London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

One female street-seller had three stalls or stands in the New Cut (when it was a great street market), about two years back, and all for the sale of second-hand furs. She has now a small shop in second-hand wearing apparel (women’s) generally, furs being of course included. The business carried on in the street (almost always “the Cut”) by the fur-seller in question, who was both industrious and respectable, was very considerable. On a Monday she has not unfrequently taken 3l., one-half of which, indeed more than half, was profit, for the street-seller bought in the summer, when furs “were no money at all,” and sold in the winter, when they “were really tin, and no mistake.” Before the season began, she sometimes had a small room nearly full of furs.

This trade is less confined to Petticoat-lane and the old clothes district, as regards the supply to retail customers, than is anything else connected with dress. But the fur trade is now small. The money, prudence, and forethought necessary to enable a fur-seller to buy in the summer, for ample profit in the winter, as regards street-trade, is not in accordance with the habits of the general run of street-sellers, who think but of the present, or hardly think even of that.

The old furs, like all the other old articles of wearing apparel, whether garbs of what may be accounted primary necessaries, as shoes, or mere comforts or adornments, as boas or muffs, are bought in the first instance at the Old Clothes Exchange, and so find their way to the street-sellers. The exceptions as to this first transaction in the trade I now speak of, are very trifling, and, perhaps, more trifling than in other articles, for one great supply of furs, I am informed, is from their being swopped in the spring and summer for flowers with the “root-sellers,” who carry them to the Exchange.

Last winter there were sometimes as many as ten persons—three-fourths of the number of second-hand fur sellers, which fluctuates, being women—with fur-stands. They frequent the street-markets on the Saturday and Monday nights, not confining themselves to any one market in particular. The best sale is for Fur Tippets, and chiefly of the darker colours. These are bought, one of the dealers informed me, frequently by maid-servants, who could run of errands in them in the dark, or wear them in wet weather. They are sold from 1s. 6d. to 4s. 6d., about 2s. or 2s. 6d. being a common charge. Children’s tippets “go off well,” from 6d. to 1s. 3d. Boas are not vended to half the extent of tippets, although they are lower-priced, one of tolerably good gray squirrel being 1s. 6d. The reason of the difference in the demand is that boas are as much an ornament as a garment, while the tippet answers the purpose of a shawl. Muffs are not at all vendible in the streets, the few that are disposed of being principally for children. As muffs are not generally used by maid-servants, or by the families of the working classes, the absence of demand in the second-hand traffic is easily accounted for. They are bought sometimes to cut up for other purposes. Victorines are disposed of readily enough at from 1s. to 2s. 6d., as are Cuffs, from 4d. to 8d.

One man, who told me that a few years since he and his wife used to sell second-hand furs in the street, was of opinion that his best customers were women of the town, who were tolerably well-dressed, and who required some further protection from the night air. He could readily sell any “tidy” article, tippet, boa, or muff, to those females, if they had from 2s. 6d. to 5s. at command. He had so sold them in Clare-market, in Tottenham-court-road, and the Brill.

Of the Second-Hand Sellers of Smithfield-market.

No small part of the second-hand trade of London is carried on in the market-place of Smithfield, on the Friday afternoons. Here is a mart for almost everything which is required for the harnessing of beasts of draught, or is required for any means of propulsion or locomotion, either as a whole vehicle, or in its several parts, needed by street-traders: also of the machines, vessels, scales, weights, measures, baskets, stands, and all other appliances of street-trade.

The scene is animated and peculiar. Apart from the horse, ass, and goat trade (of which I shall give an account hereafter), it is a grand Second-hand Costermongers’ Exchange. The trade is not confined to that large body, though they are the principal merchants, but includes greengrocers (often the costermonger in a shop), carmen, and others. It is, moreover, a favourite resort of the purveyors of street-provisions and beverages, of street dainties and luxuries. Of this class some of the most prosperous are those who are “well known in Smithfield.”

The space devoted to this second-hand commerce and its accompaniments, runs from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital towards Long-lane, but isolated peripatetic traders are found in all parts of the space not devoted to the exhibition of cattle or of horses. The crowd on the day of my visit was considerable, but from several I heard the not-always-very-veracious remarks of “Nothing doing” and “There’s nobody at all here to-day.” The weather was sultry, and at every few yards arose the cry from men and boys, “Ginger-beer, ha’penny a glass! Ha’penny a glass,” or “Iced lemonade here! Iced raspberriade, as cold as ice, ha’penny a glass, only a ha’penny!” A boy was elevated on a board at the end of a splendid affair of this kind. It was a square built vehicle, the top being about 7 feet by 4, and flat and surmounted by the lemonade fountain; long, narrow, champagne glasses, holding a raspberry coloured liquid, frothed up exceedingly, were ranged round, and the beverage dispensed by a woman, the mother or employer of the boy who was bawling. The sides of the machine, which stood on wheels, were a bright, shiny blue, and on them sprawled the lion and unicorn in gorgeous heraldry, yellow and gold, the artist being, according to a prominent announcement, a “herald painter.” The apparatus was handsome, but with that exaggeration of handsomeness which attracts the high and low vulgar, who cannot distinguish between gaudiness and beauty. The sale was brisk. The ginger-beer sold in the market was generally dispensed from carts, and here I noticed, what occurs yearly in street-commerce, an innovation on the established system of the trade. Several sellers disposed of their ginger-beer in clear glass bottles, somewhat larger and fuller-necked than those introduced by M. Soyer for the sale of his “nectar,” and the liquid was drank out of the bottle the moment the cork was undrawn, and so the necessity of a glass was obviated.