Vagabondiana;

OR,
ANECDOTES OF
ITINERANT TRADERS
THROUGH THE STREETS OF
LONDON,
IN ANTIENT AND MODERN TIMES.

VOLUME II.

BY
JOHN THOMAS SMITH.

London:
J. B. NICHOLS AND SON.

1839.

Printed by J. B. Nichols and Son, 25, Parliament-street.

THE CRIES OF LONDON:

EXHIBITING SEVERAL OF THE

ITINERANT TRADERS OF ANTIENT AND MODERN TIMES.

COPIED FROM RARE ENGRAVINGS, OR DRAWN FROM THE LIFE,

BY
JOHN THOMAS SMITH,
LATE KEEPER OF THE PRINTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

WITH A MEMOIR AND PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR.

LONDON:
JOHN BOWYER NICHOLS AND SON, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.
1839.

Printed by J. B. Nichols and Son, 25, Parliament-street.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The present work was some years since prepared for the press by its late ingenious author, who engraved all the plates for it himself, thirteen of which are copied from early prints, and the rest sketched from the life. It will easily be perceived how much superior the latter are to the former.

The descriptions of the plates were also prepared by Mr. Smith, and had the benefit of revision by the late Francis Douce, Esq. F.S.A.

These spirited etchings having become the property of the present Editor, they are now for the first time submitted to the public; who will, it is hoped, consider this volume an appropriate companion to Mr. Smith’s “Vagabondiana; or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London,” which work was honoured by a masterly Introduction from the pen of Mr. Douce.

The Editor has taken the liberty, occasionally, to adapt the letter-press to the present day; but the reader will kindly bear in mind that the work was written several years since; and that in the interval many changes have taken place, which it was not thought necessary to point out.

J. B. Nichols.

May, 1839.

CONTENTS, AND LIST OF PLATES.

JOHN THOMAS SMITH,
Late Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum.
Author of Nollekens and his Times, Antient Topography, &c. &c.
Engraved by W. Skelton, from an Original Drawing by J. Jackson, Esq^r. R.A.

Published by J. B. Nichols & Son, May 1^st, 1839.

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF
THE AUTHOR.

John Thomas Smith was the son of Nathaniel Smith, sculptor, and afterwards a well-known printseller, living at Rembrandt’s Head, 18 Great May’s-buildings, St. Martin’s-lane; and we have his own authority, written in the album of Mr. Upcott of Upper Street, Islington, for stating, he was literally “born in a hackney coach, June 23, 1766, on its way from his uncle’s old Ned Tarr, a wealthy glass-grinder, of Great Earl Street, Seven Dials, to his father’s house in Great Portland-street, Oxford Street; whilst Maddox was balancing a straw at the Little Theatre in the Hay Market, and Marylebone Gardens re-echoed the melodious notes of the famed Tommy Lowe.”

He was christened John, after his grandfather (a simple Shropshire clothier, and whose bust was the first model publicly exhibited at Spring Gardens), and Thomas, after his great uncle Admiral Smith, better known under the appellation of “Tom of Ten Thousand” (who died in 1762), and of whom Mr. Smith had a most excellent portrait painted by the celebrated Richard Wilson, the landscape painter, before that artist visited Rome, and of which there is a good engraving by Faber. The original Painting has lately been purchased by an honourable Admiral, to be presented by him to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital.

His father, Nathaniel Smith, was born in Eltham Palace, and was the playfellow of Joseph Nollekens, R.A. They both learned drawing together at William Shipley’s school, then kept in the Strand, at the eastern corner of Castle-court, the house where the Society of Arts held its first meetings.

On the 7th August, 1755, Nathaniel Smith was placed with Roubiliac, and had the honour of working with him on some of the monuments in Westminster Abbey; Nollekens was put, in 1750, under the instruction of Scheemakers. These young sculptors, about 1759 and 1760, carried off some of the first and best prizes offered by the Society of Arts. Smith settled himself in Great Portland-street; and his friend Nollekens in Mortimer-street, Cavendish-square, where he resided till his death.

Three of the heads of River Gods that adorn the arches of Somerset House, designed by Cipriani, were carved by Mr. N. Smith. Many proofs of his genius are recorded in the “Transactions of the Society of Arts.” In 1758, for the best model in clay, 5l. 5s.; in 1759, for the best drawing from a plaster cast, 5l. 5s.; and for the first best drawing of animals, 3l. 3s.; in 1760, for the first best model of animals, 9l. 9s. (this model is in the possession of Viscount Maynard); in 1761, for the first best model, in clay, of the Continence of Scipio, 15l. 15s. (in the possession of the Marquis of Rockingham); in 1762, for the first best model in clay, 21l.—the subject, Coriolanus supplicated by his Mother. Mr. N. Smith died in 1811. There is a portrait of him, etched by De Wilde; and a small painting on panel by the same artist, is also preserved. Three portraits of him by Howard are now in the family; as is also a fine portrait of his sister, by Cotes.

The friendship between Nollekens and Nath. Smith naturally introduced young Smith, the author of this work, to the notice of that celebrated sculptor. Whilst a boy, his intercourse with Nollekens was frequent, who often took him to walk with him in various parts of London, and seemed to feel a pleasure in pointing out curious remains and alterations of buildings to his notice, as well as shewing him some remarkable vestiges of former times. Perhaps these communications gave the first impetus to that love for metropolitan antiquities which he continued unabated through life. Upon the death of his mother in 1779, young Smith was invited into the studio of Mr. Nollekens, who had seen and approved of some of his attempts in wax-modelling. At that time Nathaniel Smith was Nollekens’s principal assistant; and there his son was employed in making drawings from his models of monuments, assisting in casting, and finally, though with little talent, in carving. Whilst with Nollekens, young Smith often stood to him as a model, but left him after three years. He then became a student in the Royal Academy, and was celebrated for his pen and ink imitations of Rembrandt and Ostade’s etchings; he copied several of the small pictures of Gainsborough, by whom he was kindly noticed. He afterwards was placed by his honoured friend Dr. Hinchliffe, then Bishop of Peterborough, as a pupil to John Keyse Sherwin, the celebrated engraver; but appears for a time to have given up the burin for the pencil, and was for many years a drawing master, and at one time resided at Edmonton. At the early age of 22 he married “the girl of his heart,” Miss Anne Maria Pickett (of the respectable family of Keighley, at Streatham, in Surrey), who, after a union of 45 years, was left his widow.

The name of John Thomas Smith will descend to posterity connected with the Topographical History of the Metropolis. His first work, published in numbers, was entitled, “Antiquities of London and its Environs; dedicated to Sir James Winter Lake, Bart. F.S.A.; containing Views of Houses, Monuments, Statues, and other curious remains of antiquity, engraved from the original subjects, and from original drawings communicated by several members of the Society of Antiquaries.” There was no letter-press description of these plates; but under the subjects were engraved copious “Remarks, and References to the Historical Works of Pennant, Lysons, Stow, Weever, Camden, and Maitland.” The publication commenced in January 1791. About this period it became the fashion to illustrate with prints the pleasant “Account of London,” by Mr. Pennant; and Mr. Smith’s series of plates was a great acquisition to the collector. This work was ten years in progress, and finally consisted of twelve numbers and ninety-six plates; for a list of them, see Upcott’s Bibliographical Account of English Topography, vol. ii. p. 886.

In June, 1797, Mr. Smith published “Remarks on Rural Scenery; with twenty Etchings of Cottages, from Nature; and some Observations and Precepts relative to the Picturesque.” The etchings were chiefly of cottages in the neighbourhood of the metropolis.

In June, 1807, Mr. Smith published “Antiquities of Westminster; the old Palace; and St. Stephen’s Chapel (now the House of Commons); containing 246 Engravings of Topographical Objects, of which 122 no longer remain. This work contains copies of MSS. which throw new and unexpected light on the ancient History of the Arts in England.” This history appears to have been determined on in the year 1800: when, on occasion of the Union with Ireland, it becoming necessary to remove the wainscotting for the enlargement of the House of Commons, some very curious paintings were discovered on the 11th of August in that year. The next day Dr. Charles Gower and Mr. Smith visited the paintings: when the latter immediately determined to publish engravings from them; and on the 14th, permission having been obtained, Mr. Smith commenced his drawings. It was his custom to go there as soon as it was light, and to work till nine o’clock in the morning, when he was obliged to give way to the workmen, who often followed him so close in their operations, as to remove, in the course of the day on which he had made his sketch, the painting which he had been employed in copying that very morning. Six weeks, day by day, was Mr. Smith thus occupied in making drawings and memoranda from the pictures themselves, scrupulously matching the tint of the different colours on the spot. On the 26th of September, the permission which had been granted to him was withdrawn (on Mr. Robert Smirke, the more favoured draughtsman, undertaking to make drawings for the Society of Antiquaries); but fortunately by that time Mr. Smith had completed details of every thing he wished. An opinion having been entertained that Mr. Smith’s work was intended as a rival to the one published by the Society of Antiquaries, from Mr. Smirke’s drawings, the transaction was explained in some letters to the Gentleman’s Magazine from Mr. J. Sidney Hawkins, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Smirke. See vol. LXXIII. pp. 32, 118, 204, 318, 423.

The description of the Plates was begun by John Sidney Hawkins, Esq. F.S.A., who wrote the preface and the first 144 pages, besides other portions, as enumerated in Mr. Smith’s advertisement to the volume; but an unfortunate dispute arising between these gentlemen (a circumstance much to be regretted) the work was completed by the latter. Mr. Hawkins wrote and published a pamphlet in answer to Mr. Smith’s Preface; this produced a “Vindication,” in reply, which is occasionally to be found bound at the end of the volume. Before this “Vindication” was published, a fire at Mr. Bensley’s printing office destroyed 400 remaining copies of the work, with 5,600 prints, 2000 of which were coloured and elaborately gilt by Mr. Smith and his wife. By this fire Mr. Smith sustained a severe loss (estimated at £3,000) as the work was his entire property, having been published at his sole expense, aided by an unusually liberal subscription; Mr. Hawkins having no further interest or concern in it than furnishing gratuitously the greater portion of the descriptions. Mr. Smith afterwards published “Sixty-two additional Plates” to his “Antiquities of Westminster;”[1] but without any description, or even a list of them; for which however see Upcott’s Account of English Topography, vol. ii. p. 839.

The “Antiquities of London, &c.” was followed by another work on the same subject, in a larger and more splendid quarto, entitled, “Ancient Topography of London, embracing specimens of sacred, public and domestic Architecture, from the earliest period to the time of the great Fire, 1666. Drawn and etched by John Thomas Smith, intended as an Accompaniment to the celebrated Histories of Stow, Pennant, and others.” This work was begun in October 1810, and completed in 1815, when the title was altered as follows: “Ancient Topography of London; containing not only Views of Buildings which in many instances no longer exist, and for the most part were never before published, but some Account of Places and Customs either unknown or overlooked by the London Historians.” He was assisted in the descriptions by Francis Douce, Esq. F.S.A. and other friends. This volume consists of 32 Plates, boldly and masterly etched by Mr. Smith, much in the style of Piranesi, and explained in 82 pages of letter-press. To the subscribers Mr. Smith intimated his intention to extend his work to 100 pages, with several other plates; but this was never executed; he at the same time solicited communications for his intended “Account of the Parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden.” The Manuscript is still possessed by his widow.

Mr. Smith happily escaped the necessity and drudgery of continuing his labours as an artist, being appointed in 1816, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum.

In 1817 he published “Vagabondiana; or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London; with Portraits of the most remarkable, drawn from the life;” preceded by a masterly introduction, from the pen of Francis Douce, Esq. The present Volume, which was prepared for the press by Mr. Smith, but never before published, may be considered as a continuation of the same subject.

In 1828 Mr. Smith published two volumes, entitled, “Nollekens and his Times; comprehending a Life of that celebrated Sculptor; and Memoirs of several contemporary Artists, from the time of Roubiliac, Hogarth, and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake,” 2 vols. 8vo. These volumes abound with anecdotes of his venerable master, his wife, and their connexions, and of many of the artists of the last century. The publication passed through two editions.[2]

Mr. Smith had been employed on a work, which he intended to call “Walks through London;” and in which he was to describe the Residences, with anecdotes of eminent persons. He announced a “History of his own Life and Times,” the materials for which have been purchased by Mr. Bentley. He had also at one time a very extensive and curious illustrated series of the Royal Academy Catalogues. The greater part of his collection of Autographs and Letters was purchased a few years since by Mr. Upcott; and it is believed others were sold by Mr. Christie. His remaining collection of pictures, books, models, and casts in terra-cotta and plaster, were sold at his house, 22, University-street, Tottenham Court Road, on Tuesday the 23d of April, 1833.

Mr. Smith was very generally known, both from the importance of his publications and the public situation he held at the British Museum, where he evinced much cordiality of disposition. Many an instance might be mentioned of his charitable and friendly assistance to young artists who sought his advice. He had good judgment to discover merit where it existed, inherent good feeling to encourage it in a deserving object, and sufficient candour to deter from the pursuit where he found there was no indication of talent. In short, he was a very warm and sincere friend; and has been greatly regretted by many who had enjoyed his good-humoured conversation and ever amusing fund of anecdote; more particularly by the frequenters of the print-room of the Museum, where his unremitting attentions ensured for him the regard and respect of some of the first characters of the country.

In Mr. Upcott’s album he wrote a playful account of himself, in which is the following paragraph. “I can boast of seven events, some of which great men would be proud of. I received a kiss when a boy from the beautiful Mrs. Robinson,—was patted on the head by Dr. Johnson,—have frequently held Sir Joshua Reynolds’s spectacles,—partook of a pot of porter with an elephant,—saved Lady Hamilton from falling when the melancholy news arrived of Lord Nelson’s death,—three times conversed with King George the Third,—and was shut up in a room with Mr. Kean’s lion.”[3]

Mr. Smith’s last illness, an inflammation of the lungs, was but of one week’s duration. He was fully conscious of his approaching dissolution, and died in the possession of all his faculties, surrounded by his family, on the 8th of March 1833, at No. 22, University Street, Tottenham Court Road. He was privately interred on the 16th in the burial ground of St. George’s Chapel, near Tyburn Turnpike, attended to the grave by a few old friends and brother artists.

Besides his widow Mr. Smith left one son, who died at the Cape of Good Hope three months after his father; and two daughters; one of whom is married to Mr. Smith, the sculptor; the other to Mr. Fischer, the miniature-painter, a native of Hanover.

Of Mr. Smith there is a three-quarters portrait by J. Jackson, R.A.; and also a drawing of him by the same artist, from which the engraving given in this work, by Skelton, is copied.

J. B. Nichols.

INTRODUCTION.

There are few subjects, perhaps, so eagerly attended to by the young as those related by their venerable parents when assembled round the fire-side, but more particularly descriptions of the customs and habits of ancient times. Now as the Cries of London are sometimes the topic of conversation, the author of the present work is not without the hope of finding, amongst the more aged as well as juvenile readers, many to whom it may prove acceptable, inasmuch as it not only exhibits several Itinerant Traders and other persons of various callings of the present day, but some of those of former times, collected from engravings executed in the reigns of James I., Charles I. and during the Usurpation of Oliver Cromwell, and which, on account of their extreme rarity, are seldom to be seen but in the most curious and expensive Collections.

In the perusal of this volume the collector of English Costume, as well as the Biographer, may find something to his purpose, particularly in the old dresses, as it was the custom for our forefathers to wear habits peculiar to their station, and not, as in the present times, when a linen-draper’s apprentice, or a gentleman’s butler, may, in the boxes of the theatre, by means of his dress, and previously to uttering a word, be mistaken for the man of fashion.

Of all the itinerant callings the Watchman, the Water Carrier, the Vender of Milk, the Town Crier, and the Pedlar, are most probably of the highest antiquity.

When the Suburbs of London were infested with wolves and other depredators, and the country at large in a perpetual state of warfare, it was found expedient for the inhabitants to protect themselves, and for that purpose they surrounded their city by a wall, and according to the most ancient custom erected barbicans or watch-towers at various distances, commanding a view of the country, so that those on guard might see the approach of an enemy. This is an extremely ancient custom, as we find in the Second Book of Kings, chapter ix. verse 17, “And there stood a watchman on the Tower in Jezreel.”

With respect to water, it is natural to suppose that before conduits were established in London, the inhabitants procured it from the River Thames, and that infirm people, and the more opulent citizens, compensated others for the trouble of bringing it.

This must have also been the practice as to milk, in consequence of the farm-houses always being situated in the suburbs for the purpose of grazing the cattle. Stowe, the historian, has informed us that in his boyish days he had his three quarts of milk hot from the cow for his halfpenny.

The Water Carrier will be described and delineated in the course of this work.

As the city increased in population, a Town Crier became expedient, so that an article to be sold, or any thing lost, might be in the shortest possible time made known to the inhabitants of the remotest dwelling. Shakspeare has marked the character of a Crier of his time in Hamlet, Act iii. scene 2, “But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the Town-crier spoke my lines.” Lazarello de Tormes, in the very entertaining history of his life, describes his having been a Crier at Madrid, and that by blowing a horn he announced the sale of some wine.

Sometimes the criers of country towns afford instances of the grossest flattery and ignorance. We have an instance in the Crier of Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, who, after announcing the loss of an “all black cow, with a white face and a white tail,” concluded with the usual exclamation of “God save the King and the Lord of the Manor!” adding, “and Master Billy!” well knowing that the Lord of the Manor or his Lady would remember him for recollecting their infant son.

It may be inferred from an ancient stained glass picture of a pedlar with his pack at his back, still to be seen in a South-east window of Lambeth Church,[4] a representation of which has been given by the author in a work entitled, “Antiquities of London,” that itinerant trades must have been of long standing.

It appears from the celebrated Comedy of Ignoramus, by George Ruggle, performed before King James the First on March the 8th, 1614, of which there is an English translation by Robert Codrington, published 1662, that books were at that period daily cried in the streets.

In the third scene of the second act, Cupes the itinerant Bibliopole exclaims,

Libelli, belli, belli; lepidi, novi libelli; belli, belli, libelli!

Trico. Heus, libelli belli.

Cupes. O Trico, mox tibi operam do. Ita vivam, ut pessimi sunt libelli.

In the time of Charles II. ballad singers and sellers of small books were required to be licensed. John Clarke, bookseller, rented the licensing of all ballad-singers of Charles Killigrew, Esq. master of the revels, for five years, which term expired in 1682. “These, therefore, are to give notice (saith the latter gentleman in the London Gazette) to all ballad-singers, that they take out licenses at the office of the Revels at Whitehall, for singing and selling of ballads and small books, according to an antient custom. And all persons concerned are hereby desired to take notice of, and to suppress, all mountebanks, rope-dancers, prize-players, ballad-singers, and such as make shew of motions and strange sights, that have not a license in red and black letters, under the hand and seal of the said Charles Killigrew, Esq. Master of the Revels to his Majesty; and in particular, to suppress one Mr. Irish, Mr. Thomas Varney, and Thomas Yeats, mountebank, who have no license, that they may be proceeded against according to law.”

The Gazette of April 14, 1684, contains another order relative to these licenses: “All persons concerned are hereby desired to take notice of and suppress all mountebanks, rope-dancers, ballad-singers, &c. that have not a license from the Master of his Majesty’s Revels (which, for this present year, are all printed with black letters, and the King’s Arms in red) and particularly Samuel Rutherford and —— Irish, mountebanks, and William Bevel and Richard Olsworth; and all those that have licenses with red and black letters, are to come to the office to change them for licenses as they are now altered.”

The origin of our early cries might be ascribed to the parent of invention. An industrious man finding perhaps his trade running slack, might have ventured abroad with his whole stock, and by making his case known, invited his neighbours to purchase; and this mode of vending commodities being adopted by others, probably established the custom of itinerant hawkers, to the great and truly serious detriment of those housekeepers who contributed to support their country by the payment of their taxes. An Act was passed in the reign of James the First, and is thus noticed in a work entitled, “Legal Provisions for the Poor, by S. C. of the Inner Temple, 1713.” “All Pedlars, Petty-chapmen, Tinkers, and Glass-men, per Statute 21 Jac. 28, abroad, especially if they be unknown, or have not a sufficient testimonial, and though a man have a certain habitation, yet if he goes about from place to place selling small wares, he is punishable by the 39 Eliz.”

Hawkers and Pedlars are obliged at this time, in consequence of an Act passed in the reign of King George the Third, to take out a license.

Originally the common necessaries of life were only sold in the streets, but we find as early as the reign of Elizabeth that cheese-cakes were to be had at the small house near the Serpentine River in Hyde Park. It is a moated building, and to this day known under the appellation of the “Queen’s Cheese-cake House.”[5] There were also other houses for the sale of cheese-cakes, and those at Hackney and Holloway were particularly famous. The landlord of the latter employed people to cry them about the streets of London; and within the memory of the father of the present writer an old man delivered his cry of “Holloway Cheese-cakes,” in a tone so whining and slovenly, that most people thought he said “All my teeth ache.” Indeed among persons who have been long accustomed to cry the articles they have for sale, it is often impossible to guess at what they say.

An instance occurs in an old woman who has for a length of time sold mutton dumplings in the neighbourhood of Gravel Lane. She may be followed for a whole evening, and all that can be conjectured from her utterance is “Hot mutton trumpery.”

In another instance, none but those who have heard the man, would for a moment believe that his cry of “Do you want a brick or brick dust?” could have been possibly mistaken for “Do you want a lick on the head?”

An inhabitant of the Adelphi, when an invalid, was much annoyed by the peevish and lengthened cry of “Venny,” proceeding every morning and evening from a muffin-man whenever he rang his bell.

Many of the old inhabitants of Cavendish Square must recollect the mournful manner in which a weather-beaten Hungerford fisherman cried his “Large silver Eels, live Eels.” This man’s tones were so melancholy to the ears of a lady in Harley Street that she allowed the fellow five shillings a week to discontinue his cry in that neighbourhood; and there is at the present time a slip-shod wretch who annoys Portland Place and its vicinity generally twice, and sometimes three times a day, with what may be strictly called the braying of an ass, and all his vociferation is to inform the public that he sells water-cresses, though he appears to call “Chick-weed.” Another Stentorian bawler, and even a greater nuisance in the same neighbourhood, seems to his unfortunate hearers to deal in “Cats’-meat,” though his real cry is “Cabbage-plants.”

The witty author of a tract entitled, “An Examination of certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities, in the City of Dublin,” written in the year 1732, says, “I would advise all new comers to look out at their garret windows, and there see whether the thing that is cried be Tripes or Flummery, Buttermilk or Cowheels; for, as things are now managed, how is it possible for an honest countryman just arrived, to find out what is meant, for instance, by the following words, ‘Muggs, Juggs, and Porringers, up in the Garret, and down in the Cellar?’ I say, how is it possible for a stranger to understand that this jargon is meant as an invitation to buy a farthing’s worth of milk for his breakfast or supper?”

Captain Grose, in his very entertaining little work, entitled “An Olio,” in which there are many interesting anecdotes, notices several perversions of this kind, particularly one of a woman who sold milk.

Farthing mutton pies were made and continued to be sold within the memory of persons now living at a house which was then called the “Farthing Pie House,” in Marylebone Fields, before the New Road was made between Paddington and Islington, and which house remains in its original state at the end of Norton Street, New Road, bearing the sign of the Green Man.

Hand’s Bun House at Chelsea was established about one hundred and twenty years since, and probably was the first of its kind. There was also a famous bun-house at the time of George the Second in the Spa Fields, near the New River Head, on the way to Islington, but this was long since pulled down to make way for the sheep-pens, the site of which is now covered with houses.

The first notice which the writer has been able to obtain of the hot apple-dumpling women is in Ned Ward’s very entertaining work, entitled “The London Spy,” first published in 1698. He there states that Pancakes and “Diddle, diddle dumplings O!” were then cried in Rosemary Lane and its vicinity, commonly called Rag Fair. The representation of a dumpling-woman, in the reign of Queen Anne, is given by Laroon in his Cries of London, published 1711.[6]

With respect to hot potatoes, they must have been considerably more modern, as there are persons now living who declare them to have been eaten with great caution, and very rarely admitted to the table. The potatoe is a native of Peru in South America; it has been introduced into England about a century and a half; the Irish seem to have been the first general cultivators of it in the western parts of Europe.

Rice milk, furmety, and barley-broth were in high request at the time of Hogarth, about 1740. Boitard, a French artist, who was in England at that time, has left us a most spirited representation of the follies of the day in his print entitled “Covent Garden Morning Frolic,” in which the barley-broth woman is introduced. Without detracting from the merit of the immortal Hogarth, this print, which is extremely rare, exhibits as much humour as any of his wonderful productions. A copy of this engraving with an explanatory account of the portraits which it exhibits, will be given by the author in his Topographical History of Covent Garden, a work for which he has been collecting materials for upwards of thirty years.[7]

The use of saloop is of very recent date. It was brought into notice, and first sold in Fleet Street one hundred years ago, at the house now No. 102, where lines in its praise were painted upon a board and hung up in the first room from the street, a copy of which will precede a print representing a saloop stall, given in this work.

Formerly strong waters were publicly sold in the streets, but since the duty has been laid on spirits, and an Act passed to oblige persons to take out a license for dealing in liquors, the custom of hawking such commodities has been discontinued.

The town, from the vigilance of the Police, has fortunately got rid of a set of people called Duffers, who stood at the corners of streets, inviting the unsuspicious countryman to lay out his money in silk handkerchiefs or waistcoat pieces, which they assured him in a whisper to have been smuggled. A notorious fellow of this class, who had but one eye, took his stand regularly near the gin-shop at the corner of Hog Lane, Oxford Street. The mode adopted by such men to draw the ignorant higgler into a dark room, where he was generally fleeced, was by assuring him that no one could see them, and as for a glass of old Tom, he would pay for that himself, merely for the pleasure of shewing his goods.

Though this custom of accosting passengers at the corners of streets is very properly done away with, yet the tormenting importunities of the barking shopkeeper is still permitted, as all can witness as they pass through Monmouth Street, Rosemary Lane, Houndsditch, and Moorfields. The public were annoyed in this way so early as 1626, as appears from the following passage in “Greene’s Ghost:” “There are another sort of Prentices, that when they see a gentlewoman or a countriman minded to buy any thing, they will fawne upon them, with cap in hand, with ‘What lacke you, gentlewoman? what lacke you, countriman? see what you lacke.’”

WATCHMAN, BELLMAN, and BILLMAN.

Plates I. II. III.

It has been observed in the Introduction, that of all the callings, that of the Watchman is perhaps of the highest antiquity; and as few writers can treat on any subject without a quotation from honest John Stowe, the following extract is inserted from that valuable and venerable author:

“Then had yee, besides the standing watches, all in bright harnesse, in every ward and streete of this citie and suburbs, a marching watch that passed thro’ the principal streets thereof, to wit, from the Little Conduit by Paule’s gate, thro’ West Cheape, by the Stocks, thro’ Cornehill, by Leadenhall to Aldgate, then backe downe Fen-church Street, by Grasse Church, about Grasse-church Conduit, and by Grasse Church Streete into Cornehill, and through it into Cheape again, and so broke up. The whole way ordered for this marching watch extended to 3200 taylors yards of assize. For the furniture thereof with lights there were appointed 700 cressets, 500 of them being found by the Companies, and the other 200 by the Chamber of London.[8] Besides the which lights, every Constable in London, in number more then 240, had his cresset; the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings and four pence, and every cresset had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it; so that the poore men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost 2000. The marching watch contained in number 2000 men, part of them being old souldiers, of skill to be captaines, lieutenants, serjeants, corporals, &c. Wiflers, drummers, and fifes, standard and ensigne bearers, sword-players, trumpeters on horsebacke, demilaunces on great horses, gunners with hand-guns, or halfe hakes, archers in coates of white fustian, signed on the breast and backe with the armes of the City, their bowes bent in their hands, with sheafes of arrowes by their sides, pikemen in bright corslets, burganets, &c. holbards, the like Billmen in Almaine rivets, and apernes of mayle, in great number.”[9]

Mr. Douce observes, that these watches were “laid down 20 Henry VIII.;” and that “the Chronicles of Stow and Byddel assign the sweating sickness as a cause for discontinuing the watch.”

“Anno 1416. Sir Henry Barton being maiar, ordained lanthorns and lights to be hang’d out on the winter evenings, betwixt Alhallows and Candlemas.”

Mr. Warton, in his notes to Milton’s Poems, observes, that anciently the Watchmen who cried the hours used the following or the like benedictions, which are to be found in a little poem called “The Bellman,” inserted in Robert Herrick’s Hesperides:

“From noise of scare-fires rest ye free,
From murder, Benedicite.
From all mischances, that may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night;
Mercie secure ye all, and keep
The goblin from ye while ye sleep.” 1647.

The First Plate of the Watchman, introduced in this work, is copied from a rare woodcut sheet-print engraved at the time of James the First, consisting of twelve distinct figures of trades and callings, six men and six women. Under this Watchman the following verses are introduced, but they are evidently of a more modern date than that of the woodcut:

“Maids in your smocks, look to your locks,
Your fire and candle light;
For well ’tis known, much mischief’s done
By both in dead of night.
Your locks and fire do not neglect,
And so you may good rest expect.”

Under another Watchman, in the same set of figures, are the following lines, of the same type and orthography as the preceding:

“A light here, maids, hang out your light,
And see your horns be clear and bright,
That so your candle clear may shine,
Continuing from six till nine;
That honest men that walk along,
May see to pass safe without wrong.”

There were not only Watchmen, but Bellmen and Billmen. These people were armed with a long bill in case of fire, so that they could, as the houses were mostly of timber, stop the progress of the flames by cutting away connections of fuel.

