London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

The class of men carrying on this business—for they are nearly all men—is mixed; but the majority are of a half-sporting and half-vagrant kind. One informant told me that the bird-catchers, for instance, when young, as more than three-fourths of them are, were those who “liked to be after a loose end,” first catching their birds, as a sort of sporting business, and then sometimes selling them in the streets, but far more frequently disposing of them in the bird-shops. “Some of these boys,” a bird-seller in a large way of business said to me, “used to become rat-catchers or dog-sellers, but there’s not such great openings in the rat and dog line now. As far as I know, they’re the same lads, or just the same sort of lads, anyhow, as you may see ‘helping,’ holding horses, or things like that, at concerns like them small races at Peckham or Chalk Farm, or helping any way at the foot-races at Camberwell.” There is in this bird-catching a strong manifestation of the vagrant spirit. To rise long before daybreak; to walk some miles before daybreak; from the earliest dawn to wait in some field, or common, or wood, watching the capture of the birds; then a long trudge to town to dispose of the fluttering captives; all this is done cheerfully, because there are about it the irresistible charms, to this class, of excitement, variety, and free and open-air life. Nor do these charms appear one whit weakened when, as happens often enough, all this early morn business is carried on fasting.

The old men in the bird-catching business are not to be ranked as to their enjoyment of it with the juveniles, for these old men are sometimes infirm, and can but, as one of them said to me some time ago, “hobble about it.” But they have the same spirit, or the sparks of it. And in this part of the trade is one of the curious characteristics of a street-life, or rather of an open-air pursuit for the requirements of a street-trade. A man, worn out for other purposes, incapable of anything but a passive, or sort of lazy labour—such as lying in a field and watching the action of his trap-cages—will yet in a summer’s morning, decrepid as he may be, possess himself of a dozen or even a score of the very freest and most aspiring of all our English small birds, a creature of the air beyond other birds of his “order”—to use an ornithological term—of sky-larks.

The dog-sellers are of a sporting, trading, idling class. Their sport is now the rat-hunt, or the ferret-match, or the dog-fight; as it was with the predecessors of their stamp, the cock-fight; the bull, bear, and badger bait; the shrove-tide cock-shy, or the duck hunt. Their trading spirit is akin to that of the higher-class sporting fraternity, the trading members of the turf. They love to sell and to bargain, always with a quiet exultation at the time—a matter of loud tavern boast afterwards, perhaps, as respects the street-folk—how they “do” a customer, or “do” one another. “It’s not cheating,” was the remark and apology of a very famous jockey of the old times, touching such measures; “it’s not cheating, it’s outwitting.” Perhaps this expresses the code of honesty of such traders; not to cheat, but to outwit or over-reach. Mixed with such traders, however, are found a few quiet, plodding, fair-dealing men, whom it is difficult to classify, otherwise than that they are “in the line, just because they likes it.” The idling of these street-sellers is a part of their business. To walk by the hour up and down a street, and with no manual labour except to clean their dogs’ kennels, and to carry them in their arms, is but an idleness, although, as some of these men will tell you, “they work hard at it.”

Under the respective heads of dog and bird-sellers, I shall give more detailed characteristics of the class, as well as of the varying qualities and inducements of the buyers.

The street-sellers of foreign birds, such as parrots, parroquets, and cockatoos; of gold and silver fish; of goats, tortoises, rabbits, leverets, hedgehogs; and the collectors of snails, worms, frogs, and toads, are also a mixed body. Foreigners, Jews, seamen, countrymen, costermongers, and boys form a part, and of them I shall give a description under the several heads. The prominently-characterized street-sellers are the traders in dogs and birds.

Of the former Street-Sellers, “Finders,” Stealers, and Restorers of Dogs.

Before I describe the present condition of the street-trade in dogs, which is principally in spaniels, or in the description well known as lap-dogs, I will give an account of the former condition of the trade, if trade it can properly be called, for the “finders” and “stealers” of dogs were the more especial subjects of a parliamentary inquiry, from which I derive the official information on the matter. The Report of the Committee was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, July 26, 1844.

In their Report the Committee observe, concerning the value of pet dogs:—“From the evidence of various witnesses it appears, that in one case a spaniel was sold for 105l., and in another, under a sheriff’s execution, for 95l. at the hammer; and 50l. or 60l. are not unfrequently given for fancy dogs of first-rate breed and beauty.” The hundred guineas’ dog above alluded to was a “black and tan King Charles’s spaniel;”—indeed, Mr. Dowling, the editor of Bell’s Life in London, said, in his evidence before the Committee, “I have known as much as 150l. given for a dog.” He said afterwards: “There are certain marks about the eyes and otherwise, which are considered ‘properties;’ and it depends entirely upon the property which a dog possesses as to its value.”

I need not dwell on the general fondness of the English for dogs, otherwise than as regards what were the grand objects of the dog-finders’ search—ladies’ small spaniels and lap-dogs, or, as they are sometimes called, “carriage-dogs,” by their being the companions of ladies inside their carriages. These animals first became fashionable by the fondness of Charles II. for them. That monarch allowed them undisturbed possession of the gilded chairs in his palace of Whitehall, and seldom took his accustomed walk in the park without a tribe of them at his heels. So “fashionable” were spaniels at that time and afterwards, that in 1712 Pope made the chief of all his sylphs and sylphides the guard of a lady’s lapdog. The fashion has long continued, and still continues; and it was on this fashionable fondness for a toy, and on the regard of many others for the noble and affectionate qualities of the dog, that a traffic was established in London, which became so extensive and so lucrative, that the legislature interfered, in 1844, for the purpose of checking it.

I cannot better show the extent and lucrativeness of this trade, than by citing a list which one of the witnesses before Parliament, Mr. W. Bishop, a gunmaker, delivered in to the Committee, of “cases in which money had recently been extorted from the owners of dogs by dog-stealers and their confederates.” There is no explanation of the space of time included under the vague term “recently;” but the return shows that 151 ladies and gentlemen had been the victims of the dog-stealers or dog-finders, for in this business the words were, and still are to a degree, synonymes, and of these 62 had been so victimized in 1843 and in the six months of 1844, from January to July. The total amount shown by Mr. Bishop to have been paid for the restoration of stolen dogs was 977l. 4s. 6d., or an average of 6l. 10s. per individual practised upon. This large sum, it is stated on the authority of the Committee, was only that which came within Mr. Bishop’s knowledge, and formed, perhaps, “but a tenth part in amount” of the whole extortion. Mr. Bishop was himself in the habit of doing business “in obtaining the restitution of dogs,” and had once known 18l.—the dog-stealers asked 25l.—given for the restitution of a spaniel. The full amount realized by this dog-stealing was, according to the above proportion, 9772l. 5s. In 1843, 227l. 3s. 6d. was so realized, and 97l. 14s. 6d. in the six months of 1844, within Mr. Bishop’s personal knowledge; and if this be likewise a tenth of the whole of the commerce in this line, a year’s business, it appears, averaged 2166l. to the stealers or finders of dogs. I select a few names from the list of those robbed of dogs, either from the amount paid, or because the names are well known. The first payment cited is from a public board, who owned a dog in their corporate capacity: