THE STREET-SELLER OF CROCKERY-WARE
BARTERING FOR OLD CLOTHES.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
Of the way in which the “crock barterers” dispose of their wares, &c., I have given an account below. They are rapidly supplanting the “old clo’” trade of the Jews.
The hucksters of crockery-ware are a considerable class. One who has great experience in the business thinks there must be some hundreds employed in it throughout London. He says he meets many at the swag warehouses on the evenings that he goes there. He is often half an hour before he can be served. There are seven or eight swag warehouses frequented by the hucksters, and at the busy time my informant has often seen as many as twenty-five at each house, and he is satisfied that there must be three or four hundred hucksters of china and glass throughout the metropolis. The china and glass in which they deal are usually purchased at the east end of the town, upon the understanding that if the huckster is unable to dispose of them in the course of the day the articles will be taken back in the morning, if uninjured, and the money returned. The hucksters usually take out their goods early in the day. Their baskets are commonly deposited at the warehouse, and each warehouse has from thirty to forty baskets left there over-night, when the unsold articles are returned. The baskets are usually filled with china and glass and ornaments, to the amount of from 5s. to 15s., according to the stock-money of the huckster. A basket filled with 15s. worth of china is considered, I am told, “a very tidy stock.” In the same neighbourhood as they get the crockery, are made the baskets in which it is carried. For these baskets they pay from 2s. to 6s., and they are made expressly for the hucksters; indeed, on one side of a well-known street at the east end, the baskets made in the cellars may be seen piled outside the houses up to the second-floor windows. The class of persons engaged in hawking china through the metropolis are either broken-down tradesmen or clerks out of place, or Jews, or they may be Staffordshire men, who have been regularly bred to the business. They carry different kinds of articles. The Staffordshire man may generally be known by the heavy load of china that he carries with him. He has few light or fancy articles in his basket; it is filled chiefly with plates and dishes and earthenware pans. The broken-down tradesmen carries a lighter load. He prefers tea services and vases, and rummers and cruet-stands, as they are generally of a more delicate make than the articles carried by the Staffordshire men. The Jew, however, will carry nothing of any considerable weight. He takes with him mostly light, showy, Bohemian goods—which are difficult “to be priced” by his customers, and do not require much labour to hawk about. The hucksters usually start on their rounds about nine. There are very few who take money; indeed they profess to take none at all. “But that is all flam,” said my informant. “If any one was to ask me the price of an article in an artful way like, I shouldn’t give him a straight-forward answer. To such parties we always say, ‘Have you got any old clothes?’” The hucksters do take money when they can get it, and they adopt the principle of exchanging their goods for old clothes merely as a means of evading the licence. Still they are compelled to do a great deal in the old clothes’ line. When they take money they usually reckon to get 4d. in the shilling, but at least three-fourths of their transactions consist of exchanges for old clothes. “A good tea-service we generally give,” said my informant, “for a left-off suit of clothes, hat, and boots—they must all be in a decent condition to be worth that. We give a sugar-basin for an old coat, and a rummer for a pair of old Wellington boots. For a glass milk-jug I should expect a waistcoat and trowsers, and they must be tidy ones too. But there’s nothing so saleable as a pair of old boots to us. There is always a market for old boots, when there is not for old clothes. You can any day get a dinner out of old Wellingtons; but as for coats and waistcoats—there’s a fashion about them, and what pleases one don’t another. I can sell a pair of old boots going along the streets if I carry them in my hand. The snobs will run after us to get them—the backs are so valuable. Old beaver hats and waistcoats are worth little or nothing. Old silk hats, however, there’s a tidy market for. They are bought for the shops, and are made up into new hats for the country. The shape is what is principally wanted. We won’t give a farden for the polka hats with the low crowns. If we can double an old hat up and put it in our pockets, it’s more valuable to us than a stiff one. We know that the shape must be good to stand that. As soon as a hatter touches a hat he knows by the touch or the stiffness of it whether it’s been ‘through’ the fire or not; and if so, they’ll give it you back in a minute. There is one man who stands in Devonshire-street, Bishopsgate-street, waiting to buy the hats of us as we go into the market, and who purchases at least thirty dozen of us a week. There will be three or four there besides him looking out for us as we return from our rounds, and they’ll either outbid one another, according as the demand is, or they’ll all hold