The saws sold are 8 inch, which cost at the swag-shops 8s. and 8s. 6d. a dozen; 10 inch, 9s. and 9s. 6d.; and so on, the price advancing according to the increased size, to 18 inch, 13s. 6d. the dozen. Larger sizes are seldom sold in the streets. The second man’s earnings, my informant believed, were the same as his own.
The wife of my informant, when she got work as an embroideress, could earn 11s. and 12s. At present she was at work braiding dresses for a dressmaker, at 2½d. each. By hard work, and if she had not her baby to attend to, she could earn no more than 7½d. a day. As it was she did not earn 6d.
Of the Beggar Street-Sellers.
Under this head I include only such of the beggar street-sellers as are neither infirm nor suffering from any severe bodily affliction or privation. I am well aware that the aged—the blind—the lame and the halt often pretend to sell small articles in the street—such as boot-laces, tracts, cabbage-nets, lucifer-matches, kettle-holders, and the like; and that such matters are carried by them partly to keep clear of the law, and partly to evince a disposition to the public that they are willing to do something for their livelihood. But these being really objects of charity, they belong more properly to the second main division of this book, in which the poor, or those that can’t work, and their several means of living, will be treated of.
Such, though beggars, are not “lurkers”—a lurker being strictly one who loiters about for some dishonest purpose. Many modes of thieving as well as begging are termed “lurking”—the “dead lurk,” for instance, is the expressive slang phrase for the art of entering dwelling-houses during divine service. The term “lurk,” however, is mostly applied to the several modes of plundering by representations of sham distress.
It is of these alone that I purpose here treating—or rather of that portion of them which pretends to deal in manufactured articles.
In a few instances the street-sellers of small articles of utility are also the manufacturers. Many, however, say they are the producers of the things they offer for sale, thinking thus to evade the necessity of having a hawker’s licence. The majority of these petty dealers know little of the manufacture of the goods they vend, being mere tradesmen. Some few profess to be the makers of their commodities, solely with the view of enlisting sympathy, and thus either selling the trifles they carry at an enormous profit, or else of obtaining alms.
An inmate of one of the low lodging-houses has supplied me with the following statement:—“Within my recollection,” says my informant, “the great branch of trade among these worthies, was the sale of sewing cotton, either in skeins or on reels. In the former case, the article cost the ‘lurkers’ about 8d. per pound; one pound would produce thirty skeins, which, sold at one penny each, or two for three halfpence, produced a heavy profit. The lurkers could mostly dispose of three pounds per day; the article was, of course, damaged, rotten, and worthless.
“The mode of sale consisted in the ‘lurkers’ calling at the several houses in a particular district, and representing themselves as Manchester cotton spinners out of employ. Long tales, of course, were told of the distresses of the operatives, and of the oppression of their employers; these tales had for the most part been taught them at the padding-ken, by some old and experienced dodger of ‘the school;’ and if the spokesman could patter well, a much larger sum was frequently obtained in direct alms than was reaped by the sale.”
Cotton on reels was—except to the purchaser—a still better speculation; the reels were large, handsomely mounted, and displayed in bold relief such inscriptions as the following:—