Some of the fly-paper sellers make their stock-in-trade, but three-fourths of the number buy them ready-made. The street-sellers make them of old newspapers or other waste-paper, no matter how dirty. To the paper they apply turpentine and common coach varnish, some using resin instead of varnish, and occasionally they dash a few grains of sugar over the composition when spread upon the paper.
Last summer, I was informed, there were fifty or sixty persons selling fly-papers and beetle wafers in the streets; some of them boys, and all of them of the general class of street-sellers, who “take” to any trade for which 1s. suffices as capital. Their average earnings may be estimated at 2s. 6d. a day, about one-half being profit. This gives a street outlay, say for a “season” of ten weeks, of 375l., calculating fifty sellers.
A few of these street traders carried a side of a newspaper, black with flies, attached to a stick, waving it like a flag. The cries were “Catch ’em alive! Catch ’em alive for ½d.!” “New method of destroying thousands!”
Of the Street-Sellers of Miscellaneous Manufactured Articles.
In addition to the more staple wares which form the street trade in manufactured articles of a miscellaneous character, are many, as I said before, which have been popular for a while and are now entirely disused. In the course of my inquiry it was remarkable how oblivious I found many of the street-sellers as to what they had sold at various periods. “O dear, yes sir, I’ve sold all sorts of things in the streets besides what I’m on now; first one and then another as promised a few pence,” was the substance of a remark I frequently heard; but what was meant by the one and the other thing thus sold they had a difficulty to call to mind, but on a hint being thrown out they could usually give the necessary details. From the information I acquired I select the following curious matter.
Six or seven years ago Galvanic Rings were sold extensively by the street-folk. These were clumsy lead-coloured things, which were described by the puffing shop-keepers, and in due course by the street-sellers, as a perfect amulet; a thing which by its mere contact with the finger would not only cure but prevent “fits, rheumatics, and cramps.” On my asking a man who had sold them if these were all the ailments of which he and the others proclaimed the galvanic rings an infallible cure, he answered: “Like the quack medicines you read about, sir, in ’vertisements, we said they was good for anything anybody complained of or was afraid was coming on them, but we went mostly for rheumatics. A sight of tin some of the shopkeepers must have made, for what we sold at 1d. they got 6d. a piece for. Then for gold galvanics—and I’ve been told they was gilt—they had 10s. 6d. each. The streets is nothing to the shops on a dodge. I’ve been told by people as I’d sold galvanics to, that they’d had benefit from them. I suppose that was just superstitious. I think Hyams did the most of any house in galvanics.”
The men selling these rings—for the business was carried on almost entirely by men—were the regular street-traders, who sell “first one thing and then another.” They were carried in boxes, as I have shown medals are now, and they generally formed a portion of the street-jeweller’s stock, whether he were itinerant or stationary. The purchasers were labourers in the open air, such as those employed about buildings, whose exposure to the alternations of heat and cold render them desirous of a cure for, or preventive against rheumatism. The costermongers were also purchasers, and in the course of my inquiries among that numerous body, I occasionally saw a galvanic ring still worn by a few, and those chiefly, I think, fish-sellers.
Nor was the street or shop trade in these galvanic rings confined to amulets for the finger. I heard of one elderly woman, then a prosperous street-seller in the New Cut, who slept with a galvanic ring on every toe, she suffered so much from cramp and rheumatism! There were also galvanic shields, which were to be tied round the waist, and warranted “to cure all over.” They were retailed at 6d. each. Galvanic earrings were likewise a portion of this manufacture. They were not “drops” from the ear, but filled behind and around it as regards the back of the skull, and were to avert rheumatic attacks, and even aching from the head. The street price was 1s. the pair. Galvanic bracelets, handsomely gilt, were 2s. 6d. the pair. But the sale of all these higher-priced charms was a mere nonentity compared to that of the penny rings.
Another trade—if it may be classed under this head—carried on by great numbers and with great success for a while, was that of cards with the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a sixpence. This was an engraving—now and then offered in the streets still—strictly fulfilling the announcement as to the compass in which the Prayer was contained, with the addition of a drawing of the Bible, as part of the engraving, “within the sixpence.” This trade was at first, I am told, chiefly in the hands of the patterers: “Grand novelty!” they said; “splendid engraving! The Lord’s Prayer, with a beautiful picture of the Bible, all legible to the naked eye, in the compass of a sixpence. Five hundred letters, all clear, on a sixpence.” One man said to me: “I knew very well there wasn’t 500, but it was a neat number to cry. A schoolmaster said to me once—‘Why, there isn’t above half that number of letters.’ He was wrong though; for I believe there’s 280.” This card was published six or seven years ago, and the success attending the sale of the Lord’s Prayer, led to the publication of the Belief in the same form. “When the trade was new,” said one man, “I could sell a gross in a day without any very great trouble; but in a little time there was hundreds in the trade, and one might patter hard to sell four dozen.”
The wholesale price was 8s. the gross, and as thirteen cards went to the dozen, the day’s profit when a gross was sold was 5s. When the sale did not extend to beyond four dozen the profit was 1s. 8d. A few cards “in letters of gold” were vended in the streets at 6d. each. They had large margins and presented a handsome appearance. The wholesale price was 3s. 6d. the dozen.