Everybody who studies London possesses among his collection pictures of the street cries. These drawings generally belong to the later years of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth. They establish the fact that the streets were filled with a never-ending procession of men and women with baskets, carts, wheel-barrows, trays, boxes, all bawling their wares at the top of the voice. You may look into the shop now called an “Oilman’s”; nearly all the things he sells were formerly vended in the street. The conversion of the wheel-barrow and the tray into the shop would prove a chapter in the history of London trade.
It is therefore interesting to learn that these hawkers and pedlars had already, at the end of the seventeenth century, increased so greatly as to become a nuisance to the Citizens. The Common Council proceeded against them with an Act providing that
“No Person should presume to sell any Goods, or Merchandize, in any Street, Lane, Passage, Tavern, Inn, Ale-house, or other Publick Place within the City or Liberties thereof, other than in open Markets and Fairs, upon the Penalty of forty Shillings for every such Offence. And, for the more effectual Preventing such Practices, all Citizens buying Goods of such Persons to forfeit the like Sum of forty Shillings for every such Offence. And, as farther Discouragement to all Hawkers and Pedlars, every Citizen that should permit or suffer such Persons to expose to Sale any Goods or Merchandize in his, her, or their Houses, should for every such Offence likewise forfeit the Sum of forty Shillings” (Maitland, i. p. 479).
At the same time an Act of Parliament imposed a tax upon them. The hawker or pedlar played an important part in the country life from an early period. He it was who circulated among the villages, and from farm to farm, the things for which in the country there existed no shops. Autolycus belongs to all ages, and in all ages he is a jovial, sharp, ready-witted rascal who will pass off his damaged goods for new, will buy cheap and sell dear. The hawkers escaped legislation in mediæval England, and are first noticed in a statute of Edward VI., in which “they are treated in a very contemptuous manner, being described as more ‘hurtful than necessary to the commonwealth.’ But the case of pedlars was not seriously taken in hand before the reign of William III., who put a tax upon them and, ominously enough, bound them to certify commissioners for transportation how they travelled and traded.”
We have seen how the Franciscans became pedlars,
“Thai dele with purses, pynnes and knyves,
With girdles, gloves for wenches, and wyves.”
The hawker of London was not exactly the same as the hawker of the country. In the first place, it is evident that the City disliked his setting up a stall outside the markets or the streets where special things were sold; the companies still exercised the power of regulating trade; there was still the old jealousy which would not allow one trader to sell things belonging to another company. But the object of hawkers was to sell everything wanted for the daily life; like the Franciscan, he would not only sell mercery but also cutlery. This kind of hawker was effectually banished from the City, even though shopkeepers had now begun to mix up various companies and crafts in the same counter. The London hawker was reduced to selling one thing, and one thing only. In all the pictures of the street cries we find the hawker engaged in crying one thing for sale; he offered to catch rats, or sold sand, small coal, boot laces, door-mats, baskets, sausages, and so on, whatever was wanted for everyday use and could not be found in the shops.
