London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

I specify these two commodities jointly, because they are frequently sold by the same individual. In Whitechapel and Spitalfields are eight establishments, where the street-sellers of blacking are principally supplied with their stock. It is sold in cakes, which are wrapped in a kind of oil paper, generally printed on the back, so as to catch the eye, with the address of some well-known blacking manufacturer. Thus some which a street-seller of blacking showed me were printed, in large type, as a sort of border, “Lewis’s India Rubber Blacking,” while in the middle was a very black and very predominant 30, and beneath it, in small and hardly distinguishable type, “Princess-st., Portman-market.” Any shopkeeper, who “supplies the trade,” if he be a regular customer of the manufacturer, can have his name and address printed on the cover of the blacking-cakes. The 30 is meant to catch the eye with the well-known flourish of “30, Strand.”

The quality of these cakes of blacking, the street-sellers whom I questioned told me was highly approved by their customers, and, as blacking is purchased by the classes who aim at a smartness and cleanliness above that of the purchasers of many street commodities, there is no reason to doubt the assertion. The sale of this blacking, indeed, is chiefly on a round, and it would be hopeless as to future custom to call a second time at any house where bad blacking had been sold on a previous visit. The article is vended wholesale, in “gross boxes,” and “half-gross boxes.” The half-gross boxes are 1s. 9d., and capital, even in this trifling trade, has its customary advantages, for the “gross boxes” are but 3s. It should be remembered, however, that to the buyer of two “half-gross” a couple of the plain wooden boxes, in which the blacking is sold, and often hawked, must be supplied; but to the buyer of a “gross box” only one of these cases is furnished. I may mention, to the credit of the vendors, that of the wholesale blacking makers, two have themselves been street-sellers, and one still, but only at intervals, goes “on a blacking-round” among his old customers. There are other blacking-makers, but those I have specified, as to number, are more particularly the providers for the street trade. The poor people who sell blacking at a distance from the manufacturer’s premises—as in the case of the “30, Princess-st., Portman-market”—are supplied by oilmen, chandlers, and other shopkeepers, who buy largely of the manufacturers, and can consequently supply the purchasers by the dozen, for street sale or hawking, as cheaply as they would be supplied by the manufacturer himself. A dozen is generally charged 3½d., and as the cakes are sold at ½d. each (occasionally 1d., both by the street people and more frequently the small shopkeepers) the profit is moderate enough. The cakes, however, which are regularly retailed at 1d., are larger, and cost nearly twice the amount of the others wholesale.

This trade presents the peculiarity of being almost entirely a street “door-to-door” trade, as I heard it described. Blacking is not presented for purposes of begging, as are lucifer-matches, tracts, memorandum-books, boot-laces, &c.; for the half-trading, half-begging, is carried on in the quieter parts of town, and more extensively in the suburbs, ladies being principally accosted, and to them blacking is not offered.

There are now, I learn from good authority, never fewer than 200 persons selling cake blacking, “from door to door.” More than half of them are elderly women, and more than three-fourths women of all ages and girls. The other sellers are old men and boys. None of the blacking-sellers make the article they vend. To sell eight dozen cakes a week is a full average, and of these the “pennies” and the “half-pennies” are about equally divided. This gives a weekly outlay of 6s. to each individual seller, with an average profit of about 2s. 6d., and shows a yearly street-expenditure by the public of 3120l. The profit, however, is not in equal apportionment among the traders in blacking, for the “old hands” on a regular round will do double the business of the others.

In liquid blacking the trade is now small. It is occasionally sold in the street markets on Saturday nights, but the principal traffic is in the public-houses. This kind of blacking is retailed at 2d. a bottle, and, I was informed by a man who had sold it, was “rather queer stuff.” It is labelled “equal to” (in very small letters) “Day and Martin” in very large letters. One of the manufacturers a few years ago told my informant that he had been threatened “with being sued for piracy, but it was no use sueing a mouse.” There are sometimes none, and sometimes twenty persons hawking this blacking, and they are principally, I am informed, the servants of showmen, “out of employ,” or “down on their luck.” Some of these men “raffle” their blacking in public-houses. They are provided with tickets, numbered from one to six, which are thrown, the blank sides upwards on a table, and the drawer of number six wins a two-penny bottle of blacking for ½d.; for this the raffler receives 3d. Few of these traders sell more than one dozen bottles in a day, the principal trade being in the evening, and “one-and-a-half dozen is a very good day.” The goods are carried in a sack, slung from the shoulder, and are a very heavy carriage, as two-and-a-half dozen, which are often carried, weigh about 100 lbs. If ten men, the year through, take each 6s. weekly (about half the amount being profit), which, I am assured, is the average extent of the trade, we find 156l. yearly expended in this liquid blacking. “Ten years ago,” said one blacking seller to me, “it was three times as much as it is now.” At the mews blacking is sold by men who are for the most part servants out of place, or who have become known to the denizens of the mews, from having been “helpers” in some capacity, if they have not worn a livery. Here the article vended is what it is announced to be,—“Hoby’s” or “Everett’s” blacking. The sellers are known to the coachmen and grooms, many of whom have to “find their own blacking,” or there would be no business done in the mews, the dwellers there being great sticklers for “a good article.” The profit to the vendors is 3s. in 12s. Shilling bottles are vended as numerously as “sixpennies.” An old coachman, who had lived in mews in all parts of town, calculated that, take the year through, there was every day twenty men selling blacking in the mews, with an average profit of 10d. a day, or 5s. a week, so taking 15s. each. This gives a mews expenditure, yearly, of 780l.

Black-Lead, for the polishing of grates, is sold in small paper packets, the half ounce being a ½d., and the ounce a 1d. The profit is cent. per cent. Nearly all the women who sell blacking, as I have described, sell black-lead also. In addition to these elderly traders, however, there are from twenty to thirty boys and girls who vend black-lead in the street markets, but chiefly on Saturday nights, and on other days offer it through the area rails—their wretched plight, without any actual begging, occasionally procuring them custom.

The black-lead sold in the streets has often a label in imitation of that of established shop-keepers, as “Superfine Pencil Black-Lead, prepared expressly for, and sold by T. H. Jennings, Oil-Colour and Italian Warehouse, 25, Wormwood-street, City.” The name and address must of course be different, but the arrangement of the lines, and often the type, is followed closely, as are the adornments of the packet, which in the instance cited are heraldic. In other parts of town, the labels of tradesmen are imitated in a similar way, but not very closely; and in nearly half the quantity sold a bonâ fide label is given, without imitation or sham. “There would be more sold in that way,” I was told by a sharp lad, “quite the real ticket, if the dons as wholesales the black-lead, would make it up to sell in ha’porths and penn’orths, with a proper ’lowance to us as sells.” This boy and a young sister went on a round; the boy with black-lead, the girl with boot-laces, in one direction, the mother going in another, and each making for their room at six in the evening, or as soon as “sold out.”

There are, I am informed, 100 to 150 persons selling and hawking black-lead in the streets, and it may be estimated that they take 4s. each weekly (the adults selling other small articles with the black-lead); thus we find, averaging the number of sellers at 125, that 1,300l. is yearly expended in this article, half of which sum forms the profit of the street-folk.

Of the Street-Sellers of French Polish.

The greater part of the French polish vended in the streets is bought at oil and varnish-shops in Bethnal-green and Whitechapel, the wholesale price being 1s. a pint. The street-vendors add turpentine to the polish, put it into small bottles, and retail it at 1d. a bottle. They thus contrive to clear 5d. on each shilling they take.