Street seller

“ No auctioneer is employed as in European countries, but the owner and seller himself perambulates the street or courtyard with his goods—a mule, or a frying-pan, or a carpet—calling out each successive bid which he receives on his article, pushing his way and jostling the motley mob of market people, peasants and loungers, silks and rags, until he has got his price, and hands over to its new owner his late possession. ”

“ They are chiefly of the costermonger class, some of the street-buyers however, have been carmen’s servants, or connected with trades in which they had the care of a horse and cart, and so became habituated to a street-life.
There are still many other ways in which the commerce in refuse and the second-hand street-trade is supplied. As the windmill-seller for bones, so will the puppet-show man for old bottles or broken table-spoons, or almost any old trifle, allow children to regale their eyes on the beauties of his exhibition. ”

“ If a mechanic, a labourer, or a gentleman’s servant, resorts to the streets for his bread, or because he is of a vagrant “turn,” he does not become a buyer, but a seller. Street-selling is the easier process. It is easy for a man to ascertain that oysters, for example, are sold wholesale at Billingsgate, and if he buy a bushel (as in the present summer) for 5s., it is not difficult to find out how many he can afford for “a penny a lot.” ”

“ Thus far we have dealt only with the itinerant dealers in fish, fruit, or vegetables; but there are still a large class of street-sellers, who obtain a living by the sale of the same articles at some fixed locality in the public thoroughfares ”

“ The accounts of the street-trade in second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men—the women being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes. ”

“ The men in this trade I found generally to be intelligent. They have been, for the most part, engaged in some minor department of the book-selling or newspaper trade, in the regular way, and are unconnected with the street-sellers in other lines, of whose pursuits, habits, and characters, they seem to know nothing.
The street book-stalls are most frequent in the thoroughfares which are well-frequented, but which, as one man in the trade expressed himself, are not so “shoppy” as others—such as the City-road, the New-road, and the Old Kent-road. ”

“ The street-sellers vend any quantity at the very door of the purchaser, without rendering it necessary for them to expose their poverty to the prying eyes of the neighbourhood; and, as I have said were the street dealers only honest, they would be conferring a great boon upon the poorer portion of the people, but unhappily it is scarcely possible for them to be so, and realize a profit for themselves. ”

“ There are now not above six men (of the ordinary street-selling class) who carry on this trade regularly. Sometimes twelve stalls or barrows may be seen; sometimes one, and sometimes none. Calculating that each of the six dealers takes 12s. weekly, with a profit of 6s. or 7s., we find 187l. 4s. expended in this department of street-commerce. The principal place for the trade is in High-street, Whitechapel.
Of the Street-Sellers of Second-Hand Miscellaneous Articles. ”

“ Girls and women form a large proportion of the street sellers, and earn from sixty-two cents to $1 a week. The comparative newness of our country, the smaller size of the cities, and the greater demand for manual labor have presented fewer calls for street sellers. We hope the time may never come when our streets will be thronged, as those of London are, with street venders, for we consider it not by any means an index of general prosperity. ”

“ The street-sellers have all regular beats, and seldom intrude on each other, though it sometimes happens, especially when any quarrel occurs among them, that they oppose and undersell one another in order to secure the customers. ”

“ The game and poultry street-sellers, I am told, soon find out when a customer is bent upon a bargain, and shape their prices accordingly. Although these street-sellers may generally take as their motto the announcement so often seen in the shops of competitive tradesmen, “no reasonable offer refused,” they are sometimes so worried in bargaining that they do refuse. ”

“ The costermongers who are the most provident, and either have means or club their resources for a large purchase, often buy early in the morning, and so have the advantage of anticipating their fellows in the street-trade, with the day before them. Those who buy later are the customers of the hagglers, and are street-sellers, whose means do not command an extensive purchase, or who do not care to venture upon one unless it be very cheap. ”

“ They do not puff or represent what they have to sell as what it is not— (allowing them a fair commercial latitude) . They are not of the “enterprising” class of street tradesmen. Among these are the street-sellers of stationery—such as note-paper, envelopes, pens, ink, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers. Belonging to the same class, too, are the street-vendors of almanacs, pocket-books, memorandum and account-books. Then there are the sellers of odd numbers of periodicals and broadsheets, and those who vend either playing cards, conversation cards, stenographic cards, and (at Epsom, Ascot, &c.) ”

“ Many stationary street-sellers use merely baskets, or trays, either supported in their hand, or on their arm, or else they are strapped round their loins, or suspended round their necks. These are mostly fruit-women, watercress, blacking, congreves, sheep’s-trotters, and ham-sandwich sellers.
Many stationary street-sellers stand on or near the bridges; others near the steam-packet wharfs or the railway terminuses; a great number of them take their pitch at the entrance to a court, or at the corners of streets; and stall-keepers with oysters stand opposite the doors of public-houses. ”

“ The sellers overflow them and spread out into the streets and by-ways, with no roof above them but the blue sky. Some of these sellers are men, some women, and some mere children. Some have large stationary stands, others roam about with their wares in boxes, bags, or baskets in their hands. They sell all manner of wares. Watches, jewelry, newspapers, fruits, tobacco, cigars, candies, cakes, ice cream, lemonade, flowers, dogs, birds,—in short everything that can be carried in the hand—are sold by the Street Venders. The rich and the poor buy of them. ”

“ The term "street trade," as used in this act, shall mean any business or occupation in which any street, alley, court, square or other public place is used for the sale, display or offering for sale of any articles, goods or merchandise. No boy under the age of twelve years, and no girl under the age of eighteen years, shall in any city of the first class distribute, sell or expose or offer for sale newspapers, magazines or periodicals in any street or public place. ”

“ There are many street-traders “in second-hand,” perhaps two-thirds of the whole number, who sell indiscriminately anything which they can buy, or what they hope to turn out an advantage; but even they prefer to deal more in one particular kind of merchandize than another, and this is most of all the case as concerns the street-sale of old boots and shoes. ”

“ Suffice to say I took the old boy’s advice and sure enough it paid dividends. Now the same thing applies to selling goods. It’s human nature for youth especially, to chase rainbows and follow what seems to be the easiest way. When you get out of the bus in a small town, which has four big prospects that you know you can sell right along in a row on Main Street, it’s quite natural to go sell ’em and then go to the depot and catch the first train out, but, Red—how about those three little stores way down the other side of the feather factory, about four blocks from the round house? ”

“ Our readers must often have observed in some by-street, in a poor neighbourhood, a small dirty shop, exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined. ”

“ We sell only by the dozen and to dealers uptown.”
“Over there is the tailor shop. We clean the clothes which come in, sew on the buttons, press them and make them look as good as possible. We are wholesalers only. We sell old things by the dozen just as factory owners sell new things in large quantities only. But there are many shops on Baxter Street which cater to private customers. This part of the city is frequented by “down-and-outers,” men who come from no one knows where. They stay a while; they sleep wherever they are undisturbed, they hang out in our saloons and then they disappear. ”

“ A LITTLE SHOPPING
As he spoke, we came suddenly out of the woodland into a short street of handsomely built houses, which my companion named to me at once as Piccadilly: the lower part of these I should have called shops, if it had not been that, as far as I could see, the people were ignorant of the arts of buying and selling. Wares were displayed in their finely designed fronts, as if to tempt people in, and people stood and looked at them, or went in and came out with parcels under their arms, just like the real thing. ”

“ The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the shopping of the very poor is quite another. Most interesting, to those who care to study the book of human nature, are the "street-markets" of the people, those rows of noisy booths and barrows which have stood from time immemorial, by traditional right, in certain streets, and where jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-lights display the kaleidoscopic stock-in-trade. Among such streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road; Leather Lane, Holborn; or, to descend to a yet lower social depth, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. ”

“ Many things are also sold in the streets. The street traders carry a bamboo pole across the shoulder. From the ends of this pole they sling the baskets in which they carry their wares. Many workmen ply their trades in the open street, and you are sure to see quack doctors, letter-writers, and money-changers. ”

“ These traders may be described as partaking more of the characteristics of the street stationers than of the “paper-workers,” as they are not patterers. The trade is less exclusively than the “paper-trade” in the hands of men. Those carrying on this branch of the street-traffic may be divided into the sellers of pictures in frames, and of engravings (of all kinds) , in umbrellas. ”

“ The lot-sellers nearly all vend their goods from trays slung from their shoulders. The best localities for the lot-sellers are Ratcliffe-highway, Commercial-road, Whitechapel, Minories, Tower-hill, Tooley-street, Newington-causeway, Walworth, Blackfriars and Westminster-roads, Long-acre, Holborn, and Oxford-street. To this list may be added the Brill, Tottenham-court-road, and the other street-markets, on Saturday evenings, when some of these places are almost impassable. The best places for the swag-barrow trade are also those I have specified. ”

“ As shops follow the shifting currents of travel, rentals move with them, the value of retail land depending on the number of people passing, qualified by their purchasing power, the causes which bring them past the. property and their method of locomotion. This dependence of retail business on daily traffic is due to the operation of the laws of chance, by which of a given number of passers-by a certain proportion will become customers.
The mention of traffic within a city suggests the double* function of a city street as contrasted with the single function of a country road. ”

“ Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are called towns—often only one long street—there is generally a sort of curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. ”

“ The expression ‘street trading’ includes the hawking of newspapers, matches, flowers, and other articles, playing, singing, or performing for profit, shoe-blacking, and any other like occupation carried on in streets or public places. ”

“ Many other street-corner men there are; the sweetstuff man, for instance, who sells so rapidly that two boys are employed to open the bags for him—one penny a quarter of a pound—and occasionally mohair lace sellers, puzzle and toy retailers, shipwrecked mariners, street butchers, song sellers, negro entertainers, and others ”

“ Shops where the same kind of goods are sold are grouped in quarters by themselves. There is the street of the dealers in clothing, where the booths are bright with pink, blue, and orange silks, and with brocades of gold and silver, and where ladies, veiled and draped like phantoms, are posted. ”

“ I pay what I know to be in great part an imposition, with an indulgent grin—I am in a hurry to get back to Mousmé, or might have argued the matter even in this heat—accept the offer of a coolie to carry my parcel for the equivalent of three-halfpence, and start to climb up the shady side of the rough-paved street to my home. ”

“ The most important to them does not necessarily mean the main street of the town, but the one which offers the greatest number of passersby, who are likely to be customers. For instance, they want to know where the people congregate in the streets in the evening. Do they go past the drug store and past the most popular movie theater? Do the men go through the town on the way home, or can they get home without going through the shopping section? ”