 Section 20 of London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Gillian Henry Of the Street Buyers of Waste Paper Beyond all others, the street purchase of waste paper is the most curious of any in the hands of the class I now treat of. Some may have formed the notion that waste paper is merely that which is soiled or torn, or old numbers of newspapers or other periodical publications, but this is merely a portion of the trade, as the subsequent account will show. The men engaged in this business have not unfrequently an apartment or a large closet or recess for the reception of their purchases of paper. They collect their paper street by street, calling upon every publisher, coffee shopkeeper, printer or publican, but rarely on a publican, who may be a seller of waste. I heard the refuse paper called nothing but waste after the general elliptical fashion. Attorney's offices are often visited by these buyers, as are the offices of public men, such as tax or rate collectors generally. One man told me that until about ten years ago, and while he was a youth, he was employed by a relation in the trade to carry out waste paper, sold to or ordered by cheese-mangers and so on, but that he never collected or bought paper himself. At last he thought he would start on his own account, and the first person he called upon, he said, was a rich landlady, not far from Hungerford Market, whom he saw sometimes at her bar and who was always very civil. He took an opportunity to ask her if she happened to have any waste in the house or would have any in a week or so. Seeing the landlady look surprised and not very well pleased at what certainly appeared an impertinent inquiry, he hastened to explain that he meant old newspapers or anything that way, which he would be glad to buy at so much a pound. The landlady, however, took in but one daily and one weekly paper, both sent into the country when a day or so old, and having had no dealings with men of my informant's avocation, could not understand his object in putting such questions. Every kind of paper is purchased by the waste men. One of these dealers said to me, I've often in my time cleared out a lawyer's office. I've bought old briefs and other law papers and forms that weren't the regular forms then and any damned thing they had in my line. You'll excuse me, sir, but I couldn't help thinking what a lot of misery was caused, perhaps, by the hundred weights of waste I've bought at such places. If my father hadn't got mixed up with law, he wouldn't have been ruined and his children wouldn't have had such a hard fight of it, so I hate law. All that happened when I was a child and I never understood the rights or the wrongs of it and don't like to think of people that's so foolish. I gave a penny-hickney a pound for all I bought at the lawyers and done pretty well with it, but very likely that's the only good turn such paper ever did anyone, unless it were the lawyers themselves. The waste dealers do not confine their purchases to the tradesmen I have mentioned. They buy off anyone and sometimes act as middlemen or brokers. For instance, many small stationers or news vendors, sometimes tobacconists in no extensive way of trade, sometimes chandlers, announced by a bill in their windows, waste paper bought and sold in any quantity. While more frequently perhaps the trade is carried on as an understood part of these small shopmen's business, without any announcement. Thus the shopkeepers have such miscellaneous waste brought to them and perhaps for only some particular kind have they a demand by their retail customers. The regular itinerant waste dealer then calls and clears out everything, the everything being not an unmeaning word. One man who did largely in waste at my request endeavored to enumerate all the kinds of paper he had purchased as waste and the packages of paper he showed me ready for delivery to his customers on the following day confirmed all he said as he opened them and showed me of what they were composed. He had dealt, he said, and he took great pains and great interest in the inquiry as one very curious and was a respectable and intelligent man in books on every subject. I give his own words, on which a book can be written. After a little consideration he added, well, perhaps every subject is a wide range, but if there are any exceptions it's on subjects not known to a busy man like me who is occupied from morning till night every weekday. The only worldly labour I do on a Sunday is to take my family's dinner to the bakehouse, bring it home after chapel, and read Lloyd's weekly. I've had bibles, the backs are taken off in the waste trade or it wouldn't be fair wait. Testaments, prayer books, companions to the altar and sermons and religious works. Yes, I've had the Roman Catholic books as is used in their public worship, at least so I suppose, for I never was in a Roman Catholic chapel. Well, it's hard to say about proportions, but in my opinion, as far as it's good for anything, I've not had them in anything like the proportion that I've had prayer books and Watts and Wesley's hymns. More shame. But you see, sir, perhaps a godly old man dies and those that follow him care nothing for hymn books and so they come to such as me, for they're so cheap now, they're not to be sold secondhand at all, I fancy. I've dealt in tragedies and comedies, old and new, cut and uncut. They're best uncut, for you can make them into sheets then and farces and books of the opera. I've had scientific and medical works of every possible kind and histories and travels and lives and memoirs. I needn't go through them, everything from a needle to an anchor, as the saying is. Poetry, I, many a hundred weight. Latin and Greek sometimes. And French and other foreign languages. Well now, sir, as you mention it, I think I never did have a Hebrew work. I think not, and I know the Hebrew letters when I see them. Black letter, not once in a couple of years. No, nor in three or four years when I think of it. I have met with it, and I always take anything I've got that way to Mr. Blank, the bookseller, who uses a poor man well. Don't you think, sir, I am complaining of poverty, though I have been very poor when I was recovering from cholera at the first break out of it, and I'm anything but rich now. Pamphlets I've had by the ton in my time. I think we should both be tired if I could go through all they were about. Very many were religious, moors the pity. I've heard of a page round a quarter of cheese, though, touching a man's heart. In corroboration of my informant statement, I may mention that in the course of my inquiry into the conditions of the fancy cabinet makers of the Metropolis, one elderly and very intelligent man, a first-rate artisan in skill, told me he had been so reduced in the world by the underselling of Slopmasters, called Butchers or Slotters, by the workmen in the trade, that though in his youth he could take in the news and examine our papers, each he believed ninepence at that time, but was not certain. He could afford and enjoyed no reading when I saw him last autumn, beyond the book leaves in which he received his quarter of cheese, his small piece of bacon or fresh meat or his Savaloise, and his wife schemed to go to the shops who wrapped up their things from books in order that he might have something to read after his day's work. My informant went on with his specification. Missionary papers of all kinds, parliamentary papers, but not so often new ones very largely, railway prospectuses, with plans to some of them nice engravings, and the same with other joint stock companies, children's copy books and ciphering books, old account books of every kind, a good many years ago I had some that must have belonged to a West End perfumer. There was such French items for Lady This or the Honourable Captain that. I remember there was an Honourable Captain G and almost at every second page was 100 toothpicks, three shillings and sixpence. I think it was three shillings and sixpence. In arranging this sort of waste one now and then gives a glance to it. Dictionaries of every sort I've had but not so commonly. Music books, lots of them. Manuscripts but only if they're rather old. Well 20 or 30 years or so I call that old. Letters on every possible subject but not in my experience any very modern ones. An old man dies you see and his papers are sold off, letters and all. That's the way get rid of all the old rubbish as soon as the old boys pointing his toes to the sky. What's old letters worth when the writers are dead and buried? Why perhaps a penny heap near a pound and it's a rattling big letter that will weigh half an ounce. Oh it's a queer trade but there's many worse. The letters which I saw in another waste dealers possession were 45 in number. A small collection I was told. For the most part they were very dull and commonplace. Among them however was the following an elegant and I presume a female hand but not in the modern fashionable style of handwriting. The letter is evidently old. The address is of West End gentility but I leave out name and other particularities. Mrs. Blank. Note it is not easy to judge whether the flourished letters are Mrs. or Miss but certainly more like Mrs. End note. Mrs. Blank, zoological artist presents her compliments to Mr. Blank and being commissioned to communicate with a gentleman of the name recently arrived at Charing Cross and presumed by description to be himself in a matter of delicacy and confidence indispensable verbal begs to say that if interested in the enclarcy small and necessary to the same she may be found in attendance any afternoon of the current week from three to six o'clock and no other hours. Blank Street, Blank Square Monday morning for the afternoon at home. Among the books destined to a butcher I found three perfect numbers of a six-pinny periodical published a few years back three or rather two and a half numbers of a shilling periodical with coloured engravings of the fashions two imperfect volumes of French plays an excellent edition among the plays were Atelier, Effigigny, Fédre, Le Frère Ennemi, Alexandre, Andromache, Le Plais Dur and Esther a music sheet headed a lonely thing I would not be a few pages of what seems to have been a book of tales Album d'un surmieux 36 pages in the pamphlet form quite new all these constituted about Tupnyworth to the butcher notwithstanding the variety of sources from which the supplies arrived I heard from several quarters that waste never was so scarce as it present it was hardly to be had at all the purchasers of the waste paper from the collectors are cheese mungers, buttermen butchers, fish mungers polterers, pork and sausage sellers sweet stuff sellers tobacconists, chandlers and indeed all who sell provisions or such luxuries as I have mentioned in retail some of the wholesale provision houses buy very largely and sell the waste again to their customers who pay more for it by such a medium of purchase but they have it thus on credit any retail trader in provisions at all in a large way will readily buy 6 or 700 weight at a time the price given by them varies from a penny farthing to Thruppen's Haipney the pound but it is very rarely either so low or so high the average price may be taken at 18 shillings the 100 weight which is not quite Tupens a pound and at this rate I learn from the best informed parties there are 12 tonnes sold weekly or 1,624 tonnes yearly 1,397,760 pounds at the cost of 11,232 pounds one man in the trade was confident the value of the waste paper sold could not be less than 12,000 pounds note value in a year there are about 60 men in this trade nearly 50 of whom live entirely as it was described to me by their waste and bring up their families upon it the others unite some other avocation with it the earnings of the regular collectors vary from 15 shillings weekly to 35 shillings accordingly as they meet with a supply on favourable terms or as they call it a good pool in a lot of waste they usually reside in a private room with a recess or a second room in which they sort pack and keep their paper one of these traders told me that he was satisfied that stolen paper seldom found its way directly into the collector's hands particularly publishers paper he added why not long since there was a lot of sheets stolen from Alderman Kelly's warehouse and the thief didn't take them to a waste dealer he knew better he took them sir to a tradesman in a large respectable way over the water a man that uses great lots of waste and sold them at just what was handed to him I suppose no questions asked the thief was tried and convicted but nothing was done to the buyer it must not be supposed that the waste paper used by the London tradesman costs no more than £12,000 in a year a large quantity is bought direct by butchers and others from poor persons going to them with a small quantity of their own accumulating or with such things as copy books of the street buyers of umbrellas and parasols the street traders in old umbrellas and parasols are numerous but the buying is but one part and the least skilled part of the business men some tolerably well dressed some swarthy looking like gypsies and some with a vagabond aspect may be seen in all quarters of the town and suburbs carrying a few ragged looking umbrellas or the sticks or ribs of umbrellas under their arms and crying umbrellas to mend or any old umbrellas to sell the traffickers in umbrellas are also the croc men who are always glad to obtain them in barter and who merely dispose of them at the old clothes exchange or in petticoat lane the umbrella vendors are known by an appellation of an appropriateness not uncommon in street language they are mushroom fakers the form of the expanded umbrella resembles that of a mushroom and it has the further characteristic of being rapidly or suddenly raised the mushroom itself springing up and attaining its full size in a very brief space of time the term however like all street or popular terms or phrases has become very generally condensed among those who carry on the trade they are now mushroom fakers a word which to anyone who has not heard the term in full is as meaningless as any in the vocabulary of slang the mushroom fakers will repair any umbrella on the owner's premises and their work is often done adroitly I am informed and as often bunglingly or in the trade term botched so far there is no traffic in the business the mushroom seller simply performing a piece of handicraft and being paid for the job but there is another class of street folk who buy the old umbrellas in petticoat lane or off the street buyer or collector and sometimes as one of these men said to me we are our own buyers on around they mend the umbrellas some of their wives I am assured being adepts as well as themselves and offer them for sale on the approaches to the bridges and at the corners of street the street umbrella trade is really curious not so very many years back the use of an umbrella by a man was regarded as partaking of effeminacy but now they are sold in thousands in the streets and in the second hand shops of monmouth street and such places one of these street traders told me that he had lately sold but not to an extent which might encourage him to proceed old silk umbrellas in the street for gentlemen to protect themselves from the rays of the sun the purchase of umbrellas is in a great degree mixed up with that of old clothes of which I have soon to treat but from what I have stated it is evident that the umbrella trade is most connected with street artisanship and under that head I shall describe it End of section 20 Section 21 of London Labour and the London poor volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVult recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of the street Jews although my present enquiry relates to London life in London streets it is necessary that I should briefly treat of the Jews generally as an integral but distinct and peculiar part of street life that this ancient people were engaged in what may be called street traffic in the earlier ages of our history as well as in the importation of spices furs, fine leather, armour, drugs and general merchandise there can be no doubt nevertheless concerning this part of the subject there are but the most meager accounts Jews were settled in England as early as 730 and during the sway of the Saxon kings they increased in number after the era of the conquest but it was not until the capacity to which they were exposed in the reign of Stephen had in a great measure exhausted itself and until the measures of Henry II had given encouragement to commerce and some degree of security to property in cities or congregated communities that the Jews in England became numerous and wealthy they then became active and enterprising attendants at fairs where the greater portion of the internal trade of the kingdom was carried on and especially the traffic in the more valuable commodities such as plate, jewels, armour, cloths, wines, spices, horses, cattle and so on the agents of the great prelates and barons and even of the ruling princes purchased what they required at these fairs St Giles's fair held at St Giles's hill not far from Winchester continued 16 days the fair was as it were a temporary city there were streets of tents in every direction in which the traders offered and displayed their wares during the continuance of the fair business was strictly prohibited in Winchester, Southampton and in every place within seven miles of St Giles's hill among the tent owners at such fairs were the Jews at this period the Jews may be considered as one of the bodies of merchant strangers as they were called settled in England for purposes of commerce among the other bodies of these strangers were the German merchants of the steel yard the Lombards the Coursini of Rome the merchants of the staple and others these were all corporations and thriving corporations when unmolested and the Jews had also their jewellery or Judaism not for a corporation merely but also for the requirements of their faith and worship and for their living together the London Dury was established in a place of which no vestige of its establishment now remains beyond the name the Old Dury here was erected the first synagogue of the Jews in England which was defaced or demolished Maitland States by the citizens after they had slain 700 Jews other accounts represent that number as greatly exaggerated this took place in 1263 during one of the many disturbances in the uneasy reign of Henry III all this time the Jews amassed wealth by trade and jewellery in spite of their being plundered and maltreated by the princes and other potentates everyone has heard of King John's having a Jews teeth drawn and in spite of their being priests and hated by the people the sovereigns generally encouraged merchant strangers when the city of London in 1289 petitioned Edward I for the expulsion of all merchant strangers that monarch answered with all a monarch's peculiar regard for great men and great men only no the merchant strangers are useful and beneficial to the great men of the kingdom and I will not tell them but though the king encouraged the people detested all foreign traders though not with the same intensity as they detested and condemned the Jews for in that detestation a strong religious feeling was an element of this dislike to the merchant strangers very many instances might be cited but I need give only one in 1379 nearly a century after the banishment of the Jews a Genoese merchant a man of great wealth petitioned Richard II for permission to deposit goods for safekeeping in Southampton castle promising to introduce so large a share of the commerce of the east into England that pepper should be forpence a pound yet the Londoners writes Walzingham but in the quaint monkish Latin of the day enemies to the country hired assassins who murdered the merchant in the street after this what stranger will trust his person among a people so faithless and so cruel who will not dread our treachery and abhor our name in 1290 by a decree of Edward the first the Jews were banished out of England the causes assigned for this summary act where quote their extortions their debasing and diminishing the coin and for other crimes end quote I need not enter into the merits or demerits of the Jews of that age but it is certain that any ridiculous charge any which it was impossible could be true was an excuse for the plundering of them at the hands of the rich and the persecution of them at the hands of the people at the period of this banishment their number is represented by the contemporaneous historians to have been about 16,000 a number most probably exaggerated as perhaps all statements of the numbers of a people are when no statistical knowledge has been acquired during this period of their abode in England the Jews were protected as the villains or bondsmen of the King a protection disregarded by the commonality and only giving to the executive government greater facilities of extortion and oppression in 1655 an Amsterdam Jew Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel whose name is still highly esteemed among his countrymen addressed Cromwell on the behalf of the Jews that they should be re-admitted into England with the sanction and under the protection of the law despite the absence of such sanction they had resided and of course traded in this country but in small numbers and trading often in indirect and sometimes in contraband ways Chaucer writing in the days of Richard II three reigns after their expulsion speaks of Jews as living in England it is reputed that in the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James they supplied