In this stationary trade are as many men and youths as women and girls. One woman, who had known street-selling for upwards of twenty years, said she could not do half so well now as she could twenty years ago, for the cheaper things got the cheaper people would have them. “Why, twenty year ago,” she exclaimed, “I bought a lot of ‘leno’ cheap—it was just about going out of fashion for caps then, I think—and one Saturday night in the Cut, I cleared 15s. on it. I don’t clear that in a fortnight now. I have sold to women of the town, as far as I’ve known them to be of that sort, but very seldom. It’s not often you’ll catch them using a needle for theirselves. They do use their needles, I know. You can see some of them sewing at their doors and windows in Granby-street, Waterloo-road, or could lately—for I haven’t passed that way for some time—but I believe it’s all for money down, for the slop-shops. It suits the slop-shops to get work cheap anyway; and it suits the women to have some sort of occupation, which they needn’t depend upon for their living.”
The stationary lace sellers, for the most part, display their goods on stalls, but some spread them on a board, or on matting on the ground. Some of the men gather an audience by shouting out, “Three yards a penny, edging!” As at this rate the lace-seller would only clear ½d. in a dozen yards, the cry is merely uttered to attract attention. A few who patter at the trade—but far fewer than was once the case—give short measure. One man, who occasionally sold lace, told me, that when he was compelled to sell for “next to no profit, and a hungry Sunday coming,” he gave good shop measure, thirty full inches to a yard. His yard wand was the correct length, “but I can do it, sir,” he said with some exultation, “by palming,” and he gave a jerk to his fingers, to show how he caught in the lace, and “clipped it short.”
Calculating that 100 persons in this trade each take 10s. 6d. weekly, the profit being about cent. per cent., we find 2,730l. expended in the streets in lace and similar commodities.
Of the Street-Sellers of Japanned Table-Covers.
This trade, like several others, as soon as the new commodities became in established demand, and sufficiently cheap, was adopted by street-sellers. It has been a regular street-trade between four and five years. Previously, when the covers were dearer, the street-sellers were afraid to speculate much in them; but one man told me that he once sold a table-cover for 8s., and at another time for 10s.
The goods are supplied to the street-folk principally by three manufacturers—in Long-lane, Smithfield, Whitechapel-road, and Petticoat-lane. The venders of the glazed table-covers are generally considered among the smartest of the street-folk, as they do not sell to the poor, or in poor neighbourhoods, but “at the better sort of houses, and to the wealthier sort of people.” Table-covers are now frequently disposed of by raffle. “I very seldom sell in the streets,” said one man, “though I one evening cleared 4s. by standing near the Vinegar-works, in the City-road, and selling to gents on their way home from the city. The public-house trade is the best, and indeed in winter evenings, and after dark generally, there’s no other. I get rid of more by raffling than by sale. On Saturday evening I had raffles for two covers, which cost me 1s. 4d. each. I had some trouble to get 1s. 9d. for one; but I got up a raffle for the other, and it brought me 2s.; six members at 4d. each. It’s just the sort of thing to get off in a raffle on Saturday night, or any time when mechanics have money. A man thinks—leastways I’ve thought so myself, when I’ve been in a public-house raffle—now I’ve spent more money than I ought to, and there’s the old woman to face; but if I win the raffle, and take the thing home, why my money has gone to buy a nice thing, and not for drink.” I may remark that in nearly all raffles got up in this manner, the article raffled for is generally something coveted by a working man, but not so indispensably necessary to him, that he feels justified in expending his money upon it. This fact seems well enough known to the street-sellers who frequent public-houses with their wares. I inquired of the informant in question if he had ever tried to get up a raffle of his table-covers in a coffee-shop as well as a public-house. “Never, with table-covers,” he said, “but I have with other things, and find it’s no go. In a coffee-shop people are quiet, and reading, unless it’s one of them low places for young thieves, and such like; and they’ve no money very likely, and I wouldn’t like to trust them in a raffle if they had. In public-houses there’s talk and fun, and people’s more inclined for a raffle, or anything spicy that offers.”
There are now fifteen regular street-sellers, or street-hawkers of these table-covers, in London, four of whom are the men’s wives, and they not unfrequently go a round together. Sometimes, on fine days, there are twenty. I heard of one woman who had been very successful in bartering table-covers for old clothes. “I’ve done a little that way myself,” said a man in the trade, “but nothing to her, and people sees into things so now, that there’s hardly a chance for a crust. The covers is so soft and shiny, and there’s such fine parrots and birds of paradise on them, that before the price was known there was a chance of a good bargain. I once got for a cover that cost me 2s. 9d. a great coat that a Jew, after a hard bargaining, gave me 6s. 3d. for.”
The prices of the table-covers (wholesale) run from 8s. a dozen to 30s.; but the street-sellers rarely go to a higher price than 18s. They can buy a dozen, or half a dozen—or even a smaller quantity—of different sizes. Some of these street-traders sell, with the table-covers, a few wash-leathers, of the better kind. Calculating that fifteen street-sellers each take 25s. weekly the year round—one-half being the profit, including their advantages in bartering and raffling—we find 975l. expended yearly upon japanned table-covers, bought in the streets.