The street-sale of hose used to be far more considerable than it is now, and was, in a great measure, in the hands of a class who had personal claims to notice, independent of the goodness of their wares. These were old women, wearing, generally, large white aprons, and chintz-patterned gowns, and always scrupulously clean. They carried from door to door, in the quieter streets, and in the then suburbs, stockings of their “own knitting.” Such they often were; and those which were not were still knitted stockings, although they might be the work of old women in the country, who knitted by the fireside, needing no other light on winter evenings and at the doors of their cottages in the sunshine in summer. Of these street-sellers some were blind. Between thirty and forty years ago, I am told, there were from twelve to twenty blind knitters, but my informant could not speak with certainty, as he might probably observe the same women in different parts. The blind stocking-sellers would knit at a door as they waited. The informant I have quoted thought that the last of these knitters and street-sellers disappeared upwards of twenty years ago, as he then missed her from his door, at which she used to make her regular periodical appearance. The stockings of this trade were most frequently of white lamb’s-wool, and were sold at from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. They were long in the leg, and were suited “for gentle-people’s winter wear.” The women-sellers made in those days, I am assured, a comfortable livelihood.
The sale of stockings is now principally in the hands of the men who vend braces, &c. The kind sold is most frequently unbleached cotton. The price to a street-buyer is generally from 6d. to 9d.; but the trade is of small extent. “It’s one of the trades,” a street-seller said to me, “that we can’t compete with shop-keepers in. You shall go to a haberdashery swag-shop, and though they have ‘wholesale haberdashers,’ and ‘hawkers supplied’ on the door-post, you’ll see a pair of stockings in the window marked with a very big and very black 6, and a very little and not half black ¾; and if I was to go in, they’d very likely ask me 6s. 6d. a dozen for an inferior thing. They retail themselves, and won’t be undersold if they can help it, and so they don’t care to accommodate us in things that’s always going.”
A few pairs of women’s stockings are hawked by women, and sold to servant-maids; but the trade in these goods, I am informed, including all classes of sellers—of whom there may be fifty—does not exceed (notwithstanding the universality of the wear), the receipt of 6s. weekly per individual, with a profit of from 1s. 4d. to 2s., and an aggregate expenditure of about 800l. in the year. The trade is an addition to some other street trade.
The brace-sellers used to carry with their wares another article, of which India-rubber web formed the principal part. These were trowser-straps, “with leather buttonings and ingy-spring bodies.” It was only, however, the better class of brace-sellers who carried them; those who, as my informant expressed it, “had a full stock;” and their sale was insignificant. At one time, the number of brace-sellers offering these straps was, I am informed, from 70 to 100. “It was a poor trade, sir,” said one of the class. “At first I sold at 4d., as they was 6d. in middling shops, and 1s. in the toppers, if not 1s. 6d.; but they soon came down to 3d., and then to 2d. My profit was short of 3d. in 1s. My best customers for braces didn’t want such things; plain working-men don’t. And grooms, and stable-keepers generally, wears boots or knee-gaiters, and footmen sports knee-buckles and stockings. All I did sell to was, as far as I can judge, young mechanics as liked to turn out like gents on a Sunday or an evening, and real gents that wanted things cheap. I very seldom cleared more than 1s. a week on them. The trade’s over now. If you see a few at a stand, it’s the remains of an old stock, or some that a swag-shop has pushed out for next to nothing to be rid of them.”
