 Section 1 of London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gillian Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. The Street Folk. Book II. Introduction. In commencing a new volume, I would devote a few pages to the consideration of the import of the facts already collected concerning the London Street Folk. Not only as regards the street people themselves, but also in connection with the general society of which they formed so large a proportion. The precise extent of the proportion which the street traders bear to the rest of the metropolitan population is the first point to be evolved. For the want, the ignorance and the vice of a street life being in a direct ratio to the numbers, it becomes of capital importance that we should know how many are seeking to pick up a livelihood in the public thoroughfares. This is the more essential because the government returns never have given us and probably never will give us any correct information respecting it. The census of 1841 set down the hawkers, hucksters and peddlers of the metropolis as numbering 2045. And from the enquiries I have made among the street sellers as to the means taken to obtain a full account of their numbers for the next population return. The census of 1851 appears likely to be about as correct in its statements concerning the street traders and performers as the one which preceded it. According to the accounts which have been collected during the progress of this work, the number of the London Street people so far as the enquiry has gone is upwards of 40,000. This sum is made up of 30,000 costar mungers, 2,000 street sellers of green stuff as watercresses, chickweed and ground soil, turf and so on, 4,000 street sellers of eatables and drinkables, 1,000 selling stationery, books, papers and engravings in the streets, and 4,000 other street sellers vending manufactured articles, either of metal, crockery, textile, chemical or miscellaneous substances, making altogether 41,000 or in round numbers say 40,000 individuals. The 30,000 costar mungers may be said to include 12,000 men, 6,000 women and 12,000 children. The above numbers comprise the main body of people selling in the London streets, hence if we assert that with the vendors of secondhand articles as old metal, glass, linen, clothes etc, and mineral productions such as coke, salt and sand, there are about 45,000 street traders in the metropolis, we shall not, I am satisfied, be very far from the truth. The value of the capital or stock in trade of these people, though individually trifling, amounts collectively to a considerable sum of money, indeed to very nearly 40,000 pounds, or at the rate of about £1 per head. Under the term capital are included the donkeys, barrows, baskets, stalls, trays, boards and goods belonging to the several street traders, and though the stock of the watercress, the small ware, the lucifer, the flower or the chickweed and ground soul seller may not exceed in value one shilling, and the basket or tray upon which it is carried, barely half that sum, that of the more prosperous costar munger possessed of his barrow and donkey, or of the cheap jawn with his cart filled with hardware, or the pack man with his bale of softwares at his back, may be worth almost as many pounds as the others are, Pence. The gross amount of trade done by the London street sellers in the course of the year is so large that the mind is at first unable to comprehend how, without reckless extravagance, want can be in any way associated with the class. After the most cautious calculation, the results having been checked and rechecked in a variety of ways, so that the conclusion arrived at might be somewhat near, and certainly not beyond the truth. It appears that the takings of the London street sellers cannot be said to be less than £2,500,000 per annum, but vast as this sum may seem, and especially when considered as only a portion of the annual expenditure of the metropolitan poor. Still, when we come to spread the gross yearly receipts, over 40,000 people, we find that the individual takings are but £62 per annum, which allowing the rate of profit to be in all cases even 50%, though I am convinced it is often much less. Gives to each street trader an annual income of £20.13 forpence, or within a fraction of 8 shillings a week all the year round. And when we come to deduct from this the loss by perishable articles, the keep of donkeys, the wear and tear or hire of barrows, the cost of stalls and baskets, together with the interest on stock money, generally at the rate of four shillings a week, and often one shilling a day, for £1 or £1040 per annum. We may with safety assert that the average gain or clear income of the metropolitan street sellers is rather under, than over, seven shillings sixpence a week. Some of the more expert street traders may clear 10 shillings or even 15 shillings weekly throughout the year, while the weekly profit of the less expert, the old people and the children may be said to be three shillings and sixpence. These incomes however are the average of the gross yearly profits, rather than the regular weekly gains. The consequence is that though they might be sufficient to keep the majority of the street sellers in comparative comfort, where they are constant and capable of being relied upon from week to week, but being variable and uncertain and rising sometimes from nothing in the winter to £1 a week in the summer, when street commodities are plentiful and cheap, and the poorer classes have money wherewith to purchase them, and fluctuating moreover even at the best of times, according as the weather is wet or fine, and the traffic of the streets consequently diminished or augmented. It is but natural that the people subject to such alternations should lack the prudence and temperance of those whose incomes are more regular and uniform. To place the above facts clearly before the reader, the following table has been prepared. The first column states the titles of the several classes of street sellers, the second the number of individuals belonging to each of these classes, the third the value of their respective capitals or stock in trade, the fourth the gross amount of trade done by them respectively every year, the fifth the average yearly takings of each class, and the sixth their average weekly gains. This gives us, as it were, a bird's eye view of the earnings and pecuniary condition of the various kinds of street sellers already treated off. It is here cited, as indeed all the statistics in this work are, as an approximation to the truth rather than a definite and accurate result. Costermongers. Note, the definition of a costermonger strictly includes only such individuals as confine themselves to the sale of the produce of the green and fruit markets. The term is here restricted to that signification. End note. Number of persons, 30,000. Note, this number includes men, women and children. End note. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 25,000 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually done. Street sellers of wet fish, 1,177,200 pounds. Street sellers of dry fish, 127,000 pounds. Street sellers of shellfish, 156,600 pounds. Total street sellers of fish, 1,460,800 pounds. Street sellers of green fruit, 332,400 pounds. Street sellers of dry fruit, 1,000 pounds. Street sellers of vegetables, 292,200 pounds. Total of street sellers of fruit and vegetables, 625,600 pounds. Street sellers of game, poultry, rabbits and so on, 80,000 pounds. Street sellers of flowers, roots and so on, 14,800 pounds. Total gross amount of trade annually done by costumers, 2,181,200 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 60 pounds. Average weekly gains, 8 shillings. Street sellers of green stuff, watercresses. Note, the watercress trade is carried on in the streets, principally by old people and children. The chief mart to which the street sellers of creses resort is found in market, a place which but few or none of the regular costumers attend. End note. Number of persons, 1,000. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 87 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually, 13,900 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 13 pounds. Average weekly gains, 3 shillings and 6 pence. Chickweed, ground sale and plantain. Note, the chickweed and ground sale sellers and the turf cutters traffic has but little expense connected with it and their trade is therefore nearly all profit. End note. Number of persons, 1,000. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 42 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually done, 14,000 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 14 pounds. Average weekly gains, 5 shillings. Turf cutters and sellers, number of persons, 40. