When this trade was at its height, there were, I am told, from 500 to 700 men, women and children engaged in it; selling the cards both with and without other articles. The cards had also a very extensive sale in the country.
Pen-holders with glass or china handles are another commodity which appeared suddenly, about six months ago, in street commerce, and at once became the staple of a considerable traffic. These pens are eight or nine inches long, the “body,” so to speak, being of solid round glass, of almost all colours, green, blue, and black predominating, with a seal (lacquered white or yellow) at the top, and a holder of the usual kind, with a steel pen at the bottom. Some are made of white pot and called “China pens,” and of these some are ornamented with small paintings of flowers and leaves. These wares are German, and were first charged 9s. 6d. the gross, without pens, which were an additional 3d. at the swag-shops. The price is now 5s. the gross, the pens being the same. The street-sellers who were fortunate enough to “get a good start” with these articles did exceedingly well. The pen-holders, when new, are handsome-looking, and at 1d. each were cheap; some few were at first retailed at 2d. One man, I am told, sold two-and-a-half gross in one day in the neighbourhood of the Bank, purchasers not seldom taking a dozen or more. As the demand continued, some men connected with the supply of goods for street sale, purchased all the stock in the swag-shops, expending about 170l., and at once raised the price to 10s. 6d. the gross. This amount the poorer street-sellers demurred to give, as they could rarely obtain a higher price than 1d. each, and 2d. for the ornamented holders, but the street-stationers (who bought, however, very sparingly) and the small shopkeepers gave the advance “as they found the glass-holders asked for.” On the whole, I am told, this forestalling was not very profitable to the speculators, as when fresh supplies were received at the “swags,” the price fell.
At first this street business was carried on by men, but it was soon resorted to by numbers of poor women and children. One gentleman informed me that in consequence of reading “London Labour and the London Poor,” he usually had a little talk with the street-sellers of whom he purchased any trifle; he bought these pen-holders of ten or twelve different women and girls; all of them could answer correctly his inquiry as to the uses of the pens; but only one girl, of fifteen or sixteen, and she hesitatingly, ventured to assert that she could write her own name with the pen she offered for sale. The street-trade still continues, but instead of being in the hands of 400 individuals—as it was, at the very least, I am assured, at one period—there are now only about fifty carrying it on itinerantly, while with the “pitched” sales-people, the glass-holders are merely a portion of the stock, and with the itinerants ten dozen a week (a receipt of 10s., and a profit of 4s. 9d.) is now an average sale. The former glass-holder sellers of the poorer sort are now vending oranges.
Shirt Buttons form another of the articles—(generally either “useful things” or with such recommendation to street-buyers as the galvanic amulets possessed)—which every now and then are disposed of in great quantities in the streets. If an attempt be made by a manufacturer to establish a cheaper shirt button, for instance, of horn, or pot, or glass, and if it prove unsuccessful, or if an improvement be effected and the old stock becomes a sort of dead stock, the superseded goods have to be disposed of, and I am informed by a person familiar with those establishments, that the swag-shopkeepers can always find customers, “for anything likely,” with the indispensable proviso that it be cheap. In this way shirt buttons have lately been sold in the streets, not only by the vendors of small wares in their regular trade, but by men, lads, and girls, some of the males shirtless themselves, who sell them solely, with a continuous and monotonous cry of “Halfpenny a dozen; halfpenny a dozen.” The wholesale price of the last “street lot,” was 3d. the gross, or ¼d. the dozen. To clear 6d. a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4d.
Of the Street-Sellers of Walking-Sticks.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street, Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade. There is nothing in which people are so particular. The stick’s sure to be either too short or too long, or too thick or too thin, or too limp or too stiff. You would think it was a simple thing for a man to choose a stick out of a lot, but if you were with me a selling on a fine Sunday at Battersea Fields, you’d see it wasn’t. O, it’s a tiresome job.”
