but the trade is now but the shadow of its former state. The starling,
too, is far less numerous than it was, and has lost much of its
popularity. It is now seldom seen in flocks of more than 40, and it is
rare to see a flock at all, although these birds at one period mustered
in congregations of hundreds and even thousands. Ruins, and the roofs
of ancient houses and barns--for they love the old and decaying
buildings--were once covered with them. The starling was moreover
the poor man’s and the peasant’s parrot. He was taught to speak, and
sometimes to swear. But now the starling, save as regards his own note,
is mute. He is seldom tamed or domesticated and taught tricks. It is
true starlings may be seen carried on sticks in the street as if the
tamest of the tame, but they are “braced.” Tapes are passed round their
bodies, and so managed that the bird cannot escape from the stick,
while his fetters are concealed by his feathers, the street-seller of
course objecting to allow his birds to be handled.

Starlings are caught chiefly Ilford way, I was told, and about
Turnham-green. Some are “rose” from the nest. The price is from 9_d._
to 2_s._ each. About 3000 are sold annually, half in the streets. After
having been braced, or ill-used, the starling, if kept as a solitary
bird, will often mope and die.

_Jackdaws_ and _Magpies_ are in less demand than might be expected from
their vivacity. Many of the other birds are supplied the year round,
but daws and pies for only about two months, from the middle of June to
the middle of August. The price is from 6_d._ to 1_s._ and about 1000
are thus disposed of, in equal quantities, one-half in the streets.
These birds are for the most part reared from the nest, but little
pains appear to be taken with them.

The _Redpole_ is rather a favourite bird among street-buyers,
especially where children are allowed to choose birds from a stock.
I am told that they most frequently select a goldfinch or a redpole.
These birds are supplied for about two months. About 800 or 1000 is
the extent of the take. The mortality and prices are the same as with
the goldfinch, but a goldfinch in high song is worth twice as much as
the best redpole. About a third of the sale of the redpole is in the
streets.

There are also 150 or 200 _Black-caps_ sold annually in the open air,
at from 3_d._ to 5_d._ each.

These are the chief birds, then, that constitute the trade of the
streets, with the addition of an occasional yellow-hammer, wren, jay,
or even cuckoo. They also, with the addition of pigeons, form the stock
of the bird-shops.

I have shown the number of birds caught, the number which survive for
sale, and the cost; and, as usual, under the head of “Statistics,” will
be shown the whole annual expenditure. This, however, is but a portion
of the London outlay on birds. There is, in addition, the cost of their
cages and of their daily food. The commonest and smallest cage costs
6_d._, a frequent price being 1_s._ A thrush’s basket-cage cannot be
bought, unless rubbish, under 2_s._ 6_d._ I have previously shown the
amount paid for the green food of birds, and for their turfs, &c., for
these are all branches of street-commerce. Of their other food, such as
rape and canary-seed, German paste, chopped eggs, biscuit, &c., I need
but intimate the extent by showing what birds will consume, as it is
not a portion of street-trade.

A goldfinch, it has been proved by experimentalising ornithologists,
will consume _90_ grains, in weight, of canary-seed in 24 hours. A
greenfinch, for whose use 80 grains of wheat were weighed out, ate 79
of them in 24 hours; and, on another occasion ate, in the same space
of time, 100 grains of a paste of eggs and flour. Sixteen canaries
consumed 100 grains’ weight of food, each bird, in 24 hours. The amount
of provision thus eaten was about one-sixth of the full weight of the
bird’s body, or an equivalent, were a man to swallow victuals in the
same proportion, of 25 lbs. in 24 hours. I may remark, moreover, that
the destruction of caterpillars, insects, worms, &c., by the small
birds, is enormous, especially during the infancy of their nestlings.
A pair of sparrows fed their brood 36 times an hour for 14 hours of a
long spring day, and, it was calculated, administered to them in one
week 3400 caterpillars. A pair of chaffinches, also, carried nearly as
great a number of caterpillars for the maintenance of their young.

The singing-birds sold in the street are offered either singly in small
cages, when the cage is sold with the bird, or they are displayed in
a little flock in a long cage, the buyer selecting any he prefers.
They always appear lively in the streets, or indeed a sale would be
hopeless, for no one would buy a dull or sick bird. The captives are
seen to hop and heard to chirp, but they are not often heard to sing
when thus offered to the public, and it requires some little attention
to judge what is but an impatient flutter, and what is the fruit of
mere hilarity.

The places where the street-sellers more especially offer their birds
are--Smithfield, Clerkenwell-green, Lisson-grove, the City and New
roads, Shepherdess-walk, Old Street-road, Shoreditch, Spitalfields,
Whitechapel, Tower-hill, Ratcliffe-highway, Commercial-road
East, Poplar, Billingsgate, Westminster Broadway, Covent-garden,
Blackfriars-road, Bermondsey (mostly about Dock-head), and in the
neighbourhood of the Borough Market. The street-sellers are also
itinerant, carrying the birds in cages, holding them up to tempt
the notice of people whom they see at the windows, or calling at
the houses. The sale used to be very considerable in the “Cut” and
Lambeth-walk. Sometimes the cages with their inmates are fastened to
any contiguous rail; sometimes they are placed on a bench or stall; and
occasionally in cages on the ground.

To say nothing, in this place, of the rogueries of the bird-trade,
I will proceed to show how the street-sold birds are frequently
inferior to those in the shops. The catcher, as I have stated, is also
the street-seller. He may reach the Dials, or whatever quarter the
dealer he supplies may reside in, with perhaps 30 linnets and as many
goldfinches. The dealer selects 24 of each, refusing the remaining
dozen, on account of their being hens, or hurt, or weakly birds. The
man then resorts to the street to effect a sale of that dozen, and
thus the streets have the refuse of the shops. On the other hand,
however, when the season is at its height, and the take of birds is
the largest, as at this time of year, the shops are “stocked.” The
cages and recesses are full, and the dealer’s anxiety is to sell before
he purchases more birds. The catchers proceed in their avocation;
they must dispose of their stock; the shopkeeper will not buy “at any
figure,” and so the streets are again resorted to, and in this way
fine birds are often sold very cheap. Both these liabilities prevail
the year through, but most in the summer, and keep up a sort of poise;
but I apprehend that the majority, perhaps the great majority, of the
street-sold birds, are of an inferior sort, but then the price is much
lower. On occasions when the bird-trade is overdone, the catchers will
sell a few squirrels, or gather snails for the shops.

The buyers of singing-birds are eminently the working people, along
with the class of tradesmen whose means and disposition are of the
same character as those of the artisan. Grooms and coachmen are
frequently fond of birds; many are kept in the several mews, and
often the larger singing-birds, such as blackbirds and thrushes.
The fondness of a whole body of artificers for any particular bird,
animal, or flower, is remarkable. No better instance need be cited
than that of the Spitalfields weavers. In the days of their prosperity
they were the cultivators of choice tulips, afterwards, though not
in so full a degree, of dahlias, and their pigeons were the best
“fliers” in England. These things were accomplished with little cost,
comparatively, for the weavers were engaged in tasks, grateful and
natural to their tastes and habitudes; and what was expense in the
garden or aviary of the rich, was an exercise of skill and industry
on the part of the silk-weaver. The humanising and even refining
influence of such pursuits is very great, and as regards these pure
pleasures it is not seldom that the refinement which can appreciate
them has proceeded not to but _from_ the artisans. The operatives have
often been in the van of those who have led the public taste from
delighting in the cruelty and barbarity of bear and bull-baiting and
of cock-fighting--among the worst of all possible schools, and very
influential those schools were--to the delight in some of the most
beautiful works of nature. It is easy to picture the difference of
mood between a man going home from a dog-fight at night, or going home
from a visit to his flowers, or from an examination to satisfy himself
that his birds were “all right.” The families of the two men felt the
difference. Many of the rich appear to remain mere savages in their
tastes and sports. Battues, lion and hippopotamus hunting, &c.,--all
are mere civilized barbarisms. When shall we learn, as Wordsworth says,

    “Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
    With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

But the change in Spitalfields is great. Since the prevalence of low
wages the weaver’s garden has disappeared, and his pigeon-cote, even if
its timbers have not rotted away, is no longer stocked with carriers,
dragoons, horsemen, jacobins, monks, poulters, turtles, tumblers,
fantails, and the many varieties of what is in itself a variety--the
fancy-pigeon. A thrush, or a linnet, may still sing to the clatter of
the loom, but that is all. The culture of the tulip, the dahlia, and
(sometimes) of the fuchsia, was attended, as I have said, with small
cost, still it _was_ cost, and the weaver, as wages grew lower, could
not afford either the outlay or the loss of time. To cultivate flowers,
or rear doves, so as to make them a means of subsistence, requires
a man’s whole time, and to such things the Spitalfields man did not
devote his time, but his leisure.

The readers who have perused this work from its first appearance
will have noticed how frequently I have had to comment on the always
realized indication of good conduct, and of a superior taste and
generally a superior intelligence, when I have found the rooms
of working people contain flowers and birds. I could adduce many
instances. I have seen and heard birds in the rooms of tailors,
shoemakers, coopers, cabinet-makers, hatters, dressmakers, curriers,
and street-sellers,--all people of the best class. One of the most
striking, indeed, was the room of a street-confectioner. His family
attended to the sale of the sweets, and he was greatly occupied at
home in their manufacture, and worked away at his peppermint-rock, in
the very heart of one of the thickliest populated parts of London,
surrounded by the song of thrushes, linnets, and goldfinches, all kept,
not for profit, but because he “loved” to have them about him. I have
seldom met a man who impressed me more favourably.

The flowers in the room are more attributable to the superintending
taste of a wife or daughter, and are found in the apartments of the
same class of people.

There is a marked difference between the buyers or keepers of birds
and of dogs in the working classes, especially when the dog is of a
sporting or “varmint” sort. Such a dog-keeper is often abroad and so
his home becomes neglected; he is interested about rat-hunts, knows
the odds on or against the dog’s chance to dispatch his rats in the
time allotted, loses much time and customers, his employers grumbling
that the work is so slowly executed, and so custom or work falls off.
The bird-lover, on the other hand, is generally a more domestic, and,
perhaps consequently, a more prosperous and contented man. It is
curious to mark the refining qualities of particular trades. I do not
remember seeing a bull-dog in the possession of any of the Spitalfields
silk-weavers: with them all was flowers and birds. The same I observed
with the tailors and other kindred occupations. With slaughterers,
however, and drovers, and Billingsgatemen, and coachmen, and cabmen,
whose callings naturally tend to blunt the sympathy with suffering, the
gentler tastes are comparatively unknown. The dogs are almost all of
the “varmint” kind, kept either for rat-killing, fighting, or else for
their ugliness. For “pet” or “fancy” dogs they have no feeling, and in
singing birds they find little or no delight.

OF THE BIRD-CATCHERS WHO ARE STREET-SELLERS.

The street-sellers of birds are called by themselves “hawkers,” and
sometimes “bird hawkers.”

Among the bird-catchers I did not hear of any very prominent
characters at present, three of the best known and most prominent
having died within these ten months. I found among all I saw the
vagrant characteristics I have mentioned, and often united with a
quietness of speech and manner which might surprise those who do not
know that any pursuit which entails frequent silence, watchfulness,
and solitude, forms such manners. Perhaps the man most talked of by
his fellow-labourers, was Old Gilham, who died lately. Gilham was his
real name, for among the bird-catchers there is not that prevalence
of nicknames which I found among the costermongers and patterers. One
reason no doubt is, that these bird-folk do not meet regularly in the
markets. It is rarely, however, that they know each other’s surnames,
Old Gilham being an exception. It is Old Tom, or Young Mick, or Jack,
or Dick, among them. I heard of no John or Richard.

For 60 years, almost without intermission, Old Gilham caught birds.
I am assured that to state that his “catch” during this long period
averaged 100 a week, hens included, is within the mark, for he was a
most indefatigable man; even at that computation, however, he would
have been the captor, in his lifetime, of three hundred and twelve
thousand birds! A bird-catcher who used sometimes to start in the
morning with Old Gilham, and walk with him until their roads diverged,
told me that of late years the old man’s talk was a good deal of where
he had captured his birds in the old times: “‘Why, Ned,’ he would say
to me, proceeded his companion, ‘I’ve catched goldfinches in lots at
Chalk Farm, and all where there’s that railway smoke and noise just by
the hill (Primrose Hill). I can’t think where they’ll drive all the
birds to by and bye. I dare say the first time the birds saw a railway
with its smoke, and noise to frighten them, and all the fire too, they
just thought it was the devil was come.’ He wasn’t a fool, wasn’t old
Gilham, sir. ‘Why,’ he’d go on for to say, ‘I’ve laid many a day at
Ball’s Pond there, where it’s nothing but a lot of houses now, and
catched hundreds of birds. And I’ve catched them where there’s all
them grand squares Pimlico way, and in Britannia Fields, and at White
Condic. What with all these buildings, and them barbers, I don’t know
what the bird-trade’ll come to. It’s hard for a poor man to have to go
to Finchley for birds that he could have catched at Holloway once, but
people never thinks of that. When I were young I could make three times
as much as I do now. I’ve got a pound for a good sound chaffinch as I
brought up myself.’ Ah, poor old Gilham, sir; I wish you could have
seen him, he’d have told you of some queer changes in his time.”

A shopkeeper informed me that a bird-catcher had talked to him of
even “queerer” changes. This man died eight or ten years ago at an
advanced age, but beyond the fact of his offering birds occasionally
at my informant’s shop, where he was known merely as “the old man,” he
could tell me nothing of the ancient bird-catcher, except that he was
very fond of a talk, and used to tell how he had catched birds between
fifty and sixty years, and had often, when a lad, catched them where
many a dock in London now stands. “Where there’s many a big ship now in
deep water, I’ve catched flocks of birds. I never catched birds to be
sure at them docks,” he would add, “as was dug out of the houses. Why,
master, you’ll remember their pulling down St. Katherine’s Church, and
all them rummy streets the t’other side of the Tower, for a dock.” As I
find that the first dock constructed on the north side of the Thames,
the West India dock, was not commenced until the year 1800, there
seems no reason to discredit the bird-catcher’s statement. Among other
classes of street-sellers I have had to remark the little observation
they extended to the changes all around, such as the extension of
street-traffic to miles and miles of suburbs, unknown till recently.
Two thousand miles of houses have been built in London within the last
20 years. But with the bird-catchers this want of observance is not so
marked. Of necessity they must notice the changes which have added to
the fatigues and difficulties of their calling, by compelling them,
literally, to “go further a-field.”

A young man, rather tall, and evidently active, but very thin, gave
me the following account. His manners were quiet and his voice low.
His dress could not so well be called mean as hard worn, with the
unmistakable look of much of the attire of his class, that it was not
made for the wearer; his surtout, for instance, which was fastened
in front by two buttons, reached down to his ancles, and could have
inclosed a bigger man. He resided in St. Luke’s, in which parish there
are more bird-catchers living than in any other. The furniture of his
room was very simple. A heavy old sofa, in the well of which was a bed,
a table, two chairs, a fender, a small closet containing a few pots
and tins, and some twenty empty bird-cages of different sizes hung
against the walls. In a sort of wooden loft, which had originally been
constructed, he believed, for the breeding of fancy-pigeons, and which
was erected on the roof, were about a dozen or two of cages, some old
and broken, and in them a few live goldfinches, which hopped about very
merrily. They were all this year’s birds, and my informant, who had “a
little connection of his own,” was rearing them in hopes they would
turn out good specs, quite “birds beyond the run of the streets.” The
place and the cages, each bird having its own little cage, were very
clean, but at the time of my visit the loft was exceedingly hot, as the
day was one of the sultriest. Lest this heat should prove too great for
the finches, the timbers on all sides were well wetted and re-wetted at
intervals, for about an hour at noon, at which time only was the sun
full on the loft.

“I shall soon have more birds, sir,” he said, “but you see I only
put aside here such as are the very best of the take; all cocks, of
course. O, I’ve been in the trade all my life; I’ve had a turn at other
things, certainly, but this life suits me best, I think, because I have
my health best in it. My father--he’s been dead a goodish bit--was a
bird-catcher as well, and he used to take me out with him as soon as I
was strong enough; when I was about ten, I suppose. I don’t remember
my mother. Father was brought up to brick-making. I believe that most
of the bird-catchers that have been trades, and that’s not half a
quarter perhaps, were brick-makers, or something that way. Well, I
don’t know the reason. The brick-making was, in my father’s young days,
carried on more in the country, and the bird-catchers used to fall in
with the brick-makers, and so perhaps that led to it. I’ve heard my
father tell of an old soldier that had been discharged with a pension
being the luckiest bird-catcher he knowed. The soldier was a catcher
before he first listed, and he listed drunk. I once--yes, sir, I dare
say that’s fifteen year back, for I was quite a lad--walked with my
father and captain” (the pensioner’s sobriquet) “till they parted for
work, and I remember very well I heard him tell how, when on march
in Portingal--I think that’s what he called it, but it’s in foreign
parts--he saw flocks of birds; he wished he could be after catching
them, for he was well tired of sogering. I was sent to school twice or
thrice, and can read a little and write a little; and I should like
reading better if I could manage it better. I read a penny number,
or the ‘police’ in a newspaper, now and then, but very seldom. But on
a fine day I hated being at school. I wanted to be at work, to make
something at bird-catching. If a boy can make money, why shouldn’t he?
And if I’d had a net, or cage, and a mule of my own, then, I thought,
I could make money.” [I may observe that the mule longed for by my
informant was a “cross” between two birds, and was wanted for the
decoy. Some bird-catchers contend that a mule makes the best call-bird
of any; others that the natural note of a linnet, for instance, was
more alluring than the song of a mule between a linnet and a goldfinch.
One birdman told me that the excellence of a mule was, that it had been
bred and taught by its master, had never been at large, and was “better
to manage;” it was bolder, too, in a cage, and its notes were often
loud and ringing, and might be heard to a considerable distance.]

“I couldn’t stick to school, sir,” my informant continued, “and I don’t
know why, lest it be that one man’s best suited for one business, and
another for another. That may be seen every day. I was sent on trial
to a shoemaker, and after that to a ropemaker, for father didn’t seem
to like my growing up and being a bird-catcher, like he was. But I
never felt well, and knew I should never be any great hand at them
trades, and so when my poor father went off rather sudden, I took to
the catching at once and had all his traps. Perhaps, but I can’t say to
a niceness, that was eleven year back. Do I like the business, do you
say, sir? Well, I’m forced to like it, for I’ve no other to live by.”
[The reader will have remarked how this man attributed the course he
pursued, evidently from natural inclination, to its being the best and
most healthful means of subsistence in his power.] “Last Monday, for my
dealers like birds on a Monday or Tuesday best, and then they’ve the
week before them,--I went to catch in the fields this side of Barnet,
and started before two in the morning, when it was neither light nor
dark. You must get to your place before daylight to be ready for the
first flight, and have time to lay your net properly. When I’d done
that, I lay down and smoked. No, smoke don’t scare the birds; I think
they’re rather drawn to notice anything new, if all’s quite quiet.
Well, the first pull I had about 90 birds, nearly all linnets. There
was, as well as I can remember, three hedge-sparrows among them, and
two larks, and one or two other birds. Yes, there’s always a terrible
flutter and row when you make a catch, and often regular fights in the
net. I then sorted my birds, and let the hens go, for I didn’t want
to be bothered with them. I might let such a thing as 35 hens go out
of rather more than an 80 take, for I’ve always found, in catching
young broods, that I’ve drawn more cocks than hens. How do I know the
difference when the birds are so young? As easy as light from dark.
You must lift up the wing, quite tender, and you’ll find that a cock
linnet has black, or nearly black, feathers on his shoulder, where
the hens are a deal lighter. Then the cock has a broader and whiter
stripe on the wing than the hen has. It’s quite easy to distinguish,
quite. A cock goldfinch is straighter and more larger in general than a
hen, and has a broader white on his wing, as the cock linnet has; he’s
black round the beak and the eye too, and a hen’s greenish thereabouts.
There’s some gray-pates (young birds) would deceive any one until he
opens their wings. Well, I went on, sir, until about one o’clock, or
a little after, as well as I could tell from the sun, and then came
away with about 100 singing birds. I sold them in the lump to three
shopkeepers at 2_s._ 2_d._ and 2_s._ 6_d._ the dozen. That was a good
day, sir; a very lucky day. I got about 17_s._, the best I ever did but
once, when I made 19_s._ in a day.