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 20 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually done, 570 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 14 pounds. Average weekly gains, 5 shillings and 6 pence. Street sellers of eatables and drinkables. Number of persons, 4,000. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 9,000 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually, 203,100 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 50 pounds. Average weekly gains, 10 shillings. Street sellers of stationery, literature and the fine arts. Number of persons, 1,000. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 400 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually, 33,400 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 30 pounds. Average weekly gains, 8 shillings. Street sellers of manufactured articles of metal, crockery and glass, textile, chemical or miscellaneous substances. Number of persons, 4,000. Gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 2,800 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually, 188,200 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head, 47 pounds. Average weekly gains, 10 shillings. Total number of persons, 41,040. Total gross amount of capital or stock in trade, 37,529 pounds. Gross amount of trade annually done by each class, 2,634,370 pounds. Average yearly receipts per head overall, 60 pounds. Average weekly gains overall, 8 shillings. Now according to the above estimate, it would appear that the gross annual receipts of the entire body of street sellers, for there are many besides those above specified, as for instance the vendors of second hand articles and so on, may be estimated in round numbers at 3 million pounds sterling and their clear income at about 1 million pounds per annum. Hence we are enabled to perceive the importance of the apparently insignificant traffic of the streets. For where the street traders to be prohibited from pursuing their calling and so forced to apply for relief at the several metropolitan unions, the poor rates would be at the least doubled. The total sum expended in the relief of the London poor during 1848 was 725,000 pounds, but this we see is hardly three fourths of the income of the street traders. Those therefore who would put an end to the commerce of our streets should reflect whether they would like to do so at the cost of doubling the present poor rates and of reducing one 40th part of the entire metropolitan population from a state of comparative independence to absolute populism. However unsatisfactory it may be to the aristocratic pride of the wealthy commercial classes, it cannot be denied that a very important element of the trade of this vast capital, this marvellous centre of the commerce of the world, I cite the stereotype phrase of civic eloquence for they are at least truths. It is still undeniable I say that a large proportion of the commerce of the capital of Great Britain is in the hands of the street folk. This simple enunciation might appear a mere platitude where it's not that the street sellers are a proscribed class. They are driven from stations to which long possession might have been thought to give them a quasi legal right. Driven from them at the capricious desire of the shopkeepers, some of whom have had bitter reason by the diminution of their own business to repent their interference. They are bandied about at the will of a police officer, they must move on and not obstruct a thoroughfare which may be crammed and blocked with the carriages of the wealthy until to cross the road on foot is a danger. They are in fine a body numbering thousands who are allowed to live in the prosecution of the most ancient of all trades, sale or barter in the open air by sufferance alone. They are classed as unauthorized or illegal and intrusive traders though they turn over millions in a year. The authorities it is true do not sanction any general arbitrary enforcement of the legal prescription of the street folk but they have no option if a section of shopkeepers choose to say to them drive away from our doors these street people. It appears to be sufficient for an inferior class of tradesmen for such the meddlers with street folk generally seem to be merely to desire such a removal in order to accomplish it. It is not necessary for them to say an excuse we pay heavy rents and rates and taxes and are forced to let our lodgings accordingly. We pay for licences and some of us as well pay fines for giving short wait to poor people and that too when it is hardly safe to give short wait to our richer patrons. But what rates, taxes or licences do these street traders pay? Their lodgings may be dear enough but their rates are nominally nothing. Note being charged in the rent of their rooms and note from taxes they are blessedly exempt they are called upon to pay no imposts on their property or income. They defray merely the trifling duties on their tobacco, beer, tea, sugar, coffee note though these by the way the chief articles the excise and customs returns make up one half of the revenue of the country and note they ought to be put down we can supply all that is wanting what may become of them is simply their own concern. The Act 50, George III Sir 41 requires that every person carrying to sell or exposing to sale any goods, wares or merchandise shall pay a yearly duty but according to section 23 nothing in this act shall extend to prohibit any person or persons from selling by hawking in the streets any printed papers licensed by authority or any fish, fruit or victuals among the privileged articles are also included berm or yeast and coals the same act moreover contains nothing to prohibit the maker of any home manufacture from exposing his goods to sale in any town market or fair nor any tinker, cooper, glazier or other artisan from going about and carrying the materials of his business the unlicensed itinerant vendors of such things however as Lucifer matches, bootlaces, braces, fuzzies or any wares indeed not of their own manufacture are violators of the law and subject to a penalty of ten pounds or three months imprisonment for each offence it is in practice however only in the hawking of such articles as those on which the duty is heavy and of considerable value to the revenue such as tea, tobacco or cigars that there is any actual check in the London streets nevertheless a large portion of the street trading without a license is contrary to law and the people seeking to obtain a living by such means are strictly liable to fine or imprisonment while even those street traders whom they act specially exempts as for instance the street sellers of fish, fruit and vegetables and of eatables and drinkables as well as the street artisans and who are said to have the right of exposing their goods to sale in any market or fair in every city, borough, town corporate and market town even these I say are liable to be punished for obstructing the highway whenever they attempt to do so now these are surely anomalies which it is high time in these free trade days should cease the endeavour to obtain an honest and independent livelihood should subject no man to fine or imprisonment nor should the poor hawker, the neediest perhaps of all tradesmen be required to pay £4 a year for the liberty to carry on his business when the wealthy shopkeeper can do so scot-free moreover it is a glaring iniquity that the rich tradesman should have it in his power by complaining to the police to deprive his poorer rival of the right to dispose of his goods in the streets it is often said in justification that as the shopkeepers pay the principal portion of the rates and taxes they must be protected in the exercise of their business but this in the first place is far from the truth as regards the taxes the poorer classes pay nearly half of the national imposts they pay the chief portion of the malt duty and that is in round numbers £5 million a year the greater part of the spirit duty which is £4,350,000 the tobacco duty £4,250,000 the sugar duty £4,500,000 and the duty on tea £5,330,000 making altogether £23,430,000 out of about £50,000,000 considering the rates however it is not so easy to estimate what proportion the poor people contribute towards the local burdens of the country but if they are householders they have to pay quota of the parish and county expenses directly and if lodgers indirectly in the rent of their apartments hence it is evident that to consider the street sellers unworthy of being protected in the exercise of their calling because they pay neither rates nor taxes is to commit a gross injustice not only to the street sellers themselves by forcing them to contribute in their tea and sugar their beer, gin and tobacco towards the expenses of a government which exerts itself rather to injure than benefit them but likewise to the rate payers of the parish for it is a necessary consequence if the shopkeepers have the power to deprive the street dealers of their living whenever the out of door tradesmen are thought to interfere with the business of those indoors perhaps by underselling them that the street dealers being unable to live by their own labour must partake themselves to the union and live upon the labour of the parishioners and thus the shopkeepers may be said to enrich themselves at the expense not only of the poor street people but likewise of their brother rate payers nor can it be said that the street sellers are interlopers upon these occasions for if ancient custom be referred to it will be found that the shopkeepers are the real intruders they having succeeded the hawkers who were in truth the original distributors of the produce of the country but though no body of shopkeepers nor indeed any other class of people individually should possess the power to deprive the hawkers of what is often the last shift of struggling independence the sale of a few goods in the street still it is evident that the general convenience of the public must be consulted and that where the street traders to be allowed the right of pitching in any thoroughfare they pleased many of our principal streets would be blocked up with costars' barrels and the curb of Regent Street crowded like that of the new cut with the hawkers and hucksters that would be sure to resort to the other while those thoroughfares which like Fleet Street and Cheapside are now almost impossible at certain times of the day from the increased traffic of the city would be rendered still more impervious by the throngs of street sellers that the crowd alone would be sure to attract to the spot under the circumstances therefore it becomes necessary that we should provide for the vast body of street sellers some authorised place of resort where they might be both entitled and permitted to obtain an honest living according to Act of Parliament to think for a moment of putting down street trading is to be at once ignorant of the numbers and character of the people pursuing it to pass an Act declaring 50,000 individuals, rogues and vagabonds would be to fill our prisons under workhouses with men who would willingly earn their own living besides the poor will buy of the poor subject the petty trader to fine and imprisonment as you please still the very sympathy and patronage of the petty purchaser will in this country always call into existence a large body of purveyors to the poorer classes I would suggest therefore and I do so after much consideration and an earnest desire to meet all the difficulties of the case that a number of poor men's markets be established throughout London by the purchase or rental of plots of grounds in the neighbourhood of the present street markets that a small toll be paid by each of the street sellers attending such markets for the right to vend their goods there that the keeper or beedle of each market be likewise an inspector of weights and measures and that any hawker found using slangs of any kind or resorting to any imposition whatever be prohibited entering the market for the future that the conduct and regulation of the markets be under the direction of a committee consisting of an equal number of shareholders sellers and working men the latter as representatives of the buyers and that the surplus funds, if any after paying all expenses together with a fair interest to the shareholders of the market should be devoted to the education of the children of the hawkers before and after the hours of sale there might also be a penny savings bank in connection with each of the markets and a person stationed at the gates on the conclusion of the day's business to collect all he could from the hawkers as they left there are already a sufficient number of poor markets established at the east end of the town though of a different character such as the old clothes exchange to prove the practicability of the proposed plan among even the pettiest traders and I am convinced after long deliberation that such institutions could not but tend to produce a rapid and marked improvement in the character of the London hawkers this is the only way evident to me of meeting the evil of our present street life an evil which is increasing every day and which threatens our long almost to overwhelm us in its abominations to revile the street people is stark folly their ignorance is no demerit to them even as it is no merit to us to know the little that we do if we really wish the people better let us I say again do for them what others have done for us and without which humiliating as it may be to our pride we should most assuredly have been as they are it is the continued forgetfulness of this truth a truth which our wretched self-conceit is constantly driving from our minds that prevents our stirring to improve the condition of these poor people though if we knew but the whole of the facts concerning them and their sufferings and feelings our very fears alone for the safety of the state would be sufficient to make us do something in their behalf I am quite satisfied from all I have seen that there are thousands in this great metropolis ready to rush forth on the least evidence of a rising of the people to commit the most savage and revolting excesses men who have no knowledge of the government of the country but as an armed despotism preventing their earning their living and who hate all law because it is made to appear to them merely as an organized tyranny men too who have neither religious nor moral principles to restrain the exercise of their grossest passions when once aroused and men who from our very neglect of them are necessarily and essentially the dangerous classes whose existence we either rail at or deplore the rate of increase among the street traders it is almost impossible to arrive at the population returns affords us no data for the calculation and the street people themselves are unable to supply the least information on the subject all they can tell us is that about 20 years ago they took a guinea for every shilling that they get now this heavy reduction of their receipts they attribute to the cheapness of commodities and the necessity to carry and sell a greater quantity of goods in order to get the same profit as well as to the increase in the number of street traders but when questioned as to the extent of such increase their answers are of the vaguest possible kind arranging the street people however as we have done into three distinct classes according to the causes which have led to their induction into a street life namely those who are born and bred to the streets those who take to the streets and those who are driven to the streets it is evident that the main elements of any extraordinary increase of the street folk must be sought for among the two latter classes among the first the increase will at the utmost be at the same rate as the ordinary increase of the population namely one and a half percent per annum for the English cost amongers and street traders in general appear to be remarkable rather for the small than the large number of their children so that even supposing all the boys and girls of the street sellers to be brought up to the same mode of life as their father we could not thus account for any enormous increase among the street folk with those however who take to the streets from the love of a roving life or the desire to shake a free leg to quote the phrases of the men themselves or are driven to the streets from an inability to obtain employment at the pursuit to which they have been accustomed the case is far different that there is every day a greater difficulty for working men to live by their labour either from the paucity of work or from the scanty remuneration given for it surely no one will be disposed to question when everyone is crying out that the country is overpopulated such being the case it is evident that the number of mechanics in the streets must be daily augmenting for as I have before said street trading is the last shift of an unemployed artisan to keep himself and his family from the union the workmen out of work sooner than starve or go to the parish for relief takes to making up and vending on his own account the articles of his craft whilst the underpaid workmen sooner than continue toiling from morning till midnight for a bare subsistence resorts to the easier trade of buying and selling again even among the less industrious of the working classes the general decline in wages has tended and is continually tending to make their labour more and more irksome to them there is a cant abroad at the present day that there is a special pleasure in industry and hence we are taught to regard all those who object to work as