| Lowest price paid per half-dozen. | Sold at in the streets. | Highest price paid per half-dozen. | Sold at in the streets. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | s. | d. | |
| Table-knives and forks | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 6 |
| Ditto, without forks | 0 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| Pocket-knives | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| Pen-knives | 1 | 9 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 9 |
| Razors | 1 | 9 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 6 |
| Scissors | 0 | 3½ | 0 | 6 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 6 |
Their usual rate of profit is 50 per cent., but rather than refuse a ready sale the street cutlery-seller will often take much less. Many of the sellers only pursue the trade for a few weeks in the year. A number of the Irish labourers take to it in the winter-time when they can get no work. Some few of the sellers are countrymen, but these mostly follow the business continuously. “I don’t see as there is hardly one upon the list as has ever been a cutler by trade,” said one street-seller to me, “and certainly none of the cutlery-sellers have ever belonged to Sheffield—they may say so, but its only a dodge.” The cutlery street-sellers are not one-quarter so numerous as they were two years back. “The reason is,” I am told, “that things are got so bad a man can’t live by the trade—mayhap he has to walk three miles now before he can sell for 1s. a knife that has cost him 8½d., and then mayhap he is faint, and what’s 3½d., sir, to keep body and soul together, when a man most likely has had no victuals all the day before.” If they had a good bit of stock they might perhaps get a crust, they say. “Things within the last two or three years,” to quote the words of one of my informants, “have been getting much worse in the streets; ’specially in the cutlery line. I can’t give no account for it, I’m sure, sir; the sellers have not been half as many as they were. What’s become of them that’s gone, I can’t tell; they’re in the workhouse, I dare say.” But, notwithstanding this decrease in the number of sellers, there is a greater difficulty to vend their goods now than formerly. “It’s all owing to the times, that’s all I can say. People, shopkeepers, and all says to me, I can’t tell why things is so bad, and has been so bad in trade; but so they is. We has to walk farther to sell our goods, and people beat us down so terrible hard, that we can’t get a penny out of them when we do sell. Sometimes they offers me 9d., yes, and often 6d. for an 8½d. knife; and often enough 4d. for one that stands you in 3¾d.—a ¼d. profit, think of that, sir. Then they say, ‘Well, my man, will you take my money?’ and so as to make you do so, they’ll flash it before your eyes, as if they knew you was a starving, and would be sure to be took in by the sight of it. Yes, sir, it is a very hard life, and we has to put up with a good deal—a good deal—starvation and hard-dealing, and insults and knockings about, and all. And then you see the swag-shops is almost as hard on us as the buyers. The swag-men will say, if you merely makes a remark, that a knife they’ve sold you is cracked in the handle, ‘Oh, is it; let me see whereabouts;’ and when you hands it to ’em to show it ’em, they’ll put it back where they took it from, and tell you, ‘You’re too particular by half, my man. You’d better go and get your goods somewhere else; here take your money, and go on about your business, for we won’t sarve you at all.’ They’ll do just the same with the scissors too, if you complains about their being a bit rusty. ‘Go somewhere else,’ they’ll say, ‘We won’t sarve you.’ Ah, sir, that’s what it is to be a poor man; to have your poverty flung in your teeth every minute. People says, ‘to be poor and seem poor is the devil;’ but to be poor, and be treated like a dog merely because you are poor, surely is ten thousand times worse. A street-seller now-a-days is looked upon as a ‘cadger,’ and treated as one. To try to get a living for one’s self is to do something shameful in these times.”
The man then gave me the following history of himself. He was a kindly-looking and hearty old man. He had on a ragged fustian jacket, over which he wore a black greasy-looking and tattered oilskin coat—the collar of this was torn away, and the green baize lining alone visible. His waistcoat was patched in every direction, while his trousers appeared to be of corduroy; but the grease and mud was so thick upon them, that it was difficult to tell of what material they were made. His shoes—or rather what remained of them—were tied on his feet with pieces of string. His appearance altogether denoted great poverty.