together to give one price. The same will be done by other parties wanting the old umbrellas that we bring back with us. These are valuable principally for the whalebone. Cane ribbed ones are worth only from 1d. to 2d., and that’s merely the value of the stick and the supporters. Iron skewers are made principally out of the old supporters of umbrellas.” The china and crockery bought by the hucksters at the warehouses are always second-rate articles. They are most of them a little damaged, and the glass won’t stand hot water. Every huckster, when he starts, has a bag, and most of them two—the one for the inferior, and the other for the better kind of old clothes he buys. “We purchase gentlemen’s left-off wearing apparel. This is mostly sold to us by women. They are either the wives of tradesmen or mechanics who sell them to us, or else it is the servant of a lodging-house, who has had the things given to her, and with her we can deal much easier than the others. She’s come to ’em light, and of course she parts with ’em light,” said the man, “and she’ll take a pair of sugar basins worth about 6d., you know, for a thing that’ll fetch two or three shillings sometimes. But the mistresses of the houses are she-dragons. They wants a whole dinner chany service for their husband’s rags. As for plates and dishes, they think they can be had for picking up. Many a time they sells their husband’s things unbeknown to ’em, and often the gentleman of the house coming up to the door, and seeing us make a deal—for his trowsers maybe—puts a stop to the whole transaction. Often and often I’ve known a woman sell the best part of her husband’s stock of clothes for chany ornaments for her mantelpiece. And I’m sure the other day a lady stripped the whole of her passage, and gave me almost a new great coat, that was hanging up in the hall, for a few trumpery tea-things. But the greatest ‘screws’ we has to deal with are some of the ladies in the squares. They stops you on the sly in the streets, and tells you to call at their house at sitch a hour of the day, and when you goes there they smuggles you quietly into some room by yourselves, and then sets to work Jewing away as hard as they can, pricing up their own things, and downcrying yourn. Why, the other day I was told to call at a fashionable part of Pimlico, so I gave a person 3d. to mind the child, and me and my good woman started off at eight in the morning with a double load. But, bless you, when we got there, the lady took us both into a private room unbeknown to the servants, and wanted me to go and buy expressly for her a green and white chamber service all complete, with soap trays and brush trays, together with four breakfast cups—and all this here grand set-out she wanted for a couple of old washed-out light waistcoats, and a pair of light trowsers. She tried hard to make me believe that the buttons alone on the waistcoats was worth 6d. a piece, but I knowed the value of buttons afore she was borned; at first start off I’m sure they wouldn’t have cost 1d. each, so I couldn’t make a deal of it no how, and I had to take all my things back for my trouble. I asked her even for a pint of beer, but she wouldn’t listen to no such thing. We generally cry as we go, ‘any old clothes to sell or exchange,’ and I look down the area, and sometimes knock at the door. If I go out with a 15s. basket of crockery, may be after a tidy day’s work I shall come home with 1s. in my pocket (perhaps I shall have sold a couple of tumblers, or half a dozen plates), and a bundle of old clothes, consisting of two or three old shirts, a coat or two, a suit of left-off livery, a woman’s gown may be, or a pair of old stays, a couple of pair of Wellingtons, and a waistcoat or so. These I should have at my back, and the remainder of my chany and glass on my head, and werry probably a humberella or two under my arm, and five or six old hats in my hand. This load altogether will weigh about three quarters of a cwt., and I shall have travelled fifteen miles with that, at least; for as fast as I gets rid on the weight of the crockery, I takes up the weight of the old clothes. The clothes I hardly know the value on till I gets to the Clothes Exchange, in Houndsditch. The usual time for the hucksters arriving there is between three and four in the winter, or between five and six in the summer. In fact, we must be at the Exchange at them hours, because there all our buyers is, and we can’t go out the next day until we’ve sold our lot. We can’t have our baskets stocked again until we’ve got the money for our old clothes.” The Exchange is a large square plot of damp ground, about an acre in extent, enclosed by a hoarding about eight feet high, on the top of which is a narrow sloping roof, projecting sufficiently forward to shelter one person from the rain. Across this ground are placed four rows of double seats, ranged back to back. Here meet all the Jew clothesmen, hucksters, dealers in second-hand shoes, left-off wardrobe keepers, hareskin dealers, umbrella dealers and menders, and indeed buyers and sellers of left-off clothes and worn-out commodities of every description. The purchasers are of all nations, and in all costumes. Some are Greeks, others Swiss, and others Germans; some have come there to buy up old rough charity clothing and army coats for the Irish