at great profit the materials required by the alchemists for their experiments in the transmutation of metals in Elizabeth reign 2 Jewish physicians were highly esteemed in England the queen at one time confided the care of her health to Rodrigo Lopez a Hebrew who however was convicted of an attempt to poison his royal mistress Francis the first of France carried his opinion of Jewish medical skill to a great height he refused on one occasion during an illness to be attended by the most eminent of the Israelite physicians because the learned man had just been converted to Christianity the most Christian king therefore applied to his ally the Turkish Sultan Solomon II who sent him a true hardened Jew by whose directions Francis drank ass his milk and recovered Cromwell's response to the application of Manasseb in Israel was favourable but the opposition of the Puritans and more especially of Primm prevented any public declaration on the subject in 1656 however the Jews began to arrive and establish themselves in England but not until after the restoration of Charles II in 1660 could it be said that as a body they were settled in England they arrived from time to time and without any formal sanction being either granted or refused one reason alleged at the time was that the Jews were well known to be money lenders and Charles and his courtiers were as well known money borrowers I now come to the character and establishment of the Jews in the capacity in which I have more especially to describe them as street traders there appears no reason to doubt that they commenced their principal street traffic the collecting of old clothes soon after their settlement in London at any rate the cry and calling of the Jew old clothesman were so established 30 or 40 years after their return or early in the last century that one of them is delineated in Tempest's cries of London published about that period in this work the street Jew is represented as very different in his appearance to that which he presents in our day instead of merely a dingy bag hung empty over his arm he is portrayed when partially or wholly filled on his shoulder he is depicted as wearing or rather carrying three cocked hats one over the other upon his head a muff with a scarf or large handkerchief over it is attached to his right hand and arm and two dress swords occupy his left hand the apparel which he himself wears is of the full skirted style of the day and his long hair descends to his shoulders this difference in appearance however between the street Jew of 1700 and of a century and a half later is simply the effect of circumstances and indicates no change in the character of the man where it now the fashion for gentlemen to wear muffs, swords and cocked hats the Jew would again have them in his possession during the 18th century the popular feeling ran very high against the Jews although to the masses they were almost strangers except as men employed in the not very formidable occupation of collecting and vending secondhand clothes the old feeling against them seems to have lingered among the English people and their own greed in many instances engendering other and lawful causes of dislike by their resorting to unlawful and debasing pursuits and with that exaggeration of belief dear to any ignorant community as an entire people of misers, usurers extortioners receivers of stolen goods cheats, brothel keepers sheriff's officers, clippers and sweaters of the coin of the realm gaming house keepers in fine the charges or rather the accusations of carrying on every disreputable trade and none else were bundled at their doors that there was too much foundation for many of these accusations and still is no reasonable Jew can now deny that the wholesale prejudice against them was absurd is equally indisputable so strong was this popular feeling against the Israelites that it not only influenced and not only controlled the legislature but it coerced the houses of parliament to repeal in 1754 an act which they had passed the previous session and that act was merely to enable foreign Jews to be naturalised without being required to take the sacrament it was at that time and while the popular ferment was at its height unsafe for a Hebrew old clothesman however harmless a man and however long and well known on his beat to ply his street calling openly for he was often beaten and maltreated mobs, riots, pillageings and attacks upon the houses of the Jews were frequent and one of the favourite cries of the mob was certainly among the most preposterously stupid of any which ever tickled the ear and satisfied the mind of the ignorant no Jews no wooden shoes some mob leader the taste for rhyme had in this distich cleverly blended the prejudice against the Jews with the easily excited but vague fears of a French invasion which was in some strange way typified to the apprehensions of the vulgar as connected with slavery, popery the compulsory wearing of wooden shoes sabo and the eating of frogs and this sort of feeling was often revenged on the street Jew as a man mixed up with wooden shoes Cumberland in the comedy of the Jew and sometime afterwards Miss Edgeworth in the tale of Harrington and Ormond and both at the request of Jews wrote to moderate this rabid prejudice in what estimation the street and incidentally all classes of Jews are held at the present time will be seen in the course of my remarks and in the narratives to be given I may here observe however that among some the dominant feeling against the Jews on account of their faith still flourishes as is shown by the following statement a gentleman of my acquaintance was one evening about Twilight walking down Bridget Street Covent Garden when an elderly Jew was preceding him apparently on his return from a day's work as an old clothesman his bag accidentally touched the bonnet of a dashing woman of the town who was passing and she turned round abused the Jew and spat at him saying with an oath you old rags humbug you can't do that an allusion to a vulgar notion that Jews have been unable to do more than slobber since spitting on the saviour the number of Jews now in England is computed at 35,000 this is the result at which the chief rabbi arrived a few years ago after collecting all the statistical information at his command of these 35,000 more than one half or about 18,000 reside in London I'm informed that there may now be a small increase to this population but only small for many Jews have emigrated some to California a few years ago a circumstance mentioned in my account of the street sellers of jewellery there were a number of Jews known as hawkers or travellers who traverse every part of England selling watches golden silver pencil cases eyeglasses and all the more portable descriptions of jewellery as well as thermometers perometers, telescopes and microscopes this trade is now little pursued except by the stationery dealers and the Jews who carried it on and who were chiefly foreign Jews have emigrated to America the foreign Jews who though a fluctuating body are always numerous in London are included in the computation of 18,000 of this population two thirds reside in the city or the streets adjacent to the eastern boundaries of the city of the trades and localities of the street Jews the trades which the Jews most affect I was told by one of themselves are those in which as they describe it there's a chance that is they prefer a trade in such commodity as is not subjected to a fixed price so that there may be abundant scope for speculation and something like a gambler's chance for profit or loss in this way Sir Walter Scott has said trade has quote all the fascination of gambling without the moral guilt end quote but the absence of moral guilt in connection with such trading is certainly dubious the wholesale trades in foreign commodities which are now principally or solely in the hands of the Jews often as importers and exporters are watches and jewels sponges fruits especially green fruits such as oranges, lemons, grapes, walnuts coconuts and so on and dates among dried fruits shells, tortoises parrots and foreign birds curiosities ostrich feathers snuffs, cigars and pipes but cigars far more extensively at one time the localities in which these wholesale and retail traders reside are mostly at the east end indeed the Jews of London as a congregated body have been from the time when their numbers were sufficient to institute a settlement or colony peculiar to themselves always resident in the eastern quarter of the metropolis of course a wealthy Jew millionaire, merchant stock-jobber or stock-broker resides where he pleases in a villa near the Marquess of Hartford's in the Regent's Park a mansion near the Duke of Wellington's in Piccadilly a house and grounds at Clapham or Stanford Hill but these are exceptions the quarters of the Jews are not difficult to describe the trading class in the capacity of shopkeepers, warehouse men or manufacturers are the thickest in Houndsditch Aldgate and the Mineries more especially as regards the swag shops and the manufacture and sale of wearing apparel the wholesale dealers in fruit are in Duke's place and Pudding Lane, Thames Street but the superior retail Jew fritterers, some of whose shops are remarkable for the beauty of their fruit are in Cheepside Oxford Street, Piccadilly and most of all in Covent Garden Market the inferior jewelers some of whom deal with the first shops are also at the east end about Whitechapel Bevis Marks and Houndsditch the wealthier goldsmiths and watchmakers having like other tradesmen of the class their shops in the superior thoroughfares the great congregation of working watchmakers is in Clarkinwell but in that locality there are only a few Jews the Hebrew dealers in second hand garments and second hand wares generally are located about Petticoat Lane the peculiarities of which place I have lately described the manufacturers of such things as cigars, pencils and sealing wax the wholesale importers of sponge bristles and toys the dealers in quills and in looking glasses reside in large private looking houses when display is not needed for purposes of business in such parts as Monsoul Street Great Prescott Street Great Ailey Street Lemmon Street and other parts of the eastern quarter known as Goodman's Fields the wholesale dealers in foreign birds and shells and in the many foreign things known as curiosities reside in East Smithfield Ratcliffe Highway High Street, Shadwell or in some of the parts adjacent to the Thames in the long range of riverside streets from the Tower to Poplar and Blackwall are Jews who fulfil the many capacities of slop sellers and so on called into exercise by the requirements of seafaring people on their return from or commencement of a voyage a few Jews keep boarding houses for sailors in Shadwell and Wapping of the localities and abodes of