“My father was a farmer, sir. He had two farms, about 800 acres in all. I was one of eleven (ten sons and one daughter). Seven years before my father’s death he left his farm, and went to live on his money. He had made a good bit at farming; but when he died it was all gone, and we was left to shift as we could. I had little or no education. My brothers could read and write, but I didn’t take to it; I went a bird’s-nesting, boy-like, instead, so that what little I did larn I have forgot. I am very sorry for that now. I used to drive the plough, and go a harrowing for father. I was brought up to nothing else. When father died, I thought as I should like to see London. I was a mere lad—about 20—and so I strolled up to town. I had 10s. with me, and that, with a bundle, was all that I possessed in the world. When I got to London I went to lodge at a public-house—the Red Lion—in Great Wild-street; and while I was there I sought about for work, but could not get any; when all was gone, I was turned out into the streets, and walked about for two days and two nights, without a bed, or a bit to eat, unless what I picked out of the gutter, and eat like a dog—orange-peel and old cabbage-stumps, indeed anything I could find. When I was very hard put to it, I was coming down Drury-lane, and I looked in, quite casual like, to ask for a job of work at the shop of Mr. Bolton, the needle-maker from Redditch. I told him as how I was nigh starving, and would do anything to get a crust; I didn’t mind what I put my hand to. He said he would try me, and gave me two packets of needles to sell—they was the goolden-eyed ones of that time of day—and he said when I had got rid of them I was to come back to him, and I should have two packets more. He told me the price to ask—sixpence a paper—and away I went like a sand-boy, and got rid of the two in an hour and a half. Then I went back, and when I told him what I’d done, he shook hands with me, and said, as he burst out laughing, “Now, you see I’ve made a man of you.” Oh, he was an uncommon nice gentleman! Then he told me to keep the shilling I had taken, and said he would trust me with two more packets. I sold them, and two others besides, that day. Then, he says, ‘I shall give you something else,’ and he let me have two packets of tailors’ needles and half a dozen of tailors’ thimbles. He told me how to sell them, and where to go, and on them I did better. I went round to the tailors’ shops and sold a good lot, but at last they stopped me, because I was taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor blind needle-sellers what supplies the journeymen tailors at the West-end. Then Mr. Bolton sent me down to one of his relations, a Mr. Crooks, in Fetter Lane, who was a Sheffield man, and sold cutlery to the hawkers; and Mr. Crooks and Mr. Bolton sot me up between them, and so I’ve followed the line ever since. I dare say I shall continue in it to my dying day. After I got fairly set agoing, I used to make—take good and bad, wet and dry days together—18s. a week; three shillings a day was what I calculated on at the least, and to do that I was obligated to take between 2l. and 3l. a week, or about eight or nine shillings each day. I went on doing this for upwards of thirty year. I have been nearly forty years, altogether, in the streets, selling cutlery. I did very tidy till about 4 years back—I generally made from 18s. to 1l. a week up to that time. I used to go round the country—to Margate, Brighton, Portsmouth—I mostly travelled by the coast, calling at all the sea-port towns, for I always did best among the sailors. I went away every Spring time, and came to London again at the fall of the year. Sixteen year ago, I married the widow of a printer—a pressman—she had no money, but you see I had no home, and I thought I should be more comfortable, and so I have been—a great deal more comfortable—and so I should be now, if things hadn’t got so bad. Four year ago, as I was a telling you, it was just after the railways had knocked off work, things began to get uncommon bad—before then, I had as good as 30s. or 40s. stock, and when things got slack, it went away, little by little. I couldn’t make profit enough to support me and my old woman—she has got the rheumatics and can’t earn me a halfpenny or a farden in the world; she hasn’t done so for years. When I didn’t make enough to live upon, of course I was obligated to break into my stock; so there it kept going shilling by shilling, and sixpence by sixpence, until I had got nothing left to