market, others have come to purchase the hareskins and old furs, or else to pick up cheap old teapots and tea-urns. The man with the long flowing beard and greasy tattered gaberdine is worth thousands, and he has come to make another sixpence out of the rags and tatters that are strewn about the ground in heaps for sale. At a little before three o’clock the stream of rag-sellers sets in in a flood towards this spot. At the gate stands “Barney Aaron,” to take the half-penny admission of every one entering the ground. By his side stands his son with a leather pouch of half-pence, to give change for any silver that may be tendered. The stench of the old clothes is positively overpowering. Every one there is dressed in his worst. If he has any good clothes he would not put them on. Almost each one that enters has a bag at his back, and scarcely has he passed the gate before he is surrounded by some half dozen eager Jews—one feels the contents of the bundle on the huckster’s back—another clamours for the first sight. A third cries, “I’m sure you have something that’ll suit me.” “You know me,” says a fourth, “I’m a buyer, and give a good price.” “Have you got any breaking?” asks this Jew, who wants an old coat or two to cut up into cloth caps—“Have you got any fustian, any old cords, or old boats?” And such is the anxiety and greediness of the buyers, that it is as much as the seller can do to keep his bundle on his back. At length he forces his way to a seat, and as he empties the contents of his sack on the ground, each different article is snapped up and eagerly overhauled by the different Jews that have followed him to his seat. Then they all ask what sum is wanted for the several things, and they, one and all, bid one quarter of the price demanded. I am assured that it requires the greatest vigilance to prevent the things being carried off unpaid in the confusion. While this scene is going on, a Jew, perched upon a high stage in the centre of the ground, shouts aloud to the multitude, “Hot wine, a half-penny a glass, here.” Beside him stands another, with smoking cans of hot eels; and next to this one is a sweet-meat stall, with a crowd of Jew boys gathered round the keeper of it, gambling with marbles for Albert rock and hardbake. Up and down between the seats push women with baskets of sheep’s trotters on their arms, and screaming, “Legs of mutton, two for a penny; who’ll give me a handsel—who’ll give me a handsel?” After them comes a man with a large tin can under his arm, and roaring, “Hot pea, oh! hot pea, oh!” In one corner is a coffee and beer shop. Inside this are Jews playing at draughts, or settling and wrangling about the goods they have bought of one another. In fact, in no other place is such a scene of riot, rags, and filth to be witnessed. The cause of this excitement is the great demand on the part of the poor, and the cheap clothiers as well, for those articles which are considered as worthless by the rich. The old shoes are to be cobbled up, and the cracks heel-balled over, and sold out to the working-classes as strong durable articles. The Wellingtons are to be new fronted, and disposed of to clerks who are expected to appear respectable upon the smallest salaries. The old coats and trowsers are wanted for the slop-shops; they are to be “turned,” and made up into new garments. The best black suits are to be “clobbered” up—and those which are more worn in parts are to be cut up and made into new cloth caps for young gentlemen, or gaiters for poor curates; whilst others are to be transformed into the “best boys’ tunics.” Such as are too far gone are bought to be torn to pieces by the “devil,” and made up into new cloth—or “shoddy” as it is termed—while such as have already done this duty are sold for manure for the ground. The old shirts, if they are past mending, are bought as “rubbish” by the marine store dealers, and sold as rags to the paper-mills, to be changed either into the bank-note, the newspaper, or the best satin note-paper.
The average earnings of the hucksters who exchange crockery, china and glass for the above articles, are from 8s. to 10s. per week. Some days, I am told, they will make 3s., and on others they will get only 6d. However, taking the good with the bad, it is thought that 10s. a week is about a fair average of the earnings of the whole class. The best times for this trade are at the turn of the winter, and at the summer season, because then people usually purchase new clothes, and are throwing off the old ones. The average price of an old hat is from 1d. to 8d.; for an old pair of shoes, from 1d. to 4d.; an old pair of Wellingtons fetch from 3d. to 1s. 6d. (those of French leather are of scarcely any value). An old coat is worth from 4d. to 1s.; waistcoats are valued from 1d. to 3d.; trowsers are worth from 4d. to 8d.; cotton gowns are of the same value; bonnets are of no value whatever; shirts fetch from 2d. to 6d.; stockings are 1d. per pair; a silk handkerchief varies in value from 3d. to 1s. The party supplying me with the above information was originally in the coal and greengrocery business, but, owing to a succession of calamities, he has been unable to carry it on. Since then he has taken to the vending of crockery in the streets. He is a man far above the average of the class to which he at present belongs.