THE STREET-SELLER OF GREASE-REMOVING COMPOSITION, etc.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
One practice—less common than it was, however,—of the corn-salve street-seller, is to get a friend to post a letter—expressive of delighted astonishment at the excellence and rapidity of the corn-cure—at some post-office not very contiguous. If the salve-seller be anxious to remove the corns of the citizens, he displays this letter, with the genuine post-mark of Piccadilly, St. James’s-street, Pall-mall, or any such quarter, to show how the fashionable world avails itself of his wares, cheap as they are, and fastidious as are the fashionable! If the street-professional be offering his corn-cures in a fashionable locality, he produces a letter from Cheapside, or Cornhill—“there it is, it speaks for itself”—to show how the shrewd city-people, who were never taken in by street-sellers in their lives, and couldn’t be, appreciated that particular corn-salve! Occasionally, as the salve-seller is pattering, a man comes impetuously forward, and says loudly, “Here, doctor, let me have a shilling’s-worth. I bought a penn’orth, and it cured one corn by bringing it right out—here the d——d thing is, it troubled me seven year—and I’ve got other corns, and I’m determined I’ll root out the whole family of them. Come, now, look sharp, and put up a shilling’s-worth.” The shilling’s-worth is gravely handed to the applicant as if it were not only a boná fide, but an ordinary occurrence in the way of business.
One corn-salve seller—who was not in town at the time of my inquiry into this curious matter—had, I was assured, “and others might have” full faith in the efficacy of the salve he vended. One of his fellow-traders said to me, “Ay, sir, and he has good reason for trusting to it for a cure; he cured me of my corns, that I’m sure of; so there can be no nonsense about it. He has a secret.” On my asking this informant if he had tried his own corn-salve, he laughed, and said “No! I’m like the regular doctors that way, never tries my own things.” The same man, who had no great faith in what he sold being of any use in the cure of “corn, wart, or bunion,” assured me—and I have no doubt with truth—that he had sold his remedy to persons utter strangers to him, who had told him afterwards that it had cured their corns. “False relics,” says a Spanish proverb, “have wrought true miracles,” and to what cause these corn-cures were attributable, it is not my business to inquire.
I had no difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the ingredients of a street corn-salve. “Anybody,” said one man, “that understands how to set about it, can get the recipe for 2d.” Resin, 1 lb., (costing 2d.); tallow, ¼ lb. (1½d.); emerald green (1d.); all boiled together. The emerald green, I was told, was to “give it a colour.” The colour is varied, but I have cited the most usual mode of preparation. Attempts have been made to give an aromatic odour to the salve, but all the perfumes within the knowledge, or rather the means, of the street-sellers, were overpowered by the resin and the tallow, “and it has,” remarked one dealer, “a physicky sort of smell as it is, which answers.” The quantity I have cited would supply a sufficiency of the composition for the taking of “a sovereign in penn’orths.” In a week or so the stuff becomes discoloured, often from dust, and has to be re-boiled. Some of the traders illustrate the mode of applying the salve by carrying a lighted candle, and a few pieces of leather, and showing how to soften the composition and spread it on the leather. “After all, sir,” said the man, who had faith in the virtues of his fellow street-trader’s salve, “the regular thing, such as I sell, may do good; I cannot say; but it is very likely that the resin will draw the corn, just as people apply cobbler’s wax, which has resin in it. The chemists will sell you something of the same sort as I do.”
The principal purchasers are working men, who buy in the streets, and occasionally in the public-houses. The trade, however, becomes less and less remunerative. To take 15s. in a week is a good week, and to take 10s. is more usual; the higher receipt is no doubt attributable to a superior patter being used, as men will give 1d. to be amused by this street work, without caring about the nostrum. Calculating that eight of these traders take 10s. weekly—so allowing for the frequent resort of the patterers to anything more attractive—we find 208l. expended in the streets on this salve. The profits of the seller are about the same as his receipts, for 240 pennyworths can be made out of materials costing only 4½d. The further outlay necessary to this street profession is a tray worth 1s. or 1s. 6d., but a large old backgammon board, which may be bought at the second-hand shops for 1s. and sometimes for 6d., is more frequently used by the street purveyors of corn-salve.
Of the Street-Sellers of Glass and China Cement, and of Razor Paste.
The sale of glass and china cement is an old trade in the streets, but one which becomes less and less followed. Before the finer articles of crockeryware became cheap as they are now, it was of importance to mend, if possible, a broken dish of better quality, and of more importance to mend a china punch-bowl. Dishes, however, are now much cheaper, and china punch-bowls are no longer an indispensable part of even tavern festivity.
The sellers of this cement proclaim it as one which will “cure any china, stone, or earthenware, and make the broken parts adhere so firmly, that if you let it fall again, it will break, not at the part where it has been cemented, but at some other. Only a halfpenny, or a penny a stick.” These traders sometimes illustrate the adhesive strength of the composition by producing a plate or dish which has been cemented in different places, and letting it fall, to break in some hitherto sound part. This they usually succeed in doing. For the cementing of glass the street article is now perhaps never sold, and was but scantily sold, I am informed, at any time, as the junction was always unsightly.
There are now four men who sell this cement in the streets, one usually to be found in Wilderness-row, Goswell-street, being, perhaps, the one who carries on the trade most regularly. They all make their own cement; one of the receipts being—1 lb. shellac (5d.), ¼ lb. brimstone (½d.), blended together until it forms a thick sort of glue. This quantity makes half-a-crown’s-worth of the cement for the purposes of retail. The sellers do not confine themselves to one locality, but are usually to be found in one or other of the street-markets on a Saturday night. If each seller take 5s. weekly (of which 4s. may be profit), we find 52l. expended yearly by street customers in this cement.