep paying until I can hand over the 5s., with 1s. for rent added to it, all in one sum. If I could tip up the 5s. the day after I’d paid the last week’s 1s., I must pay another shilling. The man who lends does nothing else; he lives by lending, and by letting out a few barrows to costermongers, and other street-people. I wish I could take a farewell sight of them.”
The principal traffic carried on by these street-sellers is in the suburbs. Women constitute their sole customers, or nearly so. Their profits fluctuate from 20 per cent. to 100 per cent. The bread-baskets, which they buy at 4s. 6d. the doz., they retail at 6d. each; for it is very difficult, I have frequently been told, to get a price between 6d. and 1s. This, however, relates only to those things which are not articles of actual necessity. Half of these street-sellers, I am assured, take on an average from 20s. to 25s. weekly the year through; a quarter take 15s., and the remaining quarter from 7s. 6d. to 10s. Calculating an average taking of 15s. each per week, throughout the entire class, men, women, and children, we find 3,900l. expended in street-sold hardwares. Ten years ago, I am told, the takings were not less than 2,000l.
The following is an extract from accounts kept, not long ago, by a street-seller of hardware. His principal sale was snuffers, knives and forks, iron candlesticks, padlocks, and bed-screws. His stock cost him 35s. on the Monday morning, and his first week was his best, which I here subjoin: