London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1
Mayhew, Henry
1861
These traders consist of: () The vendors of metal articles; () Of chemical articles; () Of China, glass, and stone articles; () Of linen, cotton, and other textile fabrics; and () Of miscellaneous articles. In this classification I do not include -hand articles, nor yet the traffic of those who make the articles they sell, and who are indeed street-artizans rather than street-sellers. | |
Under the head are included, the vendors of razors, table and penknives, tea-trays, dogcollars, key-rings, articles of hardware, small coins and medals, pins and needles, jewellery, snuffers, candlesticks, articles of tin-ware, tools, card-counters, herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons, pans, tray-stands (as in the roasting of meat), and Dutch ovens. | |
Of the description are the vendors of blacking, black-lead, lucifer matches, cornsalves, grease--removing compositions, china and glass cements, plating-balls, rat and beetle poisons, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigarlights. | |
Under the head come all street-sold articles of China, glass, or stone manufacture, including not only "crockery," but vases, chimney-ornaments, and stone fruit. | |
The head presents the street-vending of cotton, silken, and linen-manufactures; such as sheetings, shirtings, a variety of laces, sew- | |
324 | ing cotton, threads and tapes, articles of haberdashery and of millinery, artificial flowers, handkerchiefs, and pretended smuggled goods. |
Among the class, or the "miscellaneous" street-sellers, are those who vend cigars, pipes, tobacco and snuff-boxes and cigar-cases, accordions, spectacles, hats, sponge, combs and hairbrushes, shirt-buttons and coat-studs, "lots," rhubarb, wash-leather, paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol and other toys, saw-dust, fire-wood, and pin-cushions. | |
There are many other manufactured articles sold in the streets, but their description will be more proper under the head of Street Artisans. | |
The street-sellers of manufactured articles present, as a body, so many and often such varying characteristics, that I cannot offer to give a description of them as a whole, as I have been able to do with other and less diversified classes. | |
Among them are several distinct and peculiar street-characters, such as the pack-men, who carry their cotton or linen goods in packs on their backs, and are all itinerants. Then there are duffers, who vend pretended smuggled goods, handkerchiefs, silks, tobacco or cigars; also, the sellers of sham sovereigns and sham gold rings for wagers. The crockery-ware and glass-sellers (known in the street-trade as "crocks"), are peculiar from their principle of They will sell to any , but they very rarely, and always clamour in preference for an exchange of their wares for wearing-apparel of any kind. They state, if questioned, that their reason for doing this is—at least I heard the statement from some of the most intelligent among them—that they do so because, if they "sold outright," they required a hawker's license, and could not sell or "swop" so cheap. | |
Some of the street-sellers of manufactured articles are also patterers. Among these are the "cheap Jacks," or "cheap Johns;" the grease and stain removers; the corn-salve and plate-ball vendors; the sellers of sovereigns and rings for wagers; a portion of the lotsellers; and the men who vend poison for vermin and go about the streets with live rats clinging to, or running about, their persons. | |
This class of street-sellers also includes many of the very old and the very young; the diseased, crippled, maimed, and blind. These poor creatures sell, and sometimes obtain a charitable penny, by offering to sell such things as boxes of lucifer-matches; cakes of blacking; boot, stay, and other laces; pins, and sewing and knitting-needles; tapes; cotton--bobbins; garters; pincushions; combs; nutmeg--graters; metal skewers and meat-hooks; hooks and eyes; and shirt-buttons. | |
The rest of the class may be described as merely street-sellers; toiling, struggling, plodding, itinerant tradesmen. | |