London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

In the course of a former inquiry I received an account of hareskin-buying from a woman, upwards of fifty, who had been in the trade, she told me, from childhood, “as was her mother before her.” The husband, who was lame, and older than his wife, had been all his life a field-catcher of birds, and a street-seller of hearth-stones. They had been married 31 years, and resided in a garret of a house, in a street off Drury-lane—a small room, with a close smell about it. The room was not unfurnished—it was, in fact, crowded. There were bird-cages, with and without birds, over what was once a bed; for the bed, just prior to my visit, had been sold to pay the rent, and a month’s rent was again in arrear; and there were bird-cages on the wall by the door, and bird-cages over the mantelshelf. There was furniture, too, and crockery; and a vile oil painting of “still life;” but an eye used to the furniture in the rooms of the poor could at once perceive that there was not one article which could be sold to a broker or marine-store dealer, or pledged at a pawn-shop. I was told the man and woman both drank hard. The woman said:—

“I’ve sold hareskins all my life, sir, and was born in London; but when hareskins isn’t in, I sells flowers. I goes about now (in November) for my skins every day, wet or dry, and all day long—that is, till it’s dark. To-day I’ve not laid out a penny, but then it’s been such a day for rain. I reckon that if I gets hold of eighteen hare and rabbit skins in a day, that is my greatest day’s work. I gives 2d. for good hares, what’s not riddled much, and sells them all for 2½d. I sells what I pick up, by the twelve or the twenty, if I can afford to keep them by me till that number’s gathered, to a Jew. I don’t know what is done with them. I can’t tell you just what use they’re for—something about hats.” [The Jew was no doubt a hat-furrier, or supplying a hat-furrier.] “Jews gives us better prices than Christians, and buys readier; so I find. Last week I sold all I bought for 3s. 6d. I take some weeks as much as 8s. for what I pick up, and if I could get that every week I should think myself a lady. The profit left me a clear half-crown. There’s no difference in any perticler year—only that things gets worse. The game laws, as far as I knows, hasn’t made no difference in my trade. Indeed, I can’t say I knows anything about game laws at all, or hears anything consarning ’em. I goes along the squares and streets. I buys most at gentlemen’s houses. We never calls at hotels. The servants, and the women that chars, and washes, and jobs, manages it there. Hareskins is in—leastways I c’lects them—from September to the end of March, when hares, they says, goes mad. I can’t say what I makes one week with another—perhaps 2s. 6d. may be cleared every week.”

These buyers go regular rounds, carrying the skins in their hands, and crying, “Any hareskins, cook? Hareskins.” It is for the most part a winter trade; but some collect the skins all the year round, as the hares are now vended the year through; but by far the most are gathered in the winter. Grouse may not be killed excepting from the 12th, and black-game from the 20th of August to the 10th of December; partridges from the 1st of September to the 1st of February; while the pheasant suffers a shorter season of slaughter, from the 1st of October to the 1st of February; but there is no time restriction as to the killing of hares or of rabbits, though custom causes a cessation for a few months.

