One feeble old man gave me the following account of his customers. He had been in the employ of market-gardeners, carmen, and others, whose business necessitated the use of carts and horses. In his old age he was unable to do any hard work; he was assisted, however, by his family, especially by one son living in the country; he had a room in the house of a daughter, who was a widow, but his children were only working people, with families, he said, and so he sold a few lucifers “as a help,” and to have the comfort of a bit of tobacco, and buy an old thing in the way of clothing without troubling any one. Out of his earnings, too, he paid 6d. a week for the schooling of one of his daughter’s children.
“I sell these lucifers, sir,” he said, in answer to my inquiries, “I never beg with them: I’d scorn it. My children help me, as I’ve told you; I did my best for them when I was able, and so I have a just sort of claim on them. Well, indeed, then, sir, as you ask me, if I had only myself to depend upon, why I couldn’t live. I must beg or go into the house, and I don’t know which I should take to worst at 72. I’ve been selling lucifers about five years, for I was worn out with hard work and rheumatics when I was 65 or 66. I go regular rounds, about 2 miles in a day, or 2½, or if it’s fine 3 miles or more from where I live, and the same distance back, for I can sometimes walk middling if I can do nothing else. I carry my boxes tied up in a handkerchief, and hold 2 or 3 in my hand. I’m ashamed to hold them out on any rail where I aint known; and never do if there isn’t a good-humoured looking person to be seen below, or through the kitchen window. But my eyesight aint good, and I make mistakes, and get snapped up very short at times. Yesterday, now, I was lucky in my small way. There’s a gentleman, that if I can see him, I can always sell boxes to at 1d. a piece. That’s his price, he says, and he takes no change if I offer it. I saw him yesterday at his own door, and says he, ‘Well, old greybeard, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Here’s 1s., leave a dozen boxes.’ I told him I had only 11 left; but he said, ‘O, it’s all the same,’ and he told a boy that was crossing the hall to take them into the kitchen, and we soon could hear the housekeeper grumbling quite loud—perhaps she didn’t know her master could hear—about being bothered with rubbish that people took in master with; and the gentleman shouts out, ‘Some of you stop that old —— mouth, will you? She wants a profit out of them in her bills.’ All was quiet then, and he says to me quite friendly, ‘If she wasn’t the best cook in London I’d have quitted her long since, by G—.’” The old man chuckled no little as he related this; he then went on, “He’s a swearing man, but a good man, I’m sure, and I don’t know why he’s so kind to me. Perhaps he is to others. I’m ashamed to hold my boxes to the ary rails, ’cause so many does that to beg. I sell lucifers both to mistresses and maids. Some will have 3 for a 1d., and though it’s a poor profit, I do it, for they say, ‘O, if you come this way constant, we’ll buy of you whenever we want. If you won’t give 3 a penny, there’s plenty will.’ I sell, too, in some small streets, Lisson-grove way, to women that see me from their windows, and come down to the door. They’re needle-workers I think. They say sometimes, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, for it saves me the trouble of running out.’
THE LUCIFER MATCH GIRL.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
“Well, sir, I’m sure I hardly know how many boxes I sell. On a middling good day I sell 2 dozen, on a good day 3 dozen, on a bad day not a dozen, sometimes not half-a-dozen, and sometimes, but not often, not more than a couple. Then in bad weather I don’t go out, and time hangs very heavy if it isn’t a Monday; for every Monday I buy a threepenny paper of a newsman for 2d., and read it as well as I can with my old eyes and glasses, and get my daughter to read a bit to me in the evening, and next day I send the paper to my son in the country, and so save him buying one. As well as I can tell I sell about 9 dozen boxes a week, one week with another, and clear from 2s. to 2s. 6d. It’s employment for me as well as a help.”
It is not easy to estimate the precise number of persons who really sell lucifer matches as a means of subsistence, or as a principal means. There are many, especially girls and women, the majority being Irishwomen, who do not directly solicit charity, and do not even say, “Buy a box of lucifers from a poor creature, to get her a ha’porth of bread;” or, “please a bit of broken victuals, if it’s only cold potatoes, for a box of the best lucifers.” Yet these match-sellers look so imploringly down an area, or through a window, some “shouldering” a young child the while, and remain there so pertinaciously that a box is bought, or a halfpenny given, often merely to get rid of the applicant.
An intelligent man, a street-seller, and familiar with street-trading generally, whom I questioned on the subject, said: “It’s really hard to tell, sir, but I should calculate this way. It’s the real sellers you ask about; them as tries to live on their selling lucifers, or as their main support. I have worked London and the outside places—yes, I mean the suburbs—in ten rounds, or districts, but six is better, for you can then go the same round the same day next week, and so get known. The real sellers, in my opinion, is old men and women out of employ, or past work, and to beg they are ashamed. I’ve read the Bible you see, sir, though I’ve had too much to do with gay persons even to go to church. I should say that in each of those ten rounds, or at any rate, splicing one with another, was twenty persons really selling lucifers. Yes, and depending a good deal upon them, for they’re an easy carriage for an infirm body, and as ready a sale as most things. I don’t reckon them as begs, or whines, or sticks to a house for an hour, but them as sells; in my opinion, they’re 200, and no more. All the others dodges, in one way or other, on pity and charity. There’s one lurk that’s getting common now. A man well dressed, and very clean, and wearing gloves, knocks at a door, and asks to speak to the master or mistress. If he succeeds, he looks about him as if he was ashamed, and then he pulls out of his coat-pocket a lucifer box or two, and asks, as a favour, to be allowed to sell one, as reduced circumstances drive him to do so. He doesn’t beg, but I don’t reckon him a seller, for he has always some story or other to tell, that’s all a fakement.” Most dwellers in a suburb will have met with one of these well-dressed match-sellers.
Adopting my informant’s calculation, and supposing that each of these traders take, on lucifers alone, but 4s. weekly, selling nine dozen (with a profit to the seller of from 1s. 9d. to 2s. 6d.), we find 2080l. expended in this way. The matches are sold also at stalls, with other articles, in the street markets, and elsewhere; but this traffic, I am told, becomes smaller, and only amounts to one-tenth of the amount I have specified as taken by itinerants. These street-sellers reside in all parts of town which I have before specified as the quarters of the poor.