the poorest of the Jews I shall speak hereafter concerning the street trades pursued by the Jews I believe there is not at present a single one of which they can be said to have a monopoly nor in any one branch of the street traffic are there so many of the Jew traders as there were a few years back this remarkable change is thus to be accounted for strange as the fact may appear the Jew has been undersold in the streets and he has been bitten on what might be called his own ground the buying of old clothes the Jew boys and the Fiebler and Elder Jews had until some 12 or 15 years back almost the monopoly of orange and lemon street selling or street hawking the Kostermonger class had possession of the theatre doors and the approaches to the theatres they had too occasionally their barrels full of oranges the Jews were the daily assiduous and itinerant street sellers of this most popular of foreign and perhaps of all fruits in their hopes of sale they followed anyone a mile if encouraged even by a few approving glances the great theatre of this traffic was in the stagecoach yards in such ins as the Bull and Mouth St Martin's Le Grand the Belle Sauvage Ludgate Hill Harrison's Head Snowhill the Bull, Aldgate the Swan with two necks Ladlain City the George and Blue Boar Holburn the White Horse, Fetter Lane and other such places they were seen too with all their eyes about them as one informant expressed it outside the inns where the coaches stopped to take up passengers and the and the now defunct peacock in Islington a commercial traveller told me that he could never leave town by any mail or stage without being besieged by a small army of Jew boys who most pertinaciously offered him oranges, lemons, sponges combs, pocket books pencils, sealing wax paper, many bladed penknifes razors, pocket mirrors and shaving boxes as if a man could not possibly quit the metropolis without requiring a stock of such commodities in the whole of these trades unless in some degree in sponges and black lead pencils the Jew is now outnumbered or displaced I have before alluded to the underselling of the Jew boy by the Irish boy in the street orange trade but the characteristics of the change are so peculiar that a further notice is necessary it is curious to observe that the most assiduous and hitherto the most successful of street traders were supplanted not by a more persevering or more skillful body of street sellers but simply by a more starving body some few years since poor Irish people and chiefly those connected with the culture of the land came over to this country in great numbers actuated either by vague hopes of bettering themselves by emigration or working on the railways or else influenced by the restlessness common to an impoverished people these men, when unable to obtain employment without scruple became street sellers not only did the adults resort to street traffic generally in its simplest forms such as hawking fruit but the children by whom they were accompanied from Ireland in great numbers were put into the trade and if two or three children earned tuppence a day each and their parents five pence or six pence each or even four pence the subsistence of the family was better than they could obtain in the midst of the miseries of the southern and western part of the sister isle an Irish boy of 14 having to support himself by street trade as was often the case owing to the death of parents and to diverse casualties would undersell the Jew boys similarly circumstances the Irish boy could live harder than the Jew often in his own country he subsisted on a stolen turnip a day he could lodge harder lodge for a penny a night in any noise some then or sleep in the open air which is seldom done by the Jew boy he could dispense with the use of shoes and stockings a dispensation at which his rival in trade revolted he drank only water or if he took tea or coffee it was as a meal and not merely as a beverage to crown the whole the city bread Jew boy required some evening recreation the penny or tuppany concert or a game at draughts or dominoes but this the Irish boy the bread never thought of for his soul luxury was a deep sleep and being regardless or ignorant of all such recreations he worked longer hours and so sold more oranges than his Hebrew competitor thus as the Munster or Connacht lad could live on less than the young denizen of Petticoat Lane he could sell at smaller profit and did so sell the Hebrew youths were displaced by the Irish in the street orange trade it is the same or the same in a degree with other street trades which were at one time all but monopolised by the Jew adults among these were the street sale of spectacles and sponges the prevalence of slop work and slop wages and the frequent difficulty of obtaining properly remunerated employment the pinch of want in short have driven many mechanics to street traffic so that the numbers of street traffickers have been augmented while no small portion of the newcomers have adopted the more knowing street avocations formerly pursued only by the Jews of the other class of street traders who have interfered largely with the old clothes trade which at one time people seem to consider a sort of birthright among the Jews I have already spoken when treating of the dealings of the croc men in bartering glass and crocery wear for second hand apparel these traders now obtain as many old clothes as the Jew clothes men themselves for with a great number of ladies the offer of an ornament of glass or spar or of a beautiful and fragrant plant is more attractive than the offer of a small sum of money for the purchase of the left off garments of the family the croc men are usually strong and in the prime of youth or manhood and are capable of carrying heavy burdens of glass or china wears for which the Jews are either incompetent or disinclined some of the Jews which have been thus displaced from the street traffic have emigrated to America with the assistance of their brethren the principal street trades of the Jews are now in sponges spectacles, combs, pencils, accordions, cakes, sweet meats, drugs and fruits of all kinds but in all these trades unless perhaps in drugs they are in a minority compared with the Christian street sellers there is not among the Jews street sellers generally anything of the concubinage or co-habitation common among the costar mongers marriage is the rule end of section 21 section 22 of London Labour and the London Poor volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this Libri Vox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of the Jew old clothes men 50 years ago the appearance of the street Jews engaged in the purchase of secondhand clothes was different to what it is at the present time the Jew had then far more of the distinctive garb and aspect of a foreigner he not unfrequently wore the gabardine which is never seen now in the streets but some of the long loose frock coats worn by the Jew clothes buyers resemble it at that period too the Jew's long beard was far more distinctive than it is in this hersoot generation in other respects the street Jew is unchanged now as during the last century he traverses every street square and road with a monotonous cry sometimes like a bleep off glow glow on this head however I have previously remarked when describing the street Jew of 100 years ago in an inquiry into the condition of the old clothes dealers a year and a half ago a Jew gave me the following account he told me at the commencement of his statement that he was of opinion that his people were far more speculative than the Gentiles and therefore the English liked better to deal with them our people he said will be out all day in the wet and begrudge themselves a bit of anything to eat till they go home and then maybe they'll gamble away their crown just for the love of speculation my informant who could write or speak several languages and had been 50 years in the business then said I am no bigot indeed I do not care where I buy my meat so long as I can get it I often go into the minarees and buy some without looking to how it has been killed or whether it has a seal on it or not he then gave me some account of the Jewish children and the number of men in the trade which I have embodied under the proper heads the itinerant Jew clothes man he told me was generally the son of a former Jew of clothes man but some were cigar makers or pencil makers taking to the clothes business when those trades were slack but that 19 out of 20 had been born to it if the parents of the Jew boy are poor and the boy a sharp lad he generally commences business at 10 years of age by selling lemons or some trifle in the streets and so as he expressed it or street connection by becoming known to the neighbourhoods he visits if he sees a servant he will when selling his lemons ask if she have any old shoes or old clothes and offered to be a purchaser if the clothes should come to more than the Jew boy has in his pocket he leaves what silver he has as an earnest upon them and then seeks some regular Jew clothes man who will advance the purchase money as the old Jew agrees to do upon the understanding that he is to have half ribic that is a moiety of the profit and then he will accompany the boy to the house to pass his judgement on the goods and satisfy himself that the stripling has not made a blind bargain an error into which he very rarely falls after this he goes with the lad to Petticoat Lane and there they share whatever money over and above what has been paid for them by such means the Jew boy gets his knowledge of the old clothes business and so quick are these lads generally that in the course of two months they will acquire sufficient experience in connection with the trade to begin dealing on their own account there are some he told me as sharp at fifteen as men of fifty it is very seldom my informant stated that a Jew clothesman takes away any of the property of the house he may be called into I expect there's a good many of them he continued for he sometimes spoke of his co-traders as if they were not of his own class is fond of cheating that is they won't mind giving only two shillings for a thing that's worth five shillings they are fond of money and will do almost anything to get it Jews are perhaps the most money loving people in all England there are certainly some old clothesmen who will buy articles at such a price that they must know them to have been stolen their rule however is to ask no questions and to get as cheap an article as possible a Jew clothesman is seldom or never seen in liquor they gamble for money either at their own homes or at public houses the favourite games are tossing dominoes and cards I was informed by one of the people that he had seen as much as 30 pounds in silver and gold lying upon the ground when two parties had been playing at throwing three halfpence