“Yes, it’s hard work is mine, because there’s such a long walking home
when you’ve done catching. O, when you’re at work it’s not work but
almost a pleasure. I’ve laid for hours though, without a catch. I smoke
to pass the time when I’m watching; sometimes I read a bit if I’ve had
anything to take with me to read; then at other times I thinks. If you
don’t get a catch for hours, it’s only like an angler without a nibble.
O, I don’t know what I think about; about nothing, perhaps. Yes, I’ve
had a friend or two go out catching with me just for the amusement.
They must lie about and wait as I do. We have a little talk of course:
well, perhaps about sporting; no, not horse-racing, I care nothing
for that, but it’s hardly business taking any one with you. I supply
the dealers and hawk as well. Perhaps I make 12_s._ a week the year
through. Some weeks I’ve made between 3_l._ and 4_l._, and in winter,
when there’s rain every day, perhaps I haven’t cleared a penny in a
fortnight. That’s the worst of it. But I make more than others because
I have a connection and raise good birds.

“Sometimes I’m stopped by the farmers when I’m at work, but not often,
though there is some of ’em very obstinate. It’s no use, for if a
catcher’s net has to be taken from one part of a farm, after he’s had
the trouble of laying it, why it must be laid in another part. Some
country people likes to have their birds catched.”

My informant supplied shopkeepers and hawked his birds in the streets
and to the houses. He had a connection, he said, and could generally
get through them, but he had sometimes put a bird or two in a fancy
house. These are the public-houses resorted to by “the fancy,” in some
of which may be seen two or three dozen singing-birds for sale on
commission, through the agency of the landlord or the waiter. They are
the property of hawkers or dealers, and must be good birds, or they
will not be admitted.

The number of birds caught, and the proportion sold in the streets,
I have already stated. The number of bird-catchers, I may repeat, is
about the same as that of street bird-sellers, 200.

OF THE CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER.

From the bird-seller whose portrait will be given in the next number
of this work I have received the following account. The statement
previously given was that of a catcher and street-seller, as are the
great majority in the trade; the following narrative is that of one
who, from his infirmities, is merely a street-_seller_.

[Illustration: THE CRIPPLED STREET BIRD-SELLER.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The poor man’s deformity may be best understood by describing it in his
own words: “I have no ancle.” His right leg is emaciated, the bone is
smaller than that of his other leg (which is not deformed), and there
is no ancle joint. The joints of the wrists and shoulders are also
defective, though not utterly wanting, as in the ancle. In walking
this poor cripple seems to advance by means of a series of jerks. He
uses his deformed leg, but must tread, or rather support his body,
on the ball of the misformed foot, while he advances his sound leg;
then, with a twist of his body, after he has advanced and stands upon
his undeformed leg and foot, he throws forward the crippled part of
his frame by the jerk I have spoken of. His arms are usually pressed
against his ribs as he walks, and convey to a spectator the notion
that he is unable to raise them from that position. This, however, is
not the case; he can raise them, not as a sound man does, but with an
effort and a contortion of his body to humour the effort. His speech
is also defective, his words being brought out, as it were, by jerks;
he has to prepare himself, and to throw up his chin, in order to
converse, and then he speaks with difficulty. His face is sun-burnt and
healthy-looking. His dress was a fustian coat with full skirts, cloth
trowsers somewhat patched, and a clean coarse shirt. His right shoe was
suited to his deformity, and was strapped with a sort of leather belt
round the lower part of the leg.

A considerable number of book-stall keepers, as well as costermongers,
swag-barrowmen, ginger-beer and lemonade sellers, orange-women,
sweet-stuff vendors, root-sellers, and others, have established their
pitches--some of them having stalls with a cover, like a roof--from
Whitechapel workhouse to the Mile End turnpike-gate; near the gate they
are congregated most thickly, and there they are mixed with persons
seated on the forms belonging to adjacent innkeepers, which are placed
there to allow any one to have his beer and tobacco in the open air.
Among these street-sellers and beer-drinkers is seated the crippled
bird-seller, generally motionless.

His home is near the Jews’ burial-ground, and in one of the many
“places” which by a misnomer, occasioned by the change in the
character and appearance of what _were_ the outskirts, are still
called “Pleasant.” On seeking him here, I had some little difficulty
in finding the house, and asking a string of men, who were chopping
fire-wood in an adjoining court, for the man I wanted, mentioning
his name, no one knew anything about him; though when I spoke of his
calling, “O,” they said, “you want Old Billy.” I then found Billy at
his accustomed pitch, with a very small stock of birds in two large
cages on the ground beside him, and he accompanied me to his residence.
The room in which we sat had a pile of fire-wood opposite the door;
the iron of the upper part of the door-latch being wanting was
replaced by a piece of wood--and on the pile sat a tame jackdaw, with
the inquisitive and askant look peculiar to the bird. Above the pile
was a large cage, containing a jay--a bird seldom sold in the streets
now--and a thrush, in different compartments. A table, three chairs,
and a hamper or two used in the wood-cutting, completed the furniture.
Outside the house were cages containing larks, goldfinches, and a very
fine starling, of whose promising abilities the bird-seller’s sister
had so favourable an opinion that she intended to try and teach it to
talk, although that was very seldom done now.

The following is the statement I obtained from the poor fellow. The
man’s sister was present at his desire, as he was afraid I could not
understand him, owing to the indistinctness of his speech; but that was
easy enough, after awhile, with a little patience and attention.

“I was born a cripple, sir,” he said, “and I shall die one. I was born
at Lewisham, but I don’t remember living in any place but London. I
remember being at Stroud though, where my father had taken me, and
bathed me often in the sea himself, thinking it might do me good. I’ve
heard him say, too, that when I was very young he took me to almost
every hospital in London, but it was of no use. My father and mother
were as kind to me and as good parents as could be. He’s been dead
nineteen years, and my mother died before him. Father was very poor,
almost as poor as I am. He worked in a brick-field, but work weren’t
regular. I couldn’t walk at all until I was six years old, and I was
between nine and ten before I could get up and down stairs by myself.
I used to slide down before, as well as I could, and had to be carried
up. When I could get about and went among other boys, I was in great
distress, I was teased so. Life was a burthen to me, as I’ve read
something about. They used to taunt me by offering to jump me” (invite
him to a jumping match), “and to say, I’ll run you a race on one leg.
They were bad to me then, and they are now. I’ve sometimes sat down and
cried, but not often. No, sir, I can’t say that I ever wished I was
dead. I hardly know why I cried. I suppose because I was miserable. I
learned to read at a Sunday school, where I went a long time. I like
reading. I read the Bible and tracts, nothing else; never a newspaper.
It don’t come in my way, and if it did I shouldn’t look at it, for I
can’t read over well and it’s nothing to me who’s king or who’s queen.
It can never have anything to do with me. It don’t take my attention.
There’ll be no change for me in this world. When I was thirteen my
father put me into the bird trade. He knew a good many catchers. I’ve
been bird-selling in the streets for six-and-twenty years and more,
for I was 39 the 24th of last January. Father didn’t know what better
he could put me to, as I hadn’t the right use of my hands or feet,
and at first I did very well. I liked the birds and do still. I used
to think at first that they was like me; they was prisoners, and I
was a cripple. At first I sold birds in Poplar, and Limehouse, and
Blackwall, and was a help to my parents, for I cleared 9_s._ or 10_s._
every week. But now, oh dear, I don’t know where all the money’s gone
to. I think there’s very little left in the country. I’ve sold larks,
linnets, and goldfinches, to captains of ships to take to the West
Indies. I’ve sold them, too, to go to Port Philip. O, and almost all
those foreign parts. They bring foreign birds here, and take back
London birds. I don’t know anything about foreign birds. I know there’s
men dressed as sailors going about selling them; they’re duffers--I
mean the men. There’s a neighbour of mine, that’s very likely never
been 20 miles out of London, and when he hawks birds he always dresses
like a countryman, and duffs that way.

“When my father died,” continued the man, “I was completely upset;
everything in the world was upset. I was forced to go into the
workhouse, and I was there between four and five months. O, I hated
it. I’d rather live on a penny loaf a day than be in it again. I’ve
never been near the parish since, though I’ve often had nothing to
eat many a day. I’d rather be lamer than I am, and be oftener called
silly Billy--and that sometimes makes me dreadful wild--than be in the
workhouse. It was starvation, but then I know I’m a hearty eater, very
hearty. Just now I know I could eat a shilling plate of meat, but for
all that I very seldom taste meat. I live on bread and butter and tea,
sometimes bread without butter. When I have it I eat a quartern loaf
at three meals. It depends upon how I’m off. My health’s good. I never
feel in any pain now; I did when I first got to walk, in great pain.
Beer I often don’t taste once in two or three months, and this very hot
weather one can’t help longing for a drop, when you see people drinking
it all sides of you, but they have the use of their limbs.” [Here two
little girls and a boy rushed into the room, for they had but to open
the door from the outside, and, evidently to tease the poor fellow,
loudly demanded “a ha’penny bird.” When the sister had driven them
away, my informant continued.] “I’m still greatly teased, sir, with
children; yes, and with men too, both when they’re drunk and sober.
I think grown persons are the worst. They swear and use bad language
to me. I’m sure I don’t know why. I know no name they call me by in
particular when I’m teased, if it isn’t ‘Old Hypocrite.’ I can’t say
why they call me ‘hypocrite.’ I suppose because they know no better.
Yes, I think I’m religious, rather. I would be more so, if I had
clothes. I get to chapel sometimes.” [A resident near the bird-seller’s
pitch, with whom I had some conversation, told me of “Billy” being
sometimes teased in the way described. Some years ago, he believed it
was at Limehouse, my informant heard a gentlemanly-looking man, tipsy,
d--n the street bird-seller for Mr. _Hobbler_, and bid him go to the
Mansion House, or to h--l. I asked the cripple about this, but he had
no recollection of it; and, as he evidently did not understand the
allusion to Mr. Hobbler, I was not surprised at his forgetfulness.]

“I like to sit out in the sunshine selling my birds,” he said. “If it’s
rainy, and I can’t go out, because it would be of no use, I’m moped to
death. I stay at home and read a little; or I chop a little fire-wood,
but you may be very sure, sir, its little I can do that way. I never
associate with the neighbours. I never had any pleasure, such as going
to a fair, or like that. I don’t remember having ever spent a penny in
a place of amusement in my life. Yes, I’ve often sat all day in the
sun, and of course a deal of thoughts goes through my head. I think,
shall I be able to afford myself plenty of bread when I get home? And
I think of the next world sometimes, and feel quite sure, quite, that
I shan’t be a cripple there. Yes, that’s a comfort, for this world
will never be any good to me. I feel that I shall be a poor starving
cripple, till I end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Other poor men can
get married, but not such as me. But I never was in love in my life,
never.” [Among the vagrants and beggars, I may observe, there are men
more terribly deformed than the bird-seller, who are married, or living
in concubinage.] “Yes, sir,” he proceeded, “I’m quite reconciled to my
lameness, quite; and have been for years. O, no, I never fret about
that now; but about starving, perhaps, and the workhouse.

