The markets which are usually frequented by the vendors of tools are Newgate and Leadenhall. There are, I am informed, only five or six street-sellers who at present frequent these markets on the busy days. The articles in which they deal are butchers’ saws, cleavers, steels, meat-hooks, and knives; these saws they sell from 2s. to 4s. each; knives and steels, from 9d. to 1s. 3d. each; cleavers, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. each; and meat-hooks at 1d., 2d., and 3d. each, according to the size. It is very seldom, however, that cleavers are sold by the street-sellers, as they are too heavy to carry about. I am told that the trade of the tool-sellers in Newgate and Leadenhall markets is now very indifferent, owing chiefly to the butchers having been so frequently imposed upon by the street-sellers, that they are either indisposed or afraid to deal with them. When the itinerant tool-sellers are not occupied at the markets they vend their wares to tradesmen at private shops, but often without success. “It is a poor living,” said one of the hawkers to me; “sometimes little better than starving. I have gone out a whole day and haven’t taken a farthing.” I am informed that the greater portion of these street-sellers are broken-down butchers. The tools they vend are purchased at the Brummagem warehouses. To start in this branch of the street-business 5s. or 10s. usually constitutes the amount of capital invested in stock, and the average takings of each are about 2s. or 2s. 6d. a day.
“A dozen years back twenty such men offered saws at my shop,” said a butcher in a northern suburb to me; “now there’s only one, and he seems half-starving, poor fellow, and looks very hungrily at the meat. Perhaps it’s a way he’s got to have a bit given him, as it is sometimes.”
The only street-seller of tools at present frequenting Billingsgate-market is an elderly man, who is by trade a working cutler. The articles he displays upon his tray are oyster-knives, fish-knives, steels, scissors, packing-needles, and hammers. This tradesman makes his own oyster-knives and fish-knives; the scissors and hammers are second-hand; and the packing-needles are bought at the ironmongers. Sometimes brad-awls, gimlets, nails, and screws form a part of his stock. He informed me that he had frequented Billingsgate-market upwards of ten years. “Wet or dry,” he said, “I am here, and I often suffer from rheumatics in the head and limbs. Sometimes I have taken only a few pence; on other occasions I have taken 3s. or 4s., but this is not very often. However, what with the little I take at Billingsgate, and at other places, I can just get a crust, and go on from day to day.”
The itinerant saw-sellers offer their goods to any one in the street as well as at the shops, and are at the street markets on Saturday evenings with small saws for use in cookery. With the butchers they generally barter rather than sell, taking any old saw in exchange with so much money, for a new one. “I was brought up a butcher,” said one of these saw-sellers, “and worked as a journeyman, off and on, between twenty and thirty year. But I grew werry delicate from rheumaticks, and my old ’ooman was bad too, so that we once had to go into Marylebone work’us. I had no family living, perhaps they’re better as it is. We discharged ourselves after a time, and they gave us 5s. I then thought I’d try and sell a few saws and things. A master-butcher that’s been a friend to me, lent me another 5s., and I asked a man as sold saws to butchers to put me in the way of it, and he took me to a swag-shop. I do werry badly, sir, but I’ll not deny, and I can’t deny—not anyhow—when you tell me Mr. —— told you about me—that there’s ’elps to me. If I make a bargain, for so much; or for old saws or cleavers, or any old butcher thing, and so much; a man wot knows me says, ‘Well, old boy, you don’t look satisfied; here’s a bit of steak for you.’ Sometimes it’s a cut off a scrag of mutton, or weal; that gives the old ’ooman and me a good nourishing bit of grub. I can work at times, and every Saturday a’most I’m now a porter to a butcher. I carries his meat from Newgate, when he’s killed hisself, and wants no more than a man’s weight from the market; and when he ’asn’t killed hisself in course he hires a cart. I makes 1s. a day the year round, I think, on saws, and my old ’ooman makes more than ’arf as much at charing, and there’s the ’elps, and then I gets 18d. and my grub every Saturday. It’s no use grumbling; lots isn’t grubbed ’arf so well as me and my old ’ooman. My rent’s 20d. a week.”
The articles vended by the second class of the street-sellers of tools, or those whose purchasers are mostly connected with the docks and warehouses, consist of iron-handled claw-hammers, spanners, bed-keys, and corkscrews. Of these street-traders there are ten or twelve, and the greater portion of them are blacksmiths out of employ. Some make their own hammers, whereas others purchase the articles they vend at the swag-shops. “We sell more hammers and bed-keys than other things,” said one, “and sometimes we sells a corkscrew to the landlord of a public-house, and then we have perhaps half-a-pint of beer. Our principal customers for spanners are wheelwrights. Those for hammers are egg-merchants, oilmen, wax and tallow-chandlers, and other tradesmen who receive or send out goods in wooden cases; as well as chance customers in the streets.” The amount of capital required to start in the line is from 5s. to 15s.: “it is not much use,” said one, “to go to shop with less than 10s.”
