Charles Hindley

“ The supply of milk to the metropolis is perhaps one of the most beautiful combinations of industry we have. The days have long since passed when Finsbury had its pleasant groves, and Clerkenwell was a village, and there were green pastures in Holborn, when St. Pancras boasted only a little church standing in meadows, and St. Martin’s was literally in the fields. Slowly but surely does the baked clay of Mr. Jerry, “the speculative builder” stride over the clover and the buttercup; and yet every family in London may be supplied with milk by eight o’clock every morning at their own doors. ”

“ Evening had gathered o’er Saint Giles’s, and Seven Dials. So tranquil was the season, even publishers were touched. Catnach and Pitts sat silent in their shops; placing their hands in breeches-poke, with that serenity which pockets best convey, they looked around their walls—walls more richly decked than if hung with triumphs of Sidonian looms, arrayed with Bayeux stitchings; walls, where ten thousand thousand ballads—strips harmonious, yet silent as Apollo’s unbraced strings,—hung pendulous, or crisply curling, like John Braham’s hair. ”

“ The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hands, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. ”

“ To bring within the reach of all the standard and popular works of the day, had been the ambition of the elder Catnach; whilst the son was, nolens volens, incessant in his endeavours in trying to promulgate and advance, not the beauty, elegance, and harmony which pervades many of our national airs and ballad poetry, but very often the worst and vilest of each and every description—in other words, those most suitable for street-sale. ”

“ As you enter the Brill the market sounds are scarcely heard. But at each step the low hum grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until at last the different cries become distinct, and the hubbub, din, and confusion of a thousand voices bellowing at once, again fill the air. The road and footpath are crowded, as on the over-night; the men are standing in groups, smoking and talking; whilst the women run to and fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled aprons, others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat dangling from their hands. ”

“ Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven, Give us this Day our daily Bread, and forgive us our Trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us, and lead us not into Temptation, but deliver us from Evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the Glory, for ever and ever. ”

“ With unpaved streets, and no noise of coaches to drown any particular sound, we may readily imagine the din of the great London thoroughfares of four centuries ago, produced by all the vociferous demand for custom. The chief body of London retailers were then itinerant,—literally pedlars; and those who had attained some higher station were simply stall-keepers. The streets of trade must have borne a wonderful resemblance to a modern fair. Competition was then a very rude thing, and the loudest voice did something perhaps to carry the customer. ”

“ He requested the executioner to give him as little pain as possible in the process of pinioning his arms and wrists; he uttered not a word in allusion to his crime; neither did he make any dying request, except that his spectacles might be given to Sarah Gale; he exhibited no sign of hope; he showed no symptom of reconciliation with his offended God! When the venerable ordinary preceded him in the solemn procession through the vaulted passage to the fatal drop, he was so overcome and unmanned, that he could not support himself without the aid of the assistant executioner. ”

“ Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along the pavement; now to a stand of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with red handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts, fluttering backwards and forwards, and a counter built up outside on the kerb, behind which are boys beseeching custom. At the door of a tea-shop, with its hundred white globes of light, stands a man delivering bills, thanking the public for past favours, and “defying competition.” ”

“ Copy of Verses.
Come all you feeling hearted christians, wherever you may be,
Attention give to these few lines, and listen unto me;
Its of this cruel murder, to you I will unfold,
The bare recital of the same will make your blood run cold.
[Pg 279]
Confined within a lonely cell, with sorrow I am opprest,
The very thought of what I’ve done, deprives me of rest;
Within this dark and gloomy cell in the County Gaol I lie,
For murder of my dear wife I am condemned to die. ”

“ Marylebone and Hyde Park were a royal hunting-ground, with a manor house, where the Earls of Oxford lived in later times. Piccadilly was ‘the road to Reading,’ with foxgloves growing in its ditches, gathered by the simple dealers of Bucklersbury, to make anodynes for the weary-hearted. Chelsea was a village; Pimlico a country hamlet, where pudding-pies were eaten by strolling Londoners on a Sunday. Westminster was a city standing by itself, with its Royal Palace, its Great Hall for banquets and the trial of traitors, its sanctuary, its beautiful Abbey, and its famous Almonry. ”

“ I did tremendous with him, because it happened in London, down Ratcliff Highway—that’s a splendid quarter for working—there’s plenty of feeling—but, bless you, some places you go to you can’t move nohow, they’ve hearts like paving stones. They wouldn’t have ‘the papers’ if you’d give them to ’em—especially when they knows you. Greenacre didn’t sell so well as might have been expected, for such a diabolical out-and-out crime as he committed; but you see he came close after Pegsworth, and that took the beauty off him. Two murderers together is no good to nobody. ”

“ The “cry” of the Hot Cross Bun vendor varies at times and in places—as thus:—
While some of a humorous turn of mind like to introduce a little bit of their own, or the borrowed wit of those who have gone before them, and effect the one step which is said to exist from the sublime to the ridiculous, and cry—
But the street hot-cross-bun trade is languishing—and languishing, will ultimately die a natural death, as the master bakers and pastrycooks have entered into it more freely, and now send round to their regular customers for orders some few days before each succeeding Good Friday. ”

“ We frequently meet with the pieman in old prints; and in Hogarth’s “March to Finchley,” there he stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning with delight at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the victim of another. We learn from this admirable figure by the greatest painter of English [Pg 214] life, that the pieman of the last century perambulated the streets in professional costume; and we gather further, from the burly dimensions of his wares that he kept his trade alive by the laudable practice of giving “a good pennyworth for a penny.” ”

“ One class of literature which Jemmy Catnach made—by reason of greater mechanical skill and a larger capital than his rivals—almost his own, was children’s farthing, halfpenny, and penny books. Among the great many that he published we select from our own private collection, those that follow as a fair sample.
Many other nursery books of a similar kind might be mentioned as some of the chief attractions that emanated from the “Catnach Press,” and which, to the juvenile population, were more eagerly welcomed than the great sensational three-volume novels are by many in our day. ”

“ A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together with the twankling of a brass kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman’s thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. ”

“ London:
Published by Ryle and Paul,
2 & 3, Monmouth Court, Seven Dials.
Text of Image on page 206.
A Pair of Snuffers.
A mouth I have got, that’s not whiter than ink.
And all I devour doth most nauseously stink;
So much valued am I, that by none I’m refused,
And the light shines the brighter whenever I’m used.
A Watch.
My form is beauteous to allure the sight
My habit gay, of colour gold & white,
When ladies take the air, it is my pride,
To walk with equal paces by their side,
I near their persons constantly remain,
A favourite slave, bound in a golden chain. ”

“ Others, as well as ourselves, will, it may be, lie awake upon their beds, and listen to the murmurs going to and fro within the great heart of London, and, thinking on the half-forgotten days of the nineteenth century, wonder perhaps whether, in these olden times, we too heard the sound of “Hot Cross Buns.” ”

“ Such is a brief résumé of the latter years of John Catnach’s life. It is apparent that, by a little application and self-denial, this man might have made for himself a name and position in the world. He possessed all the necessary talents for bringing success within his reach. The ground which he took is the same which in after years proved to be of inestimable value to hundreds of publishers who never possessed half the amount of ability and good taste in printing and embellishing books that was centred in him. ”

“ The street Pieman with his “cry,” of “Pies all hot! hot!! hot!!!—Penny pies, all hot! hot!!—fruit, eel, beef, veal or kidney pies! pies, all hot-hot-hot,” is one of the most ancient of street callings, and to London boys of every degree, “Familiar in their mouths as household words.” Nor is the itinerant trade in pies—“Eel, beef, veal, kidney or fruit,” confined to the great metropolis. All large provincial towns have, from a time going back much farther than even the proverbial “oldest inhabitant” can recollect, had their old and favourite “Penny Pieman,” or, “Old-all-Hot!” ”

“ Printed at the “Catnach Press” by W. FORTEY, Monmouth Court,
Bloomsbury, the Oldest House in the World for Ballads (4,000 sorts) Song
Books, &c. &c.
Hark! I hear the drums a beating—no longer can I stay,
I hear the trumpets sounding, my love I must away,
We are ordered from Portsmouth many a long mile,
For to join the British soldiers on the banks of the Nile.
Willie, dearest Willie, don’t leave me here to mourn,
You’ll make me curse and rue the day that ever I was born,
For the parting of my own true love is parting of my life,
So stay at home dear Willie, and I will be your wife. ”