“Before father died, the parish allowed us 1_s._ 6_d._ and a quartern
loaf a week; but after he was buried, they’d allow me nothing; they’d
only admit me into the house. I hadn’t a penny allowed to me when I
discharged myself and came out. I hardly know how ever I _did_ manage
to get a start again with the birds. I knew a good many catchers, and
they trusted me. Yes, they was all poor men. I did pretty tidy by bits,
but only when it was fine weather, until these five years or so, when
things got terrible bad. Particularly just the two last years with
me. Do you think times are likely to mend, sir, with poor people? If
working-men had only money, they’d buy innocent things like birds to
amuse them at home; but if they can’t get the money, as I’ve heard them
say when they’ve been pricing my stock, why in course they can’t spend
it.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the sister, “trade’s very bad. Where my husband and
I once earned 18_s._ at the fire-wood, and then 15_s._, we can’t now
earn 12_s._ the two of us, slave as hard as we will. I always dread the
winter a-coming. Though there may be more fire-wood wanted, there’s
greater expenses, and it’s a terrible time for such as us.”

“I dream sometimes, sir,” the cripple resumed in answer to my question,
“but not often. I often have more than once dreamed I was starving and
dying of hunger. I remember that, for I woke in a tremble. But most
dreams is soon forgot. I’ve never seemed to myself to be a cripple in
my dreams. Well, I can’t explain how, but I feel as if my limbs was
all free like--so beautiful. I dream most about starving I think, than
about anything else. Perhaps that’s when I have to go to sleep hungry.
I sleep very well, though, take it altogether. If I had only plenty to
live upon there would be nobody happier. I’m happy enough when times
is middling with me, only one feels it won’t last. I like a joke as
well as anybody when times is good; but that’s been very seldom lately.

“It’s all small birds I sell in the street now, except at a very odd
time. That jackdaw there, sir, he’s a very fine bird. I’ve tamed him
myself, and he’s as tame as a dog. My sister’s a very good hand among
birds, and helps me. She once taught a linnet to say ‘Joey’ as plain
as you can speak it yourself, sir. I buy birds of different catchers,
but haven’t money to buy the better kinds, as I have to sell at 3_d._,
and 4_d._, and 6_d._ mostly. If I had a pound to lay out in a few nice
cages and good birds, I think I could do middling, this fine weather
particler, for I’m a very good judge of birds, and know how to manage
them as well as anybody. Then birds is rather dearer to buy than they
was when I was first in the trade. The catchers have to go further,
and I’m afeared the birds is getting scarcer, and so there’s more time
taken up. I buy of several catchers. The last whole day that I was at
my pitch I sold nine birds, and took about 3_s._ If I could buy birds
ever so cheap, there’s always such losses by their dying. I’ve had
three parts of my young linnets die, do what I might, but not often so
many. Then if they die all the food they’ve had is lost. There goes
all for nothing the rape and flax-seed for your linnets, canary and
flax for your goldfinches, chopped eggs for your nightingales, and
German paste for your sky-larks. I’ve made my own German paste when
I’ve wanted a sufficient quantity. It’s made of pea-meal, treacle,
hog’s-lard, and moss-seed. I sell more goldfinches than anything else.
I used to sell a good many sparrows for shooting, but I haven’t done
anything that way these eight or nine years. It’s a fash’nable sport
still, I hear. I’ve reared nightingales that sung beautiful, and have
sold them at 4_s._ a piece, which was very cheap. They often die when
the time for their departure comes. A shopkeeper as supplied such
as I’ve sold would have charged 1_l._ a piece for them. One of my
favouritest birds is redpoles, but they’re only sold in the season.
I think it’s one of the most knowingest little birds that is; more
knowing than the goldfinch, in my opinion.

“My customers are all working people, all of them. I sell to nobody
else; I make 4_s._ or 5_s._; I call 5_s._ a good week at this time
of year, when the weather suits. I lodge with a married sister; her
husband’s a wood-chopper, and I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ a week, which is cheap,
for I’ve no sticks of my own. If I earn 4_s._ there’s only 2_s._ 6_d._
left to live on the week through. In winter, when I can make next to
nothing, and must keep my birds, it is terrible--oh yes, sir, if you
believe me, terrible!”

OF THE TRICKS OF THE BIRD-DUFFERS.

The tricks practised by the bird-sellers are frequent and systematic.
The other day a man connected with the bird-trade had to visit
Holloway, the City, and Bermondsey. In Holloway he saw six men, some
of whom he recognised as regular bird-catchers and street-sellers,
offering sham birds; in the City he found twelve; and in Bermondsey
six, as well as he could depend upon his memory. These, he thought,
did not constitute more than a half of the number now at work as
bird-“duffers,” not including the sellers of foreign birds. In the
summer, indeed, the duffers are most numerous, for birds are cheapest
then, and these tricksters, to economise time, I presume, buy of other
catchers any cheap hens suited to their purpose. Some of them, I am
told, never catch their birds at all, but purchase them.

The greenfinch is the bird on which these men’s art is most commonly
practised, its light-coloured plumage suiting it to their purposes. I
have heard these people styled “bird-swindlers,” but by street-traders
I heard them called “bird-duffers,” yet there appears to be no very
distinctive name for them. They are nearly all men, as is the case in
the bird trade generally, although the wives may occasionally assist
in the street-sale. The means of deception, as regards the greenfinch
especially, are from paint. One aim of these artists is to make their
finch resemble some curious foreign bird, “not often to be sold so
cheap, or to be sold at all in this country.” They study the birds in
the window of the naturalists’ shops for this purpose. Sometimes they
declare these painted birds are young Java sparrows (at one time “a
fashionable bird”), or St. Helena birds, or French or Italian finches.
They sometimes get 5_s._ for such a “duffing bird;” one man has been
known to boast that he once got a sovereign. I am told, however, by a
bird-catcher who had himself supplied birds to these men for duffing,
that they complained of the trade growing worse and worse.

It is usually a hen which is painted, for the hen is by far the
cheapest purchase, and while the poor thing is being offered for sale
by the duffers, she has an unlimited supply of hemp-seed, without
other food, and hemp-seed beyond a proper quantity, is a very strong
stimulus. This makes the hen look brisk and bold, but if newly caught,
as is usually the case, she will perhaps be found dead next morning.
The duffer will object to his bird being handled on account of its
timidity; “but it is timid only with strangers!” “When you’ve had
him a week, ma’am,” such a bird-seller will say, “you’ll find him as
lovesome and tame as can be.” One jealous lady, when asked 5_s._ for
a “very fine Italian finch, an excellent singer,” refused to buy, but
offered a deposit of 2_s._ 6_d._, if the man would leave his bird and
cage, for the trial of the bird’s song, for two or three days. The
duffer agreed; and was bold enough to call on the third day to hear
the result. The bird was dead, and after murmuring a little at the
lady’s mismanagement, and at the loss he had been subjected to, the
man brought away his cage. He boasted of this to a dealer’s assistant
who mentioned it to me, and expressed his conviction that it was true
enough. The paints used for the transformation of native birds into
foreign are bought at the colour-shops, and applied with camel-hair
brushes in the usual way.

When canaries are “a bad colour,” or have grown a paler yellow
from age, they are re-dyed, by the application of a colour sold at
the colour-shops, and known as “the Queen’s yellow.” Blackbirds are
dyed a deeper black, the “grit” off a frying-pan being used for the
purpose. The same thing is done to heighten the gloss and blackness
of a jackdaw, I was told, by a man who acknowledged he had duffed a
little; “people liked a gay bright colour.” In the same way the tints
of the goldfinch are heightened by the application of paint. It is
common enough, moreover, for a man to paint the beaks and legs of the
birds. It is chiefly the smaller birds which are thus made the means of
cheating.

Almost all the “duffing birds” are hawked. If a young hen be passed off
for a good singing bird, without being painted, as a cock in his second
singing year, she is “brisked up” with hemp-seed, is half tipsy in
fact, and so passed off deceitfully. As it is very rarely that even the
male birds will sing in the streets, this is often a successful ruse,
the bird appearing so lively.

A dealer calculated for me, from his own knowledge, that 2000 small
birds were “duffed” yearly, at an average of from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._
each.

As yet I have only spoken of the “duffing” of English birds, but
similar tricks are practised with the foreign birds.

In parrot-selling there is a good deal of “duffing.” The birds are
“painted up,” as I have described in the case of the greenfinches, &c.
Varnish is also used to render the colours brighter; the legs and beak
are frequently varnished. Sometimes a spot of red is introduced, for
as one of these duffers observed to a dealer in English birds, “the
more outlandish you make them look, the better’s the chance to sell.”
Sometimes there is little injury done by this paint and varnish, which
disappear gradually when the parrot is in the cage of a purchaser;
but in some instances when the bird picks himself where he has been
painted, he dies from the deleterious compound. Of this mortality,
however, there is nothing approaching that among the duffed small birds.

Occasionally the duffers carry really fine cockatoos, &c., and if they
can obtain admittance into a lady’s house, to display the beauty of the
bird, they will pretend to be in possession of smuggled silk, &c., made
of course for duffing purposes. The bird-duffers are usually dressed as
seamen, and sometimes pretend they must sell the bird before the ship
sails, for a parting spree, or to get the poor thing a good home. This
trade, however, has from all that I can learn, and in the words of an
informant, “seen its best days.” There are now sometimes six men thus
engaged; sometimes none: and when one of these men is “hard up,” he
finds it difficult to start again in a business for which a capital of
about 1_l._ is necessary, as a cage is wanted generally. The duffers
buy the very lowest priced birds, and have been known to get 2_l._
10_s._ for what cost but 8_s._, but that is a very rare occurrence, and
the men are very poor, and perhaps more dissipated than the generality
of street-sellers. Parrot duffing, moreover, is seldom carried on
regularly by any one, for he will often duff cigars and other things
in preference, or perhaps vend really smuggled and good cigars or
tobacco. Perhaps 150 parrots, paroquets, or cockatoos, are sold in this
way annually, at from 15_s._ to 1_l._ 10_s._ each, but hardly averaging
1_l._, as the duffer will sell, or raffle, the bird for a small sum if
he cannot dispose of it otherwise.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FOREIGN BIRDS.

This trade is curious, but far from extensive as regards street-sale.
There is, moreover, contrary to what might be expected, a good deal
of “duffing” about it. The “duffer” in English birds disguises them
so that they shall look like foreigners; the duffer in what are
unquestionably foreign birds disguises them that they may look _more_
foreign--more Indian than in the Indies.

