He made no speeches, but sung—“Winketty-winketty-wink-wink-wink—wink-wink—wicketty-wicketty-wink—fine fresh winketty-winks wink wink.” He was often so sore in the stomach and hoarse with hallooing that he could hardly speak. He had no child, only himself and wife to keep out of his earnings. His room was 2s. a week rent. He managed to get a bit of meat every day, he said, “somehow or ’nother.”
Another, more communicative and far more intelligent man, said to me concerning the character of his customers: “They’re people I think that like to daddle” (dawdle, I presume) “over their teas or such like; or when a young woman’s young man takes tea with her mother and her, then they’ve winks; and then there’s joking, and helping to pick winks, between Thomas and Betsy, while the mother’s busy with her tea, or is wiping her specs, ’cause she can’t see. Why, sir, I’ve known it! I was a Thomas that way myself when I was a tradesman. I was a patten-maker once, but pattens is no go now, and hasn’t been for fifteen year or more. Old people, I think, that lives by themselves, and has perhaps an annuity or the like of that, and nothing to do pertickler, loves winks, for they likes a pleasant way of making time long over a meal. They’re the people as reads a newspaper, when it’s a week old, all through. The other buyers, I think, are tradespeople or working-people what wants a relish. But winks is a bad trade now, and so is many that depends on relishes.”
One man who “works” the New Cut, has the “best wink business of all.” He sells only a little dry fish with his winks, never wet fish, and has “got his name up,” for the superiority of that shell-fish—a superiority which he is careful to ensure. He pays 8s. a week for a stand by a grocer’s window. On an ordinary afternoon he sells from 7s. to 10s. worth of periwinkles. On a Monday afternoon he often takes 20s.; and on the Sunday afternoon 3l. and 4l. He has two coster lads to help him, and sometimes on a Sunday from twenty to thirty customers about him. He wraps each parcel sold in a neat brown paper bag, which, I am assured, is of itself, an inducement to buy of him. The “unfortunate” women who live in the streets contiguous to the Waterloo, Blackfriars, and Borough-roads, are among his best customers, on Sundays especially. He is rather a public character, getting up dances and the like. “He aint bothered—not he—with ha’p’orths or penn’orths of a Sunday,” said a person who had assisted him. “It’s the top of the tree with his customers; 3d. or 6d. at a go.” The receipts are one-half profit. I heard from several that he was “the best man for winks a-going.”
The quantity of periwinkles disposed of by the London street-sellers is 3,600,000 pints, which, at 1d. per pint, gives the large sum of 15,000l. expended annually in this street luxury. It should be remembered, that a very large consumption of periwinkles takes place in public-houses and suburban tea-gardens.
Of “Dry” Fish Selling in the Streets.
The dealing in “dry” or salt fish is never carried on as a totally distinct trade in the streets, but some make it a principal part of their business; and many wet fish-dealers whose “wet fish” is disposed of by noon, sell dry fish in the afternoon. The dry fish, proper, consists of dried mackerel, salt cod—dried or barrelled—smoked or dried haddocks (often called “finnie haddies”), dried or pickled salmon (but salmon is only salted or pickled for the streets when it can be sold cheap), and salt herrings.
A keen-looking, tidily-dressed man, who was at one time a dry fish-seller principally, gave me the following account. For the last two months he has confined himself to another branch of the business, and seemed to feel a sort of pleasure in telling of the “dodges” he once resorted to:
“There’s Scotch haddies that never knew anything about Scotland,” he said, “for I’ve made lots of them myself by Tower-street, just a jump or two from the Lambeth station-house. I used to make them on Sundays. I was a wet fish-seller then, and when I couldn’t get through my haddocks or my whitings of a Saturday night, I wasn’t a-going to give them away to folks that wouldn’t take the trouble to lift me out of a gutter if I fell there, so I presarved them. I’ve made haddies of whitings, and good ones too, and Joe made them of codlings besides. I had a bit of a back-yard to two rooms, one over the other, that I had then, and on a Sunday I set some wet wood a fire, and put it under a great tub. My children used to gut and wash the fish, and I hung them on hooks all round the sides of the tub, and made a bit of a chimney in a corner of the top of the tub, and that way I gave them a jolly good smoking. My wife had a dry fish-stall and sold them, and used to sing out ‘Real Scotch haddies,’ and tell people how they was from Aberdeen; I’ve often been fit to laugh, she did it so clever. I had a way of giving them a yellow colour like the real Scotch, but that’s a secret. After they was well smoked they was hung up to dry all round the rooms we lived in, and we often had stunning fires that answered as well to boil crabs and lobsters when they was cheap enough for the streets. I’ve boiled a mate’s crabs and lobsters for 2½d.; it was two boilings and more, and 2½d. was reckoned the price of half a quarter of a hundred of coals and the use of the pan. There’s more ways than one of making 6d., if a man has eyes in his head and keeps them open. Haddocks that wouldn’t fetch 1d. a piece, nor any money at all of a Saturday night, I’ve sold—at least she has” (indicating his wife by a motion of his thumb)—“at 2d., and 3d., and 4d. I’ve bought fish of costers that was over on a Saturday night, to make Scotch haddies of them. I’ve tried experience” (experiments) “too. Ivy, burnt under them, gave them, I thought, a nice sort of flavour, rather peppery, for I used always to taste them; but I hate living on fish. Ivy with brown berries on it, as it has about this time o’ year, I liked best. Holly wasn’t no good. A black-currant bush was, but it’s too dear; and indeed it couldn’t be had. I mostly spread wetted fire-wood, as green as could be got, or damp sticks of any kind, over shavings, and kept feeding the fire. Sometimes I burnt sawdust. Somehow, the dry fish trade fell off. People does get so prying and so knowing, there’s no doing nothing now for no time, so I dropped the dry fish trade. There’s few up to smoking them proper; they smoke ’em black, as if they was hung up in a chimbley.”
Another costermonger gave me the following account:
“I’ve salted herrings, but the commonest way of salting is by the Jews about Whitechapel. They make real Yarmouth bloaters and all sorts of fish. When I salted herrings, I bought them out of the boats at Billingsgate by the hundred, which is 120 fish. We give them a bit of a clean—hardly anything—then chuck them into a tub of salt, and keep scattering salt over them, and let them lie a few minutes, or sometimes half an hour, and then hang them up to dry. They eat well enough, if they’re eaten in time, for they won’t keep. I’ve known three day’s old herrings salted, just because there was no sale for them. One Jew sends out six boys crying ‘real Yarmouth bloaters.’ People buy them in preference, they look so nice and clean and fresh-coloured. It’s quite a new trade among the Jews. They didn’t do much that way until two years back. I sometimes wish I was a Jew, because they help one another, and start one another with money, and so they thrive where Christians are ruined. I smoked mackerel, too, by thousands; that’s a new trade, and is done the same way as haddocks. Mackerel that won’t bring 1d. a piece fresh, bring 2d. smoked; they are very nice indeed. I make about 10s. or 11s. a week by dry fish in the winter months, and about as much by wet,—but I have a tidy connection. Perhaps I make 17s. or 18s. a week all the year round.”