“ The whole neighbourhood is covered with hand-barrows, some laden with baskets, others with sacks. The air is filled with a kind of sea-weedy odour, reminding one of the sea-shore; and on entering the market, the smell of whelks, red herrings, sprats, and a hundred other sorts of fish, is almost overpowering. The wooden barn looking square [14] where the fish is sold is, soon after six o’clock, crowded with shiny cord jackets and greasy caps. Everybody comes to Billingsgate in his worst clothes; and no one knows the length of time a coat can be worn until they have been to a fish sale. ”

“ He did a small and very humble trade as a jobbing master, printing and publishing penny histories, street-papers, and halfpenny songs, relying for their composition on one or two out of the known “Seven Bards of the Seven Dials,” and when they were on the drink, or otherwise not inclined to work, being driven to write and invent them himself.
The customers who frequented his place of business were for the most part of the lowest grades of society:—those who by folly, intemperance, and crime, had been reduced to the greatest penury. ”

“ Catnach, like many others connected with the getting up of news broadsides and fly-sheets, did not always keep clear of the law. The golden rule is a very fine one, but, unfortunately, it is not always read aright; in some cases injured innocence flies at extremes. Jemmy Catnach for a long time had been living upon unfriendly terms with a party connected with the management of one of Mother Cummins’s lodging-house establishments in the immediate neighbourhood, so out of spite printed a pamphlet, purporting to be the “Life and Adventures of Old Mother Cummins.” ”

“ Women run about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers, for in half-an-hour the market will close. In a little time the butcher puts up his shutters, and leaves the door still open; the policemen in their clean gloves come round and drive the street-sellers before them, and as the clock strikes eleven the market finishes, and the Sunday’s rest begins. ”

“ But although the sale was very large, it only occupies one “short month.” This enabled them to make Carols a stock job, so that when trade in the Ballad, Sensational, “Gallows,” or any other line of business was dull, they used to fill up every spare hour in the working off or colouring them, so as to be ready to meet the extraordinary demand which was sure to be made at the fall of the year.
Like most of the old English customs, Christmas-carol singing is fast dying out. Old peripatetic stationers well remember the rich harvest they once obtained at Christmas times by carol selling. ”

“ Professing an anxiety to put down street cries, our police persecute one class out of a multitude, and leave all the rest untouched. It is not only an inadequate remedy, but the remedy is sought in the wrong direction. The fact is, that the street noises are an undoubted evil, and in the interests of the public, action should be taken not to put them down, but to regulate them by local bye-laws, leaving the course of trade otherwise free. ”

“ Catnach was now at the height of his fame as a printer of ballads, Christmas-pieces, carols, lotteries, execution papers, dying speeches, catchpennies, primers and battledores, and his stock of type and woodcuts had very considerably increased to meet his business demands. And it may be said that he was the very Napoleon of buyers at sales by auction of “printers’ stock.” On one occasion, when lot after lot was being knocked down to him, one of the “Littlejohn crew” of “knock-out-men” of the period, observed to the auctioneer, “Why, sir, Mr. Catnach is buying up all the lots.” ”

“ Time was when this was a thriving trade: and we are old enough to remember the day when a good [Pg 194] half-mile of wall fluttered with the minstrelsy of war and love, under the guardianship of a scattered file of pinners-up, along the south side of Oxford-street alone. Thirty years ago the dead walls gave place to shop fronts, and the pinners-up departed to their long homes. As they died out very few succeeded to their honours and emoluments. There is one pinner-up, seemingly the last of his race, who makes his display on the dead wall of the underground railway in Farringdon road. ”

“ THE CATNACH PRESS.
——There can be little doubt that Jemmy Catnach, the printer, justly earned the distinction of being one of the great pioneers in the cause of promoting cheap literature—he was for a long time the great Mæcenas and Elzevir of the Seven Dials district. We do not pretend to say that the productions which emanated from his establishment contained much that was likely to enlighten the intellect, or sharpen the taste of the ordinary reader ”