Of this description of men, the Second Plate, copied from a rare print prefixed to a work, entitled, “Villanies discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-light,”[10] by T. Deckar, or Dekker, 1616, is given as a specimen. The Bellman is stiled “The Childe of Darkness, a common Night-walker, a man that had no man to waite uppon him, but onely a dog, one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beate at men’s doores, bidding them (in meere mockerie) to look to their candles when they themselves were in their dead sleeps, and albeit he was an officer, yet he was but of light carriage, being knowne by the name of the Bellman of London.”

In Strype’s edition of Stowe’s London, 1756, (vol. ii. 489,) it is observed, “Add to this government of the nightly watches, there is belonging to each ward a Bellman, who, especially in the long nights, goeth thro’ the streets and lanes, ringing a bell; and when his bell ceaseth, he salutes his masters and mistresses with some rhimes, suitable to the festivals and seasons of the year; and bids them look to their lights. The beginning of which custom seems to be in the reign of Queen Mary, in January 1556; and set up first in Cordwainer-street Ward, by Alderman Draper, Alderman of that ward; then and there, as I find in an old Journal, one began to go all night with a bell; and at every lane’s end, and at the ward’s end, gave warning of fire and candle, and to helpe the poor, and pray for the dead.”

It appears from the Bellman’s Epistle, prefixed to the London Bellman, published in 1640, that he came on at midnight, and remained ringing his bell till the rising up of the morning. He says, “I will wast out mine eies with my candles, and watch from midnight till the rising up of the morning: my bell shall ever be ringing, and that faithfull servant of mine (the dog that follows me) be ever biting.”

Leases of houses, and household furniture stuff, were sold in 1564 by an out-cryer and bellman for the day, who retained one farthing in the shilling for his pains.

The friendly Mr. George Dyer, late a printseller of Compton-street, presented to the writer a curious sheet print containing twelve Trades and Callings, published by Overton, without date, but evidently of the time of Charles the Second, from which engraving the Third Plate of a Watchman was copied.

WATER-CARRIER.

Plate IV.

The Conduits of London and its environs, which were established at an early period, supplied the metropolis with water until Sir Hugh Middleton brought the New River from Amwell to London, and then the Conduits gradually fell into disuse, as the New River water was by degrees laid on in pipes to the principal buildings in the City, and, in the course of time, let into private houses.

When the above Conduits supplied the inhabitants, they either carried their vessels, or sent their servants for the water as they wanted it; but we may suppose that at an early period there were a number of men who for a fixed sum carried the water to the adjoining houses. The first delineation the writer has been able to discover of a Water-carrier, is in Hoefnagle’s print of Nonsuch, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The next is in the centre of that truly-curious and more rare sheet wood-cut, entitled, “Tittle-Tattle,” which from the dresses of the figures must have been engraved either in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or the beginning of that of James the First. In this wood-cut the maid servants are at a Conduit, where they hold their tittle-tattle, while the Water-carriers are busily engaged in filling their buckets and conveying them on their shoulders to the places of destination.

The figure of a Water-carrier, introduced in the Fourth Plate, is copied from one of a curious and rare set of cries and callings of London, published by Overton, at the White Horse without Newgate. The figure retains the dress of Henry the Eighth’s time; his cap is similar to that usually worn by Sir Thomas More, and also to that given in the portrait of Albert Durer, engraved by Francis Stock. It appears by this print, that the tankard was borne upon the shoulder, and, to keep the carrier dry, two towels were fastened over him, one to fall before him, the other to cover his back. His pouch, in which we are to conclude he carried his money, has been thus noticed in a very curious and rare tract, entitled, “Green’s Ghost, with the merry Conceits of Doctor Pinch-backe,” published 1626: “To have some store of crownes in his purse, coacht in a faire trunke flop, like a boulting hutch.”

Ben Jonson, in his admirable comedy of “Every Man in his Humour,” first performed in 1598, has made Cob the water-carrier of the Old Jewry, at whose house Captain Bobadil lodges, a very leading and entertaining character. Speaking of himself before the Justice, he says, “I dwell, Sir, at the sign of the Water-tankard, hard by the Green Lattice; I have paid scot and lot there many time this eighteen years.”

The first notice which the writer has been able to obtain of the introduction of the New River water into public buildings in London, he found in the Archives of Old Bethlem, in which it appears, that “on the 26th of February, 1626, Mr. Middleton conveyed water into Bethlem.” This must have been, according to its date, the old Bethlem Hospital that stood in Bishopsgate-street, near St. Botolph’s Church, on the site of the streets which are at this time under the denomination of Old Bethlem; as the building lately taken down in London Wall, Moorfields, was begun in April 1675, and finished in July 1676. It should seem therefore that this magnificent building, which had more the appearance of a palace than a place of confinement, most substantially built with a centre and two wings, extending in length to upwards of 700 feet, was only one year in building; a most extraordinary instance of manual application.

In 1698, when Cheapside Conduit was no longer used for its original purpose, it became the place of call for chimney-sweepers, who hung up their brooms and shovels against it, and there waited for hire.

It appears that even in 1711 the New River water was not generally let into houses; for in Laroon’s Cries of London, which were published at that time, there is a man with two tubs suspended across his shoulders, according to the present mode of carrying milk, at the foot of which plate is engraved “Any New River Water, water here.”[11]

CORPS-BEARER.

Plate V.

Of all the calamities with which a great city is infested, there can be none so truly awful as that of a plague, when the street-doors of the houses that were visited with the dreadful pest were padlocked up, and only accessible to the surgeons and medical men, whose melancholy duty frequently exposed them even to death itself; and when the fronts of the houses were pasted over with large bills exhibiting red crosses, to denote that in such houses the pestilence was raging, and requesting the solitary passenger to pray that the Lord might have mercy upon those who were confined within. Of these bills there are many extant in the libraries of the curious, some of which have borders engraved on wood, printed in black, displaying figures of skeletons, bones, and coffins. They also contain various recipes for the cure of the distemper. The Lady Arundell, and other persons of distinction, published their methods for making what was then called plague-water, and which are to be found in many of the rare books on cookery of the time; but happily for London, it has not been visited by this affliction since 1665, a circumstance owing probably to the Great Fire in the succeeding year, which consumed so many old and deplorable buildings, then standing in narrow streets and places so confined that it was hardly possible to know where any pest would stop.

Every one who inspects Aggas’s Plan of London, engraved in the reign of Elizabeth, as well as those published subsequently to the rebuilding of the City after the fire, must acknowledge the great improvements as to the houses, the widening of the streets, and the free admission of fresh air. It is to be hoped, and indeed we may conclude from the very great and daily improvements on that most excellent plan of widening streets, that this great City will never again witness such visitations.

When the plague was at its height, perhaps nothing could have been more silently or solemnly conducted than the removal of the dead to the various pits round London, that were opened for their reception; and it was the business of Corpse Bearers, such as the one exhibited in the Fifth Plate, to give directions to the Car-men, who went through the City with bells, which they rang, at the same time crying “Bring out your Dead.” This melancholy description may be closed, by observing that many parts of London, particularly those leading to the Courts of Westminster, were so little trodden down, that the grass grew in the middle of the streets. Few persons would believe the truth of the following extract:

“A profligate wretch had taken up a new way of thieving (yet ’tis said too much practised in those times), of robbing the dead, notwithstanding the horror that is naturally concomitant. This trade he followed so long, till he furnished a warehouse with the spoils of the dead; and had gotten into his possession (some say) to the number of a thousand winding-sheets.” See Memoirs of the Life and Death of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, published 1682.

It is remarkable, and shows the great advantage of our River Thames, that during the Plague of 1665, according to a remark made by Lord Clarendon, not one house standing upon London Bridge was visited by the plague.

Although the subject of Funerals has been so often treated of by various authors, yet the following extracts will not, it is hoped, be deemed irrelevant by the reader. They may serve too as a contrast to the confusion and mingling of dust which must have taken place during the plague, in the burial of so many thousands in so short a space of time, and they may show likewise the vanity of human nature.

In “Chamberlain’s Imitation of Holbein’s Drawings,” in his Majesty’s collection, is the following passage alluding to the great care Lady Hobye took as to the arrangement of her funeral.

“Her fondness for those pompous soothings, which it was usual at that time for grief to accept at the hands of pride, scarcely died with her; for, a letter is extant from her to Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, desiring to know ‘what number of mourners were due to her calling; what number of waiting women, pages, and gentlemen ushers; of chief mourners, lords, and gentlemen; the manner of her hearse, of the heralds, and church?’ &c. This remarkable epistle concludes thus: ‘Good Mr. Garter, do it exactly, for I find forewarnings that bid me provide a pick-axe,’ &c. The time of her death is not exactly known, but it is supposed to have been about 1596. She is buried at Bisham, with her first husband.[12] It was this Lady’s daughter, Elizabeth Russell, that was said to have died with a pricked finger.”

It was usual at funerals to use rosemary, even to the time of Hogarth, who has introduced it in a pewter plate on the coffin-lid of the funeral scene in his Harlot’s Progress. Shakspeare notices it in Romeo and Juliet, “And stick your rosemary on this fair corse.” “This plant,” says Mr. Douce, in his “Illustrations of Shakspeare and Ancient Manners,” page 216, vol. i. “was used in various ways at funerals. Being an evergreen, it was regarded as an emblem of the soul’s immortality.” Thus in Cartwright’s “Ordinary,” Act 5, scene 1:

“———————If there be
Any so kind as to accompany
My body to the earth, let them not want
For entertainment; pr’ythee see they have
A sprig of rosemary dip’d in common water,
To smell to as they walk along the streets.”

In an obituary kept by Mr. Smith, secondary of one of the Compters, and preserved among the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 886, is the following entry: “Jan. 2, 1671, Mr. Cornelius Bee, Bookseller in Little Britain, died; buried Jan. 4, at Great St. Bartholomew’s, without a sermon, without wine or wafers, only gloves and rosemary.” And Mr. Gay, when describing Blowselinda’s funeral, records that “Sprigg’d rosemary the lads and lasses bore.”

Suicides were buried on the north side of the church, in ground purposely unconsecrated.