in the air on a Saturday some gamble away the morning and the greater part of the afternoon note Saturday I need hardly say is the Hebrew Sabbath end note they meet in some secret back place about ten and begin playing for one a time that is tossing up three halfpence and staking a shilling on the result other Jews and a few Christians will gather round and bet sometimes the bets laid by the Jew bystanders are as high as two pounds each and on more than one occasion the old clothesmen have wagered as much as 50 pounds but only after great gains at gambling some if they can will cheat by means of a hipney with a head or a tail on both sides called a gray the play lasts till the Sabbath is nearly over and then they go to business or the theatre they seldom or never say a word while they are losing but merely stamp on the ground it is dangerous though to interfere when luck runs against them the rule is when a man is losing to let him alone I have known them play for three hours together and nothing be said all that time but head tail they seldom go to synagogue and on a Sunday evening have card parties at their own houses they seldom eat anything on their rounds the reason is not because they object to eat meat killed by a Christian but because they are afraid of losing a deal or the chance of buying a lot of old clothes by delay they are generally too lazy to light their own fires before they start of a morning and 19 out of 20 obtain their breakfasts at the coffee shops about Houn's Ditch when they return from their day's work they have mostly some stew ready prepared by their parents or wife if they are not family men they go to an eating house this is sometimes a Jewish house but if no one is looking they creep into a Christian cook shop not being particular about eating trifre that is meat which has been killed by a Christian those that are single generally go to a neighbour and agree with him to be boarded on the Sabbath and for this the charge is generally about two shelling sixpence on a Saturday there is cold fish for breakfast and supper indeed a Jew would pawn the shirt off his back sooner than go without fish then and in holiday time he will have it if he has to get it out of the stones it is not reckoned a holiday unless there is fish 40 years ago I have made as much in a week by the purchase of old clothes in the streets said a Jew informant upon an average then I could earn weekly about two pounds but now things are different people are more wide awake everyone knows the value of an old coat nowadays the women know more than the men the general average I think take the good weeks with the bad throughout the year is about a pound a week some weeks we get two pounds and some usually nothing I was told by a Jewish professional gentlemen that the account of the spirit of gambling prevalent among his people was correct but the amounts said to be staked he thought rare or exaggerated the Jew old clothes men are generally far more cleanly in their habits than the poorer classes of English people their hands they always wash before their meals and this is done whether the party be a strict Jew or measurement a convert or apple state from Judaism neither will the Israelite ever use the same knife to cut his meat that he previously used to spread his butter and he will not even put his meat on a plate that has hand butter on it nor will he use for his soup the spoon that has hand melted butter in it this objection to mix butter with meat is carried so far that after partaking of the one Jews not eat of the other for the space of two hours the Jews are generally when married most exemplary family men there are few funder fathers than they are and they will starve themselves sooner than their wives and children should want whatever their faults may be they are good fathers husbands and sons their principal characteristic is their extreme love of money and though the strict Jew does not trade himself Sabbath he may not object to employ either one of his tribe or a Gentile to do so for him the capital required for commencing in the old clothes line is generally about a pound this the Jew frequently borrows especially after holiday time for then he has generally spent all his earnings unless he be a provident man when his stock money is exhausted he goes either to a neighbour or to a publican vicinity and borrows a pound on the Monday morning to strike a light with as he calls it and agrees to return it on the Friday evening with a shilling interest for the loan this he always pays back if he was to sell the coat off his back he would do this I am told because to fail in so doing would be to prevent his obtaining any stock money for the future with this capital he starts on his rounds about eight in the morning and I am assured he will frequently begin his work without tasting food rather than break into the borrowed stock money each man has his particular walk and never interferes with that of his neighbour indeed while upon another's beat he will seldom cry for clothes sometimes they go half Rybeck together that is they will share the profits of the day's business and when they agree to do this the one will take the date and the other another the lower the neighbourhood the more old clothes are there for sale at the east end of the town they like the neighbourhoods frequented by sailors and there they purchase of the girls and the women the sailors jackets and trousers but they buy most of the petticoat lane the old clothes exchange and the marine store dealers for as the due clothes man never travels the streets by night time the parties who then have clothes to dispose of usually sell them to the marine store or second hand dealers overnight and the due buys them in the morning the first thing that he does on his rounds is to seek out these shops and see what he can pick up there a very great amount of business is done by the due clothes man at the marine store shops at the west as well as at the east end of London at the west end the itinerant clothes men prefer them use gentlemen's houses to all other places or else the streets where the little tradesmen and small gentile families reside my informant assured me that he had once bought a bishop's hat of his lordship's servant for one shilling sixpence on a Sunday morning these traders as I have elsewhere stated live at the east end of the town the greater number of them reside in Port Sokenward town stitch and their favourite localities in this district are either cobsyard, ropers building or Wentworth street they mostly occupy small houses about four shilling sixpence a week rent and live with their families they are generally sober men it is seldom that a due leaves his house and owes his landlord money and if his goods should be seized the rest of his tribe will go round and collect what is owing the rooms occupied by the old clothesmen are far from being so comfortable as those of the English artisans whose earnings are not superior to the gains of these clothesmen those which I saw had all littered look the furniture was old and scant and the apartments seemed neither shop parlor nor bedroom for domestic and family men as some of the due old clothesmen are they seem very indifferent to the comforts of a home I have spoken of trifre or meat killed in the Christian fashion now the meat killed according to the Jewish law is known as kosher and a strict Jew will eat none other in one of my letters in the morning chronicle on the meat markets of London there appeared the following statement respecting the Jew butchers in Whitechapel market quote to a portion of the meat here exposed for sale may be seen attached the peculiar seal which shows that the animal was killed conformably to the Jewish rights according to the injunctions of this religion the beast must die from its throat being cut instead of being knocked on the head the slaughterer of the cattle for Jewish consumption moreover must be a Jew two slaughterers are appointed by the Jewish authorities of the synagogue and they can employ others who must be likewise Jews as assistants the slaughterers I saw were quiet looking and quiet mannered men when the animal is slaughtered and skinned an examiner also appointed by the synagogue carefully inspects the inside if the lights be grown to the ribs said my informant who had had many years experience in this branch of the meat trade or if the lungs have any disease or if there be any disease anywhere the meat is pronounced unfit for the food of the Jews and is sent entire to a carcass butcher to be sold to the Christians this however does not happen once in 20 times to the parts exposed for sale when the slaughtering has been according to the Jewish law there is attached a lead and seal stamped in Hebrew characters with the name of the examining party sealing in this way as I ascertained from the slaughterers to see from 120 to 140 bullocks from 400 to 500 sheep and lambs and about 30 calfs all the parts of the animal thus slaughtered may be and are eaten by the Jews but three fourths of the purchase of this meat is confined as regards the Jews to the four quarters of the respective animals the hind quarters being the choice or parts are sent to the state or lead and haul markets for sale on commission end quote the Hebrew butchers consider that the Christian mode of slaughter is a far less painful death to the ox than was the Jewish I am informed that of the Jew old clothes men there are now only from 500 to 600 in London at one time there might have been a thousand their average earnings may be something short of 20 shillings a week in second hand clothes alone but the gains are difficult to estimate off a Jew street seller an elderly man who at the time I saw him was vending spectacles or bartering them for old clothes old books or any second hand articles gave me an account of his street life but it presented little remarkable beyond the not unusual vicissitudes of the lives of those of his class he had been in every street trade and had on four occasions traveled all over England selling quills, sealing wax, pencils sponges, braces cheap or superior jewelry thermometers and pictures he had sold barometers in the mountainous parts of Cumberland sometimes walking for hours without seeing man or women I liked it then he said for I was young and strong and didn't care to keep twice in the same town I was afterwards in the old clothes line I buy a few odd hats and light things still but I'm not able to carry heavy weights as my breath is getting rather short note I find that the Jews generally object to the more laborious kinds of street traffic end note yes I've been twice to Ireland and sold a good many quills and Dublin for I crossed over from Liverpool quills and wax were a great trade with us once now it's quite different I've had as much as 60 pounds of my own and that more than half a dozen