appertaining to the class of natural vagabonds but where is the man among us that loves labour for work or labour is merely that which is irksome to perform and which every man requires a certain amount of remuneration to induce him to perform if men really loved work they would pay to be allowed to do it rather than require to be paid for doing it that occupation which is agreeable to us we call amusement and that and that only which is disagreeable we term labour or drudgery according to the intensity of its irksomeness hence as the amount of remuneration given by way of inducement to a man to go through a certain amount of work becomes reduced so does the stimulus to work become weakened and this through the decline of wages is what is daily taking place among us our operatives are continually ceasing to be producers and passing from the creators of wealth into the exchangers or distributors of it becoming mere tradesmen subsisting on the labour of other people rather than their own and so adding to the very non-producers the great number of whom is the main cause of the poverty of those who make all our riches to teach people the difficulty of living by labour is to inculcate the most dangerous of all lessons and this is what we are daily doing our trading classes are increasing at a most enormous rate and so giving rise to that exceeding competition and consequently to that continual reduction of prices all of which must ultimately fall upon the working man this appears to me to be the main cause of the increase of the London street people and one for which I candidly confess I see no remedy End of section 1 section 2 of London Labour and the London Poor volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVolks recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of the street sellers of secondhand articles I have already treated of the street commerce in such things as are presented to the public in the form in which they are to be cooked, eaten, drunk or used they have comprised the necessaries, delicacies or luxuries of the street they have been either the raw food or preparations ready cooked or mixed for immediate consumption as in the case of the street eatables and drinkables or else they were the proceeds of taste or its substitute in art or literature or of usefulness or ingenuity in manufacture all these many objects of street commerce may be classified in one well-known word they are bought and sold firsthand I have next to deal with the secondhand sellers of our streets and in this division perhaps will be found more that is novel, curious and interesting than in that just completed Mr Babbage in his economy of machinery and manufactures says concerning the employment of materials of little value quote the worn out saucepan and tinware of our kitchens when beyond the reach of the tinker's art are not utterly worthless we sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and worn out iron coal scuttles traversing our streets these have not yet completed their useful course the less corroded parts are cut into strips punched with small holes and varnished with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunk maker who protects the edges and angles of his boxes with them the remainder are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts who employ them in combination with pyrolignus acid in making a black dye for the use of calico printers end quote Mr Babbage has here indicated one portion of the nature of the street trade in secondhand articles the application of worn out materials to a new purpose but this secondhand commerce of the streets for a street commerce it mainly is both in selling and buying has a far greater extent than that above indicated and many ramifications under the present head I shall treat only of street sellers unless when a street purchase may be so intimately connected with a street sale that for the better understanding of the subject it may be necessary to sketch both of the street buyers and the street finders or collectors both connected with the secondhand trade I shall treat separately in London where many in order to live struggle to extract a meal from the possession of an article which seems utterly worthless nothing must be wasted many a thing which in a country town is kicked by the penniless out of their path even or examined and left as meat only for the scavenger's cart will in London be snatched up as a prize it is money's worth a crushed and torn bonnet for instance or better still an old hat napless shapeless crownless and brimless will be picked up in the street and carefully placed in a bag with similar things by one class of street folk the street finders and to tempt the well to do sell their secondhand goods the street trader offers the barter of shapely china or shining glass vessels or blooming fuchsias or fragrant geraniums for the rubbish or else in the spirit of the hero of the fairy tale he exchanges new lamps for old of the street sale of secondhand articles with all the collateral or incidental matter bearing immediately on the subject I shall treat under the following heads or under such heads as really constitute the staple of the business dismissing such as maybe trifling or exceptional of these traffickers then there are five classes the mere enumeration of the objects of their traffic being curious enough one the street sellers of old metal articles such as knives forks and butcher's steels saws hammers pincers files screwdrivers planes chisels and other tools more frequently those of the workers in wood than of other artisans old scissors and shears locks keys and hinges shovels fire irons trivates chimney cranes fenders and fire guards warming pans but rarely now flat and Italian irons curling tongs rings horseshoes and nails coffee and teapots urns trays and canisters pewter measures scales and weights bed screws and keys candlesticks and snuffers niggers generally called niggers i.e. false bottoms for grates tobacco and snuff boxes and spittoons door plates numbers knockers and discussions dog collars and dog chains and other chains grid irons razors coffee mills lamps swords and daggers gun and pistol barrels and locks and occasionally the entire weapon bronze and cast metal figures table chair and sofa casters bell pools and bells the larger buckles and other metal most frequently brass articles of harness furniture compositor's sticks the depositories of the type in the first instance the multifarious kinds of tinwares stamps corkscrews barrel taps ink stands a multiplicity of culinary vessels and of old metal lids footmen broken machinery and parts of machinery as odd wheels and screws of all sizes and so on and so on 2. the street sellers of old linen cotton and woolen articles such as old sheeting for towels old curtains of dimity muslin cotton or marine carpeting blanketing for house scouring cloths ticking for beds and pillows sacking for different purposes according to its substance and quality fringes and stocking legs for the supply of jobbing worsted and for refooting I may here observe that in the street trade secondhand linen or cotton is often made to pay a double debt the shirt collars sold sometimes to a considerable extent and very cheap in the street markets are made out of linen which has previously been used in some other form so is it with white waistcoats and other habiliments of the street folk who vend such wares I shall speak chiefly in the fourth division of this subject namely the secondhand street sellers of miscellaneous articles three the street sellers of old glass and crockery including the variety of bottles odd or in sets or in broken sets pans, pitchers, wash hand basins and other crockery utensils china ornaments pier, convex and toilet glasses often without the frames pocket ink bottles wine, beer and secure glasses decanters glass fish bowls occasionally salt sellers sugar basins and lamp and gas glasses four the street sellers of miscellaneous articles these are such as cannot properly be classed under any of the three preceding heads and include a mass of miscellaneous commodities accordions and other musical instruments brushes of all descriptions shaving boxes and razor straps baskets of many kinds stuffed birds with and without frames pictures with and without frames desks, work boxes tea caddies and many articles of old furniture bootjacks and books shoehorns cartouche boxes pocket and opera glasses rules and measures in frames backgammon and chess boards and men and dice boxes of dominoes cribbage boards and boxes sometimes with old packs of cards Pope boards note, boards used in playing the game of Pope or Pope John though rarely seen now and not fish or card counters of bone, ivory or mother of pearl and equal rarity microscopes occasionally an extensive variety of broken or faded things new or long