It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of “fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only the “windows” and outward appearances of these places—the interior being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers, General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens, and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”
| Table Cutlery. | ||
|---|---|---|
| s. | d. | |
| Common knives and forks, per doz. | 2 | 0 |
| Ivory-handle table knives and fork, per set of fifty-pieces | 30 | 0 |
| Tables, per doz. | 15 | 0 |
| Desserts, per doz. | 11 | 3 |
| Carvers, per pair | 4 | 0 |
| Fire-Irons. | ||
| Strong wrought-iron for kitchens, per set 2s. to | 6 | 0 |
| Ditto for parlours or libraries, bright pans, 4s. 6d. to | 7 | 0 |
| Fenders. | ||
| Kitchen fenders, 3 ft. long, with sliding bar | 3 | 0 |
| Green ditto, brass tops, for bed rooms | 1 | 8 |
“Britannia Metal Goods” (tea-pots, &c.), “German Silver Goods” (tea-spoons, 1s. to 2s. per dozen, &c.).
| Bellows. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen, each | 10d. to | 2 | 0 |
| Parlour ditto, brass pipes and nails | 2s. 3d. to | 3 | 0 |
Japanned goods, brass goods, iron saucepans, oval iron pots, iron tea-kettles, &c., iron stew-pans, &c. The prices here run very systematically:—
| One quart | 1 | 2 |
| Three pints | 1 | 8 |
| Two quarts | 2 | 0 |
| Three quarts | 3 | 0 |
| Four quarts | 3 | 9 |
| Five quarts | 4 | 0 |
Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans, tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods (kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove, shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools, plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical instruments (accordions from 1s. to 5s., &c.). Then come dials and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera glasses, each 10d. to 10s., China ornaments, lamps, sundries (these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping and goffering-machines, from 14s., looking-glasses, pictures, &c., beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols, powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6d. to 2s., nut-cracks, 6d. to 1s. 6d., folding measures, each 2s. to 4s., silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2s. to 10s., carpet bags, each 3s. to 10s., egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.
Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the “Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest “swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.
The swag-shops (of which I state the numbers in a parenthesis) are in Houndsditch (their principal locality) (23), Minories (4), Whitechapel (2), Ratcliffe-highway (20), Shoreditch (1), Long-lane, Smithfield (4), Fleet-lane (2), Holywell-street, Strand (1), Tothill-street (4), Compton-street, Soho (1), Hatton-garden (2), Clerkenwell (10), Kent-street, Borough (8), New-cut (6), Blackman-street (2), Tooley-street (3), London-road (3), Borough-road (1), Waterloo-road (4)—in all 101; but a person who had been upwards of twenty years a frequenter of these places counted up fifty others, many of them in obscure courts and alleys near Houndsditch, Ratcliffe Highway, &c., &c. These “outsiders” are generally of a smaller class than those I have described; “and I can tell you, sir,” the same man said, “some of them—ay, and some of the big ones, too—are real swag-shops still,—partly so, that is; you understand me, sir.” The word “swag,” I should inform my polite readers, means in slang language, “plunder.”
It may be safely calculated, then, that there are 150 swag-shops to which the different classes of street-sellers resort for the purchase of stock. Among these establishments are pot swag, stationery swag, haberdashery swag, jewellery swag, and miscellaneous swag—the latter comprise far more than half of the entire number, and constitute the warehouses which are described by their owners as “Birmingham and Sheffield,” or “English and Foreign,” or “English and German.” It is in these last-mentioned “swags” that the class I now treat of—the street-sellers of metal manufactures—find the commodities of their trade. To this, however, there is one exception. Tins for household use are not sold at the general swag-shops; but “fancy tins,” such as japanned and embellished trays, are vended there extensively. The street-sellers of this order are supplied at the “tin-shops,”—the number of the wholesale tin-men supplying the street-sellers is about fifty. The principle on which the business is conducted is precisely that of the more general swag-shop; but I shall speak of them when I treat of the street-sellers of tins.