Street trader

“ I shall, therefore, describe the buyers of rags, broken metal, bottles, glass, and bones, as a body of street-traders, but take the articles in which they traffic seriatim, pointing out in what degree they are, or have been, wholly or partially, the staple of several distinct callings.
The traders in these things are not unprosperous men. The poor creatures who may be seen picking up rags in the street are “street-finders,” and not buyers. It is the same with the poor old men who may be seen bending under an unsavoury sack of bones. ”

“ The precise extent of the proportion which the Street-Traders bear to the rest of the Metropolitan Population is the first point to be evolved; for the want, the ignorance, and the vice of a street-life being in a direct ratio to the numbers, it becomes of capital importance that we should know how many are seeking to pick up a livelihood in the public thoroughfares. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such being the case, it is evident that the number of mechanics in the streets must be daily augmenting, for, as I have before said, street-trading is the last shift of an unemployed artizan to keep himself and his family from the “Union.” ”

“ In showing the money expended in the ginger-beer trade it must be borne in mind that a large portion of the profits accrues to persons who cannot be properly classed with the regular street-traders. Such is the proprietor of the great fountain of which I have spoken, who is to be classed as a speculative man, ready to embark capital in any way—whether connected with street-traffic or not—likely to be remunerative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some of the more expert street-traders may clear 10s. or even 15s. weekly throughout the year, while the [2] weekly profit of the less expert, the old people, and the children, may be said to be 3s. 6d. These incomes, however, are the average of the gross yearly profits rather than the regular weekly gains; the consequence is, that though they might be sufficient to keep the majority of the street-sellers in comparative comfort, were they constant and capable of being relied upon, from week to week—but being variable and uncertain, and rising sometimes from nothing in the winter to 1l. ”

“ These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the bric-à-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon; everyone walks in the middle of the street. ”

“ As their experience increases they may become general street-sellers. The duller sort will continue to carry on the trades that any one with ordinary lungs and muscles can pursue. “All a fellow wants to know to sell potatoes,” said a master street-seller to me, “is to tell how many tanners make a bob, and how many yenaps a tanner.” [How many sixpences make a shilling, and how many pence a sixpence.] The smarter and bolder lads ripen into patterers, or street-performers, or fall into theft. ”

“ Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. ”

“ Careful usage would confine this term to newsboys, peddlers and bootblacks who work independently of any employer. Many children are employed by other persons to sell newspapers, peddle goods and polish shoes, and such children technically are street traders no more than those who run errands, carry messages or deliver parcels. Consequently the term "street trades" is limited in its application, and by no means embraces all the economic activities of children in our streets and public places. ”

“ The sale of belts, stockings, braces, straps and garters, is mostly in the hands of men, who, from all that I can learn, are regular street-sellers, who “turn their hands first to this and then to that,” but this portion of street-traffic is often combined with the sale of dog-collars, chains, &c. The trade is more a public-house than a distinct traffic in the street. The landlord of a well-frequented inn in Lambeth told me that every day at least 100 of such street-sellers—not including match-girls and [373] women—entered his house to offer their wares ”

“ On the Saturday evening the corn-salve sellers resort to the street markets.
The patter of these traders is always to the same purport (however differently expressed) —the long-tested efficacy and the unquestionable cheapness of their remedies. The vendors are glib and unhesitating; but some, owing, I imagine, to a repetition of the same words, as they move from one part of a thoroughfare to another, or occupy a pitch, have acquired a monotonous tone, little calculated to impress a street audience—to effect which a man must be, or appear to be, in earnest. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ An active fellow with nimble feet
Could run the length of Market street
On umbrellas, if he but cared;
Nor lose one step on the way he fared.
Aye—run the whole length and back again,
Over the heads of women and men;
All going up and none going down,
Filling, at morn, the empty town. ”

“ The wholesale price of the last “street lot,” was 3d. the gross, or 1⁄4d. the dozen. To clear 6d. a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4d.
Of the Street-Sellers of Walking-Sticks.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street, Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade. There is nothing in which people are so particular. ”

“ But the street-buyer must not only know what to give, for hare-skins for instance, but what he can depend upon getting from the hat-manufacturers, or hat-furriers, and upon having a regular market. Thus a double street-trade knowledge is necessary, and a novice will not care to meddle with any form of open-air traffic but the simplest. Neither is street-buying (old clothes excepted) generally cared for by adults who have health and strength. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Hucksters and pedlars’ carts make two rows of booths in the street itself, and along the houses is still another—a perpetual market doing a very lively trade in its own queer staples, found nowhere on American ground save in “the Bend.” Two old hags, camping on the pavement, are dispensing stale bread, baked not in loaves, but in the shape of big wreaths like exaggerated crullers, out of bags of dirty bed-tick. There is no use disguising the fact: they look like and they probably are old mattresses mustered into service under the pressure of a rush of trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The principal purchasers are the chandlers, butchers, &c., in the quieter streets, and more especially “a little way out of town, where there ain’t so many cheap shops.” A man, now a street-stationer, with a “fixed pitch,” had carried on the account-book trade until an asthmatic affliction compelled him to relinquish it, as the walking became impossible to him, and he told me that the street-trade was nothing to what it once was. “People,” he said, “aren’t so well off, I think, sir; and they’ll buy half a quire of outside foolscap, or outside post, for from 5d. ”

“ One trade, however, (namely, that of “Comic Exhibition Papers,” gelatine and engraved cards of the Exhibition) is entirely now in the streets. In the broad-sheet trade, again, the “running patterers” work what are called “cocks,” when there are no incidents happening to incite the public mind. Hence, making due allowances for such variations, we may fairly assume that the street-sellers belonging to this class number at least 1,000. The following statistics will show the whole amount of capital, and the gross income of this branch of street traffic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another argument in favor of street trading advanced by those who are interested in maintaining present conditions, is that it affords a splendid training for a business career because of the competition that rages among the boys. This is doubtless true, as far as it goes, but the great difficulty is that street trading leads nowhere. It is a blind alley that sooner or later leaves its followers helpless against the solid wall of skilled labor's competition. ”

“ And in this part of the trade is one of the curious characteristics of a street-life, or rather of an open-air pursuit for the requirements of a street-trade. A man, worn out for other purposes, incapable of anything but a passive, or sort of lazy labour—such as lying in a field and watching the action of his trap-cages—will yet in a summer’s morning, decrepid as he may be, possess himself of a dozen or even a score of the very freest and most aspiring of all our English small birds, a creature of the air beyond other birds of his “order”—to use an ornithological term—of sky-larks. ”

“ The men who sell these goods have all bought them at the Exchange—the exceptions being insignificant—so that this street-sale is but an extension of the trade of the central mart, with the addition that the wares have been made ready for use. ”