kept such as magic lanterns dissected maps or histories and so on from the toy warehouses and shops Dutch clocks, barometers wooden trays, shells music and books the latter being often odd volumes of old novels teetotems and similar play things ladies' headcombs villas and parasols fishing rods and nets reins and other parts of cart gig and two-horse harness boxes full of odds and ends of old leather such as water pipes and a mass of imperfect metal things which had better be described said an old dealer as from a needle to an anchor five, the street sellers of old apparel including the body habiliments constituting a like men's, women's boys, girls and infants attire as well as hats caps, gloves, belts and stockings shirts and shirt fronts note, dickies end note handkerchiefs, stocks and neckties furs such as victorines boas, tippets and edgings beavers and bonnets and the other several and sometimes not easily describable articles which constitute female fashionable or ordinary wear I may here observe that of the wares which once formed a portion of the stock of the street sellers of the fourth and fifth divisions but which are now no longer objects of street sale were till within the last few years fans, back and shoulder boards to make girls grow straight several things at one time thought indispensable to every well-nurtured child such as corals and bells, belts sashes, scabbards, epaulets feathers or plumes hard leather stocks and other indications of the volunteer, militia and general military spirit of the early part of the present century Before proceeding immediately with my subject I may say a few words concerning what is in the estimation of some a second-hand matter I allude to the many uses to which that which is regarded and indeed termed awful or refuse or waste is put in a populous city This may be evidenced in the multi-form uses to which the awful of the animals which are slaughtered for our use are put It is still more curiously shown in the uses of the awful of the animals which are killed for our use but for that of our dogs and cats and to this part of the subject I shall more especially confine the remarks I have to make My observations on the uses of other waste articles will be found in another place What in the butcher's trade is considered the awful of a bullock was explained by Mr. Deputy Hicks before the last select committee of the House of Commons on Smithfield to mark it quote the carcass as it hangs clear of everything else is the carcass and all else constitutes the awful end quote The carcass may be briefly termed the four quarters whereas the awful then comprises the hide which in the average sized bullock that is slaughtered in London is worth 12 shillings but with the hide are sold the horns which are worth 12 shillings to the comb makers who use them to make their tortoise shell articles and for similar purposes the hooves are worth tuppence to the glue makers or prussiet of potash manufacturers what comes out of a bullock to use the trade term is the liver the lights or lungs the stomach the intestinal canal sometimes 36 yards when extended and the gall duct these portions with the legs called feet in the trade form what is styled the tribe man's portion and are disposed off to him by the butcher for five shillings six pence separately the value of the liver is eight pence of the lights six pence both for dog's meat and of the legs which are worked into toothbrush handles dominoes and so on one shilling the remaining three shillings and four pence is the worth of the other portion the heart averages rather more than one shilling the kidney is the same the head one shilling nine pence the blood which is let down the drain in all but the larger slaughtering houses a penny hepney being thruppence for nine gallons the tallow seven stone 14 shillings and the tail I was told from nothing to two shillings averaging about six pence the tongue two shilling six pence thus the awful cells altogether firsthand for one pound 18 shillings and six pence I will now show the uses to which what is far more decidedly pronounced awful and what is much more second hand in popular estimation namely a dead horse is put and even a dead horse is awful and I will then show the difference in this curious trade between the Parisian and London horse awful the greatest horse slaughtering establishments in France are at Montfoucon a short distance from the capital when the animal has been killed it is cut up and the choice or portions of the flesh are eaten by the work people of the establishment and by the hangers on and jobbers who haunt the locality of such places and are often men of a desperate character the rest of the carcass is sold for the feeding of dogs cats pigs and poultry a portion being also devoted to purposes of manure the flesh on a horse of average size and fatness is 350 pounds which sells for one pound 12 shillings and six pence but this is only one of the uses of the dead animal the skin is sold to a tanner for 10 shillings and six pence a manufacturer of sal ammonia or similar preparations or of Prussian blue or to a comb or toy maker for one shilling four pence the old shoes and the shoe nails are worth tuppence hypney the hair of the mane and tail realises a penny hypney the tendons are disposed of either fresh or dried to glue makers for thruppence a pound of dried tendons separated from the muscles being about the average per horse the bones are bought by the turners cutlers, fan makers and the makers of ivory black and sal ammonia 90 pounds being an average weight of the animals bones and realising two shillings the intestines wrought into the different preparations required of the gut makers or for manure are worth tuppence the blood is used by the sugar refiner and by the fatteners of poultry pigeons and turkeys which devour it greedily or else for manure when required for manure it is dried 20 pounds of dried blood which is average weight being worth one shilling nine pence the fat is removed from the carcass and melted down it is in demand for the making of gas of soap and when very fine of beige grease also for the dubbing or grease applied to harness and to shoe leather this fat when consumed in lamps communicates a greater portion of heat than does oil and is therefore preferred by the makers of glass toys and by enamelers and polishers a horse at Montfaucon has been known to yield 60 pounds of fat but this is an extreme case a yield of 12 pounds is the produce of a horse in fair condition but at these slaughterhouses there are so many lean and sorry jades that eight pounds may be taken as an average of fat and at a value of six pence per pound nor does the list end here the dead and putrid flesh is made to team with life and to produce food for other living creatures a pile of peaties of flesh six inches in height layer on layer is slightly covered with hay or straw the flies soon deposit their eggs in active matter and thus maggots are bred the most of which are used as food for pheasants and in a smaller degree of domestic fowls and as baits for fish these maggots give or are supposed to give a game flavour to poultry and a very high flavour to pheasants one horse's flesh thus produces maggots worth one shilling in five pence the total amount then realised on the dead horse ten shillings in six pence is as follows the flesh one pound twelve shillings in six pence the skin ten shillings in six pence the hoofs one shilling in four pence the shoes and nails tuppence hypenny the mane and tail a penny hypenny the tendons thruppence the bones two shillings the intestines tuppence the blood one shilling nine pence the fat four shillings the maggots one shilling in five pence total two pounds fourteen shillings and thruppence the carcass of a french horse is also made available in another way and which relates to a subject I have lately treated off the destruction of rats but this is not a regularly accruing emolument mon folcon swarms with rats and to kill them the carcass of a horse is placed in a room into which the rats gain access through openings in the floor contrived for the purpose at night the rats are lured by their kindness of scent to the room and lured in numbers the openings are then closed and they are prisoners in one room sixteen thousand were killed in four weeks the paris furriers gave from three to four francs for a hundred skins so that taking the average at three shillings of our money sixteen thousand rat skins would return twenty four pounds in london the uses of the dead horses flesh bones blood and so on are different horse flesh is not as yet a portion of human food in this country in a recent parliamentary enquiry witnesses were examined as to whether horse flesh was used by the sausage makers there was some presumption that such might be the case but no direct evidence i