work upon—not a halfpenny. You see, four or five months ago, I was took very bad with the rheumatic fever and gout. I got wet through in the streets, and my clothes dried on me, and the next day I was taken bad with pains in my limbs, and then everything that would fetch me a penny went to the pawn-shop; all my own and my old woman’s clothes went to get us food—blankets, sheets and all. I never would go nigh the parish; I couldn’t bring myself to have the talk about it. When I got well and out into the streets again, I borrowed 2s. or 3s. of my landlady—I have lived with her these three years—to get my stock again, but you see that got me so few things, that I couldn’t fetch myself up. I lost the greater portion of my time in going backards and forrards to the shop to get fresh goods as fast as I sold them, and so what I took wasn’t enough to earn the commonest living for me and my missus. Since December we have been nearly starving, and that’s as true as you have got the pen in your very hand. Sunday after Sunday we have been without a bit of dinner, and I have laid a-bed all day because we have had no coal, and then been obligated to go out on Monday morning without a bit of victuals between my lips. I’ve been so faint I couldn’t hardly walk. I’ve picked the crusts off the tables of the tap-rooms where I have been to hawk my goods, and put them in my pocket to eat them on the sly. Wet and dry I’m obligated to be out; let it come down ever so hard I must be in it, with scarcely a bit of shoe, and turned 60 years old, as I am. Look here, sir,” he said, holding up his foot; “look at these shoes, the soles is all loose, you see, and let water. On wet days I hawk my goods to respectable shops; tap-rooms is no good, decent people merely get insulted there. But in most of the shops as I goes to people tells me, ‘My good man it is as much as we can do to keep ourselves and our family in these cutting times.’ Now, just to show you what I done last week. Sunday, I laid a-bed all day and had no dinner. Monday, I went out in the morning without a morsel between my lips, and with only 8½d. for stock-money; with that I bought a knife and sold it for a shilling, and then I got another and another after that, and that was my day’s work—three times 3½d. or 10½d. in all, to keep the two of us. Tuesday, I sold a pair of small scissors and two little pearl-handled knives, at 6d. each article, and cleared 10½d. on the whole, and that is all I did. Wednesday, I sold a razor-strop for 6d., a four-bladed knife for a shilling, and a small hone for 6d.; by these I cleared 10d. altogether. Thursday, I sold a pair of razors for a shilling, clearing by the whole 11½d. Friday, I got rid of a pair of razors for 1s. 9d., and got 9d. clear.” I added up the week’s profits and found they amounted to 4s. 3½d. “That’s about right,” said the man, “out of that I shall have to pay 1s. for my week’s rent; we’ve got a kitchen, so that I leave you to judge how we two can live out of what’s remaining.” I told him it would’nt average quite 6d. a day. “That’s about it,” he replied, “we have half a loaf of bread a day, and that thank God is only five farthings now. This lasts us the day, with two-penny-worth of bits of meat that my old woman buys at a ham-shop, where they pare the hams and puts the parings by on plates to sell to poor people; and when she can’t get that, she buys half a sheep’s head, one that’s three or four days old, for then they sells ’em to the poor for 1½d. the half; and these with ¾d. worth of tea, and ½d. worth of sugar, ¼d. for a candle, 1d. of coal—that’s seven pounds—and ¾d. worth of coke—that’s half a peck—makes up all we gets.” These items amount to 6½d. in all. “That’s how we do when we can get it, and when we can’t, why we lays in bed and goes without altogether.”
Of the Blind Street-sellers of Tailors’ Needles, etc.
It is customary with many trades, for the journeymen to buy such articles as they require in their business of those members of their craft who have become incapacitated for work, either by old age, or by some affliction. The tailors—the shoe-makers—the carpenters—and many others do this. These sellers are, perhaps, the most exemplary instances of men driven to the streets, or to hawking for a means of living; and they, one and all, are distinguished by that horror of the workhouse which I have before spoken of as constituting a peculiar feature in the operative’s character. At present I purpose treating of the street-sellers of needles and “trimmings” to the tailors.
