The character of the penny swag-men belongs more to that of the costermongers than to any other class of street-folk. Many of them drink as freely as their means will permit. I was told of a match between a teetotaller and a beer-drinker, about nine years ago. It was for 5s. a side, and the “Championship.” Each man started with an equal stock, alike in all respects, but my informant had forgotten the precise number of articles. They pattered, twenty-five yards apart one from another, three hours in James-street, Covent-garden; three hours in the Blackfriars-road; and three hours in Deptford. The teetotaller was “sold out” in seven-and-a-half hours; while his opponent—and the contest seems to have been carried on very good-humouredly—at the nine hours’ end, had four dozen articles left, and was rather exhausted, or, as it was described to me, “told out.” The result, albeit, was not looked upon, I was assured, as anything very decisive of the relative merits of beer or water, as the source of strength or inspiration of “patter.” The teetotaller was the smarter, though he did not appear the stronger, man; he abandoned the championship, and went into another trade four years ago. The patter of the swag-men has nothing of the humour of the paper-workers; it is merely declaratory that the extensive stock offered on such liberal terms to the public would furnish a wholesale shop; that such another opportunity for cheap pennyworths could never by any possibility occur again, and that it was a duty on all who heard the patterer to buy at once.
The men having their own barrows or stalls (but the stall-trade is small) buy their goods as they find their stock needs replenishment at the swag-shops. “It was a good trade at first, sir,” said one man, “and for its not being a good trade now, we may partly blame one another. There was a cutting down trade among us. Black earrings were bought at 14d. the dozen, and sold at a loss at 1d. each. So were children’s trap-bats, and monkeys up sticks, but they are now 9d. a dozen. Sometimes, sir, as I know, the master of a swag-barrow gets served out. You see, a man may once on a time have a good day, and take as much as 2l. Well, next day he’ll use part of that money, and go as a penny swag on his own account; or else he’ll buy things he is sold out of, and work them on his own account on his master’s barrow. All right, sir; his master makes him a convenience for his own pocket, and so his master may be made a convenience for the man’s. When he takes the barrow back at the week’s end, if he’s been doing a little on his own dodge, there’s the stock, and there’s the money. It’s all right between a rich man and a poor man that way; turn and turn about’s fair play.”
The lot-sellers are, when the whole body are in London, about 200 in number; but they are three times as itinerant into the country as are the traders in the heavier and little portable swag-barrows. The lot-sellers nearly all vend their goods from trays slung from their shoulders. The best localities for the lot-sellers are Ratcliffe-highway, Commercial-road, Whitechapel, Minories, Tower-hill, Tooley-street, Newington-causeway, Walworth, Blackfriars and Westminster-roads, Long-acre, Holborn, and Oxford-street. To this list may be added the Brill, Tottenham-court-road, and the other street-markets, on Saturday evenings, when some of these places are almost impassable. The best places for the swag-barrow trade are also those I have specified. Their customers, alike for the useful and fancy articles, are the working-classes, and the chief sale is on Saturdays and Mondays. One swag-man told me that he thought he could sell better if he had a less crowded barrow, but his master was so keen of money that he would make him try everything. It made selling more tiresome, too, he said, for a poor couple who had a penny or two to lay out would fix on half the things they saw, and change them for others, before they parted with their money.
Of the penny-a-piece sellers trading on their own account, the receipts may be smaller than those of the men who work the huge swag-barrows on commission, but their profits are greater. Calculating that 100 of these traders are, the year round, in London (some are absent all the summer at country fairs, and on any favourable opportunity, while a number of swag-barrowmen leave that employment for costermongering on their own account), and that each takes 2l. weekly, we find no less than 10,400l. thus expended in the streets of London in a year.
The lot-sellers also resort largely to the country, and frequently try other callings, such as the sale of fruit, medals, &c. Some also sell lots only on Saturday and Monday nights. Taking these deductions into consideration, it may be estimated that only fifty men (there is but one female lot-seller on her own account) carry on the trade, presuming it to be spread over the six days of the week. Each of them may take 13s. weekly (with a profit of 7s. 6d.), so showing the street outlay to be 1,690l. The “lots” are bought at the German and English swag-shops; the principal supply, however, is procured from Black Tom in Clerkenwell.
Of the Street-Sellers of Roulette Boxes.
In my account of the street-trade in “China ornaments” I had occasion to mention a use to which a roulette box, or portable roulette table, was put. I need only repeat in this place that the box (usually of mahogany) contains a board, with numbered partitions, which is set spinning, by means of a central knob, on a pivot; the lid is then placed on the box, a pea is slipped through a hole in the lid, and on the number of the partition in which the pea is found deposited, when the motion has ceased, depends the result. The table, or board, is thus adapted for the determination of that mode of raising money, popular among costermongers and other street-folk, who in their very charities crave some excitement; I mean a “raffle;” or it may be used for play, by one or more persons, the highest number “spun” determining the winner. These street-sold tables may still be put to another use: In the smaller sort, “going no higher than fourteen,” one division is blank. Thus any one may play against another, or several others spinning in turns, the “blank” being a chance in the “banker’s” favour. Some of the tables, however, are numbered as high as 36, or as a seller of them described it, “single and double zero, bang; a French game.”
This curious street-trade has been carried on for seven years, but with frequent interruptions, by one man, who, until within these few weeks, was the sole trader in the article. There are now but two selling roulette-boxes at all regularly. The long-established salesman wears mustachios, and has a good deal the look of a foreigner. During his seven years’ experience he has sold, he calculates, 12,000 roulette-boxes, at a profit of from 175l. to 200l. The prices (retail) are from 1s. to 2l., at which high amount my informant once disposed of “a roulette” in the street. He has sold, however, more at 1s. than at all other rates together. The “shilling roulette” is about three inches in diameter; the others proportionately larger. These wares are German made, bought at a swag-shop, and retailed at a profit of from 15 to 33 per cent. They are carried in a basket, one being held for public examination in the vendor’s hand.
“My best customers,” said the experienced man in the business, “are stock-brokers, travellers, and parsons; people that have spare time on their hands. O, I mean by ‘travellers,’ gentlemen going on a railway who pass the time away at roulette. Now and then a regular ‘leg,’ when he’s travelling to Chester, York, or Doncaster, to the races, may draw other passengers into play, and make a trifle, or not a trifle, by it; or he will play with other legs; but it’s generally for amusement, I’ve reason to believe. Friends travelling together play for a trifle to pass away time, or who shall pay for breakfasts for two, or such like. I supplied one gaming-house with a large roulette-table made of a substance that if you throw it into water—and there’s always a pail of ‘tepid’ ready—would dissolve very quickly. When it’s not used it’s hung against the wall and is so made that it looks to be an oil-painting framed. It cost them 10l. I suppose I have the ‘knock’ of almost every gaming-house in London. There’s plenty of them still. The police can drive such as me about in the streets or out of the streets to starve, but lords, and gentlemen, and some parsons, I know, go to the gaming-houses, and when one’s broke into by the officers—it’s really funny—John Smith, and Thomas Jones, and William Brown are pulled up, but as no gaming implements are found, there’s nothing against them. Some of these houses are never noticed for a long time. The ‘Great Nick’ hasn’t been, nor the ‘Little Nick.’ I don’t know why they’re called ‘Nicks,’ those two; but so they are. Perhaps after Old Nick. At the Great Nick I dare say there’s often 1000l. depending. But the Little Nick is what we call only ‘brown papermen,’ low gamblers—playing for pence, and 1s. being a great go. I wonder the police allow that.”