Among such matters of street-trade are the elastic toys called “gutta-percha heads;” these, however, have no gutta-percha in their composition, but consist solely of a composition made of glue and treacle—the same as is used for printer’s rollers. The heads are small coloured models of the human face, usually with projecting nose and chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit of being squeezed into a different form of features, their elasticity causing them to return to the original caste. The trade carried on in the streets in these toys was at one time extensive, but it seems now to be gradually disappearing. On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there was not one “head” exposed for sale in any of the four great street markets of Leather-lane, the Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the Hampstead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.
The trade became established in the streets upwards of two years ago. At first, I am told by a street-seller, himself one of the first, there were six “head-sellers,” who “worked” the parks and their vicinity. My informant one day sold a gross of heads in and about Hyde-park, and a more fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1½ gross. The heads were recommended, whenever opportunity offered, by a little patter. “Here,” one man used to say, “here’s the Duke of Wellington’s head for 1d. It’s modelled from the statty on horseback, but is a improvement. His nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel’s only 1d. Anybody you please is 1d.; a free choice and no favour. The Queen and all the Royal Family 1d. apiece.” As the street-seller offered to dispose of the model of any eminent man’s head and face, he held up some one of the most grotesque of the number. Another man one Saturday evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers and others in the street markets “pattering” them off as the likenesses of any policeman who might be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was when the trade was new. The number of sellers was a dozen in the second week; it was soon twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of the heads; besides these the heads were offered to the street-buying public by many of the stationary street-folk, whose stock partook of a miscellaneous character. The men carrying on this traffic were of the class of general street-sellers.
“The trade was spoiled, sir,” said an informant, “by so many going into it, but I’ve heard that it’s not bad in parts of the country now. The sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and Sundays was the best days. I don’t pretend to be learned about religion, but I know that many a time after I’d earned next to nothing in a wet week, it came a fine Sunday morning, and I took as much as got me and my wife and children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and sometimes, when we could depend on it, smoking hot from the baker’s oven; and I then felt I had something to thank God for. You see, sir, when a man’s been out all the week, and often with nothing to call half a dinner, and his wife’s earnings only a few pence by sewing at home, with three young children to take care of, you’re nourished and comforted, and your strength keeps up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in your own room. But them as eats their dinner without having to earn it, can’t understand about that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped, the police drive us about like dogs, not gentlemen’s dogs, but stray or mad dogs. And it seems there’s some sort of a new police. I can’t understand a bit of it, and I don’t want to, for the old police is trouble enough.”
The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the “English and German” swag-shops. A few are made by the men who sell them in the streets. The “swag” price is 1s. the gross; at one time the swag man demurred to sell less than half a gross, but now when the demand is diminished, a dozen is readily supplied for 8d. The street price retail, is and always was 1d. a head. The principal purchasers in the street are boys and young men, with a few tradesmen or working people, “such as can afford a penny or two,” who buy the “gutta-percha” heads for their children. There used to be a tolerable trade in public houses, where persons enjoying themselves bought them “for a lark,” but this trade has now dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the “larks,” an informant knew to be practised, was to attach the head to a piece of paper or card, write upon it some one’s name, make it up into a parcel, and send it to the flattered individual. The same man had sold heads to young women, not servant-maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid employment, and he believed, from their manner when buying, for some similar purpose of “larking.” When the heads were a novelty, he sold a good many to women of the town.
There are now no street-folks who depend upon the sale of these gutta-percha heads, but they sell them occasionally. The usual mode is to display them on a tray, and now, generally with other things. One man showed me his box, which, when the lid was raised, he carried as a tray slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-percha heads, exhibition medals, and rings and other penny articles of jewellery.
There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons selling gutta-percha heads in the streets, some of them confining their business solely to those articles. In this number, however, I do not include those who are both makers and sellers. Their average receipts, I am assured, do not exceed 5s. a week each, for, though some may take 15s. a week, others, and generally the stationary head-sellers, do not take 1s. The profit to the street retailer is one third of his receipts. From this calculation it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue, 390l. is spent yearly in these street toys. At one time it was far more than twice the amount.