The custom of burial observed by that truly respectable class of the community denominated Friends, commonly called Quakers, may be deemed the most rational, as it is conducted with the utmost simplicity.

The corpse is kept the usual time; it is then put into a plain coffin uncovered. Afterwards it is placed in a plain hearse, also uncovered, and without feathers; the attendants accompanying the funeral in their family carriages, or hackney coaches. The corpse is then placed by the side of the grave where sometimes they offer a prayer, or deliver an exhortation, after which the coffin is lowered, the earth put over it, and thus the ceremony closes. Should the deceased have been a minister, then the corpse on the day of its interment is carried into the meeting house, and remains there in the midst of the congregation during their meditations.

The orthodox members of this society never wear any kind of mourning. Relatives are never designedly placed by each other, but are buried indiscriminately, as death may visit each member.

They begin at the left hand upper corner, placing them in rows till they have filled the ground to the lower right hand corner, after which they commence again as before. They make no distinction whatever between male and female, nor young and old, nor have they even so much as a coffin-plate.

The Jews bury their dead within four and twenty hours, adhering to the custom of the East, where the body would putrify beyond that time. The great burial-ground at Mile End was made at the sole expense of the famous Moses Hart, who, after losing an immense sum in the South Sea bubble, died worth 5000l. per annum. This munificent Jew also built the Dutch Synagogue in Duke’s-place. The squib prints of the day designate Moses Hart by the introduction of the Knave of Hearts. The Knave of Clubs in the same plate was meant for the ancestor of the Gideon family. The Jews bury their poor by a collection made at the funerals of the better part of the community. Several boys go about to the mourners and other Jews assembled upon the occasion, with tin boxes padlocked up, at the top of which there is a small slit to admit of the contributions, and every Jew present, however humble his station, is eager to drop in his mite.

HACKNEY COACHMAN.

Plate VI.

From the writer’s extensive knowledge of prints, and his intimate acquaintance with the various collections in England, he has every reason to conclude that the original print of a Hackney Coachman, from which this Plate has been copied, is perhaps the only representation of the earliest character of that calling. The print from which it was taken is one of a Set published by Overton, at the sign of the White Horse without Newgate; and its similarity to the figures given by Francis Barlow in his Æsop’s Fables, and particularly in a most curious sheet-print etched by that artist, exhibiting Charles the Second, the Duke of York, &c. viewing the Races on Dorset Ferry near Windsor, in 1687, sufficiently proves this Hackney Coachman to have been of the reign of that monarch.

The early Hackney Coachman did not sit upon the box as the present drivers do, but upon the horse, like a postilion; his whip is short for that purpose; his boots, which have large open broad tops, must have been much in his way, and exposed to the weight of the rain. His coat was not according to the fashion of the present drivers as to the numerous capes, which certainly are most rational appendages, as the shoulders never get wet; the front of the coat has not the advantage of the present folding one, as it is single breasted.

His hat was pretty broad, and so far he was screened from the weather. Another convincing proof that he rode as a postilion is, that his boots are spurred. In that truly curious print representing the very interesting Palace of Nonsuch, engraved by Hoefnagle, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the coachman who drives the royal carriage in which the Queen is seated, is placed on a low seat behind the horses, and has a long whip to command those he guides. How soon after Charles the Second’s time the Hackney Coachmen rode on a box the writer has not been able to learn, but in all the prints of King William’s time the Coachmen are represented upon the box, though by no means so high as at present; nor was it the fashion at the time of Queen Anne to be so elevated as to deprive the persons in the carriage of the pleasure of looking over their shoulders.

Brewer, in his “Beauties of Middlesex,” observes in a note, that “It is familiarly said, that Hackney, on account of its numerous respectable inhabitants, was the first place near London provided with Coaches for hire, for the accommodation of families, and that thence arises the term Hackney Coaches.”

This appears quite futile; the word Hackney, as applied to a hireling, is traced to a remote British origin, and was certainly used in its present sense long before that village became conspicuous for wealth or population.

In 1637 the number of Hackney Coaches in London was confined to 50, in 1652 to 200, in 1654 to 300, in 1662 to 400, in 1694 to 700, in 1710 to 800, in 1771 to 1000, and in 1802 to 1100. In imitation of our Hackney Coaches, Nicholas Sauvage introduced the Fiacres at Paris, in the year 1650. The hammer-cloth is an ornamental covering of the coach-box. Mr. S. Pegge says, “The Coachman formerly used to carry a hammer, pincers, a few nails, &c. in a leathern pouch hanging to his box, and this cloth was devised for the hiding of them from public view.” See Pegge’s “Anonymiana,” p. 181.

It is said that the sum of £1500, arising from the duty on Hackney Coaches, was applied in part of the expense in rebuilding Temple Bar.

JAILOR.

Plate VII.

Those persons who remember old Newgate, the Gate House at Westminster, and other places of confinement, will recollect how small and inconvenient those buildings were, and must acknowledge the very great improvements as to the extensive accommodation of all our Prisons, not only in London, but in almost every county in England; and for these very great improvements no one could have stood more forward than the benevolent Howard. It is to him the public owe extensiveness of building, separations in the prisons for the various criminals, and most liberal supply of fresh water. Since his time there have been few jail distempers, as the prisoners have spacious yards to walk in, and by thus being exposed to fresh air are kept free from fevers and other disorders incidental to places of confinement. Let any one who recollects old Newgate survey the present structure, and he will be highly gratified with the respectable order kept up in that edifice. In some of the counties the jails may be looked upon as asylums, for neatness and good management, particularly that of Cambridge, where, instead of the whole of the prisoners for every sort of crime being huddled together in the tower of the Castle, they have now a building which affords separate apartments for men, women, and children, and this on the most elevated spot, commanding views of the adjacent country from every window. Whoever has visited Chelmsford Jail must have been delighted with its humane and sensible construction. Those who do not recollect the old prisons will, upon an inspection of Fox’s Book of Martyrs, perceive in the Prisons of Lambeth Palace, the Bishop of London’s House, Aldersgate Street, &c. how very small and confined those prisons were, having been not above eight feet square, with low ceilings and hardly an opening to let in the light. In addition to these miseries each room had its stocks, in which the prisoners were placed. The residences of our sovereigns in former days had likewise their prisons. Three of these were in the old palace of Westminster, viz. Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. Heaven was a place where, if the prisoners could afford to pay, they had accommodations. Purgatory was a place with a ceiling so low that they could not walk without bending the head into the chest; and Hell was a dungeon with little or no light, where they had only bread and water. The pump lately standing in the street close by the Exchequer Coffee House, and now carried to the opposite side of the way, was the pump of this last prison, and to this day goes under the appellation of “Hell Pump.”

To the credit of present manners, our modern jailors are in general men of feeling, and wherever it is discovered that they act with cruelty they are immediately dismissed from their office. This was not the case in former days, for they were in general the most hard-hearted of men, and callous even to the distresses of the aged, and crying infant at the breast.

The following Plate, pourtraying a Jailor of those times, will sufficiently convey an idea of the morose gluttony of such a character. It was copied from a rare tract, entitled, “Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by Geffray Mynshul, of Grayes Inne, Gent. with new additions, 1638.” On the right side of the figure is written, “Those that keepe me, I keepe; if can, will still.” On the left hand, “Hee’s a true Jaylor strips the Divell in ill.” The following extracts from this curious work will shew the estimation in which the author held a Jailor:

“As soone as thou commest before the gate of the prison, doe but think thou art entring into Hell, and it will extenuate somewhat of thy misery, for thou shalt be sure not only to find Hell, but fiends and ugly monsters, which with continuall torments will afflict thee; for at the gate there stands Cerberus, a man in shew, but a dogge in nature, who at thy entrance will fawne upon thee, bidding thee welcome, in respect of the golden croft which he must have cast him; then he opens the doore with all gentlenes, shewing thee the way to misery is very facile, and being once in, he shuts it with such fury, that it makes the foundation shake, and the doore and windows so barricadoed, that a man so loseth himself with admiration that he can hardly finde the way out and be a sound man.

“Now for the most part your porter is either some broken cittizen who hath plaid jack of all trades, some pander, broker, or hangman, that hath plaid the knave with all men; and for the more certainty his emblem is a red beard, to which sacke hath made his nose cousin-german.

“If marble-hearted Jaylors were so haplesse happy as to be mistaken, and be made Kings, they would, instead of iron to their grates, have barres made of men’s ribs, Death should stand at doore for porter, and the Divell every night come gingling of keyes, and rapping at doores to lock men up.

“The broker useth to receive pawnes, but when he hath the feathers he lets the bird flye at liberty: but the Jaylor when he hath beene plum’d with the prisoner’s pawnes, detaines him for his last morsell.

“He feedes very strangely, for some say he eates cloakes, hats, shirts, beds, and bedsteds, brasse, or pewter, or gold rings, plate, and the like; but I say he is in his dyet more greedy than Cannibals, for they eate but some parts of a man, but this devoures the whole body. The tenne-peny and nine-peny ordinaries should never bee in the Fleet, Gatehouse, or the two infernal Compters, for Hunger would lay the cloth, and Famine would play the leane-fac’d serving-man to take away the trenchers.”

A PRISON BASKET-MAN.

Plate VIII.

This Plate exhibits one of those men who were sent out to beg broken meat for the poor prisoners. It was copied from one of the sets published by Overton in the reign of King Charles the Second. This custom, which perhaps was as ancient as our Religious Houses, has been long done away by an allowance of meat and bread having been made to those prisoners who are destitute of support.