“ There are States which have made a considerable noise in the world, whose total revenue does not reach what London spends annually in milk alone. As for the distribution of this inconceivable amount of liquid, which is delivered every morning and afternoon in small quantities all over the enormous area of bricks-and-mortar to which we have referred, it would utterly baffle the most marvellous organiser and administrator that ever existed upon earth, to extemporise human machinery for carrying on so minute and yet so gigantic a trade. ”

“ The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great city of London thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court-road, Hoxton, Shoreditch, [Pg 34] Kingsland, Whitechapel, Hackney-road, and many other suburban districts, which still retain the character of a street-market, they stand in long rows as the evening draws in, with paper-lanterns stuck in their baskets on dark nights; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the olden time.
The “costard-monger” whom Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is still noisy. ”

“ Long before “the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd” are the London cows milked; and the great wholesale vendors of the commodity, who have it consigned to them daily from more distant parts to the various railway stations in the metropolis, bear it in carts to every part of the town, and distribute it to the hundreds of shopkeepers and itinerants, who are anxiously waiting to receive it for re-distribution amongst their own customers. It is evident that a perishable commodity which everyone requires at a given hour, must be so distributed. ”

“ The shopkeepers have now ruined the itinerants—not by putting them down by fiery penalties, but by the competition amongst themselves to have [Pg 37] every article at hand for every man’s use, which shall be better and cheaper than the wares of the itinerant. Whose ear is now ever deafened by the cries of the broom-man? He was a sturdy fellow in the days of old “Morose,” carrying on a barter which in itself speaks of the infancy of civilization. His cry was “Old Shoes for some Brooms.” Those proclamations for barter no doubt furnished a peculiar characteristic of the old London Cries. ”

“ Artists of all countries and times have delighted to represent those peculiarities of costume and character which belong to the history of street-cries, and the criers thereof. Annibale Carracci—1560-1609—has immortalized the cries of Bologna; and from the time of Elizabeth to that of Queen Victoria, authors, artists and printers combined, have presented the Cries and Itinerant Trades of London, in almost numberless forms, and in various degrees of quality, from the roughest and rudest wood-cut-blocks to the finest of copper and steel plate engravings, or skilfully wrought etchings. ”

“ Each salesman tries his utmost to sell his wares, tempting the passers-by with his bargains. The boy with his stock of herbs offers “a double ’andful of fine parsley for a penny;” the man with the donkey-cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him to their utmost, with their “Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of us here? A penny a bunch—hurrah for free trade! Here’s your turnips!” Until it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the scramble that is going on throughout London for a living. ”

“ The sellers of food are of course among these. “Hot Peascod,” and “Hot Sheep’s-feet,” are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. “Hot Wardens,” and “Hot Codlings,” are not the cries which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire; also roasted chesnuts, and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the “fruit” when cut; the London pieman still holds his ground in spite of the many penny pie-shops now established. Rice-milk is yet sold out in halfpennyworths. ”

“ London, as a commercial city, has numbers of visitors and residents to whom quiet is of vital importance. The street cries, it is alleged, constitute a nuisance to the public, particularly to numbers of day-time-alone occupants, to whom time and thought is money. ”

“ Geoffrey of Monmouth deposeth that about 400 years before Christ’s nativity, Belin, a king of the Britons, built this gate and gave it its name, and that when he was dead the royal body was burnt, and the ashes set over the gate in a vessel of brass, upon a high pinnacle of stone. The London historian, John Stow, more prosaic, on the other hand, is quite satisfied that one Biling once owned the wharf, and troubles himself no further. ”

“ James Lackington—1746-1816—one of the most celebrated of our early cheap booksellers, lived at the “Temple of Muses,” Finsbury-place—the shop, into which a coach and six could be driven. This curious mixture of cobbler’s wax, piety, vanity, and love of business, has left us in his autobiography, which he published under the title of his “Memoirs and Confessions,” his experience as a pie-boy! or seller of pies, thus:—
“At ten years old I cried apple pies in the street. ”

“ Only a few of the shops are closed; but the butcher’s and the coal shed are filled with customers, and from the door of the shut-up baker’s, the women come streaming forth with bags of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber’s, smoothing their clean-shaved chins. Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions, braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and corn-plasters, are all bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with their pet terriers under their arms. ”