A third class of the street-sellers of tools are the vendors of curry-combs and brushes, mane-combs, scrapers, and clipping instruments; and these articles are usually sold at the several mews, stable-yards, and jobbing-masters’ in and about the metropolis. The sellers are mostly broken-down grooms, who, not being able to obtain a situation, resort to street-selling as a last shift. “It is the last coach, when a man takes to this kind of living,” said one of my informants, a groom in a “good place;” “and it’s getting worse and worse. The poor fellows look half-starved. Why, what do you think I gave for these scissors? I got ’em for 6d. and a pint of beer, and I should have to give perhaps half-a-crown for ’em at a shop.” The trade is fast declining, and to gentlemen’s carriage mews the street-sellers of such tools rarely resort, as the instruments required for stable-use are now bought, by the coachmen, of the tradesmen who supply their masters. At the “mixed mews,” as I heard them called, there are two men who, along with razors, knives, and other things, occasionally offer “clipping” and “trimming” scissors. Four or five years ago there were four of these street-sellers. The trimming-scissors are, in the shops, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a pair. There is one trade still carried on in these places, although it is diminutive compared to what it was: I allude to the sale of curry-combs. Those vended by street-sellers at the mews are sold at 7d. or 6d. The best sale for these curry-combs is about Coventry-street and the Haymarket, and at the livery-stables generally. Along with curry-combs, the street-vendors sell wash-leathers, mane-combs (horn), sponges (which were like dried moss for awhile, I was told, got up by the Jews, but which are now good), dandy-brushes (whalebone-brushes, to scrape dirt from a horse’s legs, before he is groomed), spoke-brushes (to clean carriage-wheels), and coach-mops. One dweller in a large West-end mews computed that 100 different street-traders resorted thither daily, and that twenty sold the articles I have specified. In this trade, I am assured, there are no broken-down coachmen or grooms, only the regular street-sellers. A commoner curry-comb is sold at 2d. (prime cost 1s. 3d. a dozen), at Smithfield, on market-days, and to the carmen, and the owners of the rougher sort of horses; but this trade is not extensive.
There may be ten men, I am told, selling common “currys;” and they also sell other articles (often horse oil-cloths and nose-bags) along with them.
The last class of street-sellers is the beaten-out mechanic or workman, who, through blindness, age, or infirmities, is driven to obtain a livelihood by supplying his particular craft with their various implements. Of this class, as I have before stated, there are six men in London who were brought up as tailors, but are now, through some affliction or privation, incapacitated from following their calling. These men sell needles at four and five for 1d.; thimbles 1d. to 2d. each; scissors from 1s. to 2s. 6d.; and wax 1d. the lump. There are also old and blind shoemakers, who sell a few articles of grindery to their shopmates, as they term them, as well as a few decayed members of other trades, hawking the implements of the handicraft to which they formerly belonged. But as I have already given a long account of one of this class, under the head of the blind needle-seller, there is no occasion for me to speak further on the subject.
From one of the street-traders in saws I had the following account of his struggles, as well as the benefit he received from teetotalism, of which he spoke very warmly. His room was on the fourth floor of a house in a court near Holborn, and was clean and comfortable-looking. There were good-sized pictures, in frames, of the Queen, the Last Supper, and a Rural Scene, besides minor pictures: some of these had been received in exchange for saws with street-picture-sellers. A shelf was covered with china ornaments, such as are sold in the streets; the table had its oil-skin cover, and altogether I have seldom seen a more decent room. The rent, unfurnished, was 2s. a week.
“I’ve been eight years in this trade, sir,” the saw-seller said, “but I was brought up to a very different one. When a lad I worked in a coal-pit along with my father, but his behaviour to me was so cruel, he beat me so, that I ran away, and walked every step from the north of England to London. I can’t say I ever repented running away—much as I’ve gone through. My money was soon gone when I got to London, and my way of speaking was laughed at. [He had now very little of a provincial accent.] That’s fourteen year back. Why, indeed, sir, it puzzles me to tell you how I lived then when I did live. I jobbed about the markets, and slept, when I could pay for a lodging, at the cheap lodging-houses; so I got into the way of selling a few things in the streets, as I saw others do. I sold laces and children’s handkerchiefs. Sometimes I was miserable enough when I hadn’t a farthing, and if I managed to make a sixpence I got tipsy on it. For six weeks I slept every night in the Peckham Union. For another five or six weeks I slept every night in the dark arches by the Strand. I’ve sometimes had twenty or thirty companions there. I used to lie down on the bare stones, and was asleep in a minute, and slept like a top all night, but waking was very bad. I felt stiff, and sore, and cold, and miserable. How I lived at all is a wonder to me. About eleven years ago I was persuaded to go to a Temperance Meeting in Harp Alley (Farringdon-street), and there I signed the pledge; that is, I made my mark, for I can’t read or write, which has been a great hinder to me. If I’d been a scholard a teetotal gent would have got me into the police three years ago, about the time I got married. I did better, of course, when I was a teetotaller—no more dark arches. I sold a few little shawls in the streets then, but it was hardly bread and butter and coffee at times. Eight year ago I thought I would try saw-selling: a shopkeeper advised me, and I began on six salt saws, which I sold to oilmen. They’re for cutting salt only, and are made of zinc, as steel would rust and dirty the salt. The trade was far better at first than it is now. In good weeks I earned 16s. to 18s. In bad weeks 10s. or 12s. Now I may earn 10s., not more, a week, pretty regular: yesterday I made only 6d. Oilmen are better customers than chance street-buyers, for I’m known to them. There’s only one man besides myself selling nothing but saws. I walk, I believe, 100 miles every week, and that I couldn’t do, I know, if I wasn’t teetotal. I never long for a taste of liquor if I’m ever so cold or tired. It’s all poisonous.”