It was the business of such men to claim the attention of the public by their cry of “Some broken breade and meate for y^e poore prisonors! for the Lord’s sake pitty the poore!” This mendicant for the prisoners is also noticed with the following London Cries, in a play entitled, “Tarquin and Lucrece,” viz. “A Marking Stone.” “Breade and Meate for the poor Prisoners.” “Rock Samphire.” “A Hassoc for your pew, or a Pesocke to thrust your feet in.” In former days the passenger was solicited in the most melancholy and piteous manner by the poor prisoners. A tin box was lowered by a wire from the windows of their prisons into the street, so as to be even with the eye of the passenger. The confined persons, in hoarse, but sometimes solemn tones, solicited the public to “Remember the poor prisoners!” Not many persons can now recollect the tin boxes of this description, suspended from the Gatehouse at Westminster, and under the gloomy postern of old Newgate; but the custom was till lately continued at the Fleet Prison: where a box of the above description was put out from a grated window, even with the street, where one of the prisoners, who took it by turns, implored the public to “Remember the poor Insolvent Debtors;” but as the person was seen, and so near the street, the impression made on the passenger had not that gloomy and melancholy air of supplication as when uttered from a hollow voice at a distance, and in darkness; so that hundreds passed by without attending to the supplicant.

Few of those gentlemen who come into office of Sheriff with a dashing spirit quit their station without doing some, and, indeed, to do them justice, essential service to the community. Sir Richard Phillips, when sheriff, established the poor boxes put up on the outside of Newgate, with a restriction that they should be opened in the presence of the Sheriffs, and distributed by them to the poor prisoners, so that there could be no embezzlement, and the donations thus rendered certain of being equally and fairly divided among the proper objects, according to their distressing claims.

The following extract is from a work published by Mr. Murray in 1815, entitled, “Collections relative to Systematic Relief of the Poor,” and which perhaps may be the earliest notice of mendicants by proxy. Plutarch notices a Rhodian custom, which is particularly mentioned by Phœnix of Colophon, a writer of Iambics, who describes certain men going about to collect donations for the crow, and singing or saying,

“My good worthy masters, a pittance bestow,
Some oatmeal, or barley, or wheat, for the crow;
A loaf, or a penny, or e’en what you will,
As fortune your pockets may happen to fill.
From the poor man a grain of his salt may suffice,
For your crow swallows all and is not over nice.
And the man who can now give his grain and no more,
May another day give from a plentiful store.
Come, my lad, to the door, Plutus nods to our wish,
And our sweet little mistress comes out with a dish.
She gives us her figs, and she gives us a smile,
Heav’n bless her! and guard her from sorrow and guile,
And send her a husband of noble degree,
And a boy to be danced on his grand-daddy’s knee;
And a girl like herself, all the joy of her mother,
Who may one day present her with just such another.
God bless your dear hearts all a thousand times o’er,
Thus we carry our crow-song to door after door;
Alternately chaunting we ramble along,
And we treat all who give, or give not, with a song.”

And the song ever concludes:

“My good worthy masters, your pittance bestow,
Your bounty, my good worthy mistresses, throw.
Remember the crow! he is not over nice;
Do but give as you can, and the gift will suffice.”

RAT-CATCHER.

Plate IX.

There are two kinds of rats known in this country, the black, which was formerly very common, but is now rarely seen, being superseded by the large brown kind, commonly called the Norway rat. The depredations committed by this little animal, which is about nine inches long, can be well attested by the millers and feeders of poultry, as in addition to its mischief it frequently carries off large quantities to its hiding place.

In 1813 the following computation was made: “The annual value of the European Empire cannot be less than 25 millions sterling, and of this at least one fiftieth part, upon the lowest calculation, is eaten and destroyed by rats and mice; the public loss therefore is at least 500,000l. per annum, exclusive of the damage done in ships, in store houses, and buildings of every kind.”

The bite of the rat is keen, and the wound it inflicts painful and difficult to heal, owing to the form of its teeth, which are long, sharp, and irregular. It produces from twelve to eighteen at a litter, and were it not that these animals destroy each other, the country would soon be overrun with them.

Mr. Bewick observes, “It is a singular fact in the history of these animals, that the skins of such of them as have been devoured in their holes, have frequently been found curiously turned inside out, every part being completely inverted, even to the ends of the toes.”

In addition to this remark of Mr. Bewick, it may be mentioned, that though the destruction of rats is so great among themselves, yet they are in some degree attached to each other, and have even their sports and pastimes. It is well known that a herd of rats will be defenders of their own holes, and that when a strange brood trespass upon their premises, they are sure to be set upon and devoured. They are active as the squirrel, and will, like that animal, sit up and eat their food. They play at hide and seek with each other, and have been known to hide themselves in the folds of linen, where they have remained quite still until their playmates have discovered them, in the same manner as kittens. Most readers will recollect the fable where a young mouse suggests that the cat should have a bell fastened to his neck, so that his companions might be aware of his approach. This idea was scouted by one of their wiseheads, who asked who was to tye the bell round the cat’s neck? This experiment has actually been tried upon a rat. A bell was fastened round his neck, and he was replaced in his hole, with full expectation of his frightening the rest away, but it turned out that instead of their continuing to be alarmed at his approach, he was heard for the space of a year to frolick and scamper with them. In China the Jugglers cause their rats and mice to dance together to music, and oblige them to take leaps as we teach our cats. The following is a copy of a handbill distributed in Cornhill a few years ago:

“A most wonderful Rat, the greatest natural curiosity ever seen in London.

“A gigantic Female Rat, taken near Somerset House: it is truly worthy the inspection of the curious, its length being three feet three inches, and its weight ten pounds three quarters; and twenty-four inches in circumference. Any lady or gentleman purchasing goods to the amount of one shilling or upwards, will have an opportunity of seeing it gratis, at No. 5, Sweeting’s Alley, Cornhill.”

Rats were made use of as a plague, see 1st Book of Kings, chap. v. Nich. Poussin painted this subject, which has been engraved by Stephen Picart of Rome, 1677.

In a curious tract, entitled “Green’s Ghost,” published in 1626, Watermen are nicknamed water-rats; an appellation also bestowed on pirates by the immortal bard of Avon.

The down of the musk-rat of Canada is used in the manufacture of hats. From the tail of the Muscovy musk-rat is extracted a kind of musk, very much resembling the genuine sort, and their skins are frequently laid among clothes to preserve them from moths.

“The musk-rat is of all the small species larger and whiter than the common. He exhales, as he moves, a very strong smell of musk, which penetrates even the best inclosures. If, for example, one of the animals pass over a row of bottles, the liquor they contain will be so strongly scented with musk that it cannot be drunk. The writer has known tons of wine touched by them so strongly infected, that it was with the greatest difficulty, and by a variety of process, that they could be purged of this smell. These rats are a great plague to all the country, and, if they once get into a cellar or magazine, are very hard to destroy. Cats will not venture to attack them, for fear probably of being suffocated by the smell; nor will the European terrier hurt them.” See Les Hindous, par E. Baltazard Solvyns, tom. 4. Paris, 1812, folio.

The Norwegians of late years have the following effectual mode of getting rid of their rats:

They singe the hair of one of them over a fire, and then let it loose; the stench is so offensive to his comrades that they all immediately quit the house, and are eventually destroyed by combating with other broods. This expedient has become so general, that Norway is relieved of one of its greatest pests. The above method was communicated to the writer by a native, who wondered that our farmers had not adopted it.

It appears in that very masterly set of etchings by Simon Guillain, or Guilini, from drawings made by Annibal Caracci, of the Cries of Bologna, published in 1646, that the Rat-catcher had representations of rats and mice painted upon a square cloth fastened to a pole like a flag, which he carried across his shoulder.

The Chinese Rat and Mouse-killer carries a cat in a bag. In Ben Jonson’s time, the King’s most excellent Mole-catcher lived in Tothill Street.

MARKING STONES.

Plate X.

The rare wood-cut, from which the present etching was made, is one of the curious set of twelve figures engraved in wood of the time of James the First. Under the figure are the following lines:

“Buy Marking Stones, Marking Stones buy,
Much profit in their use doth lie:
I’ve marking stones of colour red,
Passing good,—or else black lead.”

The cry of Marking Stones is also noticed in the play of “Tarquin and Lucrece.” These Marking Stones, as the verses above state, are either of a red colour, or composed of black lead. They were used in marking of linen, so that washing could not take the mark out. Every one knows that water will not take effect upon black lead, particularly if the stick of that material, which is denominated “a Marking Stone,” be heated before it be stamped. The stone, of a red colour, was probably of a material impregnated with the red called “ruddle,” a colour never to be washed out. It is used by the graziers for the marking of their sheep, is of an oily nature, and made in immense quantities, for the use of graziers, at the Ruddle Manufactory, near the Nine Elms, on the Battersea Road. It was a red known in the reign of Edward the Third, and much used by the painters employed in the decorations of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster.

About fifty years ago it was the custom of those persons who let lodgings in St. Giles’s, above the Two-penny admission, where sheets were afforded at sixpence the night, to stamp their linen with sticks of marking stones of ruddle, with the words “Stop Thief,” so that, if stolen, the thief should at once be detected and detained. For this, and many other curious particulars respecting the lowest classes of the inhabitants of St. Giles in the Fields, the writer is much indebted to his truly respectable friend, the late William Packer, Esq. of Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and afterwards of Great Baddow, in Essex, who was born, and resided for the great part of his life, upon the spot. For the honour of this gentleman’s family, it may be here acknowledged that his father, who was also a truly respectable man, was one of the promoters of the building of Middlesex Hospital, which, before the erection of the present building, was an establishment held in Windmill Street, leading from Tottenham Court Road to Percy Chapel, in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. The house which the Hospital occupied, standing on the South side of the street, has since been made use of as a French charity school.

BUY A BRUSH, OR A TABLE BOOK.

Plate XI.

The Engraving from which the accompanying Plate was copied was one of a set published by Overton, but without date. Judging from the dress, it must have been made either in the reign of King James the First or in that of the succeeding monarch. The inscription over the figure is, “Buy a Brush or a Table Book.” The floors were not wetted, but rubbed dry, even until they bore a very high polish, particularly when it was the fashion to inlay staircases and floors of rooms with yellow, black, and brown woods. On the landing places of the great staircase in the house built by Lord Orford, now the Grand Hotel, at the end of King Street in Covent Garden, such inlaid specimens are still remaining, in a beautiful state of preservation. There are many houses of the nobility where the floors consist of small pieces of oak arranged in tessellated forms. The room now occupied by the servants in waiting, and that part of the house formerly a portion of the old gallery, at Cleveland House, St. James’s; the floors of the state rooms of Montagu House, now the British Museum; and the floor of the Library in St. Paul’s Cathedral, all retain their tessellated forms. These floors were rubbed by the servants, who wore brushes on their feet, and they were, and indeed are, so highly polished, in some of the country mansions, that in some instances they are dangerous to walk upon. This mode of dry-rubbing rooms by affixing the brush to the feet, is still practised in France, chiefly by men-servants.

