London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

I myself have often given a sovereign to professed thieves to get “changed,” and never knew one to make off with the money. Depend upon it, if we would really improve, we must begin by elevating instead of degrading.

Of the “Slang” Weights and Measures.

All counterfeit weights and measures, the costermongers call by the appropriate name of “slang.” “There are not half so many slangs as there was eighteen months ago,” said a ‘general dealer’ to me. “You see, sir, the letters in the Morning Chronicle set people a talking, and some altered their way of business. Some was very angry at what was said in the articles on the street-sellers, and swore that costers was gentlemen, and that they’d smash the men’s noses that had told you, sir, if they knew who they were. There’s plenty of costers wouldn’t use slangs at all, if people would give a fair price; but you see the boys will try it on for their bunts, and how is a man to sell fine cherries at 4d. a pound that cost him 3½d., when there’s a kid alongside of him a selling his ‘tol’ at 2d. a pound, and singing it out as bold as brass? So the men slangs it, and cries ‘2d. a pound,’ and gives half-pound, as the boy does; which brings it to the same thing. We doesn’t ’dulterate our goods like the tradesmen—that is, the regular hands doesn’t. It wouldn’t be easy, as you say, to ’dulterate cabbages or oysters; but we deals fair to all that’s fair to us,—and that’s more than many a tradesman does, for all their juries.”

The slang quart is a pint and a half. It is made precisely like the proper quart; and the maker, I was told, “knows well enough what it’s for, as it’s charged, new, 6d. more than a true quart measure; but it’s nothing to him, as he says, what it’s for, so long as he gets his price.” The slang quart is let out at 2d. a day—1d. extra being charged “for the risk.” The slang pint holds in some cases three-fourths of the just quantity, having a very thick bottom; others hold only half a pint, having a false bottom half-way up. These are used chiefly in measuring nuts, of which the proper quantity is hardly ever given to the purchaser; “but, then,” it was often said, or implied to me, the “price is all the lower, and people just brings it on themselves, by wanting things for next to nothing; so it’s all right; it’s people’s own faults.” The hire of the slang pint is 2d. per day.

The scales used are almost all true, but the weights are often beaten out flat to look large, and are 4, 5, 6, or even 7 oz. deficient in a pound, and in the same relative proportion with other weights. The charge is 2d., 3d., and 4d. a day for a pair of scales and a set of slang weights.

The wooden measures—such as pecks, half pecks, and quarter pecks—are not let out slang, but the bottoms are taken out by the costers, and put in again half an inch or so higher up. “I call this,” said a humorous dealer to me, “slop-work, or the cutting-system.”

One candid costermonger expressed his perfect contempt of slangs, as fit only for bunglers, as he could always “work slang” with a true measure. “Why, I can cheat any man,” he said. “I can manage to measure mussels so as you’d think you got a lot over, but there’s a lot under measure, for I holds them up with my fingers and keep crying, ‘Mussels! full measure, live mussels!’ I can do the same with peas. I delight to do it with stingy aristocrats. We don’t work slang in the City. People know what they’re a buying on there. There’s plenty of us would pay for an inspector of weights; I would. We might do fair without an inspector, and make as much if we only agreed one with another.”

In conclusion, it is but just I should add that there seems to be a strong disposition on the part of the more enlightened of the class to adopt the use of fair weights and measures; and that even among the less scrupulous portion of the body, short allowance seems to be given chiefly from a desire to be even with a “scaly customer.” The coster makes it a rule never to refuse an offer, and if people will give him less than what he considers his proper price, why—he gives them less than their proper quantity. As a proof of the growing honesty among this class, many of the better disposed have recently formed themselves into a society, the members of which are (one and all) pledged not only to deal fairly with their customers, but to compel all other street-sellers to do the same. With a view of distinguishing themselves to the public, they have come to the resolution of wearing a medal, on which shall be engraved a particular number, so that should any imposition be practised by any of their body, the public will have the opportunity of complaining to the Committee of the Association, and having the individual (if guilty) immediately expelled from the society.

Of Half Profits.

Besides the modes of trading on borrowed capital above described, there is still another means of obtaining stock prevalent among the London costermongers. It is a common practice with some of the more provident costermongers, who buy more largely—for the sake of buying cheaply—than is required for the supply of their own customers, to place goods in the hands of young men who are unable to buy goods on their own account, “on half profits,” as it is called. The man adopting this means of doing a more extensive business, says to any poor fellow willing to work on those terms, “Here’s a barrow of vegetables to carry round, and the profit on them will be 2s.; you sell them, and half is for yourself.” The man sells them accordingly; if however he fail to realize the 2s. anticipated profit, his employer must still be paid 1s., even if the “seller” prove that only 13d. was cleared; so that the costermonger capitalist, as he may be described, is always, to use the words of one of my informants, “on the profitable side of the hedge.”