Of the Street-Sellers of Fly-Papers and Beetle-Wafers.
Fly-Papers came, generally, into street-traffic, I am informed, in the summer of 1848.
The fly-papers are sold wholesale at many of the oil-shops, but the principal shop for the supply of the street-traders is in Whitechapel. The wholesale price is 2¼d. a dozen, and the (street) retail charge ½d. a paper, or three 1d. A young man, to whom I was referred, and whom I found selling, or rather bartering, crockery, gave me the following account of his experience of the fly-paper trade. He was a rosy-cheeked, strong-built young fellow, and said he thought he was “getting on” in his present trade. He spoke merrily of his troubles, as I have found common among his class, when they are over.
“My father had a milk-walk,” he said, “and when he died I was without money and had nothing to do, but I soon got a place with a single gentleman. He had a small house, and kept only me and a old housekeeper. I was to make myself generally useful, but when I first went, the most I had to do was to look after a horse that master had. Master never was on horseback in his life, but he took Skipjack—that was the horse’s name, he was rising six—for a debt, and kept him two months, till he could sell him to his mind. Master took a largeish garden—for he was fond of growing flowers and vegetables, and made presents of them—just before poor Skipjack went, and I was set to work in it, besides do my house-work. It was a easy place, and I was wery comfable. But master, who was a good master and a friend to a poor man, as I know, got into difficulties; he was something in the City; I never understood what; and one night, when I’d been above a year and a-half with him, he told me I must go, for he couldn’t afford to keep me any longer. Next day he was arrested, quite sudden I believe, and sent to prison for debt. I had a good character, but nobody cared for one from a man in prison, and in a month my money was out, and my last 3s. 6d. went for an advertisement, what was no good to me. I then took to holding horses or anything that way, and used to sleep in the parks or by the road-sides where it was quiet. I did that for a month and more. I’ve sometimes never tasted food all day, and used to quench myself (so he worded it) with cold water from the pumps. It took off the hunger for a time. I got to know other boys that was living as I was, and when I could afford it I slept at lodging-houses, the boys took me to or told me about. One evening a gentleman gave me 1s. for catching his horse that he’d left standing, but it had got frightened, and run off. Next morning I went into the fly-paper trade,—it’s nearly two years ago, I think—because a boy I slept with did tidy in it. We bought the papers at the first shop as was open, and then got leave of the deputy of the lodging-house to catch all the flies we could, and we stuck them thick on the paper, and fastened the paper to our hats. I used to think, when I was in service, how a smart livery hat, with a cockade to it, would look, but instead of that I turned out, the first time in my life that ever I sold anything, with my hat stuck round with flies. I felt so ashamed I could have cried. I was miserable, I felt so awkerd. But I spent my last 2d. in some gin and milk to give me courage, and that brightened me up a bit, and I set to work. I went Mile-end way, and got out of the main streets, and I suppose I’d gone into streets and places where there hadn’t often been fly-papers before, and I soon had a lot of boys following me, and I felt, almost, as if I’d picked a pocket, or done something to be ’shamed of. I could hardly cry ‘Catch ’em alive, only a halfpenny!’ But I found I could sell my papers to public-houses and shopkeepers, such as grocers and confectioners, and that gave me pluck. The boys caught flies, and then came up to me, and threw them against my hat, and if they stuck the lads set up a shout. I stuck to the trade, however, and took 2s. 6d. to 3s. every day that week, more than half of it profit, and on Saturday I took 5s. 6d. The trade is all to housekeepers. I called at open shops and looked up at the windows, or held up my hat at private houses, and was sometimes beckoned to go in and sell my papers. Women bought most, I think. ‘Nasty things,’ they used to say, ‘there’s no keeping nothing clean for them.’ I stuck to the trade for near two months, and then I was worth 13s. 6d., and had got a pair of good shoes, and a good second-hand shirt, with one to change it; and next I did a little in tins and hardware, at the places where I used to go my fly rounds, and in the winter I got into the crock-trade, with another young fellow for a mate, and I’m in it yet, and getting a tidy connection, I think.”