The word “Duffer,” I may mention, appears to be connected with the
German _Durffen_, to want, to be needy, and so to mean literally
a needy or indigent man, even as the word _Pedlar_ has the same
origin--being derived from the German _Bettler_, and the Dutch
_Bedelaar_--a beggar. The verb _Durffen_, means also to dare, to be so
bold as to do; hence, to _Durff_, or _Duff_, would signify to resort to
any impudent trick.

The supply of parrots, paroquets, cockatoos, Java sparrows, or St.
Helena birds, is not in the regular way of consignment from a merchant
abroad to one in London. The commanders and mates of merchant vessels
bring over large quantities; and often enough the seamen are allowed to
bring parrots or cockatoos in the homeward-bound ship from the Indies
or the African coast, or from other tropical countries, either to
beguile the tedium of the voyage, for presents to their friends, or,
as in some cases, for sale on their reaching an English port. More, I
am assured, although statistics are hardly possible on such a subject,
are brought to London, and perhaps by one-third, than to all the other
ports of Great Britain collectively. Even on board the vessels of the
royal navy, the importation of parrots used to be allowed as a sort
of boon to the seamen. I was told by an old naval officer that once,
after a long detention on the west coast of Africa, his ship was
ordered home, and, as an acknowledgment of the good behaviour of his
men, he permitted them to bring parrots, cockatoos, or any foreign
birds, home with them, not limiting the number, but of course under
the inspection of the petty officers, that there might be no violation
of the cleanliness which always distinguishes a vessel of war. Along
the African coast, to the southward of Sierra Leone, the men were not
allowed to land, both on account of the unhealthiness of the shores,
and of the surf, which rendered landing highly dangerous, a danger,
however, which the seamen would not have scrupled to brave, and
recklessly enough, for any impulse of the minute. As if by instinct,
however, the natives seemed to know what was wanted, for they came off
from the shores in their light canoes, which danced like feathers on
the surf, and brought boat-loads of birds; these the seamen bought of
them, or possessed themselves of in the way of barter.

Before the ship took her final departure, however, she was reported
as utterly uninhabitable below, from the incessant din and clamour:
“We might as well have a pack of women aboard, sir,” was the ungallant
remark of one of the petty officers to his commander. Orders were then
given that the parrots, &c., should be “thinned,” so that there might
not be such an unceasing noise. This was accordingly done. How many
were set at liberty and made for the shore--for the seamen in this
instance did not kill them for their skins, as is not unfrequently
the case--the commander did not know. He could but conjecture; and he
conjectured that something like a thousand were released; and even
after that, and after the mortality which takes place among these birds
in the course of a long voyage, a very great number were brought to
Plymouth. Of these, again, a great number were sent or conveyed under
the care of the sailors to London, when the ship was paid off. The
same officer endeavoured on this voyage to bring home some very large
pine-apples, which flavoured, and most deliciously, parts of the ship
when she had been a long time at sea; but every one of them rotted, and
had to be thrown overboard. He fell into the error, Captain ---- said,
of having the finest fruit selected for the experiment; an error which
the Bahama merchants had avoided, and consequently they succeeded where
he failed. How the sailors fed the parrots, my informant could hardly
guess, but they brought a number of very fine birds to England, some of
them with well-cultivated powers of speech.

This, as I shall show, is one of the ways by which the London supply of
parrots, &c., is obtained; but the permission, as to the importation
of these brightly-feathered birds, is, I understand, rarely allowed
at present to the seamen in the royal navy. The far greater supply,
indeed more than 90 per cent. of the whole of the birds imported, is
from the merchant-service. I have already stated, on the very best
authority, the motives which induce merchant-seamen to bring over
parrots and cockatoos. That to bring them over is an inducement to some
to engage in an African voyage is shown by the following statement,
which was made to me, in the course of a long inquiry, published in my
letters in the _Morning Chronicle_, concerning the condition of the
merchant-seamen.

“I would never go to that African coast again, only I make a pound or
two in birds. We buy parrots, gray parrots chiefly, of the natives,
who come aboard in their canoes. We sometimes pay 6_s._ or 7_s._, in
Africa, for a fine bird. I have known 200 parrots on board; they make a
precious noise; but half the birds die before they get to England. Some
captains won’t allow parrots.”

When the seamen have settled themselves after landing in England,
they perhaps find that there is no room in their boarding-houses for
their parrots; these birds are not admitted into the Sailors’ Home;
the seamen’s friends are stocked with the birds, and look upon another
parrot as but another intruder, an unwelcome pensioner. There remains
but one course--to sell the birds, and they are generally sold to a
highly respectable man, Mr. M. Samuel, of Upper East Smithfield; and
it is from him, though not always directly, that the shopkeepers and
street-sellers derive their stock-in-trade. There is also a further
motive for the disposal of parrots, paroquets, and cockatoos to a
merchant. The seafaring owner of those really magnificent birds,
perhaps, squanders his money, perhaps he gets “skinned” (stripped of
his clothes and money from being hocussed, or tempted to helpless
drunkenness), or he chooses to sell them, and he or his boarding-house
keeper takes the birds to Mr. Samuel, and sells them for what he can
get; but I heard from three very intelligent seamen whom I met with in
the course of my inquiry, and by mere chance, that Mr. Samuel’s price
was fair and his money sure, considering everything, for there is
usually a qualification to every praise. It is certainly surprising,
under these circumstances, that such numbers of these birds should thus
be disposed of.

Parrots are as gladly, or more gladly, got rid of, in any manner, in
different regions in the continents of Asia and America, than with
us are even rats from a granary. Dr. Stanley, after speaking of the
beauty of a flight of parrots, says:--“The husbandman who sees them
hastening through the air, with loud and impatient screams, looks upon
them with dismay and detestation, knowing that the produce of his
labour and industry is in jeopardy, when visited by such a voracious
multitude of pilferers, who, like the locusts of Egypt, desolate whole
tracts of country by their unsparing ravages.” A contrast with their
harmlessness, in a gilded cage in the houses of the wealthy, with us!
The destructiveness of these birds, is then, one reason why seamen can
obtain them so readily and cheaply, for the natives take pleasure in
catching them; while as to plentifulness, the tropical regions teem
with bird, as with insect and reptile, life.

Of parrots, paroquets, and cockatoos, there are 3000 imported to London
in the way I have described, and in about equal proportions. They are
sold, wholesale, from 5_s._ to 30_s._ each.

There are now only three men selling these brilliant birds regularly in
the streets, and in the fair way of trade; but there are sometimes as
many as 18 so engaged. The price given by a hawker for a cockatoo, &c.,
is 8_s._ or 10_s._, and they are retailed at from 15_s._ to 30_s._,
or more, “if it can be got.” The purchasers are the wealthier classes
who can afford to indulge their tastes. Of late years, however, I am
told, a parrot or a cockatoo seems to be considered indispensable to
an inn (not a gin-palace), and the innkeepers have been among the best
customers of the street parrot-sellers. In the neighbourhood of the
docks, and indeed along the whole river side below London-bridge, it
is almost impossible for a street-seller to dispose of a parrot to an
innkeeper, or indeed to any one, as they are supplied by the seamen.
A parrot which has been taught to talk is worth from 4_l._ to 10_l._,
according to its proficiency in speech. About 500 of these birds are
sold yearly by the street-hawkers, at an outlay to the public of from
500_l._ to 600_l._

Java sparrows, from the East Indies, and from the Islands of the
Archipelago, are brought to London, but considerable quantities die
during the voyage and in this country; for, though hardy enough, not
more than one in three survives being “taken off the paddy seed.” About
10,000, however, are sold annually, in London, at 1_s._ 6_d._ each, but
a very small proportion by street-hawking, as the Java sparrows are
chiefly in demand for the aviaries of the rich in town and country. In
some years not above 100 may be sold in the streets; in others, as many
as 500.

In St. Helena birds, known also as wax-bills and red-backs, there is
a trade to the same extent, both as regards number and price; but the
street-sale is perhaps 10 per cent. lower.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF BIRDS’-NESTS.

The young gypsy-looking lad, who gave me the following account of the
sale of birds’-nests in the streets, was peculiarly picturesque in his
appearance. He wore a dirty-looking smock-frock with large pockets
at the side; he had no shirt; and his long black hair hung in curls
about him, contrasting strongly with his bare white neck and chest.
The broad-brimmed brown Italian-looking hat, broken in and ragged at
the top, threw a dark half-mask-like shadow over the upper part of his
face. His feet were bare and black with mud: he carried in one hand his
basket of nests, dotted with their many-coloured eggs; in the other he
held a live snake, that writhed and twisted as its metallic-looking
skin glistened in the sun; now over, and now round, the thick knotty
bough of a tree that he used for a stick. The portrait of the youth is
here given. I have never seen so picturesque a specimen of the English
nomads. He said, in answer to my inquiries:--

“I am a seller of birds’-nesties, snakes, slow-worms, adders,
‘effets’--lizards is their common name--hedgehogs (for killing black
beetles); frogs (for the French--they eats ’em); snails (for birds);
that’s all I sell in the summer-time. In the winter I get all kinds
of wild flowers and roots, primroses, ‘butter-cups’ and daisies, and
snow-drops, and ‘backing’ off of trees; (‘backing’ it’s called, because
it’s used to put at the back of nosegays, it’s got off the yew trees,
and is the green yew fern). I gather bulrushes in the summer-time,
besides what I told you; some buys bulrushes for stuffing; they’re the
fairy rushes the small ones, and the big ones is bulrushes. The small
ones is used for ‘stuffing,’ that is, for showing off the birds as is
stuffed, and make ’em seem as if they was alive in their cases, and
among the rushes; I sell them to the bird-stuffers at 1_d._ a dozen.
The big rushes the boys buys to play with and beat one another--on a
Sunday evening mostly. The birds’-nesties I get from 1_d._ to 3_d._
a-piece for. I never have young birds, I can never sell ’em; you see
the young things generally dies of the cramp before you can get rid
of them. I sell the birds’-nesties in the streets; the threepenny
ones has six eggs, a half-penny a egg. The linnets has mostly four
eggs, they’re 4_d._ the nest; they’re for putting under canaries, and
being hatched by them. The thrushes has from four to five--five is
the most; they’re 2_d._; they’re merely for cur’osity--glass cases or
anything like that. Moor-hens, wot build on the moors, has from eight
to nine eggs, and is 1_d._ a-piece; they’re for hatching underneath a
bantam-fowl, the same as partridges. Chaffinches has five eggs; they’re
3_d._, and is for cur’osity. Hedge-sparrows, five eggs; they’re the
same price as the other, and is for cur’osity. The Bottletit--the
nest and the bough are always put in glass cases; it’s a long hanging
nest, like a bottle, with a hole about as big as a sixpence, and
there’s mostly as many as eighteen eggs; they’ve been known to lay
thirty-three. To the house-sparrow there is five eggs; they’re 1_d._
The yellow-hammers, with five eggs, is 2_d._ The water-wagtails, with
four eggs, 2_d._ Blackbirds, with five eggs, 2_d._ The golden-crest
wren, with ten eggs--it has a very handsome nest--is 6_d._ Bulfinches,
four eggs, 1_s._; they’re for hatching, and the bulfinch is a very dear
bird. Crows, four eggs, 4_d._ Magpies, four eggs, 4_d._ Starlings, five
eggs, 3_d._ The egg-chats, five eggs, 2_d._ Goldfinches, five eggs,
6_d._, for hatching. Martins, five eggs, 3_d._ The swallow, four eggs,
6_d._; it’s so dear because the nest is such a cur’osity, they build up
again the house. The butcher-birds--hedge-murderers some calls them,
for the number of birds they kills--five eggs, 3_d._ The cuckoo--they
never has a nest, but lays in the hedge-sparrow’s; there’s only one egg
(it’s very rare you see the two, they has been got, but that’s seldom)
that is 4_d._, the egg is such a cur’osity. The greenfinches has four
or five eggs, and is 3_d._ The sparrer-hawk has four eggs, and they’re
6_d._ The reed-sparrow--they builds in the reeds close where the
bulrushes grow; they has four eggs, and is 2_d._ The wood-pigeon has
two eggs, and they’re 4_d._ The horned owl, four eggs; they’re 6_d._
The woodpecker--I never see no more nor two--they’re 6_d._ the two;
they’re a great cur’osity, very seldom found. The kingfishers has four
eggs, and is 6_d._ That’s all I know of.

[Illustration: STREET-SELLER OF BIRDS’ NESTS.]

“I gets the eggs mostly from Witham and Chelmsford, in Essex;
Chelmsford is 20 mile from Whitechapel Church, and Witham, 8 mile
further. I know more about them parts than anywhere else, being used
to go after moss for Mr. Butler, of the herb-shop in Covent Garden.
Sometimes I go to Shirley Common and Shirley Wood, that’s three miles
from Croydon, and Croydon is ten from Westminster-bridge. When I’m
out bird-nesting I take all the cross country roads across fields
and into the woods. I begin bird-nesting in May and leave off about
August, and then comes the bulrushing, and they last till Christmas;
and after that comes the roots and wild flowers, which serves me up
to May again. I go out bird-nesting three times a week. I go away at
night, and come up on the morning of the day after. I’m away a day and
two nights. I start between one and two in the morning and walk all
night--for the coolness--you see the weather’s so hot you can’t
do it in the daytime. When I get down I go to sleep for a couple of
hours. I ‘skipper it’--turn in under a hedge or anywhere. I get down
about nine in the morning, at Chelmsford, and about one if I go to
Witham. After I’ve had my sleep I start off to get my nests and things.
I climb the trees, often I go up a dozen in the day, and many a time
there’s nothing in the nest when I get up. I only fell once; I got on
the end of the bough and slipped off. I p’isoned my foot once with the
stagnant water going after the bulrushes,--there was horseleeches,
and effets, and all kinds of things in the water, and they stung me,
I think. I couldn’t use my foot hardly for six weeks afterwards, and
was obliged to have a stick to walk with. I couldn’t get about at all
for four days, and should have starved if it hadn’t been that a young
man kept me. He was a printer by trade, and almost a stranger to me,
only he seed me and took pity on me. When I fell off the bough I wasn’t
much hurt, nothing to speak of. The house-sparrow is the worst nest of
all to take; it’s no value either when it _is_ got, and is the most
difficult of all to get at. You has to get up a sparapet (a parapet)
of a house, and either to get permission, or run the risk of going
after it without. Partridges’ eggs (they has no nest) they gives you
six months for, if they see you selling them, because it’s game, and
I haven’t no licence; but while you’re hawking, that is showing ’em,
they can’t touch you. The owl is a very difficult nest to get, they
builds so high in the trees. The bottle-tit is a hard nest to find; you
may go all the year round, and, perhaps, only get one. The nest I like
best to get is the chaffinch, because they’re in the hedge, and is no
bother. Oh, you hasn’t got the skylark down, sir; they builds on the
ground, and has five eggs; I sell them for 4_d._ The robin-redbreast
has five eggs, too, and is 3_d._ The ringdove has two eggs, and is
6_d._ The tit-lark--that’s five blue eggs, and very rare--I get 4_d._
for them. The jay has five eggs, and a flat nest, very wiry, indeed;
it’s a ground bird; that’s 1_s._--the egg is just like a partridge egg.
When I first took a kingfisher’s nest, I didn’t know the name of it,
and I kept wondering what it was. I daresay I asked three dozen people,
and none of them could tell me. At last a bird-fancier, the lame man
at the Mile-end gate, told me what it was. I likes to get the nesties
to sell, but I havn’t no fancy for birds. Sometimes I get squirrels’
nesties with the young in ’em--about four of ’em there mostly is, and
they’re the only young things I take--the young birds I leaves; they’re
no good to me. The four squirrels brings me from 6_s._ to 8_s._ After
I takes a bird’s nest, the old bird comes dancing over it, chirupping,
and crying, and flying all about. When they lose their nest they wander
about, and don’t know where to go. Oftentimes I wouldn’t take them if
it wasn’t for the want of the victuals, it seems such a pity to disturb
’em after they’ve made their little bits of places. Bats I never take
myself--I can’t get over ’em. If I has an order for ’em, I buys ’em of
boys.

“I mostly start off into the country on Monday and come up on
Wednesday. The most nesties as ever I took is twenty-two, and I
generally get about twelve or thirteen. These, if I’ve an order, I sell
directly, or else I may be two days, and sometimes longer, hawking them
in the street. Directly I’ve sold them I go off again that night, if
it’s fine; though I often go in the wet, and then I borrow a tarpaulin
of a man in the street where I live. If I’ve a quick sale I get down
and back three times in a week, but then I don’t go so far as Witham,
sometimes only to Rumford; that is 12 miles from Whitechapel Church.
I never got an order from a bird-fancier; they gets all the eggs they
want of the countrymen who comes up to market.

“It’s gentlemen I gets my orders of, and then mostly they tells me to
bring ’em one nest of every kind I can get hold of, and that will often
last me three months in the summer. There’s one gentleman as I sells to
is a wholesale dealer in window-glass--and he has a hobby for them. He
puts ’em into glass cases, and makes presents of ’em to his friends. He
has been one of my best customers. I’ve sold him a hundred nesties, I’m
sure. There’s a doctor at Dalston I sell a great number to--he’s taking
one of every kind of me now. The most of my customers is stray ones in
the streets. They’re generally boys. I sells a nest now and then to a
lady with a child; but the boys of twelve to fifteen years of age is my
best friends. They buy ’em only for cur’osity. I sold three partridges’
eggs yesterday to a gentleman, and he said he would put them under a
bantam he’d got, and hatch ’em.

“The snakes, and adders, and slow-worms I get from where there’s moss
or a deal of grass. Sunny weather’s the best for them, they won’t
come out when it’s cold; then I go to a dung-heap, and turn it over.
Sometimes, I find five or six there, but never so large as the one I
had to-day, that’s a yard and five inches long, and three-quarters of
a pound weight. Snakes is 5_s._ a pound. I sell all I can get to Mr.
Butler, of Covent-garden. He keeps ’em alive, for they’re no good dead.
I think it’s for the skin they’re kept. Some buys ’em to dissect: a
gentleman in Theobalds-road does so, and so he does hedgehogs. Some
buys ’em for stuffing, and others for cur’osities. Adders is the same
price as snakes, 5_s._ a pound after they first comes in, when they’re
10_s._ Adders is wanted dead; it’s only the fat and skin that’s of any
value; the fat is used for curing p’isoned wounds, and the skin is used
for any one as has cut their heads. Farmers buys the fat, and rubs it
into the wound when they gets bitten or stung by anything p’isonous.
I kill the adders with a stick, or, when I has shoes, I jumps on ’em.
Some fine days I get four or five snakes at a time; but then they’re
mostly small, and won’t weigh above half a pound. I don’t get many
adders--they don’t weigh many ounces, adders don’t--and I mostly has
9_d._ a-piece for each I gets. I sells _them_ to Mr. Butler as well.

“The hedgehogs is 1_s._ each; I gets them mostly in Essex. I’ve took
one hedgehog with three young ones, and sold the lot for 2_s._ 6_d._
People in the streets bought them of me--they’re wanted to kill the
black-beetles; they’re fed on bread and milk, and they’ll suck a cow
quite dry in their wild state. They eat adders, and can’t be p’isoned,
at least it says so in a book I’ve got about ’em at home.

“The effets I gets orders for in the streets. Gentlemen gives me their
cards, and tells me to bring them one; they’re 2_d._ apiece. I get them
at Hampstead and Highgate, from the ponds. They’re wanted for cur’osity.

“The snails and frogs I sell to Frenchmen. I don’t know what part they
eat of the frog, but I know they buy them, and the dandelion root.
The frogs is 6_d._ and 1_s._ a dozen. They like the yellow-bellied
ones, the others they’re afraid is toads. They always pick out the
yellow-bellied first; I don’t know how to feed ’em, or else I might
fatten them. Many people swallows young frogs, they’re reckoned very
good things to clear the inside. The frogs I catch in ponds and ditches
up at Hampstead and Highgate, but I only get them when I’ve a order.
I’ve had a order for as many as six dozen, but that was for the French
hotel in Leicester-square; but I _have_ sold three dozen a week to one
man, a Frenchman, as keeps a cigar shop in R--r’s-court.

“The snails I sell by the pailful--at 2_s._ 6_d._ the pail. There
is some hundreds in a pail. The wet weather is the best times for
catching ’em; the French people eats ’em. They boils ’em first to get
’em out of the shell and get rid of the green froth; then they boils
them again, and after that in vinegar. They eats ’em hot, but some of
the foreigners likes ’em cold. They say they’re better, if possible,
than whelks. I used to sell a great many to a lady and gentleman in
Soho-square, and to many of the French I sell 1_s._’s worth, that’s
about three or four quarts. Some persons buys snails for birds, and
some to strengthen a sickly child’s back; they rub the back all over
with the snails, and a very good thing they tell me it is. I used to
take 2_s._’s worth a week to one woman; it’s the green froth that does
the greatest good. There are two more birds’-nest sellers besides
myself, they don’t do as many as me the two of ’em. They’re very naked,
their things is all to ribbins; they only go into the country once
in a fortnight. They was never nothing, no trade--they never was in
place--from what I’ve heard--either of them. I reckon I sell about
20 nesties a week take one week with another, and that I do for four
months in the year. (This altogether makes 320 nests.) Yes, I should
say, I do sell about 300 birds’-nests every year, and the other two,
I’m sure, don’t sell half that. Indeed they don’t want to sell; they
does better by what they gets give to them. I can’t say what they
takes, they’re Irish, and I never was in conversation with them. I
get about 4_s._ to 5_s._ for the 20 nests, that’s between 2_d._ and
3_d._ apiece. I sell about a couple of snakes every week, and for some
of them I get 1_s._, and for the big ones 2_s._ 6_d._; but them _I_
seldom find. I’ve only had three hedgehogs this season, and I’ve done
a little in snails and frogs, perhaps about 1_s._ The many foreigners
in London this season hasn’t done me no good. I haven’t been to
Leicester-square lately, or perhaps I might have got a large order or
two for frogs.”

LIFE OF A BIRD’S-NEST SELLER.

“I am 22 years of age. My father was a dyer, and I was brought up to
the same trade. My father lived at Arundel, in Sussex, and kept a shop
there. He had a good business as dyer, scourer, calico glazer, and
furniture cleaner. I have heard mother say his business in Arundel
brought him in 300_l._ a year at least. He had eight men in his employ,
and none under 30_s._ a week. I had two brothers and one sister, but
one of my brothers is since dead. Mother died five years ago in the
Consumption Hospital, at Chelsea, just after it was built. I was very
young indeed when father died; I can hardly remember him. He died
in Middlesex Hospital: he had abscesses all over him; there were
six-and-thirty at the time of his death. I’ve heard mother say many
times that she thinked it was through exerting himself too much at his
business that he fell ill. The ruin of father was owing to his house
being burnt down; the fire broke out at two in the morning; he wasn’t
insured: I don’t remember the fire; I’ve only heerd mother talk about
it. It was the ruin of us all she used to tell me; father had so much
work belonging to other people; a deal of moreen curtains, five or six
hundred yards. It was of no use his trying to start again: he lost
all his glazing machines and tubs, and his drugs and ‘punches.’ From
what I’ve heerd from mother they was worth some hundreds. The Duke of
Norfolk, after the fire, gave a good lot of money to the poor people
whose things father had to clean, and father himself came up to London.
I wasn’t two year old when that happened. We all come up with father,
and he opened a shop in London and bought all new things. He had got
a bit of money left, and mother’s uncle lent him 60_l._ We lived two
doors from the stage door of the Queen’s Theatre, in Pitt-street,
Charlotte-street, Fitzroy-square; but father didn’t do much in London;
he had a new connection to make, and when he died his things was sold
for the rent of the house. There was only money enough to bury him. I
don’t know how long ago that was, but I think it was about three years
after our coming to London, for I’ve heerd mother say I was six years
old when father died. After father’s death mother borrowed some more
money of her uncle, who was well to do. He was perfumer to her Majesty:
he’s dead now, and left the business to his foreman. The business was
worth 2000_l._ His wife, my mother’s aunt, is alive still, and though
she’s a woman of large property, she won’t so much as look at me. She
keeps her carriage and two footmen; her address is, Mrs. Lewis, No. 10,
Porchester-terrace, Bayswater. I have been in her drawing-room two or
three times. I used to take letters to her from mother: she was very
kind to me then, and give me several half-crowns. She knows the state
I am in now. A young man wrote a letter to her, saying I had no clothes
to look after work in, and that I was near starving, but she sent no
answer to it. The last time I called at her house she sent me down
nothing, and bid the servant tell me not to come any more. Ever since
I’ve wanted it I’ve never had nothing from her, but before that she
used to give me something whenever I took a letter from mother to her.
The last half-crown I got at her house was from the cook, who gave it
me out of her own money because she’d known my mother.

“I’ve got a grandmother living in Woburn-place; she’s in service there,
and been in the family for twenty years. The gentleman died lately and
left her half his property. He was a foreigner and had no relations
here. My grandmother used to be very good to me, and when I first got
out of work she always gave me something when I called, and had me
down in her room. She was housekeeper then. She never offered to get
me a situation, but only gave me a meal of victuals and a shilling or
eighteen-pence whenever I called. I was tidy in my dress then. At last
a new footman came, and he told me as I wasn’t to call again; he said,
the family didn’t allow no followers. I’ve never seen my grandmother
since that time but once, and then I was passing with my basket of
birds’ nests in my hand just as she was coming out of the door. I was
dressed about the same then as you seed me yesterday. I was without a
shirt to my back. I don’t think she saw me, and I was ashamed to let
her see me as I was. She was kind enough to me, that is, she wouldn’t
mind about giving me a shilling or so at a time, but she never would do
nothing else for me, and yet she had got plenty of money in the bank,
and a gold watch, and all, at her side.

“After father died, as I was saying, mother got some money from her
uncle and set up on her own account; she took in glazing for the trade.
Father had a few shops that he worked for, and they employed mother
after his death. She kept on at this for eighteen months and then she
got married again. Before this an uncle of mine, my father’s brother,
who kept some lime-kilns down in Bury St. Edmunds, consented to take my
brother and sister and provide for them, and four or five year ago he
got them both into the Duke of Norfolk’s service, and there they are
now. They’ve never seen me since I was a child but once, and that was
a few year ago. I’ve never sent to them to say how badly I was off.
They’re younger than I am, and can only just take care of theirselves.
When mother married again, her husband came to live at the house; he
was a dyer. He behaved very well to me. Mother wouldn’t send me down
to uncle’s, she was too fond of me. I was sent to school for about
eighteen months, and after that I used to assist in the glazing at
home, and so I went on very comfortable for some time. Nine year ago
I went to work at a French dyer’s, in Rathbone-place. My step-father
got me there, and there I stopped six year. I lived in the house after
the first eighteen months of my service. Five year ago mother fell
ill; she had been ailing many years, and she got admitted into the
Consumption Hospital, at Brompton. She was there just upon three months
and was coming out the next day (her term was up), when she died on the
over night. After that my step-father altered very much towards me. He
didn’t want me at home at all. He told me so a fortnight after mother
was in her grave. He took to drinking very hearty directly she was
gone. He would do anything for me before that. He used to take me with
him to every place of amusement what he went to, but when he took to
drinking he quite changed; then he got to beat me, and at last he told
me I needn’t come there any more.

“After that, I still kept working in Rathbone-place, and got a lodging
of my own; I used to have 9_s._ a week where I was, and I paid 2_s._
a week for my bed, and washing, and mending. I had half a room with a
man and his wife; I went on so for about two years, and then I was took
bad with the scarlet fever and went to Gray’s-inn-lane hospital. After
I was cured of the scarlet fever, I had the brain fever, and was near
my death; I was altogether eight weeks in the hospital, and when I come
out I could get no work where I had been before. The master’s nephew
had come from Paris, and they had all French hands in the house. He
wouldn’t employ an English hand at all. He give me a trifle of money,
and told me he would pay my lodgings for a week or two while I looked
for work. I sought all about and couldn’t find any; this was about
three year ago. People wouldn’t have me because I didn’t know nothing
about the English mode of business. I couldn’t even tell the names
of the English drugs, having been brought up in a French house. At
last, my master got tired of paying for my lodging, and I used to try
and pick up a few pence in the streets by carrying boxes and holding
horses, it was all as I could get to do; I tried all I could to find
employment, and they was the only jobs I could get. But I couldn’t make
enough for my lodging this way, and over and over again I’ve had to
sleep out. Then I used to walk the streets most of the night, or lie
about in the markets till morning came in the hopes of getting a job.
I’m a very little eater, and perhaps that’s the luckiest thing for such
as me; half a pound of bread and a few potatoes will do me for the day.
If I could afford it, I used to get a ha’porth of coffee and a ha’porth
of sugar, and make it do twice. Sometimes I used to have victuals give
to me, sometimes I went without altogether; and sometimes I couldn’t
eat. I can’t always.

“Six weeks after I had been knocking about in the streets in the
manner I’ve told you, a man I met in Covent-Garden market told me he
was going into the country to get some roots (it was in the winter
time and cold indeed; I was dressed about the same as I am now, only
I had a pair of boots); and he said if I chose to go with him, he’d
give me half of whatever he earned. I went to Croydon and got some
primroses; my share came to 9_d._, and that was quite a God-send to me,
after getting nothing. Sometimes before that I’d been two days without
tasting anything; and when I got some victuals after that, I couldn’t
touch them. All I felt was giddy; I wasn’t to say hungry, only weak and
sicklified. I went with this man after the roots two or three times;
he took me to oblige me, and show me the way how to get a bit of food
for myself; after that, when I got to know all about it, I went to get
roots on my own account. I never felt a wish to take nothing when I was
very hard up. Sometimes when I got cold and was tired, walking about
and weak from not having had nothing to eat, I used to think I’d break
a window and take something out to get locked up; but I could never
make my mind up to it; they never hurt me, I’d say to myself. I do
fancy though, if anybody had refused me a bit of bread, I should have
done something again them, but I couldn’t, do you see, in cold blood
like.