The sale of waistcoats is confined to Smithfield, as regards the class I now treat of—the sellers of articles made by others. Twelve or fourteen years back, there was a considerable sale in what was a branch of duffing. Waistcoats were sold to countrymen, generally graziers’ servants, under the pretence that they were of fine silk plush, which was then rather an object of rustic Sunday finery. A drover told me that a good many years ago he saw a countryman, with whom he was conversing at the time, pay 10s. 6d. for a “silk plush waistcoat,” the vendor having asked 15s., and having walked away—no doubt remarking the eagerness of his victim—when the countryman refused to give more than 10s. “He had a customer set for it,” he said, “at half-a-guinea.” On the first day the waistcoat was worn—the drover was afterwards told by the purchaser—it was utterly spoiled by a shower of rain; and when its possessor asked the village tailor the value of the garment, he was told that it had no value at all; the tailor could not even tell what it was made of, but he never saw anything so badly made in his life; never. Some little may be allowed for the natural glee of a village tailor on finding one of his customers, who no doubt was proud of his London bargain, completely taken in; but these waistcoats, I am assured by a tailor who had seen them, were the veriest rubbish. The trade, however, has been unknown, unless with a few rare exceptions at a very busy time—such as the market for the show and sale of the Christmas stock—since the time specified.
The waistcoats now sold in Smithfield market, or in the public-houses connected with it, are, I am told, and also by a tailor, very paltry things; but the price asked removes the trade from the imputation of duffing. These garments are sold at from 1s. to 4s. 6d. each; but very rarely 4s. 6d. The shilling waistcoats are only fit for boys—or “youths,” as the slop-tailors prefer styling them—but 1s. 6d. is a common price enough; and seven-eighths of the trade, I am informed, is for prices under, or not exceeding, 2s. The trade is, moreover, very small. There are sometimes no waistcoat-sellers at all; but generally two, and not unfrequently three. The profits of these men are 1s. on a bad, and 2s. 6d. on a good day. As, at intervals, these street-sellers dispose of a sleeve-waistcoat (waistcoat with sleeves) at from 4s. 6d. to 6s., we may estimate the average earnings in the trade at 5s. per market day, or 10s. in the week. This shows an outlay of 78l. in the year, as the profits of these street traders may be taken at 33 per cent.; or, as it is almost invariably worded by such classes, “4d. in the 1s.” The material is of a kind of cotton made to look as stout as possible, the back, &c., being the commonest stuff. They are supplied by a slop-house at the East End, and are made by women, or rather girls.
The sale of waistcoats in the street, markets, &c., is of second-hand goods, or otherwise in the hands of a distinct class. There are other belts, and other portions of wearing apparel, which, though not of textile fabrics, as they are often sold by the same persons as I have just treated of, may be described here. These are children’s “patent leather” belts, trowser-straps, and garters.
The sellers of children’s and men’s belts and trowser-straps are less numerous than they were, for both these things, I am told, but only on street authority, are going out of fashion. From one elderly man who had “dropped belts, and straps, and all that, for oranges,” I heard bitter complaints of the conduct of the swag shop-keepers who supplied these wares. The substance of his garrulous and not very lucid complaint was that when boys’ patent leather belts came into fashion, eleven, twelve, or thirteen years back, he could not remember which, the usual price in the shops was 1s., and they were soon to be had in the streets for 6d. each. The belt-sellers “did well” for a while. But the “swags” who, according to my informant, at first supplied belts of patent horse-leather, came to substitute patent sheep-leather for them, which were softer, and looked as well. The consequence was, that whenever the sheep-leather belts were wet, or when there was any “pull” upon them, they stretched, and “the polish went to cracks.” After having been wet a few times, too, they were easily torn, and so the street trade became distrusted. It was the same with trowser-straps.
The belt trade is now almost extinct in the streets, and the strap trade, which was chiefly in the hands of old and infirm, and young people, is now confined to the sellers of dog-collars, &c. The trowser-straps are not glazed or patent-leather, now, but “plain calf;” sold at 2d. a pair generally, and bought at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 4d. the dozen pairs. Many readers will remember how often they used to hear the cry, “Three pair for sixpence! Three pair for sixpence!” A cry now, I believe, never heard.
Among the belt and strap-sellers were some blind persons. One man counted to me three blind men whom he knew selling them, and one sells them still, attached to the rails by St. Botolph’s church, Bishopsgate.