The hawker dealt, in the old times, more in textile fabrics than in anything else. Indeed, Shakspere has dashed off a catalogue of his wares, in the song of Autolycus:
“Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as e’er was crow.”
In the reigns succeeding the termination of the Wars of the Roses, and down to the Commonwealth, the hawker’s pack was often stocked with costly goods; for great magnificence in dress was then the custom of the wealthy, and even the burgesses on public occasions wore velvet, fine cambric ruffs, and furs. The hawker was thus often a man of substance and frequently travelled on horseback, with his wares slung in bags on his horse’s side, or fitted to the crupper or pommell of his saddle. He was often, moreover, attended by a man, both for help in his sales, and protection in travelling. In process of time an established hawker became the medium of news and of gossip, and frequently the bearer of communications from town to town. His profits were often great, but no little trust seems to have been reposed in him as to the quality and price of his goods; and, until the present century or so, slop goods were little manufactured, so that he could not so well practise deceptions. Neither, during the prosperity of the trade, does it appear that any great degree of dishonesty characterized the hawker, though to this there were of course plenty of minor exceptions as well as one glaring contradiction. The wreckers of our southern coasts, who sometimes became possessed of rich silks, velvets, laces, &c.—(not unfrequently murdering all the mariners cast on shore, and there was a convenient superstition among the wreckers, that it was unlucky to offer help to a drowning man)—disposed of much of their plunder to the hawkers; and as communication was slow, even down to Mr. Palmer’s improvements in the Post Office in 1784, the goods thus rescued from the deep, or obtained by the murder of the mariners, were disposed of even before the loss of the vessel was known at her destination; for we are told that there was generally a hawker awaiting a wreck on the most dangerous shores of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Sussex.
During the last century, and for the first ten years of the present, the hawker’s was a profitable calling. He usually in later times travelled with horse and covered cart, visiting fairs, markets, and private houses, more especially in the country. In some parts the calling was somewhat hereditary, son succeeding to father after having officiated as his assistant, and so becoming known to the customers. The most successful of the class, alike on both sides of the border, were Scotchmen.
In 1810 the prosperity of this trade experienced a check. In that year “every hawker, pedlar, or petty chapman going from town to town, or to other men’s houses, and travelling on foot, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods” was required to pay a yearly licence of 4l., with an additional 4l. for every horse, ass, or mule, used in the business. Nothing, however, in the Act in question, 50 Geo. III. c. 41, as I have before intimated, “extended to prohibit” the hawking for sale of “any fish, fruit, or victuals” without licence. Neither is there any extension of the prohibition to the unlicensed workers or makers of any goods or wares, or their children or servants resident with them, hawking such goods, and selling them “in every city, borough, town corporate, or market town,” but not in villages or country places. “Tinkers, coopers, glaziers, plumbers, and harness-menders,” are likewise permitted to carry about with them the proper materials necessary for their business, no licence being necessary.
The passing of this Act did not materially check the fraudulent practices of which the hawkers were accused, and of which a portion of them were doubtlessly guilty; indeed some of the manufacturers, whose names were pirated by the hawkers, were of opinion that the licensing for ten or twenty years facilitated fraud, as many people, both in London and the country, thought they were safe in dealing with a “licensed” hawker, since he could not procure a licence without a certificate of his good character from the clergyman of his place of residence, and from two “reputable inhabitants.” Linen of good quality used to be extensively hawked, but from 1820 to 1825, or later in some parts, the hawkers got to deal in an inferior quality, “unions” (a mixture of linen and cotton), glazed and stiffened, and set off with gaudy labels bearing sometimes the name of a well-known firm, but altered in spelling or otherwise, and expressed so as to lead to the belief that such a firm were the manufacturers of the article. Jews, moreover, as we have seen, travelled in all parts with inferior watches and jewellery, and sometimes “did well” by persuading the possessors of old solid watches, or old seals or jewellery, that they were ridiculously out of fashion, and so inducing them to give money along with the old watch for a watch or other article of the newest fashion, which yet was intrinsically valueless compared with the other. These and other practices, such as selling inferior lace under pretence of its having been smuggled from France, and of the choicest quality, tended to bring the hawker’s trade into disrepute, and the disrepute affected the honest men in the business. Some sank from the possession of a good horse and cart to travelling on foot, as of yore, forwarding goods from place to place by the common carriers, and some relinquished the itinerant trade altogether. The “cutting” and puffing shopkeepers appeared next, and at once undersold the “slop” hawker, and foiled him on his own ground of pushing off inferior wares for the best. The numbers of the hawkers fell off considerably, but notwithstanding I find, in the last census tables (1841), the following returns as to the numbers of “hawkers, hucksters, and pedlars,” distributed throughout Great Britain. The Government returns, however, admit of no comparison being formed between these numbers and those of any previous time.
