Most of these traders sell tapes and other articles as well as laces. The tapes cost 3d. and 3½d. the dozen, and are sold at ½d. a knot. A dozen in 2 days is an average sale, but I have treated more expressly of those who depend principally upon boot-lace selling for their livelihood. Their average profits are about 3s. a week, on laces alone. The trade, I am told, was much more remunerative a few years back, and the decline was attributed “to so many getting into the trade, and the button boots becoming as fashionable as the Adelaides.”
Of a Blind Female Seller of “Small-Wares.”
I now give an account of the street-trade, the feelings, and the life of a poor blind woman, who may be seen nearly every fine day, selling what is technically termed “small-ware,” in Leather-lane, Holborn. The street “small-wares” are now understood to be cotton-tapes, pins, and sewing cotton; sometimes with the addition of boot and stay-laces, and shirt-buttons.
I saw the blind small-ware seller enter her own apartment, which was on the first floor of a small house in a court contiguous to her “pitch.” The entrance into the court was low and narrow; a tall man would be compelled to stoop as he entered the passage leading into the court. Here were unmistakeable signs of the poverty of the inhabitants. Soapsuds stood in the choked gutter, old clothes were hung out to dry across the court, one side being a dead wall, and the windows were patched with paper, sometimes itself patched with other paper. In front of one window, however, was a rude gate-work, behind which stood a root of lavender, and a campanula, thriving not at all, but yet, with all their dinginess, presenting a relief to the eye.
The room of the blind woman is reached by a very narrow staircase, on which two slim persons could not pass each other, and up old and worn stairs. Her apartment may be about ten feet square. The window had both small and large panes, with abundance of putty plastering. The furniture consisted of a small round deal table (on which lay the poor woman’s stock of black and white tapes, of shirt-buttons, &c.), and of four broken or patched chairs. There were a few motley-looking “pot” ornaments on the mantel-shelf, in the middle of which stood a doctor’s bottle. The bust of a female was also conspicuous, as was a tobacco-pipe. Above the mantel-piece hung some pictureless frames, while a pair of spectacles were suspended above a little looking-glass. Over a cupboard was a picture of the Ethiopian serenaders, and on the uncoloured walls were engravings of animals apparently from some work on natural history. There were two thin beds, on one of which was stowed a few costermonger’s old baskets and old clothes (women’s and boys’), as if stowed away there to make room to stir about. All the furniture was dilapidated. An iron rod for a poker, a pair of old tongs, and a sheet-iron shovel, were by the grate, in which glimmered a mere handful of fire. All showed poverty. The rent was 1s. a week (it had been 1s. 9d.), and the blind woman and a lodger (paying 6d. of the rent) slept in one bed, while a boy occupied the other. A wiry-haired dog, neither handsome nor fat, received a stranger (for the blind woman, and her guide and lodger, left their street trade at my request for their own room) with a few querulous yelps, which subsided into a sort of whining welcome to me, when the animal saw his mistress was at ease. The pleasure with which this poor woman received and returned the caresses of her dog was expressed in her face. I may add that owing to a change of street names in that neighbourhood, I had some difficulty in finding the small-ware seller, and heard her poor neighbours speak well of her as I inquired her abode; usually a good sign among the poor.
The blind tape-seller is a tall and somewhat strongly-formed woman, with a good-humoured and not a melancholy expression of face, though her manner was exceedingly quiet and subdued and her voice low. Her age is about 50. She wore, what I understand is called a “half-widow’s cap;” this was very clean, as indeed was her attire generally, though worn and old.
I have already given an account of a female small-ware seller (which account formerly appeared in one of my letters in the Morning Chronicle) strongly illustrating the vicissitudes of a street life. It was the statement, however, of one who is no longer in the streets, and the account given by the blind tape and pin seller is further interesting as furnishing other habitudes or idiosyncracies of the blind (or of an individual blind woman), in addition to those before detailed; more especially in its narrative of the feelings of a perhaps not very sensitive woman who became “dark” (as she always called it) in mature age.
“It’s five years, sir,” she said, “since I have been quite dark, but for two years before that I had lost the sight of one eye. Oh, yes, I had doctors but they couldn’t save my eyesight. I lost it after illnesses and rheumatics, and from want and being miserable. I felt very miserable when I first found myself quite dark, as if everything was lost to me. I felt as if I’d no more place in the world; but one gets reconciled to most things, thank God, in time; but I’m often low and sad now. Living poorly and having a sickly boy to care about may be one reason, as well as my blindness and being so bad off.
“I was brought up to service, and was sent before that to St. Andrew’s school. I lost my parents and friends (relatives) when I were young. I was in my first place eighteen months, and was eight or nine years in service altogether, mostly as maid of all work. I saved a little money and married. My husband was a costermonger, and we didn’t do well. Oh, dear no, sir, because he was addicted to drinking. We often suffered great pinching. I can’t say as he was unkind to me. He died nine years or more since. After that I supported myself, and two sons we had, by going out to wash and ‘chair.’ I did that when my husband was living. I had tidy work, as I ‘chaired’ and washed for one family in Clerkenwell for ten years, and might again if I wasn’t dark. My eldest son’s now a soldier and is with his regiment at Dover. He’s only eighteen, but he could get nothing to do as hard as he tried; I couldn’t help him; he knew no trade; and so he ’listed. Poor fellow! perhaps I shall never see him again. Oh, see him! That I couldn’t if he was sitting as near me as you are, sir; but perhaps I may never hear his voice again. Perhaps he’ll have to go abroad and be killed. It’s a sad thought that for a blind widow; I think of it both up and in bed. Blind people thinks a great deal, I feel they does. My youngest son—he’s now fourteen—is asthmatical; but he’s such a good lad, so easily satisfied. He likes to read if he can get hold of a penny book, and has time to read it. He’s at a paper-stainer’s and works on fancy satin paper, which is very obnicious” (the word she used twice for pernicious or obnoxious) “to such a delicate boy. He has 5s. a week, but, oh dear me, it takes all that for his bit of clothes, and soap for washing, and for shoes, and then he must carry his dinner with him every day, which I makes ready, and as he has to work hard, poor thing, he requires a little meat. I often frets about his being so weakly; often, as I stands with my tapes and pins, and thinks, and thinks. But, thank God, I can still wash for him and myself, and does so regularly. No, I can’t clean my room myself, but a poor woman who lives by selling boot-laces in the streets has lodged with me for many years, and she helps me.”
“Lives!” interrupted the poor boot-lace woman, who was present, “starves, you mean; for all yesterday I only took a farthing. But anything’s better than the house. I’ll live on 4d. a day, and pay rent and all, and starve half my time, rather nor the great house” (the Union).