found however among butchers who had the best means of knowing a strong conviction that such was the case one highly respectable tradesman told me he was as certain of it as that it was the month of june though if called upon to produce legal evidence proving either that such was the sausage makers practice or that this was the month of june he might fail in both instances i found among street people who dealt in provisions a strong or at any rate a strongly expressed opinion that the tongues kidneys and hearts of horses were sold as those of oxen one man told me somewhat triumphantly as a result of his ingenuity in deduction that he had thoughts at one time of trying to establish himself in a cat's meat walk and made enquiries into the nature of the calling i'm satisfied the Aussie's arts were sold for beastesses cause you see sir there's nothing as a be better light for favourite cats and pet dogs than a nice piece of art but when do you see the Aussie's arts on a barrel if they don't go to the cats where does they go to fly to the Christians i am assured however by tradesmen who's interest to say nothing of other considerations would probably make them glad to expose such practices that this substitution equine for the bovine heart is not attempted and is hardly possible the bullock's heart kidneys and tongue are so different in shape the heart more especially and in the colour of the fat while the rough tip of the ox's tongue is not found in that of the horse that this second hand or awful kind of animal food could not be palmed off upon anyone who had ever purchased the heart kidneys or tongue of an ox if the horse's tongue be used as a substitute for that of any other said one butcher to me it is for the dried reindeer's a savoury dish for the breakfast table since writing the above i have had convincing proof given me that the horse's tongues are cured and sold as nests the heart and kidneys are also palmed i find for those of oxen thus in one respect the difference between the usages in respect of this food between Paris and London one tradesman in a large way of business with many injunctions that i should make no illusion that might lead to his being known as he said it might be his ruin even though he never slaughtered the meat he sold but was in fact a dead salesman or a vendor of meat consigned to him one tradesman i say told me that he had fancied the principle objection to the eating of horse flesh among us the horse was quite as dainty in his food as the ox he was quite as graminivorous and shrunk more from a nicer sense of smell from anything pertaining to a contact with animal food than did the ox the principle objection lies in the number of diseased horses sold at the knackers my informant reasoned only from analogy as he had never tasted horse flesh but a great uncle as he told me had relished it highly in the peninsular war the uses to which a horse's carcass are put in london are these the skin for tanning sells for six shillings as a low average the hooves for glue are worth tuppence the shoes and nails a penny hypenny the mane and tail a penny hypenny the bones which in london as it was described to me are cracked up for manure bring one shilling sixpence the fat is melted down and used for cartgrees and common harness oil one person acquainted with the trade thought that the average yield of fat was ten pounds per horse taking it low another that it was twelve pounds taking it square so that if eleven pounds be accepted as an average the fat at tuppence per pound would realise one shilling tenpence of the tendons no uses made of the blood none and no maggots are reared upon putrid horse flesh but a butcher who had been twenty years a farmer also told me that he knew from experience that there was nothing so good as maggots for the fattening of poultry and he thought from what I told him of maggot breeding in Montfaucon that we were behind the French in this respect thus the English dead horse the vendor receiving on an average one pound from the knacker realises the following amount without including the knacker's profit in disposing of the flesh to the cat's meat man but computing it merely at two pounds we have the subjoined receipts the flesh averaging two hundred weight sold at tuppence heapney per pound two pounds the skin six shillings the hoofs tuppence the shoes and nails a penny heapney the bones one shilling six pence the fat one shilling ten pence the tendons zero the tongue and so on unknown the blood zero the intestines zero total two pounds nine shillings seven pence heapney the French dead horse then is made a source of nearly five shillings higher receipt than the English one by inquiring the reason for this difference and why the blood and so on were not made available I was told that the demand by the Prussian blue manufacturers and the sugar refiners was so fully supplied and oversupplied from the great cattle slaughterhouses that the private butchers for the trifling sum to be gained let the blood be wasted one bullock slaughterer in fox and not yard who kills a hundred eighty cattle in a week receives only one pound for the blood of the whole number which is received in a well in the slaughterhouse the amount paid for blood a few years back was more than double its present rate under these circumstances I was told it would be useless trying to turn the wasted awful of a horse to any profitable purpose there is I am told on an average one thousand horses every week in London and this at two pounds ten shillings each animal would make the value of the dead horses of the metropolis amount to one hundred and thirty thousand pounds per annum where it's not that I might be dwelling too long on the subject I might point out how the awful of the skins was made to subserve other purposes from the bourbonsy tanyards and how the pairings went to the makers of glue and size and the hair to the builders to mix with lime and so on and so on I may instance another thing in which the worth of what in many places is valueless refuse is exemplified in the matter of waste as waste paper is always called in the trade paper in all its glossiest freshness is but a reproduction of what had become in some measure waste namely the rags of the cotton or linen fabric after serving their original purpose there is a body of men in London who occupy themselves entirely in collecting waste paper it is no matter of what kind a small prayer book a once perfumed and welcome love note lawyers or tailors bills, acts of parliament and double sheets of the times form portions of the waste dealer's stock tons upon tons are thus consumed yearly books of every description are ingredients of this waste and in every language modern poems or pamphlets and old romances perfect or imperfect Shakespeare, Molière Bibles, music, histories stories, magazines tracts to convert the heathen or to prove how easily and how immensely our national and individual wealth might be enhanced the prospectoses of a thousand companies each certain to prove a mine of wealth schemes to pay off the national debt or recommendations to wipe it off auctioneer's catalogs and long kept letters children's copy books and last century ledgers printed effusions which have progressed no further than the unfolded sheets uncut works and books mouldy from age all these things are found in the insatiate bag of the waste collector who of late has been worried because he could not supply enough I don't know how it is sir said one waste collector with whom I had some conversation on the subject of street sold books with which business he was also connected I can't make it out but paper gets scarcer or else I'm out of luck just at this time my family and me really couldn't live on my waste if we had to depend entirely upon it I am assured that in no place in the world is this traffic carried on to anything approaching the extent that it is in London when I treat of the street buyers I shall have some curious information to publish on the subject I do but allude to it here as one strongly illustrative of second hand appliances of the street sellers of second hand metal articles I have in the preceding remark specified the wares sold by the vendors of the second hand articles of metal manufacture or as they are called in the streets the old metal men the several articles I have specified may never be all found at one time upon one stall but they are all found on the respective stalls I sir said one old man whom I conversed with and there's more things every now and then comes to the stalls and there used to be still more when I were young but I can't call them all to mind for times is worse with me and so my memory fails but there used to be a good many bayonets and iron tinderboxes and steels for striking lights I can remember them some of the sellers have strong heavy barrows which