Of the Street-Sellers of Whips, etc.
These traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If one be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher’s cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort.
The commonest of the whips sold to cart-drivers is sometimes represented as whalebone covered with gut; but the whalebone is a stick, and the flexible part is a piece of leather, while the gut is a sort of canvas, made to resemble the worked gut of the better sort of whips, and is pasted to the stock; the thong—which in the common sort is called “four strands,” or plaits—being attached to the flexible part. Some of these whips are old stocks recovered, and many are sad rubbish; but for any deceit the street-seller can hardly be considered responsible, as he always purchases at the shop of a wholesale whipmaker, who is in some cases a retailer at the same price and under the same representations as the street-seller. The retail price is 1s. each; the wholesale, 8s. and 9s. a dozen. Some of the street whip-sellers represent themselves as the makers, but the whips are almost all made in Birmingham and Walsall.
THE STREET-SELLER OF WALKING-STICKS.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
Of these traders very few are the ordinary street-sellers. Most of them have been in some way or other connected with the care of horses, and some were described to me as “beaten-out countrymen,” who had come up to town in the hope of obtaining employment, and had failed. One man, of the last-mentioned class, told me that he had come to London from a village in Cambridgeshire, bringing with him testimonials of good character, and some letters from parties whose recommendation he expected would be serviceable to him; but he had in vain endeavoured for some months to obtain work with a carrier, omnibus proprietor, or job-master, either as driver or in charge of horses. His prospects thus failing him, he was now selling whips to earn his livelihood. A friend advised him to do this, as better than starving, and as being a trade that he understood:—
“I often thought I’d be forced to go back home, sir,” he said, “and I’d have been ashamed to do ’t, for I would come to try my luck in London, and would leave a place I had. All my friends—and they’re not badly off—tried to ’suade me to stop at home another year or two, but come I would, as if I must and couldn’t help it. I brought good clothes with me, and they’re a’most all gone; and I’d be ashamed to go back so shabby, like the prodigal’s son; you know, sir. I’ll have another try yet, for I get on to a cab next Monday, with a very respectable cab-master. As I’ve only myself, I know I can do. I was on one, but not with the same master, after I’d been six weeks here; but in two days I was forced to give it up, for I didn’t know my way enough, and I didn’t know the distances, and couldn’t make the money I paid for my cab. If I asked another cabman, he was as likely to tell me wrong as right. Then the fares used to be shouting out, ‘I say, cabby, where the h—— are you going? I told you Mark-lane, and here we are at the Minories. Drive back, sir.’ I know my way now well enough, sir. I’ve walked the streets too long not to know it. I notice them on purpose now, and know the distances. I’ve written home for a few things for my new trade, and I’m sure to get them. They don’t know I’m selling whips. There would be such a laugh against me among all t’ young fellows if they did. Me as was so sure to do well in London!
“It’s a poor trade. A carman’ll bid me 6d. for such a whip as this, which is 4s. 3d. the half dozen wholesale. ‘I have to find my own whips,’ my last customer said, ‘though I drives for a stunning grocer, and be d——d to him.’ They’re great swearers some of them. I make 7s. or 8s. in a week, for I can walk all day without tiring. I one week cleared 14s. Next week I made 3s. I have slept in cheap lodging-houses—but only in three: one was very decent, though out of the way; one was middling; and the t’other was a pig-sty. I’ve seen very poor places in the country, but nothing to it. I now pay 2s. a week for a sort of closet, with a bed in it, at the top of a house, but it’s clean and sweet; and my landlord’s a greengrocer and coal-merchant and firewood-seller;—he’s a good man—and I can always earn a little against the rent with him, by cleaning his harness, and grooming his pony—he calls it a pony, but it’s over 15 hands—and greasing his cart-wheels, and mucking out his stable, and such like. I shall live there when I’m on my cab.”