| England and Wales. | |
|---|---|
| Bedford | 79 |
| Berks | 160 |
| Bucks | 129 |
| Cambridge | 139 |
| Chester | 362 |
| Cornwall | 175 |
| Cumberland | 217 |
| Derby | 427 |
| Devon | 230 |
| Dorset | 97 |
| Durham | 301 |
| Essex | 339 |
| Gloucester | 437 |
| Hereford | 44 |
| Hertford | 137 |
| Huntingdon | 45 |
| Kent | 284 |
| Lancaster | 1862 |
| Leicester | 292 |
| Lincoln | 435 |
| Middlesex | 1597 |
| Monmouth | 163 |
| Norfolk | 431 |
| Northampton | 214 |
| Northumberland | 426 |
| Nottingham | 267 |
| Oxford | 94 |
| Rutland | 23 |
| Salop | 240 |
| Somerset | 201 |
| Southampton | 226 |
| Stafford | 472 |
| Suffolk | 288 |
| Surrey | 609 |
| Sussex | 238 |
| Warwick | 476 |
| Westmorland | 44 |
| Wilts | 109 |
| Worcester | 247 |
| City of York | 63 |
| East Riding of York | 200 |
| North Riding | 187 |
| West Riding | 1039 |
| 14,038 | |
| Wales. | |
| Anglesey | 14 |
| Brecon | 63 |
| Cardigan | 38 |
| Carmarthen | 49 |
| Carnarvon | 32 |
| Denbigh | 69 |
| Flint | 35 |
| Glamorgan | 202 |
| Merioneth | 25 |
| Montgomery | 31 |
| Pembroke | 46 |
| Radnor | 20 |
| 624 | |
| Island in the British Seas | 47 |
| Scotland. | |
| Aberdeen | 105 |
| Argyll | 44 |
| Ayr | 144 |
| Banff | 33 |
| Berwick | 41 |
| Bute | 17 |
| Caithness | 4 |
| Clackmannan | 18 |
| Dumbarton | 29 |
| Dumfries | 72 |
| Edinburgh | 401 |
| Elgin, or Moray | 37 |
| Fife | 77 |
| Forfar | 108 |
| Haddington | 54 |
| Inverness | 33 |
| Kincardine | 27 |
| Kinross | 9 |
| Kirkcudbright | 46 |
| Lanark | 677 |
| Linlithgow | 33 |
| Nairn | 2 |
| Orkney and Shetland | 10 |
| Peebles | 13 |
| Perth | 119 |
| Renfrew | 107 |
| Ross and Cromarty | 11 |
| Roxburgh | 96 |
| Selkirk | 18 |
| Stirling | 95 |
| Sutherland | 5 |
| Wigtown | 36 |
| 2561 | |
Thus we find that, in 1841, there were of these trades in
| England | 14,038 |
| Wales | 624 |
| British Isles | 47 |
| Scotland | 2,561 |
| Total in Great Britain | 17,270 |