“The only bad money we have taken was from a Methodist clergyman, who came in for a 1s. 6d. portrait. He gave us a bad sixpence.
“For colouring we charge 3d. more. If the portraits are bad or dark we tell them, that if they have them coloured the likeness will be perfect. We flesh the face, scratch the eye in, and blue the coat and colour the tablecloth. Sometimes the girl who does it puts in such a lot of flesh paint, that you can scarcely distinguish a feature of the person. If they grumble, we tell them it will be all right when the picture’s dry. If it’s a good picture, the colour looks very nice, but in the black ones we are obliged to stick it on at a tremendous rate, to make it show.
“Jim stands at the door, and he keeps on saying, ‘A correct portrait, framed and glazed, for sixpence, beautifully enamelled.’ Then, when they are listening, he shows the specimen in his hands, and adds, ‘If not approved of, no charge made.’
“One morning, when we had been doing ‘quisby,’ that is, stopping idle, we hit upon another dodge. Some friends dropped in to see me, and as I left to accompany them to a tavern close by, I cried to Jim, ‘Take that public-house opposite.’ He brought the camera and stand to the door, and a mob soon collected. He kept saying, ‘Stand back, gentlemen, stand back! I am about to take the public-house in front by this wonderful process.’ Then he went over to the house, and asked the landlord, and asked some gentlemen drinking there to step into the road whilst he took the house with them facing it. Then he went to a policeman and asked him to stop the carts from passing, and he actually did. By this way he got up a tremendous mob. He then put in the slide, pulled off the cap of the camera, and focussed the house, and pretended to take the picture, though he had no prepared glass, nor nothing. When he had done, he called out, ‘Portraits taken in one minute. We are now taking portraits for 6d. only. Time of sitting, two seconds only. Step inside and have your’n taken immediately.’ There was a regular rush, and I had to be fetched, and we took 6s. worth right off.
“People seem to think the camera will do anything. We actually persuade them that it will mesmerise them. After their portrait is taken, we ask them if they would like to be mesmerised by the camera, and the charge is only 2d. We then focus the camera, and tell them to look firm at the tube; and they stop there for two or three minutes staring, till their eyes begin to water, and then they complain of a dizziness in the head, and give it up, saying they ‘can’t stand it.’ I always tell them the operation was beginning, and they were just going off, only they didn’t stay long enough. They always remark, ‘Well, it certainly is a wonderful machine, and a most curious invention.’ Once a coalheaver came in to be mesmerised, but he got into a rage after five or six minutes, and said, ‘Strike me dead, ain’t you keeping me a while!’ He wouldn’t stop still, so Jim told him his sensitive nerves was too powerful, and sent him off cursing and swearing because he couldn’t be mesmerised. We don’t have many of these mesmerism customers, not more than four in these five months; but it’s a curious circumstance, proving what fools people is. Jim says he only introduces these games when business is dull, to keep my spirits up—and they certainly are most laughable.
“I also profess to remove warts, which I do by touching them with nitric acid. My price is a penny a wart, or a shilling for the job; for some of the hands is pretty well smothered with them. You see, we never turn money away, for it’s hard work to make a living at sixpenny portraits. My wart patients seldom come twice, for they screams out ten thousand blue murders when the acid bites them.
“Another of my callings is to dye the hair. You see I have a good many refuse baths, which is mostly nitrate of silver, the same as all hair-dyes is composed of. I dyes the whiskers and moustache for 1s. The worst of it is, that nitrate of silver also blacks the skin wherever it touches. One fellow with carroty hair came in one day to have his whiskers died, and I went clumsily to work and let the stuff trickle down his chin and on his cheeks, as well as making the flesh at the roots as black as a hat. He came the next day to have it taken off, and I made him pay 3d. more, and then removed it with cyanide, which certainly did clean him, but made him smart awfully.
“I have been told that there are near upon 250 houses in London now getting a livelihood taking sixpenny portraits. There’s ninety of ’em I’m personally acquainted with, and one man I know has ten different shops of his own. There’s eight in the Whitechapel-road alone, from Butcher-row to the Mile-end turnpike. Bless you, yes! they all make a good living at it. Why, I could go to-morrow, and they would be glad to employ me at 2l. a-week—indeed they have told me so.
“If we had begun earlier this summer, we could, only with our little affair, have made from 8l. to 10l. a-week, and about one-third of that is expenses. You see, I operate myself, and that cuts out 2l. a-week.”