London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1
Mayhew, Henry
1861
Of the Street-Sellers of Broad-Sheets.
The broad-sheet known in street-sale is an unfolded sheet, varying in size, and printed on side. The word is frequently used to signify an account of a murder or execution, but it may contain an account of a fire, an "awful accident and great loss of life," a series of conundrums, as in those called "Nuts to Crack," a comic or intended comic engraving, with a speech or some verses, as recently in satire of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman (these are sometimes called "comic exhibitions"), or a "bill of the play." The "cocks" are more frequently a smaller size than the broad-sheet. | |
The sellers of these articles (play-bills excepted), are of the class I have described as patterers. The play-bill sellers are very rarely patterers on other "paper work." Some of them are on the look-out during the day for a job in porterage or such like, but they are not mixed up with any pattering,—and a regular patterer looks down upon a play-bill seller as a poor creature, "fit for nothing but play-bills." I now proceed to describe such of these classes as have not been previously given. | |