The Table Book is of very ancient use. Shakspeare thus notices it in his play of Hamlet:

Ham. My tables: meet it is
I set it down.

It was a book consisting of several small pieces of slate set in frames of wood, fastened together with hinges, and closed, as a book for the pocket: for a representation of one, with a pencil attached to a string, as used in 1565, see Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners,” vol. II. p. 227. It was taken, says that writer, from Gesner’s Treatise De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565. The Almanacs of that time likewise contained tables of a composition like asses skin. One of these was in the possession of Mr. Douce.

It is a very curious fact that the farmers, graziers, and horse dealers, use at this day a Table Book consisting of slates bound in wood, with a pencil attached to it, exactly of the same make as that referred to as used in 1565, and such are now regularly sold at the toy shops. We may conclude that persons in the higher ranks of life used sheets of ivory put together as a book, for we frequently meet with such, elegantly adorned with clasps, of very old workmanship.

Howell, in his “Familiar Letters,” 4to. p. 7, published 1645, says, “This return of Sir Walter Raleigh from Guiana puts me in minde of a facetious tale I read lately in Italian, (for I have a little of that language already,) how Alphonso King of Naples sent a Moor, who had been his captive a long time, to Barbary, to buy horses, and to return by such a time. Now there was about the King a kinde of buffon or jester who had a Table Book, wherein he was used to register any absurdity, or impertinence, or merry passage, that happened about the Court. That day the Moor was dispatched for Barbary, the said jester waiting upon the King at supper, the King called for his journall, and askt what he had observed that day; thereupon he produced his Table Book, and amongst other things he read how Alphonso King of Naples had sent Beltran the Moor, who had been a long time his prisoner, to Morocco, his own country, with so many thousand crowns to buy horses. The King asked him ‘why he inserted that?’ ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I think he will never come back to be a prisoner again, and so you have lost both man and money.’ ‘But, if he do come, then your jest is marr’d,’ quoth the King. ‘No, sir; for if he return, I will blot out your name, and put him in for a fool.’”

FIRE-SCREENS.

Plate XII.

The next plate is a copy from the same set of prints from which the preceding one was taken, and has the following inscription engraved above it:

“I have screenes if you desier,
To keepe y^r butey from y^e fire.”

It appears from the extreme neatness of this man, and the goods which he exhibits for sale, that they were of a very superior quality, probably of foreign manufacture, and possibly from Leghorn, from whence hats similar to those on his head were first brought into England. These Leghorn hats were originally imported and sold by our Turners, who generally had the Leghorn hat for their sign. England certainly can boast of superiority in almost every description of manufacture, over those of most parts of the world; but it never successfully rivalled the Basket-makers and Willow-workers of France and Holland, either for bleaching or weaving; nor perhaps is it possible for any skill to exceed that of the French in their present mode of making baskets and other such ware. Even the children’s rattles of the Dutch and French, surpass anything of the kind made in this country. The willow is common in most parts of Holland, so that they have a great choice of a selection of wood, and the females are taught the art of twisting it at a very early age. It must be acknowledged, that the natives of Hudson’s Bay are very curious workers of baskets and other useful articles made of the barks of trees, and even the most uncultivated nations often display exquisite neatness in their modes of making them. The French carry their basket ware either in small barrows or in little carts, and sell them at so cheap a rate, by reason of the few duties they have to pay to Government, that it would be impossible for an Englishman, were he master of the art of producing them, to sell them for less than ten times the sum.

That very wonderful people the Chinese probably were the first who thought of hand-screens to protect the face from the sun. We find them introduced in their earliest delineations of costume. The feathered fans of our Elizabeth might occasionally have been used as fire screens, in like manner as those now imported from the East Indies, also composed of feathers, and which frequently adorn our chimney pieces. It is possible, however, that as our vendor of Fire-screens has particularly acquainted us with the use of his screens, they might have been the first that were introduced decidedly for that purpose.

SAUSAGES.

Plate XIII.

The female vendor of Sausages exhibited in the following Plate, is of the time of Charles II. and has here been preferred to a similar character belonging to the preceding reign, her dress and general appearance being far more picturesque. Under the original print are the following lines:

“Who buys my Sausages! Sausages fine!
I ha’ fine Sausages of the best,
As good they are as e’er was eat,
If they be finely drest.
Come, Mistris, buy this daintie pound,
About a Capon rost them round.”

Almost every county has some peculiar mode of making sausages, but as to their general appearance they are tied up in links. There are several sorts which have for many years upheld their reputation, such as those made at Bewdley in Oxfordshire, at Epping, and at Cambridge, places particularly famous for them. The sausages from Bewdley, Epping, and Cambridge, are mostly sold by the poulterers, who are in general very attentive in having them genuine. They are brought to Leadenhall, Newgate, and other markets, neatly put up in large flat baskets, similar to those in which fresh butter is sent to town. The Oxford gentlemen frequently present their London friends with some of the sausage meat put up in neat brown pans; this is fried in cakes, and is remarkably good.

The pork-shops of Fetter Lane have been for upwards of 150 years famous for their sausages; indeed the pork-shops throughout London are principally supported by a most extensive sale of sausages.

Ben Jonson, in his play of Bartholomew Fair, exhibits sausage stalls, their contents being prime articles of refreshment at that very ancient festival. In a very curious tract, entitled, “A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, (youngest daughter of Colley Cibber, Esq.) written by herself, the second edition, printed for W. Reeve, in Fleet Street, 1759,” the authoress, after experiencing some of the most curious vicissitudes, in the midst of her greatest distress, says, “I took a neat lodging in a street facing Red Lyon Square, and wrote a letter to Mr. Beard, intimating to him the sorrowful plight I was in; and, in a quarter of an hour after, my request was obligingly complied with by that worthy gentleman, whose bounty enabled me to set forward to Newgate Market, and bought a considerable quantity of pork at the best hand, which I converted into sausages, and with my daughter set out laden with each a burden as weighty as we could well bear; which, not having been used to luggages of that nature, we found extremely troublesome. But Necessitas non habeat legem, we were bound to that or starve.

“Thank heaven, our loads were like Æsop’s, when he chose to carry the bread, which was the weightiest burden, to the astonishment of his fellow-travellers; not considering that his wisdom preferred it, because he was sure it would lighten as it went: so did ours, for as I went only where I was known, I soon disposed, among my friends, of my whole cargo; and was happy in the thought, that the utmost excesses of my misfortunes had no worse effect on me, than an industrious inclination to get a small livelihood, without shame or reproach; though the Arch-Dutchess of our family, who would not have relieved me with a halfpenny roll or a draught of small-beer, imputed this to me as a crime; I suppose she was possessed with the same dignified sentiments Mrs. Peachum is endowed with, and THOUGHT THE HONOUR OF THEIR FAMILY WAS CONCERNED; if so, she knew the way to have prevented the disgrace, and in a humane, justifiable manner, have preserved her own from that taint of cruelty I doubt she will never overcome.”

The wretched vendors of sausages, who cared not what they made them of, such as those about forty years back who fried them in cellars in St. Giles’s, and under gateways in Drury Lane, Field Lane, commonly called “Food and Raiment Alley, or Thieving Lane, alias Sheep’s Head Alley,” with all its courts and ramifications of Black Boy Alley, Saffron Hill, Bleeding Heart Yard, and Cow Cross, were continually persecuting their unfortunate neighbours, to whom they were as offensive as the melters of tallow, bone burners, soap boilers, or cat-gut cleaners. This “Food and Raiment Alley,” so named from the cook and old clothes shops, was in former days so dangerous to go through, that it was scarcely possible for a person to possess his watch or his handkerchief by the time he had passed this ordeal of infamy; and it is a fact, that a man after losing his pocket-handkerchief, might, on his immediate return through the Lane, see it exposed for sale, and purchase it at half the price it originally cost him, of the mother of the young gentleman who had so dextrously deprived him of it. Watches were, as they are now in many places in London, immediately put into the crucible to evade detection.

NEW ELEGY.

Plate XIV.

This figure was drawn and etched by the writer from an itinerant vendor of Elegies, Christmas Carols, and Love Songs. His father and grandfather had followed the same calling.

When this man was asked what particular event he recollected, his information was principally confined to the Elegies he had sold. He seemed anxious, however, to inform the public that in the year 1753 the quartern loaf was sold at fourpence halfpenny, mutton was two-pence halfpenny a pound, that porter was then three-pence a pot, and that the National Debt was twenty-four millions. Notwithstanding this man’s memory served him in the above particulars, which perhaps he had repeated so often that he could not forget them, yet he positively did not know his age; he said he never troubled his head with that, for that his father told him if he only mentioned the year of his birth any scholar could tell it. His father, he observed, cried the Elegy of that notorious magistrate Sir Thomas de Veil,[13] which went through nine editions, as there was hardly a thief or strumpet that did not purchase one.

Hogarth is supposed to have introduced this magistrate in his “Woman swearing a Child to a grave Citizen.” In his Plate of “Night,” the drunken Freemason has also been supposed to be Sir Thomas de Veil. This man had rendered himself so obnoxious by his intrigues with women, and his bare-faced partialities in screening the opulent, that the executors, who were afraid of the coffin being torn to pieces by the mob, privately conveyed it to a considerable distance from Bow Street by three o’clock in the morning.

It was formerly not only the custom to print Elegies on the great people, but on all those in the lowest class of life who had rendered themselves conspicuous as public characters. Indeed we may recollect the Elegies to the memory of Sam House, the political tool of Mr. Fox among the vulgar part of his voters, and also that to the memory of Henry Dimsdale, the muffin man, nicknamed Sir Harry Dimsdale, the Mayor of Garratt, who succeeded the renowned Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, commonly called Old Wigs, from his being a purchaser of those articles. The last Elegy was to the memory of the lamented Princess Charlotte, and it was then that the portrait of the above-mentioned Elegy-vender was taken.

