London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

Of Hawkers, Pedlars, and Petty Chapmen.

The machinery for the distribution of commodities has, in this and in all other “progressive” countries, necessarily undergone many changes; but whether these changes have been beneficial to the community, or not, this is not the place for me to inquire; all I have to do here is to set forth the order of such changes, and to show the position that the hawker and pedlar formerly occupied in the state.

The “distributor” of the produce of the country is necessarily a kind of go-between, or middleman, introduced for the convenience of bringing together the producer and consumer—the seller and the buyer of commodities. The producer of a particular commodity being generally distinct from the consumer, it follows, that either the commodity must be carried to the consumer, or the consumer go to the commodity. To save time and trouble to both parties, it seems to have been originally arranged that producer and consumer should meet, periodically, at appointed places. Such periodical meetings of buyers and sellers still exist in this and many other countries, and are termed either fairs or markets, according as they are held at long or short intervals—the fair being generally an annual meeting, and the market a weekly one. In the olden time the peculiar characteristic of these commercial congregations was, that the producer and consumer came into immediate contact, without the intervention of any middleman. The fair or market seemed to be a compromise between the two, as to the inconvenience of either finding the other when wanted. The producer brought his goods, so to speak, half way to the consumer, while the consumer travelled half way to the goods. “There would be a great waste of time and trouble,” says Stewart Mill, “and an inconvenience often amounting to impracticability, if consumers could only obtain the article they want by treating directly with the producers. Both producers and consumers are too much scattered, and the latter often at too great a distance from the former.”

“To diminish this loss of time and labour,” continues Mr. Mill, “the contrivance of fairs and markets was early had recourse to, where consumers and producers might periodically meet, without any intermediate agency; and this plan still answers tolerably well for many articles, especially agricultural produce—agriculturists having at some seasons a certain quantity of spare time on their hands. But even in this case, attendance is often very troublesome and inconvenient to buyers who have other occupations, and do not live in the immediate vicinity; while, for all articles the production of which requires continuous attention from the producers, these periodical markets must be held at such considerable intervals, and the wants of the consumers must either be provided for so long beforehand, or must remain so long unsupplied, that even before the resources of society permitted the establishment of shops, the supply of those wants fell universally into the hands of itinerant dealers, the pedlars who might appear once a month, being preferred to the fair, which only returned once a year. In country districts, remote from towns or large villages, the vocation of the pedlar is not yet wholly superseded. But a dealer who has a fixed abode, and fixed customers,” continues Mr. Mill, “is so much more to be depended on, that customers prefer resorting to him, if he is conveniently accessible; and dealers, therefore, find their advantage in establishing themselves in every locality where there are sufficient consumers near at hand to afford them remuneration.”

Thus we see that the pedlar was the original distributor of the produce of the country—the primitive middleman, as well as the prime mover in extending the markets of particular localities, or for particular commodities. He was, as it were, the first “free-trader;” increasing the facilities for the interchange of commodities, without regard to market dues or tolls, and carrying the natural advantages of particular districts to remote and less favoured places; thus enabling each locality to produce that special commodity for which it had the greatest natural convenience, and exchanging it for the peculiar produce of other parts.

Now, this extension of the markets necessarily involved some machinery for the conveyance of the goods from one district to another. Hence, the pedlar was not only the original merchant, but the primitive carrier—to whom, perhaps, we owe both our turnpike-roads and railways. For, since the peculiar characteristic of the pedlar was the carrying the produce to the consumer, rather than troubling the consumer to go after the produce, of course it soon became necessary, as the practice increased, and increased quantities of goods had to be conveyed from one part of the country to another, that increased facilities of transit should be effected. The first change was from the pack-man to the pack-horse: for the former a foot-way alone was required; while the latter necessitated the formation of some kind of a road. Some of these ancient pack-horse roads existed till within these few years. Hagbush-lane, which was described by William Hone only twenty years ago, but which has now vanished, was the ancient bridle or pack-horse road from London to the North, and extended by the Holloway back road as far as the City-road, near Old-street. “Some parts of Hagbush-lane,” says Hone, “are much lower than the meadows on either side.” At one time a terraced ridge, at another a deep rut, the pack-horse road must have been to the unaccustomed traveller a somewhat perilous pass. The historian of Craven, speaking of 1609, says, “At this time the communication between the north of England and the Universities was kept up by the carriers, who pursued their long but uniform route with trains of pack-horses. To their care were consigned packages, and not unfrequently the persons of young scholars. It was through their medium, also, that epistolary correspondence was managed; and as they always visited London, a letter could scarcely be exchanged between Yorkshire and Oxford in less time than a month.” The General Post Office was established by Act of Parliament in the year 1660, and all letters were to be sent through this office, “except such letters as shall be sent by coaches, common-known carriers of goods by carts, waggons, and pack-horses, and shall be carried along with their carts, waggons, and pack-horses respectively.”

“There is no such conveyance as a waggon in this country” (Scotland), says Roderick Random, referring to the beginning of the last century, “and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hiring a horse. I determined therefore to set out with the carriers, who transport goods from one place to another on horseback; and this scheme I accordingly put in execution on the 1st day of November, 1739, sitting on a pack-saddle between two baskets, one of which contained my goods in a knapsack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of my journey on foot, rather than proceed in such a disagreeable manner.”

The present mode of travelling, compared with that of the pack-horse means of conveyance as pursued of old, forms one of the most striking contrasts, perhaps, in all history.

Hence we see that the pedlar was originally both carrier and seller; first conveying his pack on his back, and then, as it increased in bulk, transferring it to the back of “the pack-horse.” But as soon as the practice of conveying the commodities to the buyers, instead of compelling the buyers to go to the commodities, was found to be advantageous to both consumer and producer, it was deemed expedient that the two distinct processes of carriage and sale, which are included in the distribution of commodities, should be conducted by distinct persons, and hence the carrying and selling of goods became separate vocations in the State; and such is now the machinery by which the commodities of different parts of this country, as well as of others, are at present diffused over the greater portion of this kingdom. In remote districts however, and the poorer neighbourhoods of large towns, where there are either too few consumers, or too few commodities required now to support a fixed distributor with a distinct apparatus of transit, the pedlar still continues to be the sole means of diffusing the produce of one locality among the inhabitants of another; and it is in this light—as the poor man’s merchant—that we must here consider him.

Among the more ancient of the trades, then, carried on in England is that of the hawker or pedlar. It is generally considered, as I said before, that hawking “is as ancient a mode of trade as that carried on in fairs and markets, towns and villages, as well as at the castles of the nobles or the cottages of their retainers.” To fix the origin of fairs is impossible, for, in ancient and mediæval times, every great gathering was necessarily a fair. Men—whom it is no violence to language to call “hawkers”—resorted alike to the Olympic games and to the festivals of the early Christian saints, to sell or barter their wares. Of our English fairs Mr. Jacob says, in his “Law Dictionary”—“Various privileges have been annexed to them, and numerous facilities afforded to the disposal of property in them. To give them a greater degree of solemnity, they were originally, both in the ancient and modern world, associated with religious festivals. In most places, indeed, they are still held on the same day with the wake or feast of the saint to whom the church is dedicated; and till the practice was prohibited, it was customary in England to hold them in churchyards. This practice, I may add, was not fully prohibited until the reign of Charles II., although it had long before fallen into disuse. Thus the connection between church and market is shown to be of venerable antiquity.”