STREET-SELLER OF BIRDS’ NESTS.
“I gets the eggs mostly from Witham and Chelmsford, in Essex; Chelmsford is 20 mile from Whitechapel Church, and Witham, 8 mile further. I know more about them parts than anywhere else, being used to go after moss for Mr. Butler, of the herb-shop in Covent Garden. Sometimes I go to Shirley Common and Shirley Wood, that’s three miles from Croydon, and Croydon is ten from Westminster-bridge. When I’m out bird-nesting I take all the cross country roads across fields and into the woods. I begin bird-nesting in May and leave off about August, and then comes the bulrushing, and they last till Christmas; and after that comes the roots and wild flowers, which serves me up to May again. I go out bird-nesting three times a week. I go away at night, and come up on the morning of the day after. I’m away a day and two nights. I start between one and two in the morning and walk all night—for the coolness—you see the weather’s so hot you can’t do it in the daytime. When I get down I go to sleep for a couple of hours. I ‘skipper it’—turn in under a hedge or anywhere. I get down about nine in the morning, at Chelmsford, and about one if I go to Witham. After I’ve had my sleep I start off to get my nests and things. I climb the trees, often I go up a dozen in the day, and many a time there’s nothing in the nest when I get up. I only fell once; I got on the end of the bough and slipped off. I p’isoned my foot once with the stagnant water going after the bulrushes,—there was horseleeches, and effets, and all kinds of things in the water, and they stung me, I think. I couldn’t use my foot hardly for six weeks afterwards, and was obliged to have a stick to walk with. I couldn’t get about at all for four days, and should have starved if it hadn’t been that a young man kept me. He was a printer by trade, and almost a stranger to me, only he seed me and took pity on me. When I fell off the bough I wasn’t much hurt, nothing to speak of. The house-sparrow is the worst nest of all to take; it’s no value either when it is got, and is the most difficult of all to get at. You has to get up a sparapet (a parapet) of a house, and either to get permission, or run the risk of going after it without. Partridges’ eggs (they has no nest) they gives you six months for, if they see you selling them, because it’s game, and I haven’t no licence; but while you’re hawking, that is showing ’em, they can’t touch you. The owl is a very difficult nest to get, they builds so high in the trees. The bottle-tit is a hard nest to find; you may go all the year round, and, perhaps, only get one. The nest I like best to get is the chaffinch, because they’re in the hedge, and is no bother. Oh, you hasn’t got the skylark down, sir; they builds on the ground, and has five eggs; I sell them for 4d. The robin-redbreast has five eggs, too, and is 3d. The ringdove has two eggs, and is 6d. The tit-lark—that’s five blue eggs, and very rare—I get 4d. for them. The jay has five eggs, and a flat nest, very wiry, indeed; it’s a ground bird; that’s 1s.—the egg is just like a partridge egg. When I first took a kingfisher’s nest, I didn’t know the name of it, and I kept wondering what it was. I daresay I asked three dozen people, and none of them could tell me. At last a bird-fancier, the lame man at the Mile-end gate, told me what it was. I likes to get the nesties to sell, but I havn’t no fancy for birds. Sometimes I get squirrels’ nesties with the young in ’em—about four of ’em there mostly is, and they’re the only young things I take—the young birds I leaves; they’re no good to me. The four squirrels brings me from 6s. to 8s. After I takes a bird’s nest, the old bird comes dancing over it, chirupping, and crying, and flying all about. When they lose their nest they wander about, and don’t know where to go. Oftentimes I wouldn’t take them if it wasn’t for the want of the victuals, it seems such a pity to disturb ’em after they’ve made their little bits of places. Bats I never take myself—I can’t get over ’em. If I has an order for ’em, I buys ’em of boys.
“I mostly start off into the country on Monday and come up on Wednesday. The most nesties as ever I took is twenty-two, and I generally get about twelve or thirteen. These, if I’ve an order, I sell directly, or else I may be two days, and sometimes longer, hawking them in the street. Directly I’ve sold them I go off again that night, if it’s fine; though I often go in the wet, and then I borrow a tarpaulin of a man in the street where I live. If I’ve a quick sale I get down and back three times in a week, but then I don’t go so far as Witham, sometimes only to Rumford; that is 12 miles from Whitechapel Church. I never got an order from a bird-fancier; they gets all the eggs they want of the countrymen who comes up to market.
“It’s gentlemen I gets my orders of, and then mostly they tells me to bring ’em one nest of every kind I can get hold of, and that will often last me three months in the summer. There’s one gentleman as I sells to is a wholesale dealer in window-glass—and he has a hobby for them. He puts ’em into glass cases, and makes presents of ’em to his friends. He has been one of my best customers. I’ve sold him a hundred nesties, I’m sure. There’s a doctor at Dalston I sell a great number to—he’s taking one of every kind of me now. The most of my customers is stray ones in the streets. They’re generally boys. I sells a nest now and then to a lady with a child; but the boys of twelve to fifteen years of age is my best friends. They buy ’em only for cur’osity. I sold three partridges’ eggs yesterday to a gentleman, and he said he would put them under a bantam he’d got, and hatch ’em.