times but all of it went in speculations yes some went in gambling I had a share in a gaming booth at the races for three years oh I dare say that's more than 20 years back but we did very little good there was such fees to pay for the tent on a race ground and often such delays between the races in the different towns and bribes to be given to the town officers such as town sergeants and chief constables and I hardly know who and so many expenses altogether that the profits were mostly swamped once at Newcastle races there was a fight among the pit men and our tent was in their way and was demolished almost to bits a deal of the money was lost or stolen I don't know how much but not near so much as my partners wanted to make out I wasn't on the spot just at the time I got married after that and took a shop in the second hand clothes line in Bristol but my wife died in child bed in less than a year and the shop didn't answer so I got sick of it and at last got rid of it oh I worked both the country and London still I shall take a turn into Kent in a day or two I suppose I clear between 10 shillings and 20 shillings a week anything and as I've only myself I do middling and I'm ready for another chance if any likely speculation offers I lodge with a relation and sometimes live with his family no I never touch any meat but kosher I suppose my meat now costs me 6 pence or 7 pence a day but it has cost me 10 times that and tuppence for beer in addition I am informed that there are about 50 old Jews besides old clothesmen in the streets selling fruit, cakes, pencils, spectacles, sponge, accordions drugs and so on of the Jew boy street seller I have ascertained and from sources where no ignorance on the subject could prevail that there are now in the streets of London rather more than 100 Jew boys engaged principally in fruit and cake selling in the streets very few US's are itinerant street sellers most of the older Jews thus engaged have been street sellers from their boyhood the young Jews who ply in street callings however are all men in matters of traffic almost before they cease in years to be children in addition to the Jew boy street sellers above enumerated there are from 50 to 100 but usually about 50 who are occasional or casual street traders vending for the most part coconuts and grapes and confining their sales chiefly to the Sundays on the subject of the street Jew boys a Hebrew gentleman said to me quote when we speak of street Jew boys it should be understood that the great majority of them are but little more conversant with or interested in the religion of their fathers than are the costar monger boys of whom you have written they are Jews by the accident as others in the same way with equal ignorance of the assumed faith are Christians end quote I received from a Jew boy the following account of his trading pursuits and individual aspirations there was somewhat of a thickness in his utterance otherwise his speech was but little distinguishable from that of an English street boy his physiognomy was decidedly Jewish but not of the handsomer type his hair was light coloured but clean and apparently well brushed without being oiled or as I heard a street boy style it greased it was long and he said his aunt told him it wanted cutting sadly but he liked it that way indeed he kept dashing his curls from his eyes and back from his temples as he was conversing as if he were somewhat vain of doing so he was dressed in a corduroy suit but not ragged and wore a tolerably clean very coarse and altogether buttonless shirt which he said was made for one bigger than me sir he had bought it for nine pins in Petticoat Lane and accounted as a bargain as its wear would be durable he was selling sponges when I saw him and of the commonest kind offering a large piece for thruppens which he admitted would be rubbed to bits in no time this sponge I should mention is frequently dressed with sulfuric acid and an eminent surgeon informed me that on his servant attempting to clean his black dress quote with a sponge that he had newly bought in the streets the colour of the garment to his horror changed to a bright purple the dew boy said quote I believe I'm twelve I've been to school but it's long since and my mother was very ill then and I was forced to go out to the streets to have a chance I never was kept to school I can't read, I forgot all about it I'd rather now that I could read but very likely I could soon learn if I could only spare time but if I stay long in the house I feel sick, it's not healthy oh no sir inside or out it would be all the same to me just to make a living and keep my health I can't say how long it is since I began to sell one must do something I could keep myself now and do sometimes but my father, I live with him my mother's dead, is often laid up would you like to see him sir he knows a deal no he can't write but he can read a little can I speak Hebrew well I know what you mean oh no I can't, I don't go to synagogue I haven't time my father goes but only sometimes so he says he tells me to look out for we must both go by and by note I began to ask him what he knew of Joseph and others recorded in the Old Testament but he bristled up and asked if I wanted to make a measurement a convert of him end note I have sold all sorts of things he continued oranges and lemons and sponges and nuts and sweets I should like to have a real good for my own but I must wait and there's many in the trade I only go with boys of my own sort I sell to all sorts of boys but that's nothing very likely they're Christians but that's nothing to me I don't know what's the difference between a Jew and Christian and I don't want to talk about it the measurements are never any good anybody will tell you that yes I like music and can sing a bit I get to a penny sometimes a tutny concert no I haven't been to Sussex Hall I know where it is I shouldn't understand it you get in for nothing that's one thing I've heard of Baron Rothschild he has more money than I could count in shillings in a year I don't know about his wanting to get into parliament or what it means but he's sure to do it or anything else with his money he's very charitable I've heard I don't know whether he's a German Jew or a Portuguese or what he's a cut above me a precious sight I only wish he was my uncle I can't say what I should do if I had his money perhaps I should go a travelling and see everything everywhere I don't know how long the Jews have been in England always perhaps yes I know there's Jews in other countries this sponge is Greek sponge but I don't know where it's grown only it's in foreign parts yes I've heard of it I'm of no tribe that I know of I buy what I eat about Petticoat Lane no I don't like fish but the stews and the onions with them is beautiful for tuppence you may get a pennearth the pickles, cow camperage is best are stunning but they're plummiest with a bit of cheese or anything cold that's my opinion but you may think different pork ah no I never touched it I eat a cat so would my father no sir I don't think pork smells nice in a cook shot but some Jew boys as I know thinks it does I don't know why it shouldn't be eating only that it's wrong to eat it no I never touched a ham sandwich but other Jew boys have and laughed at it I know I don't know what I make in a week I think I make as much on one thing as on another strawberries and cherries and gooseberries and nuts and walnuts in the season oh as to what I make that's nothing to nobody sometimes sixpence a day sometimes a shelling sometimes a little more and sometimes nothing no I never sell inferior things if I can help it but if one hasn't stock money one must do as one can but it isn't so easy to try it on there was a boy beaten by a woman since for selling a big bottle of strawberries that was rubbish all under the toppers it was all strawberry leaves and crushed strawberries and such like she wanted to take back from him the tuppence she'd paid for it and got hold of his pockets and there was a regular fight but she didn't get a farthing back though she tried her very hardest cause he slipped from her and hooked it so you see it's dangerous to try it on this last remark was made gravely enough but the lad told of the feat with such manifest glee that I'm inclined to believe that he himself was the culprit in question and not yes it was a dew boy it happened to but other boys in the streets is just the same do I like the streets I can't say I do there's too little to be made in them no I wouldn't like to go to school nor to be in a shop or be anybody's servant but my own oh I don't know what I shall be when I'm grown up I shall take my chance like others end quote of the pursuits, dwellings, traffic and so on of the dew boy street sellers to speak of the street dew boys as regards their traffic, manners haunts and associations is to speak of the same class of boys who may not be employed regularly in street sale but are the comrades of those who are a class who on any cessation of their employment in cigar manufacturers or indeed any capacity will apply themselves temporarily to street selling for it seems to these poor and uneducated lads a sort of natural vocation these youths uncontrolled or incontrollable by their parents who are of the lowest class of the Jews and who often I am told care little about the matter so long as the child can earn his own maintenance frequently in the evenings after their days work resort to coffee shops in preference even to a cheap concert room in these places they amuse themselves as men might do in a tavern where the landlord leaves his guests to their own caprices sometimes one of them reads aloud from some exciting or degrading book the lads who are unable to read with all the intentness with which many of the uneducated attend to anyone reading the reading is however not unfrequently interrupted by rude comments from the listeners if a newspaper be read the police or crimes are mostly the parts preferred but the most approved way of passing the evening among the Jew boys is to play at drafts dominoes or cribbage and to bet on the play some dominoes are unpracticed among the customonger boys but some of the young Jews are adept in those games a gentleman who took an interest in the Jew lads told me that he had often heard the sort of reading and comments I have described when he had called to talk to and perhaps expostulate with these youths in a coffee shop but he informed me that they seldom regarded any expostulation and seemed to be little restrained by the presence of a stranger the lads all muttering and laughing in a box among themselves I saw seven of them a little after eight in the evening in a coffee shop in the London Road although it is not much of a Jewish locality and two of them were playing at drafts for coffee while the others looked on betting hip knees or pennies