London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

There are, I am assured, 100 individuals selling little or nothing else but wash-leathers (for these traders are found in all the suburbs) in London, and that they take 10s. weekly, with a profit of from 4s. to 5s. There are, also, 100 other persons selling them occasionally, along with other goods, and as they vend the higher-priced articles, they probably receive nearly an equal amount. Hence it would appear that upwards of 5000l. is annually expended in the streets in this purchase.

Of the Street-Sellers of Spectacles and Eye-Glasses.

Twenty-five years ago the street-trade in spectacles was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews, who hawked them in their boxes of jewellery, and sold them in the streets and public-houses, carrying them in their hands, as is done still. The trade was then far more remunerative than it is at the present time to the street-folk carrying it on. “People had more money then,” one old spectacle-seller, now vending sponges, said, “and there wasn’t so many forced to take to the streets, Irish particularly, and opticians’ charges were higher than they are now, and those who wanted glasses thought they were a take-in if they wasn’t charged a fair price. O, times was very different then.”

The spectacles in the street-trade are bought at swag-shops in Houndsditch. The “common metal frames,” with or without slides, are 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. the dozen wholesale, and are retailed from 4d. to 1s. The “horn frames” are 6s. to 7s. 6d. the dozen, and are retailed from 9d. to 18d., and even 2s. The “thin steel” are from 10s. 6d. to 21s. the dozen, and are retailed from 1s. 6d. to 3s. There are higher and lower prices, but those I have cited are what are usually paid by the street-traders. The inequality of the retail prices is accounted for by there being some difference in the spectacles in a dozen, some being of a better-looking material in horn or metal; others better finished. Then there is the chance of which street-sellers are not slow to avail themselves—(“no more nor is shopkeepers,” one man said)—I mean, the chance of obtaining an enhanced price for an article, with whose precise value the buyer is unacquainted.

“The patter,” said the street-trader I have before quoted, “is nothing now, to what I’ve known it. You call it patter, but I don’t. I think it’s more in the way of persuasion, and is mostly said in public-houses, and not in the streets. Why, I’ve persuaded people, when I was in the trade and doing well at it—for that always gives you spirits—I’ve persuaded them in spite of their eyes that they wanted glasses. I knew a man who used to brag that he could talk people blind, and then they bought! It wasn’t old people I so much sold to as young and middle-aged. I think perhaps I sold as many because people thought they looked better, or more knowing in them, than to help their eyesight. I’ve known my customers try my glasses, one pair after another, in the chimney glass of a public-house parlour. ‘They’re real Scotch pebbles,’ I used to say sometimes—and I always had a fair article,—‘and was intended for a solid silver frame but the frame was made too small for them, and so I got them and put them into this frame myself, for I’m an optician, out of work, by trade. They’re worth 15s., but you may have them, framed and all, for 7s. 6d.’ I got 5s. for one pair once that way but they were a superior thing; I had them a particular bargain.” One man told me that not long ago he asked 10d. for a pair of spectacles, and a journeyman slop-tailor said to him, “Why I only gave 1s. for this pair I’m wearing a few years back, and they ought to be less than 10d. now, for the duty’s off glass.”

The eye-glasses sold in the streets are “framed” in horn. They are bought at the same places as the spectacles, and cost, wholesale, for “single eyes” 4s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. the dozen. The retail price is from 6d. to 1s. The “double eyes,” which are jointed in the middle so that the frame can be fitted to the bridge of the nose, are 10s. 6d. to 15s. the dozen, and are retailed by the street-folk from 1s. 3d. to 2s. each.

The spectacles are sold principally to working men, and are rarely hawked in the suburbs. The chief sale is in public-houses, but they are offered in all the busier thoroughfares and wherever a crowd is assembled. “The eye-glasses,” said a man who vended them, “is sold to what I calls counter-hoppers and black-legs. You’ll see most of the young swells that’s mixed up with gaming concerns at races—for there’s gaming still, though the booths is put down in many places—sport their eye-glasses; and so did them as used to be concerned in getting up Derby and St. Leger ‘sweeps’ at public-houses; least-ways I’ve sold to them, where sweeps was held, and they was busy about them, and offered me a chance, sometimes, for a handsome eye-glass. But they’re going out of fashion, is eye-glasses, I think. The other day I stood and offered them for nearly five hours at the foot of London-bridge, which used to be a tidy pitch for them, and I couldn’t sell one. All that day I didn’t take a halfpenny.”

There are sometimes 100 men, the half of whom are Jews and Irishmen in equal proportions, now selling spectacles and eye-glasses. Some of these traders are feeble from age, accident, continued sickness, or constitution, and represent that they must carry on a “light trade,” being incapable of hard work, even if they could get it. Two women sell spectacles along with Dutch drops. As in other “light trades,” the spectacle sellers do not, as a body, confine themselves to those wares, but resort, as one told me, “to anything that’s up at the time and promises better,” for a love of change is common among those who pursue a street life. It may be estimated, I am assured, that there are thirty-five men (so allowing for the breaks in regular spectacle selling) who vend them daily, taking 15s. a week (with a profit of 10s.), the yearly expenditure being thus 1365l.

Of the Street-Sellers of Dolls.

The making of dolls, like that of many a thing required for a mere recreation, a toy, a pastime, is often carried on amidst squalor, wretchedness, or privation, or—to use the word I have frequently heard among the poor—“pinching.” Of this matter, however, I shall have to treat when I proceed to consider the manufacture of and trade in dolls generally, not merely as respects street-sale.