they wheel from street to street as this required a considerable exertion of strength is carried on by strong men generally of the costumungering class the weight to be propelled is about 300 pounds of this class there are now a few merely more than half a dozen who sell on commission in the way I have described concerning the swag barrow men these are the old metal swags of street classification but their remuneration is less fixed than that of the other swag barrow men a quarter sometimes a third and sometimes even a half of the amount taken the men carrying on this traffic are the servants of the marine store dealers or vendors of old metal articles who keep shops if one of these people be lumbered up that is if he finds his stock increased too rapidly he furnishes a barrow and sends a man into the streets with it to sell what the shopkeeper may find to be excessive sometimes if the tradesman can gain only the merest trifle more than he could gain from the people who buy for the melting pot he is satisfied there is or perhaps was an opinion prevalent that the street old metals in this way of business but rid of stolen goods in such a manner as the reddiest mode of sale some of which were purposely rusted and sold at almost any price so that they brought but a profit to the fence whose payment to the thief was little more than the price of old metal at the foundry I understand however that this course is not now pursued nor is it likely that it ever was pursued to any extent the street seller is directly under the eye of the police and when there is a search for stolen goods it is not very likely that they would be paraded however battered or rusted for the purpose before men who possessed descriptions of all goods stolen until the establishment of the present system of police this might have been an occasional practice one street seller had even heard and he had it from the man what did it that a last maker's shop was some years back broken into in the expectation that money would be met with but none was found and as the thieves could not bring away such heavy lumbering things as lasts they cursed their ill luck and brought away such tools as they could stow about their persons and cover with their loose great coats these were the large knives fixed to swivels and resembling a small scythe used by the artisan to rough you the block of beechwood and a variety of excellent rasps and files for they must be of the best necessary for the completion of the last these very tools were in ten days after the rubbery sold from a street barrow the second hand metal goods are sold from stalls as well as from barrows and these stalls are often tended by women whose husbands may be in some other branch of street commerce one of these stalls I saw in the care of a stout elderly duess who was fast asleep nodding over her locks and keys she was awakened by the passing policeman lest her stock should be pilfered by the boys come wake up mother and shake yourself he said I shall catch a weasel asleep next some of these barrows and stalls are heaped with the goods and some are very scantily supplied but the barrows are by far the best stocked many of them, especially the swag look like collections of the different stages of rust from its incipient spots to its full possession of the entire metal but amongst these seemingly useless things there is a gleam of brass or plated wear on one barrow I saw an old brass door plate on which was engraved in the name of a late learned judge, Baron B another had formally announced the residence of a dignitary of the church, the reverend Mr. Blank the second hand metal sellers are to be seen in all the street markets especially on the Saturday nights also in Poplar Limehouse and the commercial road in Golden Lane and in Old Street and Old Street Road St. Luke's in Hoxton and Shore Ditch in the Westminster Broadway and the Whitechapel Road in Rosemary Lane and in the district where perhaps every street calling is pursued but where some special street trades seem peculiar to the genius of the place in Petticoat Lane a person unacquainted with the last named locality may have formed an opinion that Petticoat Lane is merely a lane or street but Petticoat Lane gives its name to a little district it embraces Sandy Row Artillery Passage Artillery Lane Frying Pan Alley Catherine Wheel Alley Tripe Yard Fissures Alley Wentworth Street Providence Place Ellison Street Swan Court Hutchison Street Middlesex Street Hebrou Place Bore's Head Yard Middlesex Street Stoney Lane Meeting House Yard Gravel Lane White Street Cutler Street and Bore's Lane Devonshire Square Bishop's Gate Street up Bore's Lane or into what in the contrast really looks like the aristocratic thoroughfare of the Aldgate High Street down Middlesex Street or into Houndsditch through the halls of the old clothes exchange All these narrow streets lanes, rows, passages, alleys, yards, courts and places are the sites of the street trade carried on in this quarter The whole neighbourhood rings with street cries many uttered in those strange East End Jewish tones which do not sound like English mixed with the incessant invitations to by Hebrew dainties or the sheepest parkins is occasionally heard the guttural utterance of the Ershtang for the native Irish as they are sometimes called are in possession of some portion of the street traffic of Petticoat Lane the original rag fare the savour of the place is moreover peculiar there is fresh fish and dried fish and fish being fried in a style peculiar to the Jews there is the fussiness of old clothes there is the odour from the pans on which, still in the Jewish fashion frizzle and hiss pieces of meat and onions puddings are boiling and enveloped in steam cakes with strange names tubs of baked pickled cucumbers or of onions give a sort of acidity to the atmosphere lemons and oranges are bound and altogether the scene is not only such as can only be seen in London but only such as can be seen in this one part of the metropolis when I treat of the street Jews I shall have information highly curious to communicate and when I come to the fifth division of my present subject I shall more particularly describe Petticoat Lane as the headquarters of the second hand clothes business I have here alluded to the character of this quarter as being one much resorted to formerly and still largely used by the sellers of second hand metal goods here I was informed that a strong built man known as Jack or appropriately enough as Iron Jack had until his death six or seven years ago one of the best stocked barrows in London this in spite of remonstrances and by a powerful exercise of his strength the man lifted as it were onto the narrow footpath and every passerby had his attention directed almost per force to the contents of the barrow for he must make a detour to advance on his way one of this man's favourite pitches was close to the lofty walls of what before the change in their charter was one of the East India Company's vast warehouses the contrast to anyone who indulged a thought on the subject and there is great food for thought in Petticoat Lane was striking enough here towered the storehouse of costly teas and silks and spices and indigo while at its foot was carried on the most minute and apparently worthless of all street trades rusty screws and nails such as only few would care to pick up in the street being objects of honest bargaining an experienced man in the business who thought he was turned 50 or somewhere about that gave me the following account of his trade his customers and so on I've been in most street trades he said and was born to it like for my mother was a raggatherer not a bad business once and I helped her I never saw my father but he was a soldier and it's supposed lost his life now I don't remember ever having heard what foreign parts and it don't matter well perhaps this is about as tidy a trade for a bit of bread as any that's going now perhaps selling fish may be better but that's to a man what knows fish well I can't say I ever did I'm more a dab at cooking it note with a laugh end note I like a blotter best on what's an Irish good iron do you know what that is sir I know though I'm not Irish but I married an Irish wife and as good a woman as ever was a wife it's done on the tongs sir laid across the fire and the blotters laid across the tongs some say it's best turned and turned very quick on the coals themselves but the tongs is best for you can raise or lower note my informant seemed interested in his account of this and other modes of cookery which I need not detail end note this is really a very trying trade oh I mean it tries a man's patience so why it was in Easter week a man dressed like a gentleman but I don't think he was a real gentleman looked out some bolts and a hammerhead and other things odds and ends