with all the eagerness of gamblers unrestrained in their expressions of delight or disappointment as he thought or losing and commenting on the moves with all the assurance of connoisseurship sometimes they squabbled angrily and then suddenly dropped their voices as the master of the coffee shop had once or twice cautioned them to be quiet the dwellings of boys such as these are among the worst in London as regards ventilation, comfort or cleanliness they reside in the courts and recesses about Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane and generally in a garret if not orphans they usually dwell with their father I am told that the care of a mother is almost indispensable to a poor Jew boy and having that care he seldom becomes an outcast the Jewesses and Jew girls are rarely itinerant street sellers not in the proportion of one to twelve compared with the men and boys in this respect therefore the street Jews differ widely from the English Costa Mungers and the street Irish nor are the Hebrew females even stall keepers in the same proportion one Jew boys lodging which I visited was in a back garret low and small the boy lived with his father a street seller of fruit and the room was very bare a few sacks were thrown over the old Pileas a blanket seemed to be used for a quilt there were no fire irons nor fender no cooking utensils beside the bed was an old chest serving for a chair while a board resting on a trestle did duty for a table this was once I presume a small street stall the one not very large window was thick with dirt and patched all over altogether I have seldom seen a more rich apartment the man I was told was addicted to drinking the callings of which the Jew boys have the monopoly are not connected with the sale of any special article but rather with such things as present a variety from those ordinarily offered in the streets such as cakes sweet meats, fried fish and in the winter, elder wine the cakes known as Boolerge a mixture of egg, flour and candied orange or lemon peel and with a slight colouring from saffron or something similar are now sold principally and used to be sold exclusively by the Jew boys almond cakes, little round cakes of crushed almonds aren't present vended by the Jew boys and their sponge biscuits are in demand all these dainties are bought by the street lads of the Jew pastry cooks the difference in these cakes in their sweet meats and their elder wine is that there is a dash of spice about them not ordinarily met with it is the same with the fried fish a little spice or pepper being blended with the oil in the street sale of pickles the Jews have also the monopoly these however are seldom hawked but generally sold from windows and doorsteads the pickles are cucumbers or gherkins and onions a large cucumber being tuppence and the smaller a penny and a hipney the faults of the Jew lad are an eagerness to make money by any means so that he often grows up a cheat a trickster, a receiver of stolen goods though seldom a thief for he leaves that to others he is content to profit by the thief's work but seldom steals himself however he may cheat some of these lads become rich men others are vagabonds all their lives none of the Jew lads can find themselves to the sale of any one article nor do they seem to prefer one branch of street traffic to another even those who cannot read are exceedingly quick I may here observe in connection with the receipt of stolen goods that I shall deal with this subject in my account of the London thieves I shall also show the connection of Jewesses and Jews with the prostitution of the metropolis in my forthcoming exposition of the London prostitutes end of section 22 section 23 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of the street Jewesses and street Jew girls I have mentioned that the Jewesses and the young Jew girls compared with the adult Jews and Jew boys are not street traders in anything like the proportion which the females were found to bear to the males among the Irish street folk and the English costar mongers there are however a few Jewish females who are itinerant street sellers as well as stall keepers in the proportion perhaps of one female to seven or eight males the majority of the street Jew girls whom I saw on around were accompanied by boys who were represented to be their brothers and I have little doubt such was the facts for these young Jewesses although often pert and ignorant are not unchaste of this I was assured by a medical gentleman who could speak with sufficient positiveness on the subject the little Jewesses are usually sold by these boys and girls together the lads driving the barrow and the girl inviting custom and handing the purchases to the buyers intending a little stall or a basket at a regular pitch with such things as cherries or strawberries the little Jewess differs only from her street selling sisters in being a brisker trader the stalls with a few old knives or scissors that are tended by the Jew girls in the streets in the Jewish quarters I am told there are not above a dozen of them are generally near the shops and within sight of their parents or friends one little Jewess with whom I had some conversation had not even heard the name of the chief rabbi the Reverend Dr. Adler and knew nothing of any distinction between German and Portuguese Jews she had I am inclined to believe never heard of either I am told that the whole or nearly the whole of these young female traders reside with parents or friends and that there is among them far less than the average number of runaways one Jew told me he thought that the young female members of his tribe did not tramp with the juveniles of the other sex no, not in the proportion of one to a hundred in comparison he said with a laugh with young women of the Christian persuasion my informant had means of knowing this fact as although still a young man he had traversed the greater part of England hawking perfumery which he had abandoned as a bad trade a wire worker long familiar with tramping and going into the country a man upon whose word I have every reason to rely told me that he could not remember of his having seen a young duess travelling with a boy there are a few adult duesses who are itinerant traders but very few I met with one who carried on her arm a not very large basket filled with glasswares chiefly salt cellars cigar ash plates blue glass dessert plates vinegar croutes and such like the greater part of her wares appeared to be blue she carried nothing but glass she was a good looking and neatly dressed woman she peeped in at each shop door and up at the windows of every private house in the street in which I met her crying she bartered her glass for old clothes or bought the garments dealing principally in female attire and almost entirely with women she declined to say anything about her family or her circumstances except that she had nothing that way to complain about but when I had used some names I had authority to make mention of she said she would with pleasure tell me all about her trade which she carried on rather than do nothing when I hawk she said with an English accent her face being unmistakably Jewish I hawk only good glass and it can hardly be called hawking as I swap it for more than I sell it I always ask for the mistress and if she wants any of my glass we come to a bargain if we can oh it's ridiculous to see what things some ladies I suppose they must be called ladies offer for my glass children's green or blue gauze veils torn or faded and not worth picking up because no use whatever old ribbons not worth dying and old frocks not worth washing people say as keen as a Jew but ladies can't think we're very keen when they offer us such rubbish I do most at the middle kind of houses both shops and private I sometimes give a little money for such a thing as a shawl or refer to it as well as my glass but only when I can't help it to secure a bargain sometimes but not often I get the old thing a trifle for my glass occasionally I buy outright I don't do much there's so many in the line and I don't go out regularly I can't see how many women are in my way very few oh I do middling I told you I had no complaints to make I don't calculate my profits or what I sell my family do that and I don't trouble myself off the synagogue and the religion and other Jews the Jews in this country are classed as Portuguese and German among them are no distinctions of tribes but there is of rites and ceremonies as is set forth in the following extract which shows also the mode of government from a Jewish writer quote the Spanish and Portuguese congregation of Jews who are also called from the word which signifies are distinct from the German and Polish Jews in their ritual service the prayers both daily and for the Sabbath materially differ from each other and the festival prayers differ still more hence the Portuguese Jews have a distinct prayer book and the German Jews likewise the fundamental laws are equally observed by both sects but in the ceremonial worship there exists numerous differences the Portuguese Jews eat some food during the Passover which the German Jews are prohibited doing by some rabbis but their authority is not acknowledged by the Portuguese rabbis nor are the present ecclesiastical authorities in London of the two sects the same the Portuguese Jews have their own rabbis and the German have their own the German Jews are much more numerous than the Portuguese the chief rabbi of the German Jews is the Reverend Dr Nathan Marcus Adler late chief rabbi of Hanover who wears no beard and dresses in the German costume the presiding rabbi of the Portuguese Jews is the Reverend David Mildola a native of Leghorn his father filled the same office in London each chief rabbi is supported by three other rabbis called Diaman which signifies in Hebrew judges every Monday and Thursday the chief rabbi of the German Jews Dr Adler supported by his three colleagues sits for two hours in the rabbinical college Beth Amidrash Smith's buildings to attend to all supplications from the German Jews which may be brought before him which are decided according to the Jewish law many disputes between Jews in religious matters are settled in this manner and if the Lord Mayor or any other magistrate is told that the matter has already been settled by the Jewish rabbi he seldom interferes this applies only to civil and not to criminal cases the Portuguese Jews have their own hospital and their own schools and their own relatives in the board of deputies of British Jews which board is acknowledged by government and is triennial Sir Moses Montefiore a Jew of great wealth who distinguished himself by his mission to Damascus during the persecution of the Jews in that place and also by his mission to Russia some years ago is the president of the board all political matters calling for