Street vending

“ There is scarcely anything else that can be hawked from a wagon that is not to be found, and at ridiculously low prices. Bandannas and tin cups at two cents, peaches at a cent a quart, “damaged” eggs for a song, hats for a quarter, and spectacles, warranted to suit the eye, at the optician’s who has opened shop on a Hester Street door-step, for thirty five cents; frowsy-looking chickens and half-plucked geese, hung by the neck and protesting with wildly strutting feet even in death against the outrage, are the great staple of the market. ”

“ So many small trades have been ruined by the larger shops taking them up, that the street-seller's case becomes daily a more complicated one, and the making a living by old-fashioned and time-honored methods almost impossible. It is all part of the general problem of the day, and the street-sellers, whether costers or those of lower degree, look forward apprehensively to changes which seem on the way, and puzzle their untaught minds as to why each avenue of livelihood seems more and more barred against them. ”

“ From the more provident costermonger’s pony and donkey cart, to the old rusty iron tray slung round the neck by the vendor of blacking, and down to the little grey-eyed Irish boy with his lucifer-matches, in the last remains of a willow hand-basket—the shape and variety of the means resorted to by the costermongers and other street-sellers, for carrying about their goods, are almost as manifold as the articles they vend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should be remembered, however, that there are many grades of vagrants among us, and that though they are all essentially non-producing and, consequently, predatory, still many are in no way distinguished from a large portion of even our wealthy tradesmen—our puffing grocers and slopsellers. To attempt to improve the condition of the voluntary street-sellers by teaching of any kind, would be to talk to the wind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many stores erect handsome outside glass-case stands for exhibiting knick-knacks at their door-ways. The fruit shops open their windows on the street. Itinerant dealers in oranges, bananas, and grapes rig up tent-like houses of business under the windows of established traders (for which heavy rents are paid, notably “down-town” in New York) , and all this gives a pleasant variety of life and color to the street. ”

“ There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any one who has made himself familiar with the habits of the working classes has often found them crowding a public-house during a hard rain, especially in the neighbourhood of new buildings, or any public open-air work. The street-sellers, themselves prevented from plying their trades outside, are busy in such times in the “publics,” offering for sale braces, belts, hose, tobacco-boxes, nuts of different kinds, apples, &c. A bargain may then be struck for so much and a half-pint of beer, and so the consumption is augmented by the trade in other matters. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Many of the activities of the day also were picturesque. As there were no warehouses in which to store goods, and as the few structures of the sort charged enormous rentals, it was cheaper to auction off immediately all consignments. These auctions were then, and remained for some years, one of the features of the place. The more pretentious dealers kept brass bands to attract the crowd. The returning miners were numerous enough to patronize both these men and the cheap clothing stores, and having bought themselves new outfits, generally cast the old ones into the middle of the street. ”

“ The necessities of those extraordinary times also brought into existence a mart for a peculiar kind of traffic. It was held daily on the line of Flinders-street, opposite the Custom House, and was designated the ‘Rag Fair.’ There, immigrants who had not means to start for the diggings, or who had a superabundance of articles of wearing apparel, congregated to expose their property for sale. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ Each article they sell is charged to the public 1d. The tin-wares of the swag-barrows are nutmeg-graters, bread-graters, beer-warmers, fish-slices, goblets, mugs, save-alls, extinguishers, candle-shades, money-boxes, children’s plates, and rattles. In addition to the tin-wares, the swag-barrows are stocked with brooches, rings, pot-ornaments, plates, small crockeryware, toys, &c., each article being also vended at 1d. The trade is so far stationary, that the men generally confine themselves to one neighbourhood, if not to one street. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Buy nothing in Chatham street, and keep out of it after dark.
FORCED SALES. When business is dull in this locality, the "merchants" resort to many artifices to fill their coffers. One of their manoeuvres is called a "forced sale." A man walking along the street, will be seized and dragged into a clothing shop. He may protest that he does not wish to buy anything, but the "merchant" and his clerks will insist that he does, and before he can well help himself, they will haul off his coat, clap one of the store coats on his back, and declare it a "perfect fit." ”

“ Among these are the “cheap Jacks,” or “cheap Johns;” the grease and stain removers; the corn-salve and plate-ball vendors; the sellers of sovereigns and rings for wagers; a portion of the lot-sellers; and the men who vend poison for vermin and go about the streets with live rats clinging to, or running about, their persons.
This class of street-sellers also includes many of the very old and the very young; the diseased, crippled, maimed, and blind. These poor creatures sell, and sometimes obtain a charitable penny, by offering to sell such things as boxes of lucifer-matches; cakes of blacking ”

“ 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.” ”