The trade is a summer and a Sunday trade. The best localities are the several parks, and the approaches to them, Greenwich-park included; Hampstead Heath, Kennington Common, and, indeed, wherever persons congregate for pedestrian purposes, Battersea Fields being, perhaps, the place where the greatest Sunday trade is carried on. Some of the greater thoroughfares too, such as Oxford-street and the City-road, are a good deal frequented by the stick-sellers.
This trade—like others where the article sold is not of general consumption or primary usefulness—affords, what I once heard a street-seller call, “a good range.” There is no generally recognised price or value, so that a smart trader in sticks can apportion his offers, or his charges, to what he may think to be the extent of endurance in a customer. What might be 2d. to a man who “looked knowing,” might be 6d. to a man who “looked green.” The common sticks, which are the “cripples,” I was told, of all the sorts of sticks (the spoiled or inferior sticks) mixed with “common pines,” are 15d. the dozen. From this price there is a gradual scale up to 8s. the dozen for “good polished;” beyond that price the street-seller rarely ventures, and seldom buys even at that (for street-trade) high rate, as fourpenny and sixpenny sticks go off the best; these saleable sticks are generally polished hazel or pine. “I’ve sold to all sorts of people, sir,” said a stick-seller. “I once had some very pretty sticks, very cheap, only 2d. a piece, and I sold a good many to boys. They bought them, I suppose, to look like men, and daren’t carry them home; for I once saw a boy I’d sold a stick to, break it and throw it away just before he knocked at the door of a respectable house one Sunday evening. I’ve sold shilling sticks to gentlemen, sometimes, that had lost or broken or forgot their own. Canes there’s nothing done in now in the streets; nor in ‘vines,’ which is the little switchy things that used to be a sort of a plaything. There’s only one stick-man in the streets, as far as I know, I think—that has what you may call a capital in sticks. Only the other day I saw him sell a registered stick near Charing-cross. It was a beauty. A Bath cane, with a splendid ivory head, and a compass let into the ivory. The head screwed off, and beneath was a map of London and a Guide to the Great Exhibition. O, but he has a beautiful stock, and aint he aristocratic! ‘Ash twigs,’ with the light-coloured bark on them, not polished, but just trimmed, was a very good sale, but they’re not now. Why, as to what I take, it’s such a uncertain trade that it’s hard to say. Some days I haven’t taken 6d., and the most money I ever took was one Derby day at Epsom—I wish there was more Derby days, for poor people’s sakes—and then I took 30s. The most money as ever I took in London was 14s.—one Sunday, in Battersea Fields, when I had a prime cheap stock of bamboos. When I keep entirely to the stick trade, and during the summer, I may take 35s. in a week, with a profit of 15s.”
The street stick-sellers are, I am assured, sometimes about 200 in number, on a fine Sunday in the summer. Of these, some are dock-labourers, who thus add to their daily earnings by a seventh day’s labour; others, and a smarter class, are the “supers” (supernumeraries) of theatres, who also eke out their pittance by Sunday toil; porters, irregularly employed, and consequently “hard pushed to live,” also sell walking-sticks on the Sundays; as do others who “cannot afford”—as a well-educated man, a patterer on paper, once said to me—“to lose a day if they were d——d for it.” The usual mode of this street-trade is to carry the bundle of sticks strapped together, under the arm, and deposit the ends on the ground when a sale is to be effected. A few, however, and principally Jews, have “stands,” with the walking-sticks inclosed in a sort of frame. On the Mondays there are not above a third of the number of stick-sellers there are on the Sundays; and on the other days of the week not above a seventh, or an eighth. Calculating that for 12 weeks of the year there are every day 35 stick-sellers, each taking, on an average, 30s. a week (with a profit, individually, of about 12s.), we find 630l. expended in walking-sticks in the streets.
On clear winter days a stick-seller occasionally plies his trade, but on frosty days they are occupied in letting out skates in the parks, or wherever ponds are frozen.