communications with government in the presence of that useful board end quote the Jews have eight synagogues in London besides some smaller places which may perhaps adopting the language of another church be called synagogues of ease the great synagogue in Duke's place a locality of which I have often had to speak is the largest but the new synagogue St. Helens Bishopgate is the one which most betokens the wealth it is rich with ornaments, marble and painted glass the pavement is of painted marble and presents a perfect round while the ceiling is a half dome there are besides these the Hamburg synagogue in Fenturch Street the Portuguese synagogue in Bevis Marks two smaller places in Cutler Street and Gunyard Houndsditch known as Polish synagogues the Maiden Lane Covent Garden Synagogue the Western Synagogue St. Albans Place Palmael and the West London Synagogue of British Jews Margaret Street Cavendish Square the last mentioned is the most aristocratic of the synagogues the service there is curtailed the ritual abbreviated and the days of observance of the Jewish festival reduced from two to one this alteration is strongly protested against by the other Jews the practices of this synagogue seem to show a yielding to the exactions or requirements of the wealthy in the old days and in almost every country in Europe it was held to be sinful even for a king reverenced and privileged as such a potentate then was to prosecute any undertaking before he heard mass in some states it was said in reproach of a noble or a sovereign before he hears mass and to meet to the impatience of the great hunting masses as they were styled or epitomies of the full service were introduced the Jews some eight or nine years back in this country seem to have followed this example such was the case at least as regards London and the welfare of the professors of this ancient faith the synagogues are not well attended the congregations being smaller in proportion to the population than those of the Church of England neither during the observance of the Jewish worship is there any special manifestation of the service being regarded as of a sacred and divinely ordained character there is a buzzing talk among the attendance during the ceremony and an absence of seriousness and attention some of the Jews however show the greatest devotion and the same may be said to the duesses who sit apart in the synagogues and are not required to attend so regularly as the men I should not have alluded to this absence of the solemnities of devotion as regards the congregations of the Hebrews had I not heard it regretted by Hebrews themselves it is shocking one said another remarked to attend the synagogue is looked upon too much as a matter of business and the spirit in some of the Christian churches as to the the streets Jews religion is little known among them or little cared for they are indifferent to it not to such a degree indeed as the costar mongers for they are not so ignorant a class but yet contrasting strongly in their neglect with the religious intensity of the majority of the Roman Catholic Irish of the streets in common justice I must give the remark of a Hebrew merchant with whom I had some conversation on the subject quote I can't say much about streets Jews for my engagements lead me away from them and I don't know much about street Christians but if out of a hundred Jews you find that only ten of them care for their religion how many out of a hundred Christians of any sort will care about theirs will ten of them care if you answer but they are only nominal Christians my reply is the Jews are only nominal Jews Jews by birth and not by faith end quote among the Jews I conversed with and of course only the more intelligent understood or were at all interested in the question I heard the most contentious denunciation of all converts from Judaism one learned informant who was by no means blind to the shortcomings of his own people expressed his conviction that no Jew had ever been really converted he had abandoned his faith from interested motives on this subject I am not called upon to express any opinion and merely mention it to show a prevalent feeling among the class I am describing the street Jews including the majority of the more prosperous and most numerous class among them the old clothes men are far from being religious in feeling or well versed in their faith and are perhaps in that respect on a level with the mass of the members of the church of England I say of the church of England because of that church the many who do not profess religion are usually accounted members in the rabbinical college I may add is the finest Jewish library in the world it has been collected for several generations under the care of the chief rabbis the public are admitted having first obtained tickets given gratuitously at the chief rabbis residence in Crosby square of the politics literature and amusements of the Jews perhaps there is no people in the world possessing the average amount of intelligence in busy communities who care so little for politics as the general body of the Jews the wealthy classes may take interest in the matter but I am assured and by those who know their countrymen well that even with them such a quality as patriotism is a mere word this may be accounted for in a great measure perhaps from a hereditary feeling the Jew could hardly be expected to love a land or to strive for the promotion of its general welfare where he felt he was but a sojourner and where he was at the best but tolerated and often proscribed but this feeling becomes highly reprehensible when it extends as I am assured it does among many of the rich Jews to their own people for whom apart from conventionalities say my informants they care nothing whatever for so long as they are undisturbed in money getting at home their brethren may be persecuted all over the world while the rich Jew merely shrugs an honourable exception however exists in Sir Moses Montefiore who has honourably distinguished himself in the relief of his persecuted brethren on more than one occasion the great of the earth no longer spit upon the gabardine of the Jewish millionaire nor do they draw his teeth to get his money but the great Jew capitalists with powerful influence in many a government do not seek to direct that influence for the bettering of the lot of their poorer brethren who at the same time broke the restrictions and indignities which they have to suffer with a perfect philosophy in fact the Jews have often been the props of the courts who have persecuted them that is to say two or three Jewish firms occasionally have not hesitated to lend millions to the governments by whom they and their people have been systematically degraded and oppressed I was told by a Hebrew gentleman a professional man that so little did the Jews themselves care for Jewish emancipation that he questioned if one man in ten actuated solely by his own feelings would trouble himself to walk the length of the street in which he lived to secure Baron Rothschild's admission into the House of Commons this apathy my informant urged with perfect truth in no wise affected the merits of the question though he was convinced it formed a great obstacle to Baron Rothschild's success for governments he said won't give boons to people who don't care for them and though this is called a boon I look upon it as only a right when such is the feeling of the comparatively wealthier Jews no one can wonder that I found among the Jewish street sellers and old clothesmen with whom I talked on the subject and their more influential brethren gave me every facility to prosecute my inquiry among them a perfect indifference to and nearly as perfect an ignorance of politics perhaps no men buy so few newspapers and read them so little as the Jews generally the street traders when I alluded to the subject said they read little but the police reports among the body of the Jews there is little love of literature they read far less let it be remembered I have acquired all this information from Jews themselves and from men who could not be mistaken in the matter and are far less familiar with English authorship either historical or literary than are the poorer English artisans neither do the wealthiest classes of the Jews care to foster literature among their own people an author a short time ago failing to interest the English Jews to promote the publication of his work went to the United States and his book was issued in Philadelphia the city of Quakers the amusements of the Jews and here I speak more especially of the street or open air traders are the theaters and concert rooms the city of London theater the standard theater most other playhouses at the east end of London are greatly resorted to by the Jews and more especially by the younger members of the body who sometimes constitute a rather obstreperous gallery the cheap concerts which they patronize are generally of a superior order for the Jews are fond of music and among them have been many eminent composers and performers so that the trash and jingle the most among the class would not please the street Jew boys hence their concerts are superior to the general run of cheap concerts and are almost always got up by their own people Sussex hall in Ledden hall street is chiefly supported by Israelites there the Jews and general literary and scientific institution is established with reading rooms and a library and there lectures, concerts and so on are given as at similar institutions off late on every Friday evening Sussex hall has been thrown open to the general public without any charge for admission and lectures have been delivered gratuitously on literature science, art and general subjects which have attracted crowded audiences the lecturers are chiefly Jews but the lecturers are neither theological nor sectarian the lecturers are Mr. M. H. Breslau the Reverend B. H. Asher Mr. J. L. Levison of Brighton and Mr. Clark a merchant in the city a Christian whose lectures are very popular among the Jews the behaviour of the Jew attendants and the others the Jews being the majority is decorous I would like to receive information I was told and a gentleman connected with the hall argued that this attention showed a readiness for proper instruction when given in an attractive form which favoured the opinion that the young Jews when not thrown in childhood into the vortex of money making were very easily teachable while their natural quickness made them both ready and willing to be taught I was informed I visited one in the Jew quarter but saw nothing to distinguish it from Christian resorts of the same character and cheapness the plate of good hot meat costing forpins and vegetables a penny except that it was fuller of Jews than of Christians by three to two perhaps and that there was no pork in the waiter's specification End of section 23