A lame man, apparently between 50 and 60, with a knowing look, gave me the following account. When I saw him he was carrying a few tins, chiefly small dripping-pans, under his arm, which he offered for sale as he went his round collecting hare and rabbit skins, of which he carried but one. He had been in the streets all his life, as his mother—he never knew any father—was a rag-gatherer, and at the same time a street-seller of the old brimstone matches and papers of pins. My informant assisted his mother to make and then to sell the matches. On her last illness she was received into St. Giles’s workhouse, her son supporting himself out of it; she had been dead many years. He could not read, and had never been in a church or chapel in his life. “He had been married,” he said, “for about a dozen years, and had a very good wife,” who was also a street-trader until her death; but “we didn’t go to church or anywhere to be married,” he told me, in reply to my question, “for we really couldn’t afford to pay the parson, and so we took one another’s words. If it’s so good to go to church for being married, it oughtn’t to cost a poor man nothing; he shouldn’t be charged for being good. I doesn’t do any business in town, but has my regular rounds. This is my Kentish and Camden-town day. I buys most from the servants at the bettermost houses, and I’d rather buy of them than the missusses, for some missusses sells their own skins, and they often want a deal for ’em. Why, just arter last Christmas, a young lady in that there house (pointing to it), after ordering me round to the back-door, came to me with two hareskins. They certainly was fine skins—werry fine. I said I’d give 4½d. ‘Come now, my good man,’ says she,” and the man mimicked her voice, “‘let me have no nonsense. I can’t be deceived any longer, either by you or my servants; so give me 8d., and go about your business.’ Well, I went about my business; and a woman called to buy them, and offered 4d. for the two, and the lady was so wild, the servant told me arter; howsomever she only got 4d. at last. She’s a regular screw, but a fine-dressed one. I don’t know that there’s been any change in my business since hares was sold in the shops. If there’s more skins to sell, there’s more poor people to buy. I never tasted hares’ flesh in my life, though I’ve gathered so many of their skins. I’ve smelt it when they’ve been roasting them where I’ve called, but don’t think I could eat any. I live on bread and butter and tea, or milk sometimes in hot weather, and get a bite of fried fish or anything when I’m out, and a drop of beer and a smoke when I get home, if I can afford it. I don’t smoke in my own place, I uses a beer-shop. I pay 1s. 6d. a week for a small room; I want little but a bed in it, and have my own. I owe three weeks’ rent now; but I do best both with tins and hareskins in the cold weather. Monday’s my best day. O, as to rabbit-skins, I do werry little in them. Them as sells them gets the skins. Still there is a few to be picked up; such as them as has been sent as presents from the country. Good rabbit-skins is about the same price as hares, or perhaps a halfpenny lower, take them all through. I generally clears 6d. a dozen on my hare and rabbit-skins, and sometimes 8d. Yes, I should say that for about eight months I gathers four dozen every week, often five dozen. I suppose I make 5s. or 6s. a week all the year, with one thing or other, and a lame man can’t do wonders. I never begged in my life, but I’ve twice had help from the parish, and that only when I was very bad (ill). O, I suppose I shall end in the great house.”

There are, as closely as I can ascertain, at least 50 persons buying skins in the street; and calculating that each collects 50 skins weekly for 32 weeks of the year, we find 80,000 to be the total. This is a reasonable computation, for there are upwards of 102,000 hares consigned yearly to Newgate and Leadenhall markets; while the rabbits sold yearly in London amount to about 1,000,000; but, as I have shown, very few of their skins are disposed of to street-buyers.

Of the Street-Buyers of Waste (Paper).

Beyond all others the street-purchase of waste paper is the most curious of any in the hands of the class I now treat of. Some may have formed the notion that waste paper is merely that which is soiled or torn, or old numbers of newspapers, or other periodical publications; but this is merely a portion of the trade, as the subsequent account will show.

The men engaged in this business have not unfrequently an apartment, or a large closet, or recess, for the reception of their purchases of paper. They collect their paper street by street, calling upon every publisher, coffee-shop keeper, printer, or publican (but rarely on a publican), who may be a seller of “waste.” I heard the refuse paper called nothing but “waste” after the general elliptical fashion. Attorneys’ offices are often visited by these buyers, as are the offices of public men, such as tax or rate collectors, generally.

One man told me that until about ten years ago, and while he was a youth, he was employed by a relation in the trade to carry out waste paper sold to, or ordered by cheesemongers, &c., but that he never “collected,” or bought paper himself. At last he thought he would start on his own account, and the first person he called upon, he said, was a rich landlady, not far from Hungerford-market, whom he saw sometimes at her bar, and who was always very civil. He took an opportunity to ask her if she “happened to have any waste in the house, or would have any in a week or so?” Seeing the landlady look surprised and not very well pleased at what certainly appeared an impertinent inquiry, he hastened to explain that he meant old newspapers, or anything that way, which he would be glad to buy at so much a pound. The landlady however took in but one daily and one weekly paper (both sent into the country when a day or so old), and having had no dealings with men of my informant’s avocation, could not understand his object in putting such questions.

Every kind of paper is purchased by the “waste-men.” One of these dealers said to me: “I’ve often in my time ‘cleared out’ a lawyer’s office. I’ve bought old briefs, and other law papers, and ‘forms’ that weren’t the regular forms then, and any d——d thing they had in my line. You’ll excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t help thinking what a lot of misery was caused, perhaps, by the cwts. of waste I’ve bought at such places. If my father hadn’t got mixed up with law he wouldn’t have been ruined, and his children wouldn’t have had such a hard fight of it; so I hate law. All that happened when I was a child, and I never understood the rights or the wrongs of it, and don’t like to think of people that’s so foolish. I gave 1½d. a pound for all I bought at the lawyers, and done pretty well with it, but very likely that’s the only good turn such paper ever did any one—unless it were the lawyers themselves.”