By this name the street-sellers have long distinguished the warehouses, or rather shops, where they purchase their goods. The term Swag, or Swack, or Sweg, is, as was before stated, a Scotch word, meaning a large collection, a “lot.” The haberdashery, however, supplied by these establishments is of a very miscellaneous character; which, perhaps, can best be shown by describing a “haberdashery swag,” to which a street-seller, who made his purchases there, conducted me, and which, he informed me, was one of the most frequented by his fraternity, if not the most frequented, in the metropolis.
The window was neither dingy, nor, as my companion expressed it, “gay.” It was in size, as well as in “dressing,” or “show”—for I heard the arrangement of the window goods called by both those names by street people—half-way between the quiet plainness of a really wholesale warehouse, and the gorgeousness of a retail drapery concern, when a “tremendous sacrifice” befools the public. Not a quarter of an inch of space was lost, and the announcements and prices were written many of them in a bungling school-boy-like hand, while others were the work of a professional “ticket writer,” and show the eagerness of so many of this class of trade to obtain custom. In one corner was this announcement: “To boot-makers. Boot fronts cut to any size or quality.” There was neither boot nor shoe visible, but how a boot front can be cut “to any quality,” is beyond my trade knowledge. Half hidden, and read through laces, was another announcement, sufficiently odd, in a window decorated with a variety of combustible commodities: “Hawkers supplied with fuzees cheaper than any house in London.” On the “ledge,” or the part shelving from the bottom of the window, within the shop, were paper boxes of steel purses with the price marked so loosely as to leave it an open question whether 1s. 0¾d. or 10¾d. was the cost. There was also a good store of silk purses, marked 2½d.; bright-coloured ribbons, in a paper box, and done up in small rolls, 1½d.; cotton reels, four a penny; worsted balls, three a penny; girls’ night-caps, 1¾d.; women’s caps, from 2¾d. to 7¾d.; (the ¾d. was always in small indistinct characters, but it was a very favourite adjunct); diamond patent mixed pins—London and Birmingham—1d. an oz. My companion directed my attention to the little packets of pins: “They’re well done up, sir, as you can see, and in very good and thick and strong pink papers, with ornamental printers’ borders, and plenty of paper for three ounces. The paper’s weighed with the pins, and the price is 1d. an oz.; so the paper fetches 1s. 4d. a pound.” There were also many papers of combs, and one tied outside the packet as a specimen, without a price marked upon them. “The price varies, sir;” said my guide and informant, and I heard the same account from others; “it varies from 1d. a pair to such as me; up to 6d. or perhaps 1s. to a servant-maid what looks innocent.”
From what appeared to be slender rods fitted higher up to the breadth of the window depended “black lace handkerchiefs, 4¾d.;” and cap fronts, some being a round wreath of gauze ornamented with light rose-coloured artificial flowers, and marked “only 5½d.;” together with lace (or edgings) which hung in festoons, and filled every vacancy. Higher up were braces marked 5d.; and more lace; and to the back of all was a sort of screen—for it shuts out all view of the inside of the shop—of big-figured shawls (the figures in purple, orange, and crimson) and of silk handkerchiefs: “They’re regular duffers,” I was told, “and very tidy duffers too—very, for it’s a respectable house.”
In the centre of the window ledge was a handsome wreath of artificial flowers, marked 2½d. “If a young woman was to go in to buy it at 2½d., I’ve seen it myself, sir,” said the street-seller “she’s told that the ticket has got out of its place, for it belonged to the lace beneath, but as she’d made a mistake without thinking of the value, the flowers was 1s. 6d. to her, though they was cheap at 2s. 6d.”
From this account it will be seen that the swag or wholesale haberdashers are now very general traders; and that they trade “retail” as well as “wholesale.” Twenty or twenty-five years ago, I am informed, the greater part of these establishments were really haberdashery swags; but so fierce became the competition in the trade, so keen the desire “to do business,” that gradually, and more especially within these four or five years, they became “all kinds of swags.”
A highly respectable draper told me that he never could thoroughly understand where hosiery, haberdashery, or drapery, began or ended; for hosiers now were always glovers, and often shirt-makers; haberdashers were always hosiers (at the least), and drapers were everything; so that the change in the character of the shops from which the street-sellers of textile fabrics procure their supplies, is but in accordance with the change in the general drapery trade. The literal meaning of the word haberdashery is unknown to etymologists.
There are now about fifty haberdashery swags resorted to by street-sellers, but only a fifth part of them make the trade to street-sellers a principal, while none make it a sole feature of their business. In the enumeration of the fifty haberdashery “swags,” five are large and handsome shops carried on by “cutting” drapers. Some of these—one in the borough, especially—do not “serve” the street-sellers, except at certain hours, generally from four to six.
There is another description of shops from which a class of street traders derive their supplies of stock. These are the “print-brokers,” who sell “gown-pieces” to the hawkers or street-traders. Only about a dozen of such shops, and those principally in the borough and in Wormwood-street, Bishopsgate, are frequented by the London street-sellers. One man showed me a draper’s shop, at which hawkers were “supplied,” but without an announcement of such a thing, as it might affect the character of the concern for gentility. The gown-pieces were rolled loosely together, and to each was attached a ticket, 2s. 11d. or 3s. 11d., with intermediate prices, but those here mentioned were the most frequent. The 11d. was in pencil, so that it could be altered at any time, without the expense of a new ticket being incurred. “That one marked 2s. 11d.,” said the street-seller, “would be charged to me 2s. 2d., and the 3s. 11d. in the same way 3s. 2d., or I might get it at 3s. If those gown-pieces don’t take—and they are almost as thin as silver-paper,—they’ll be marked down to 2s. 2d. and 3s. 2d., just by degrees, as you see them shown in the window.” The regular “print-brokers” make no display in their windows or premises.
The “duffers” and “lumpers” are supplied almost entirely at one shop in the east end. The proprietor has the sham, or inferior, silk handkerchiefs manufactured for the purpose; and for the supply of his other silk-goods, he purchases any silk “miscoloured” in the dyeing, or faded from time. “A faded lavender,” one of his customers told me, “he’ll get dyed black, and made to look quite new and fresh. Sometimes it’s good silk, but it’s mostly very dicky.” This tradesman is also a retailer.
Such things as braces and garters are sold to the street people at the general as well as the haberdashery swag-shops; and are more frequently sold wholesale than other goods; indeed the general swag-shop keepers sell them by no other way; but the “wholesale haberdashers” will sell a single pair, though not, of course, at wholesale price. Some houses again supply the more petty street-sellers, solely with such articles as are known in Manchester by the name of small-ware, including thread, cotton, tapes, laces, &c.