and they came to 10 pence apny he said he'd give six pence six pence says I why do you think I stole him well says he if I didn't think you'd stole him I shouldn't have come to you I don't think he was joking well sir we got to high words and I said then I'm damned if you have them for less than one shilling and a bit of a crowd began to gather they was most boys but the policeman came up as slow as you please and so my friend flings down one shilling and puts the things in his pocket and marches off with a few boys to keep him company that's the way one's tempers tried well it's hard to say what sells best a latch lock and keys goes off quick I've had them from tuppence to sixpence but it's only the lower price things as sells now in any trade bolts as a fairies stock and so is all sorts of tools well not saws so much as such things as screwdrivers or hammers or choppers or tools that if they're rusty people can clean up themselves saws ain't so easy to manage bed keys is good no I don't clean the metal up unless it's very bad people don't sell so well that way people's jealous that they're just done up on purpose to deceive though they may cost only a penny or tuppence there's that cheese cutter now is getting rustier and there'll be very likely a better chance to sell it this is how it is sir I know you see if a man's going to buy old metal and he sees it all rough and rusty he says to himself well there's no gammon about it I can just see what it is then folks like to clean up a thing themselves and it's as if it was something made from their own cleverness that was just my feeling sir when I bought old metals for my own use before I was in the trade and I goes by that oh working people's by far my best customers many of them's very fond of jobbing about their rooms or their houses and they come to such as me then a many has fancies for pigeons or rabbits or poultry or dogs or they mostly pick up the places for them themselves and as money's an object why them sort of fancy people buy hinges and locks and screws and hammers and what they want of me a clever mechanic can turn his hand to most things that he wants for his own use I know a shoemaker that makes beautiful rabbit touches and sells them along with his prize cattle as I call his great big long-eared rabbits perhaps I take two shillings and sixpence or three shillings and it's about half profit yes this time of the year I make good ten shillings and sixpence a week but in winter not one shilling a day that would be very poor pickings for two people to live on and I can't do without my drop of beer but my wife has constant work with the first rate laundrette at my land and so we rub on for we've no family living this informant told me further of the way in which the old metal stock sold in the streets were provided but that branch of the subject relates to street buying some of the street sellers however buy their stocks off the shopkeepers I find a difficulty in estimating the number of the second hand metalware street sellers many of the stalls or barrows are the property of the marine store shopkeepers or old metal dealers marine stores being about the only things the marine store men do not sell and these are generally placed near the shop being indeed a portion of its contents out of doors some of the marine store men a class of traders by the by not superior to street sellers making no odious comparison as to the honesty of the two when they have purchased largely the refuse iron for instance after a house has been pulled down establish two or three pitches in the street confiding the stalls or barrows of their wives and children I was told by several in the trade that there were 200 old metal sellers in the streets but from the best information at my command not more than 50 appear to be strictly street sellers unconnected with shopkeeping estimating a weekly receipt per individual of 15 shillings half being profit the yearly street outlay among this body alone amounts to £950 off the street sellers of second hand metal trays and so on there are still some few portions of the old metal trade in the streets which require specific mention among these is the sale of second hand trays occasionally with such things as bread baskets instead of these wares however being matters of daily traffic they are offered in the streets only at intervals and generally on the Saturday and Monday evenings while a few are hawked to public houses an Irishman a rather melancholy looking man but possessed of some humour gave me the following account his dress was a worn suit such as Mason's work in but I have seldom seen sole course and never on an Irishman of his class except on a Sunday so clean a shirt and he made as free a display of it as if it were the choicest cambrick he washed it he told me with his own hands as he had neither wife nor mother nor sister I was a cowkeeper's man your honour he said and he sent milk to Dublin I thought I might do better and I get to Liverpool and walked here have I done better is it sorry a better would I like to return to Dublin well perhaps please God I'll do better here yet I've sold the power of different things in the streets but I'm off for country work now I have a few to raise left if your honour wants such a thing I first sold a few for a man I'd lodged along with in Kent Street when he was sick and so I got to know the trade he told me to say and it's the truth if anybody said their only second hand that they was all the better for that for if they hadn't been real good trades at first they would never lived to be second hand ones I calls the bigger to raise butlers and the smaller waiters it's a poor trade one woman will say old fashioned things well then ma'am I'll say a good thing like this is never old fashioned no more than the beautiful mate and beret and the beautiful new pretties are coming in that you'll be eating off of it and treating your husband too God save him no lady ever goes to supper without her tray yes indeed then and it is a poor trade it's the beautiful trays I sold for sixpence I buys them off a shop which deals and such things the prophet sorry a prophet is there in it at all at all but I try to make fourpence out of a shilling if I make sixpence of a night it's good work these trays are usually carried under the arm and are sometimes piled on a stool to stand in a street market the prices are from tuppence to tenpence sometimes a shilling the stronger descriptions are sold to street sellers to display their goods upon as much as to any other class women and children occasionally sell them but it is one of the callings which seems to be disappearing from the streets from two men who were familiar with this and other second hand trades I heard the following reasons assigned for the decadence one man thought it was owing to swag trays being got up so common and so cheap but to look stunning well at least as long as the shininess lasted the other contended that poor working people had enough to do nowadays to get something to eat without thinking of a tray to put it on if twenty persons and that I am told is about the number of sellers take in the one or two nights sale four shillings a week each second hand trays thirty-three percent being the rate of profit the street expenditure is two hundred and eight pounds in a year in other second hand metal articles there is now and then a separate trade two or three sets of small flyer irons may be offered in a street market on a Saturday night or a small stock of flat and Italian irons for the lawn dresses who work cheap and must buy second hand collection of tools in the same way but these are accidental sales and are about ramifications from the general old metal trade that I have described perhaps in the sale of these second hand articles twenty people may be regularly employed and three hundred pounds yearly may be taken in petticoat lane, rosemary lane white cross street, ratcliffe highway and in the street markets generally are to be seen men, women and children selling dinner knives and forks razors, pocket knives and scissors the pocket knives and scissors are kept well oiled so that the weather does not trust them these goods have been mostly repaired ground and polished for street commerce the women and children selling these articles are the wives and families of the men who repair, grind and polish them and who belong, correctly speaking to the class of street artisans under which head they will be more particularly treated off it is the same also with the street vendors of second hand tin saucepans and other vessels a trade by the way which is rapidly decreasing for these are generally made of the old drums of machines retinned or are old saucepans and pots mended for use by the vendors who are mostly working tin men and are pertain to the artisan class end of section 2