“The snakes, and adders, and slow-worms I get from where there’s moss or a deal of grass. Sunny weather’s the best for them, they won’t come out when it’s cold; then I go to a dung-heap, and turn it over. Sometimes, I find five or six there, but never so large as the one I had to-day, that’s a yard and five inches long, and three-quarters of a pound weight. Snakes is 5s. a pound. I sell all I can get to Mr. Butler, of Covent-garden. He keeps ’em alive, for they’re no good dead. I think it’s for the skin they’re kept. Some buys ’em to dissect: a gentleman in Theobalds-road does so, and so he does hedgehogs. Some buys ’em for stuffing, and others for cur’osities. Adders is the same price as snakes, 5s. a pound after they first comes in, when they’re 10s. Adders is wanted dead; it’s only the fat and skin that’s of any value; the fat is used for curing p’isoned wounds, and the skin is used for any one as has cut their heads. Farmers buys the fat, and rubs it into the wound when they gets bitten or stung by anything p’isonous. I kill the adders with a stick, or, when I has shoes, I jumps on ’em. Some fine days I get four or five snakes at a time; but then they’re mostly small, and won’t weigh above half a pound. I don’t get many adders—they don’t weigh many ounces, adders don’t—and I mostly has 9d. a-piece for each I gets. I sells them to Mr. Butler as well.
“The hedgehogs is 1s. each; I gets them mostly in Essex. I’ve took one hedgehog with three young ones, and sold the lot for 2s. 6d. People in the streets bought them of me—they’re wanted to kill the black-beetles; they’re fed on bread and milk, and they’ll suck a cow quite dry in their wild state. They eat adders, and can’t be p’isoned, at least it says so in a book I’ve got about ’em at home.
“The effets I gets orders for in the streets. Gentlemen gives me their cards, and tells me to bring them one; they’re 2d. apiece. I get them at Hampstead and Highgate, from the ponds. They’re wanted for cur’osity.
“The snails and frogs I sell to Frenchmen. I don’t know what part they eat of the frog, but I know they buy them, and the dandelion root. The frogs is 6d. and 1s. a dozen. They like the yellow-bellied ones, the others they’re afraid is toads. They always pick out the yellow-bellied first; I don’t know how to feed ’em, or else I might fatten them. Many people swallows young frogs, they’re reckoned very good things to clear the inside. The frogs I catch in ponds and ditches up at Hampstead and Highgate, but I only get them when I’ve a order. I’ve had a order for as many as six dozen, but that was for the French hotel in Leicester-square; but I have sold three dozen a week to one man, a Frenchman, as keeps a cigar shop in R—r’s-court.
“The snails I sell by the pailful—at 2s. 6d. the pail. There is some hundreds in a pail. The wet weather is the best times for catching ’em; the French people eats ’em. They boils ’em first to get ’em out of the shell and get rid of the green froth; then they boils them again, and after that in vinegar. They eats ’em hot, but some of the foreigners likes ’em cold. They say they’re better, if possible, than whelks. I used to sell a great many to a lady and gentleman in Soho-square, and to many of the French I sell 1s.’s worth, that’s about three or four quarts. Some persons buys snails for birds, and some to strengthen a sickly child’s back; they rub the back all over with the snails, and a very good thing they tell me it is. I used to take 2s.’s worth a week to one woman; it’s the green froth that does the greatest good. There are two more birds’-nest sellers besides myself, they don’t do as many as me the two of ’em. They’re very naked, their things is all to ribbins; they only go into the country once in a fortnight. They was never nothing, no trade—they never was in place—from what I’ve heard—either of them. I reckon I sell about 20 nesties a week take one week with another, and that I do for four months in the year. (This altogether makes 320 nests.) Yes, I should say, I do sell about 300 birds’-nests every year, and the other two, I’m sure, don’t sell half that. Indeed they don’t want to sell; they does better by what they gets give to them. I can’t say what they takes, they’re Irish, and I never was in conversation with them. I get about 4s. to 5s. for the 20 nests, that’s between 2d. and 3d. apiece. I sell about a couple of snakes every week, and for some of them I get 1s., and for the big ones 2s. 6d.; but them I seldom find. I’ve only had three hedgehogs this season, and I’ve done a little in snails and frogs, perhaps about 1s. The many foreigners in London this season hasn’t done me no good. I haven’t been to Leicester-square lately, or perhaps I might have got a large order or two for frogs.”