There are, I am informed, two dozen “broken-down” journeymen tailors pursuing this avocation in and around London. “There may be more,” said one who had lost his sight stitching, “but I get my information from the needle warehouse, where we all buy our goods; and the lady there told me she knew as many as twenty-four hawkers who were once tailors. These are all either decayed journeymen, or their widows. Some are incapacitated by age, being between sixty and seventy years old; the greater part of the aged journeymen, however, are inmates of the tailors’ almshouses. I am not aware,” said my informant, “of there being more than one very old man hawking needles to the tailors, though there may be many that I know nothing about. The one I am acquainted with is close upon eighty, and he is a very respectable man, much esteemed in St. James’s and St. George’s; he sells needles, and ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ to the journeymen: he is very feeble indeed, and can scarcely get along.” Of the two dozen needle-sellers above mentioned, there are only six who confine their “rounds” solely to the metropolis. Out of these six my informant knew two who were blind beside himself (one of these sells to the journeymen in the city). There are other blind tailors who were formerly hawkers of needles, but being unable to realize a subsistence thereby, have been obliged to become inmates of the workhouses; others have recently gained admission into the almshouses. Last February, I am assured, there were two blind needle-sellers, and two decrepit, in St. James’s workhouse. There are, moreover, two widows selling tailors’ needles in London. One of these, I am told, is wretchedly poor, being “eat up with the rheumatics, and scarcely able to move”—she is the relict of a blind journeyman, and well known in St. James’s. The other widow is now in St. Pancras Workhouse, having been unable, to use the words of my informant, “to get anything to keep life and soul together at the needle trade;” she, too, I am told, is well known to the journeymen. The tailors’ needle-sellers confining themselves more particularly to London consist of, at present, one old man, three blind, one paralyzed, and one widow; besides these, there are now in the alms-houses, two decrepit and one paralyzed; and one widow in the workhouse, all of whom, till recently, were needle-sellers, and originally connected with the trade.
“That is all that I believe are now in London,” said one to me, “I should, I think, know if there were more; for it is not from one place we get our articles, but many; and there I hear that six is about the number of tailors’ hawkers in town; the rest of the two dozen hawkers that I spoke of go a little way out into the suburbs. The six, however, stick to London altogether.” The needle-sellers who go into the country, I am told, travel as far as Reading, westward, and to Gravesend, in the opposite direction, or Brentwood, in Essex, and they will keep going back’ards and for’ards to the metropolis immediately their stock is exhausted. These persons sell not only tailors’ needles, but women’s needles as well, and staylaces and cottons, and small ware in general, which they get from Shepherd’s, in Compton Street; they have all been tailors, and are incapacitated from labour, either by old age or some affliction. There was one widow of a tailor among the number, but it is believed she is now either too old to continue her journeys, or else that she is deceased. The town-sellers confine their peregrinations mostly to the parishes of St. James’s and St. George’s (my informant was not aware that any went even into Marylebone). One travels the City, while the other five keep to the West End; they all sell thimbles, needles, inch-measures, bodkins, inch sticks, scissars (“when they can get them,” I was told, “and that’s very seldom”), and bees’-wax, basting cotton, and, many of them, publications. The publications vended by these men are principally the cheap periodicals of the day, and two of these street-sellers, I am informed, do much better with the sale of publications than by the “trimmings.” “They get money, sir,” said one man to me, “while we are starving. They have their set customers and have only to go round and leave the paper, and then to get their money on the Monday morning.”
The tailors’ hawkers buy their trimmings mostly at the retail shops. They have not stock-money sufficient, I am assured, to purchase at the wholesale houses, for “such a thing as a paper of needles large tradesmen don’t care about of selling us poor men.” They tell me that if they could buy wholesale they could get their goods one-fourth cheaper, and to be “obligated” to purchase retail is a great drawback on their profits. They call at the principal tailors’ workshops, and solicit custom of the journeymen; they are almost all known to the trade, both masters and men, and, having no other means of living, they are allowed to enter the masters’ shops, though some of the masters, such as Allen, in Bond-street; Curlewis, Jarvis, and Jones, in Conduit-street, and others, refuse the poor fellows even this small privilege. The journeymen treat them very kindly, the needle-sellers tell me, and generally give them part of the provisions they have brought with them to the shop. If it was not for this the needle-sellers, I am assured, could hardly live at all. “There’s that boy there,” said a blind tailor, speaking of the youth who had led him to my house, and who sat on the stool fast asleep by the fire,—“I’m sure he must have starved this winter if it hadn’t been for the goodness of the men to us, for it’s little that me and his mother has to give him; she’s gone almost as blind as myself working at the ‘sank work’ (making up soldiers’ clothing). Oh, ours is a miserable life, sir!—worn out—blind with over work, and scarcely a hole to put one’s head in, or a bit to put in one’s mouth. God Almighty knows that’s the bare truth, sir.” Sometimes the hawkers go on their rounds and take only 2d., but that is not often; sometimes they take 5s. in a day, and “that is the greatest sum,” said my informant, “I ever took; what others might do I can’t say, but that I’m confident is about the highest takings.” In the summer three months the average takings rise to 4s. per day; but in the winter they fall to 1s., or at the outside 1s. 6d. The business lasts only for three hours and a half each day, that is from eight till half-past eleven in the morning; after that no good is to be done. Then the needle-sellers, I am told, go home, and the reason of this is, I am told, if they appear in the public streets selling or soliciting alms, the blind are exempted from becoming recipients of the benefits of many of the charitable institutions. The blind man whom I saw, told me that after he had done work and returned home, he occupied himself with pressing the seams of the soldiers’ clothes when his “missus” had sewed them. The tailors’ needle-sellers are all married, and one of the wives has a mangle; and “perhaps,” said my informant, “the blind husband turns the mangle when he goes home, but I can’t say.” Another wife is a bookfolder, but she has no work. The needles they usually sell five a penny to the journeymen, but the most of the journeymen will take but four; they say “we can’t get a living at all if we sell the needles cheaper. The journeymen are mostly very considerate—very indeed; much more than the masters; for the masters won’t hardly look at us. I don’t know that a master ever gave me a farden—and yet there’s some of them very soothing and kind in speaking.” The profit in the needles, I am told, is rather more than 100 per cent.; “but,” say the sellers, “only think, sir, we must get rid of 150 needles even to take 3s. The most we ever sell in one shop is 6d. worth—and the usual amount is 2d. worth. You can easy tell how many shops we must travel round to, in order to get rid of 3s. worth.” Take one shop with another, the good with the bad, they tell me they make about 1d. profit from each they visit. The profit on the rest of the articles they vend is about 20 per cent., and they calculate that all the year round, summer and winter, they may be said to take 2s. a day, or 12s. a week; out of which they clear from 5s. to 5s. 6d. They sell far more needles than anything else. Some of the blind needle-sellers make their own bees’-wax into “shapes,” (pennyworths) themselves, melting into and pouring into small moulds.
The blind needle-seller whom I saw was a respectable-looking man, with the same delicacy of hand as is peculiar to tailors, and which forms so marked a contrast to the horny palms of other workmen. He was tall and thin, and had that upward look remarkable in all blind men. His eyes gave no signs of blindness (the pupils being full and black), except that they appeared to be directed to no one object, and though fixed, were so without the least expression of observation. His long black surtout, though faded in colour, was far from ragged, having been patched and stitched in many places, while his cloth waistcoat and trowsers were clean and neat—very different from the garments of street-sellers in general. In his hand he carried his stick, which, as he sat, he seemed afraid to part with, for he held it fast between his knees. He came to me accompanied by his son, a good-looking rough-headed lad, habited in a washed-out-blue French kind of pinafore, and whose duty it was to lead his blind father about on his rounds. Though the boy was decently clad, still his clothes, like those of his father, bore many traces of that respectable kind of poverty which seeks by continuous mending to hide its rags from the world. The face of the father, too, was pinched, while there was a plaintiveness about his voice that told of a wretched spirit-broken and afflicted man. Altogether he was one of the better kind of handicraftsmen—one of those fine specimens of the operatives of this country—independent even in their helplessness, scorning to beg, and proud to be able to give some little equivalent for the money bestowed on them. I have already given accounts of the “beaten-out” mechanic from those who certainly cannot be accused of an excess of sympathy for the poor—namely the Poor Law Commissioners and masters of workhouses; and I can only add, that all my experience goes fully to bear out the justice of these statements. As I said before, the class who are driven to the streets to which the beaten-out or incapacitated operative belongs, is, of all others, the most deserving of our sympathy; and the following biography of one of this order is given to teach us to look with a kindly eye upon the many who are forced to become street-sellers as the sole means of saving themselves from the degradation of pauperism or beggary.