From woman, who, I am assured, may be taken as a fair type of the better class of trotter-sellers—some of the women being sottish and addicted to penn'orths of gin beyond their means—I had the following statement. I found her in the top room of a lofty house in Clerkenwell. She was washing when I called, and her son, a crippled boy of , with his crutch by his side, was cleaning knives, which he had done for many months for a family in the neighbourhood, who paid for his labour in what the mother pronounced better than money—broken victuals, because they were of such good, wholesome quality. The room, which

I'm the widow of a sawyer, sir," said Mrs. ——, with a very slight brogue, for she was an Irishwoman, "and I've been a widow 18 long years. I'm 54, I believe, but that 18 years seems longer than all the rest of my life together. My husband earned hardly ever less than 30s. a week, sometimes 3l., and I didn't know what pinching was. But I was left destitute with four young children, and had to bring them up as well as I could, by what I could make by washing and charing, and a hard fight it was. One of my children went for a soldier, one's dead, another's married, and that's the youngest there. Ah! poor fellow, what he's gone through! He's had 18 abscesses, one after another, and he has been four times in Bartholomew's. There's only God above to help him when I'm gone. My health broke six years ago, and I couldn't do hard work in washing, and I took to trotter selling, because one of my neighbours was in that way, and told me how to go about it. My son sells trotters too; he always sits at the corner of this street. I go from one public-house to another, and sometimes stand at the door, or sit inside, because I'm known and have leave. But I can't either sit, or stand, or walk long at a time, I'm so rheumatic. No, sir, I can't say I was ever badly insulted in a public-house; but I only go to those I know. Others may be different. We depend mostly on trotters, but I have a shilling and my meat, for charing, a day in every week. I've tried 'winks and whelks too, 'cause I thought they might be more in my pocket than trotters, but they don't suit a poor woman that's begun a street-trade when she's not very young. And the trotters can be carried on with so little money. It's not so long ago that I've sold threepenn'orth of trotters—that is, him and me has— pretty early in the evening; I'd bought them at Mr. ——'s, in Bermondsey, in the afternoon, for we can buy three penn'orth, and I walked there again—perhaps it's four miles there and back—and bought another 3d. worth. The first three-pence was all I could rise. It's a long weary way for me to walk, but some walk from Poplar and Limehouse. If I lay out 2s. on the Saturday—there's 15 sets for 1s., that's 60 trotters—they'll carry us on to Monday night, and sometimes, if they'll keep, to Tuesday night. Sometimes I could sell half-a-crown's worth in less time. I have to go to Bermondsey three or four times a week. The trade was far better six years ago, though trotters were dearer then, only 13 sets 1s., then 14, now 15. For some very few, that's very fine and very big, I get a penny a piece; for some I get 1 1/2d. for two; the most's 1/2d. each; some's four for 1 1/2d.; and some I have to throw into the dust-hole. The two of us earns 5s. a week on trotters, not more, I'm sure. I sell to people in the public-houses; some of them may be rather the worse for drink, but not so many; regular drunkards buys nothing but drink. I've sold them too to steady, respectable gentlemen, that's been passing in the street, who put them in their pockets for supper. My rent's 1s. a week.

I then had some conversation with the poor lad. He'd had many a bitter night, he told me, from half-past to , for he knew there was no breakfast for his mother and him if he couldn't sell some trotters. He had a cry sometimes. He didn't know any good it did him, but he couldn't help it. The boys gathered round him sometimes, and teased him, and snatched at his crutch; and the policeman said that he must make him "move on," as he encouraged the boys about him. He didn't like the boys any more than they were fond of the policemen. He had often sad thoughts as he sat with his trotters before him, when he didn't cry; he wondered if ever he would be better off; but what could he do? He could read, but not write; he liked to read very well when he had anything to read. His mother and he never missed mass.

Another old woman, very poorly, but rather tidily dressed, gave me the following account, which shows a little of public-house custom:—

I've seen better days, sir, I have indeed; I don't like to talk about that, but now I'm only a poor sheep's trotter seller, and I've been one a good many years. I don't know how long, and I don't like to think about it. It's a shocking bad trade, and such insults as we have to put up with. I serve some public-houses, and I stand sometimes at a playhouse-door. I make 3s. or 3s. 6d. a week, and in a very good week 4s., but, then, I sometimes make only 2s. I'm infirm now, God help me! and I can do nothing else. Another old woman and me has a room between us, at 1s. 4d. a week. Mother's the best name I'm called in a public-house, and it ain't a respectable name. 'Here, mother, give us one of your b— trotters,' is often said to me. One customer sometimes says: 'The stuff'll choke me, but that's as good as the Union.' He ain't a bad man, though. He sometimes treats me. He'll bait my trotters, but that's his larking way, and then he'll say: A pennorth o' gin, 'll make your old body spin.

It's his own poetry, he says. I don't know what he is, but he's often drunk, poor fellow. Women's far worse to please than men. I've known a woman buy a trotter, put her teeth into it, and then say it wasn't good, and return it. It wasn't paid for when she did so, and be- cause I grumbled, I was abused by her, as if I'd been a Turk. The landlord interfered, and he said, said he, 'I'll not have this poor woman insulted; she's here for the convenience of them as requires trotters, and she's a wellcon- ducted woman, and I'll not have her insulted,' he says, says he, lofty and like a gentleman, sir. 'Why, who's insulting the old b—h?' says the woman, says she. 'Why, you are,' says the landlord, says he, 'and you ought to pay her for her trotter, or how is she to live?' 'What the b— h—ll do I care how she lives,' says the woman, 'its nothing to me, and I won't pay her.' 'Then I will,' says the landlord, says he, 'here's 6d.,' and he wouldn't take the change. After that I soon sold all my trotters, and some gave me double price, when the landlord showed himself such a gentleman, and I went out and bought nine trotters more, another woman's stock, that she was dreading she couldn't sell, and I got through them in no time. It was the best trotter night I ever had. She wasn't a woman of the town as used me so. I have had worse sauce from modest women, as they called themselves, than from the women of the town, for plenty of them knows what poverty is, and is civiler, poor things—yes, I'm sure of that, though it's a shocking life— O, shocking! I never go to the playhouse-door but on a fine night. Young men treats their sweethearts to a trotter, for a relish, with a drop of beer between the acts. Wet nights is the best for public-houses. 'They're not salt enough,' has been said to me, oft enough, 'they don't make a man thirsty.' It'll come to the workhouse with me before long, and, perhaps, all the better. It's warm in the public-house, and that draws me to sell my trotters there sometimes. I live on fish and bread a good deal.

The returns I collected show that there is expended yearly in London streets on trotters, calculating their sale, retail, at each, , but though the regular price is , some trotters are sold at for , very few higher than , and some are kept until they are unsaleable, so that the amount may be estimated at , a receipt of weekly, per individual seller, rather more than -half of which sum is profit.