With respect to his Christmas Carols, he said they had varied almost every year in their bordered ornaments; and the writer regrets the loss of a collection of Christmas Carols from the time of this man’s grandfather, which, had he been fortunate enough to have made his drawing of the above vendor only three days before, he could have purchased for five shillings. The collectors in general of early English woodcuts may not be aware that there were printed Christmas Carols so early as Queen Mary the First. The writer, when a boy, detected several patches of one that had been fastened against the wall of the Chapel of St. Edmond in Westminster Abbey. It had marginal woodcut illustrations, which reminded him of those very interesting blocks engraved for “Hollinshed’s Chronicle.” It appears that some part of this curious Carol was remaining when Mr. Malcolm wrote his description of the above Chapel for his Work on London. (Vol. I. p. 144.)

Love Songs, however old they might be, were pronounced by our Elegy-vender to be always saleable among the country people. Robert Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” part 3, sect. 2, speaking of love songs, says, “As Carmen, Boyes, and Prentises, when a new song is published with us, go singing that new tune still in the streets, they continually acted that tragical part of Perseus, and in every man’s mouth was O, Cupid! Prince of Gods and Men! pronouncing still like stage-players, O, Cupid! they were so possessed all with that rapture, and thought of that pathetical love speech, they could not a long time after forget, or drive it out of their minds, but, O, Cupid! Prince of Gods and Men! was ever in their mouths.”

In the second volume, page 141, of Shenstone’s Works, the author says, “The ways of ballad singers, and the cries of halfpenny pamphlets, appeared so extremely humourous, from my lodgings in Fleet Street, that it gave me pain to observe them without a companion to partake. For, alas! laughter is by no means a solitary entertainment.”

ALL IN FULL BLOOM.

Plate XV.

The repeated victories gained by England over her enemies, and her unbounded liberality to them when in distress, not only by her pecuniary contributions, but by allowing this country to be their general seat of refuge during their own commotions, encouraged the ignorant among them still to continue in their belief that the streets of our great city were paved with gold. The consequence has been, that the number of idle foreigners who have been tempted to quit their homes have increased the vagrants who now infest our streets with their learned mice and chattering monkies, to the great annoyance of those passengers who do not contribute to their exhibitions; for it is their practice not only to let the animals loose to the extent of a long string, but to encourage them to run up to the balconies, oftentimes to the great terror of the families who have disregarded their impertinent importunities.

The writer of this work once reprimanded a French organist for throwing his dancing mice upon a nursery maid, because she did not contribute to reward him for the amusement they afforded her young master.

Among the various foreigners thus visiting us to make their fortunes is Anatony Antonini, a native of Lucca in Tuscany, from which place come most of those fellows who carry images and play the organ about our streets. He is exhibited in the annexed etching, with his show board of artificial flowers, “All in full bloom!” constructed of silk and paper, with wires for their stalks. The birds perched on their branches are made of wax, cast from plaster of Paris moulds. They are gaily painted and varnished, and in some instances so thin that their bodies are quite transparent.

The custom of casting figures in wax is very ancient, especially in Roman Catholic countries, where they represent the Virgin and Child and other sacred subjects as articles of devotion for the poorer sort of people who cannot afford to purchase those carved in ivory. It is said that Mrs. Salmon’s exhibition of wax-work in Fleet Street, whose sign of a Salmon was noticed by Addison in the Spectator, owes its origin to a schoolmistress, the wife of one of Henry the Seventh’s body guards. This woman distributed little wax dolls as rewards to the most deserving of her scholars, and, it is reported, brought the art from Holland.

Some few years ago a very interesting exhibition of artificial flowers was made in Suffolk Street, Charing Cross, by a female of the name of Dards, who had most ingeniously produced many hundreds of the most beautiful flowers from fishes’ bones, which, when warm, she twisted into shapes. The leaves were made from the skins of soles, eels, &c. which were stained with proper colours. The flowers of the lily of the valley were represented by the bones of the turbot which contain the brain, and were so complete a deception that they were often mistaken for a bunch of the real flowers. This exhibition did not answer the expectation of Mrs. Dards, as few persons could believe it possible that fishes’ bones were capable of being converted into articles of such elegance.

The ribs of the whale were frequently erected at the entrances of our tea gardens, and many remained within memory at the Spring Gardens, Chelsea; Cromwell’s Gardens, Brompton; Copenhagen House, &c. The inhabitants of the coast of Mechran, who live mostly upon fish, build their houses of the rudest materials, frequently of the large fish that are thrown on the shore.

About thirty-five years ago, there was another very singular “All blooming” man, a black with wooden legs, who carried natural flowers about the streets. His trick to claim attention was remarkable, as he generally contrived to startle passengers with his last vociferation. His cry was, “All blooming! blooming! blooming!!! all alive! alive!! alive!!!”

It is notable fact that blacks, when they become public characters in our streets, as they are more or less masters of humour, display their wit to the amusement of the throng, and thereby make a great deal of money. They always invent some novelty to gain the attention of the crowd. One of these fellows, under the name of Peter, held a dialogue between himself and his master, nearly to the following effect:

Master. “Oh, Peter, you very bad boy; you no work; you lazy dog.”—Peter. “Oh massa, ’give me this time, Peter Peter do so no more; Peter Peter no more run away.”—This duet he accompanied with a guitar, in so humourous a style, that he was always sure to please his audience. He would, at the completion of his song, pass himself through a hoop, and, while holding a stick, twist his arms round his body in a most extraordinary manner. His last performance was that of placing his head backwards between his legs and picking up a pin with his mouth from the ground, without any assistance from hands, his arms being folded round his body before he commenced his exhibition.

The Chinese florist carries his flowers in two flat baskets suspended from a pole placed across his shoulders, the whole being similar to our scales with their beam.

OLD CHAIRS TO MEND.

Plate XVI.

The Plate exhibits the figure of Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs now living, who resides in Compton’s Buildings, Burton Crescent, and sallies forth by eight o’clock in the morning, not with a view of getting chairs to mend; for, from the matted mass of dirty rushes which have sometimes been thrown across his shoulders for months together, without ever being once opened, it must be concluded that his cry of “Old chairs to mend” avails him but little; the fact is, that like many other itinerants, he goes his rounds and procures broken meat and subsistence thus early in the morning for his daily wants.

The seating of chairs with rushes cannot be traced further back than a century, as the chairs in common as well as public use in the reign of Queen Anne had cane seats and backs. Previously to that time, and even in the days of Elizabeth, cushion seats and stuffed backs were made use of.

In the reign of Henry the Eighth, and in remoter times, the chairs were made entirely of wood, and in many instances the backs were curiously carved, either with figures, grotesque heads, or foliage. Most of the early chairs had arms for supporting elbows, and which were also carved. In the Archæologia, published by the Society of Antiquaries, several representations of ancient chairs are given.[14] Of the Royal thrones, the reader will find a curious succession, from the time of Edward the Confessor to that of James the First, exhibited in the great seals of England, representations of most of which have been published by Speed in his History of Great Britain, and in Sandford’s Genealogical History of England.

The cry of “Old Chairs to mend!” is frequently uttered with great clearness, and occasionally with some degree of melody. Suett, the late facetious Comedian, took the cry of “Old Chairs to mend,” in an interlude, entitled, the “Cries of London,” performed some years since in the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, and repeated the old lines of

“Old Chairs to mend! Old Chairs to mend!
If I had the money that I could spend,
I never would cry Old Chairs to mend.”[15]

The late John Bannister, who performed in the same piece, took the cry of “Come here’s your scarlet ware, long and strong scarlet garters, twopence a pair, twopence a pair, twopence a pair!” which was a close imitation of a little fellow who made a picturesque appearance about the streets with his long scarlet garters streaming from the end of a pole.

The late eccentric actor Baddeley, who left a sum of money to purchase a cake to be eaten by his successors every Twelfth Night, in the Green-room of Drury Lane Theatre, took the cry of “Come buy my shrimps, come buy my shrimps, prawns, very large prawns, a wine-quart a penny periwinkles.”

The late Dr. Owen informed the present writer that he had heard that the author of “God save the King” caught the tones either from a man who cried “Old Chairs to mend,” or from another who cried “Come buy my door-mats;” and it is well known that one of Storace’s most favourite airs in “No Song no Supper,” was almost wholly constructed from a common beggar’s chaunt.

THE BASKET-MAKER.

Plate XVII.

The man whose figure affords the subject of the next Plate is a journeyman Prickle-maker, and works in a cellar on the western side of the Haymarket. A prickle is a basket used by the wine-merchants for their empty bottles; it is made of osiers unpeeled and in their natural state, and the basket is made loose with open work, so that when it is filled with bottles it may ride easy in the wine-merchant’s caravan, and without the least risk of breaking them. The maker of prickles begins the formation of the bottom of the basket by placing the osier twigs in the form of a star flat upon the ground; he then with another twig commences his weaving by twisting it under and over the ends of the twigs which meet in the centre of the star, and so he goes on to the extent of the circumference of the intended prickle; he then bends up the surrounding twigs, which are in a moist state, and binds them in the middle and the top, and thus the prickle is finished. The formation of hampers for wine-merchants’ sieves, and baskets for the gardeners and fishmongers, and indeed that of all other basket work, is begun in the same way as the prickle. The basket-maker is seated upon a broad flat stage consisting of at least four boards clamped together, touching the ground at one end, on which his feet are placed, but elevated about six feet. Upon the end where he is seated free air passes under him, and thus he takes less cold from the ground of the cellar.

In Lapland large baskets are made by two persons, a man and a woman. Their mode of forming their baskets in every particular is similar to that of the English. On the banks of the Thames, from Fulham to Staines, there were formerly numerous basket-makers’ huts, but opulent persons, anxious to have houses on those delightful spots, purchased the ground on the expiration of the leases, and erected fashionable villas on their site. The inducement for the basket-makers occupying the sides of the Thames, was the great supply of osiers or young willows which grow on the aits, particularly at Twickenham and Staines.