“When the summer came round a gentleman whom I seed in the market asked
me if I’d get him half a dozen nesties--he didn’t mind what they was,
so long as they was small, and of different kinds--and as I’d come
across a many in my trips after the flowers, I told him I would do
so--and that first put it into my head; and I’ve been doing that every
summer since then. It’s poor work, though, at the best. Often and often
I have to walk 30 miles out without any victuals to take with me, or
money to get any, and 30 miles again back, and bring with me about a
dozen nesties; and, perhaps, if I’d no order for them, and was forced
to sell them to the boys, I shouldn’t get more than a shilling for the
lot after all. When the time comes round for it, I go Christmasing and
getting holly, but that’s more dangerous work than bird-nesting; the
farmers don’t mind your taking the nesties, as it prevents the young
birds from growing up and eating their corn. The greater part of the
holly used in London for trimming up the churches and sticking in the
puddings, is stolen by such as me, at the risk of getting six months
for it. The farmers brings a good lot to market, but we is obligated to
steal it. Take one week with another, I’m sure I don’t make above 5_s._
You can tell that to look at me. I don’t drink, and I don’t gamble;
so you can judge how much I get when I’ve had to pawn my shirt for a
meal. All last week I only sold two nesties--they was a partridge’s
and a yellow-hammer’s; for one I got 6_d._, and the other 3_d._, and
I had been thirteen miles to get them. I got beside that a fourpenny
piece for some chickweed which I’d been up to Highgate to gather for
a man with a bad leg (it’s the best thing there is for a poultice to
a wound), and then I earned another 4_d._ by some mash (marsh) mallow
leaves (that there was to purify the blood of a poor woman): that, with
4_d._ that a gentleman give to me, was all I got last week; 1_s._ 9_d._
I think it is altogether. I had some victuals give to me in the street,
or else I daresay I should have had to go without; but, as it was, I
gave the money to the man and his wife I live with. You see they had
nothing, and as they’re good to me when I want, why, I did what I could
for them. I’ve tried to get out of my present life, but there seems
to be an ill luck again me. Sometimes I gets a good turn. A gentleman
gives me an order, and then I saves a shilling or eighteenpence, so
as to buy something with that I can sell again in the streets; but a
wet day is sure to come, and then I’m cracked up, obligated to eat it
all away. Once I got to sell fish. A gentleman give me a crown-piece
in the street, and I borrowed a barrow at 2_d._ a day, and did pretty
well for a time. In three weeks I had saved 18_s._; then I got an order
for a sack of moss from one of the flower-sellers, and I went down to
Chelmsford, and stopped for the night in Lower Nelson-street, at the
sign of “The Three Queens.” I had my money safe in my fob the night
before, and a good pair of boots to my feet then; when I woke in the
morning my boots was gone, and on feeling in my fob my money was gone
too. There was four beds in the rooms, feather and flock; the feather
ones was 4_d._, and the flock 3_d._ for a single one, and 2-1/2_d._
each person for a double one. There was six people in the room that
night, and one of ’em was gone before I awoke--he was a cadger--and had
took my money with him. I complained to the landlord--they call him
George--but it was no good; all I could get was some victuals. So I’ve
been obliged to keep to birds’-nesting ever since.

“I’ve never been in prison but once. I was took up for begging.
I was merely leaning again the railings of Tavistock-square with
my birds’-nesties in my hand, and the policemen took me off to
Clerkenwell, but the magistrates, instead of sending me to prison,
gave me 2_s._ out of the poors’-box. I feel it very much going about
without shoes or without shirt, and exposed to all weathers, and often
out all night. The doctor at the hospital in Gray’s-inn-lane gave me
two flannels, and told me that whatever I did I was to keep myself
wrapped up; but what’s the use of saying that to such as me who is
obligated to pawn the shirt off our back for food the first wet day as
comes? If you haven’t got money to pay for your bed at a lodging-house,
you must take the shirt off your back and leave it with them, or else
they’ll turn you out. I know many such. Sometimes I go to an artist.
I had 5_s._ when I was drawed before the Queen. I wasn’t ’xactly
drawed before her, but my portrait was shown to her, and I was told
that if I’d be there I might receive a trifle. I was drawed as a gipsy
fiddler. Mr. Oakley in Regent-street was the gentleman as did it. I
was dressed in some things he got for me. I had an Italian’s hat, one
with a broad brim and a peaked crown, a red plush waistcoat, and a
yellow hankercher tied in a good many knots round my neck. I’d a black
velveteen Newmarket-cut coat, with very large pearl buttons, and a pair
of black knee-breeches tied with fine red strings. Then I’d blue stripe
stockings and high-ancle boots with very thin soles. I’d a fiddle in
one hand and a bow in the other. The gentleman said he drawed me for my
head of hair. I’ve never been a gipsy, but he told me he didn’t mind
that, for I should make as good a gipsy fiddler as the real thing. The
artists mostly give me 2_s._ I’ve only been three times. I only wish
I could get away from my present life. Indeed I would do any work if I
could get it. I’m sure I could have a good character from my masters in
Rathbone-place, for I never done nothing wrong. But if I couldn’t get
work I might very well, if I’d money enough, get a few flowers to sell.
As it is it’s more than any one can do to save at bird-nesting, and
I’m sure I’m as prudent as e’er a one in the streets. I never took the
pledge, but still I never take no beer nor spirits--I never did. Mother
told me never to touch ’em, and I haven’t tasted a drop. I’ve often
been in a public-house selling my things, and people has offered me
something to drink, but I never touch any. I can’t tell why I dislike
doing so--but something seems to tell me not to taste such stuff. I
don’t know whether it’s what my mother said to me. I know I was very
fond of her, but I don’t say it’s that altogether as makes me do it. I
don’t feel to want it. I smoke a good bit, and would sooner have a bit
of baccy than a meal at any time. I could get a goodish rig-out in the
lane for a few shillings. A pair of boots would cost me 2_s._, and a
coat I could get for 2_s._ 6_d._ I go to a ragged school three times a
week if I can, for I’m but a poor scholar still, and I should like to
know how to read; it’s always handy you know, sir.”

This lad has been supplied with a suit of clothes and sufficient money
to start him in some of the better kind of street-trades. It was
thought advisable not to put him to any more _settled_ occupation on
account of the vagrant habits he has necessarily acquired during his
bird-nesting career. Before doing this he was employed as errand-boy
for a week, with the object of testing his trustworthiness, and
was found both honest and attentive. He appears a prudent lad, but
of course it is difficult, as yet, to speak positively as to his
character. He has, however, been assured that if he shows a disposition
to follow some more reputable calling he shall at least be put in the
way of so doing.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SQUIRRELS.

The street squirrel-sellers are generally the same men as are engaged
in the open-air traffic in cage-birds. There are, however, about six
men who devote themselves more particularly to squirrel-selling, while
as many more sometimes “take a turn at it.” The squirrel is usually
carried in the vendor’s arms, or is held against the front of his coat,
so that the animal’s long bushy tail is seen to advantage. There is
usually a red leather collar round its neck, to which is attached some
slender string, but so contrived that the squirrel shall not appear
to be a prisoner, nor in general--although perhaps the hawker became
possessed of his squirrel only that morning--does the animal show any
symptoms of fear.

The chief places in which squirrels are offered for sale, are
Regent-street and the Royal Exchange, but they are offered also in
all the principal thoroughfares--especially at the West End. The
purchasers are gentlefolk, tradespeople, and a few of the working
classes who are fond of animals. The wealthier persons usually buy the
squirrels for their children, and, even after the free life of the
woods, the animal seems happy enough in the revolving cage, in which it
“thinks it climbs.”

The prices charged are from 2_s._ to 5_s._, “or more if it can be got,”
from a third to a half being profit. The sellers will oft enough state,
if questioned, that they caught the squirrels in Epping Forest, or Caen
Wood, or any place sufficiently near London, but such is hardly ever
the case, for the squirrels are bought by them of the dealers in live
animals. Countrymen will sometimes catch a few squirrels and bring them
to London, and nine times out of ten they sell them to the shopkeepers.
To sell three squirrels a day in the street is accounted good work.

I am assured by the best-informed parties that for five months of the
year there are 20 men selling squirrels in the streets, at from 20 to
50 per cent. profit, and that they average a weekly sale of six each.
The average price is from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._, although not very long
ago one man sold a “wonderfully fine squirrel” in the street for three
half-crowns, but they are sometimes parted with for 1_s._ 6_d._ or
less, rather than be kept over-night. Thus 2400 squirrels are vended
yearly in the streets, at a cost to the public of 240_l._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF LEVERETS, WILD RABBITS, ETC.

There are a few leverets, or young hares, sold in the streets, and
they are vended for the most part in the suburbs, where the houses
are somewhat detached, and where there are plenty of gardens. The
softness and gentleness of the leveret’s look pleases children, more
especially girls, I am informed, and it is usually through their
importunity that the young hares are bought, in order that they may be
fed from the garden, and run tame about an out-house. The leverets thus
sold, however, as regards nine out of ten, soon die. They are rarely
supplied with their natural food, and all their natural habits are
interrupted. They are in constant fear and danger, moreover, from both
dogs and cats. One shopkeeper who sold fancy rabbits in a street off
the Westminster-road told me that he had once tried to tame and rear
leverets in hutches, as he did rabbits, but to no purpose. He had no
doubt it might be done, he said, but not in a shop or a small house.
Three or four leverets are hawked by the street-people in one basket
and are seen lying on hay, the basket having either a wide-worked lid,
or a net thrown over it. The hawkers of live poultry sell the most
leverets, but they are vended also by the singing-bird sellers. The
animals are nearly all bought, for this traffic, at Leadenhall, and are
retailed at 1_s._ to 2_s._ each, one-third to one-half being profit.
Perhaps 300 are sold this way yearly, producing 22_l._ 10_s._

About 400 young wild rabbits are sold in the street in a similar way,
but at lower sums, from 3_d._ to 6_d._ each, 4_d._ being the most
frequent rate. The yearly outlay is thus 6_l._ 13_s._ They thrive, in
confinement, no better than the leverets.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GOLD AND SILVER FISH.

Of these dealers, residents in London, there are about 70; but during
my inquiry (at the beginning of July) there were not 20 in town. One of
their body knew of ten who were at work live-fish selling, and there
might be as many more, he thought, “working” the remoter suburbs of
Blackheath, Croydon, Richmond, Twickenham, Isleworth, or wherever there
are villa residences of the wealthy. This is the season when the gold
and silver fish-sellers, who are altogether a distinct class from the
bird-sellers of the streets, resort to the country, to vend their glass
globes, with the glittering fish swimming ceaselessly round and round.
The gold fish-hawkers are, for the most part, of the very best class of
the street-sellers. One of the principal fish-sellers is in winter a
street-vendor of cough drops, hore-hound candy, coltsfoot-sticks, and
other medicinal confectionaries, which he himself manufactures. Another
leading gold-fish seller is a costermonger now “on pine-apples.” A
third, “with a good connection among the innkeepers,” is in the autumn
and winter a hawker of game and poultry.

There are in London three wholesale dealers in gold and silver
fish; two of whom--one in the Kingsland-road and the other close by
Billingsgate--supply more especially the street-sellers, and the
street-traffic is considerable. Gold fish is one of the things which
people buy when brought to their doors, but which they seldom care to
“order.” The importunity of children when a man unexpectedly tempts
them with a display of such brilliant creatures as gold fish, is
another great promotive of the street-trade; and the street-traders are
the best customers of the wholesale purveyors, buying somewhere about
three-fourths of their whole stock. The dealers keep their fish in
tanks suited to the purpose, but goldfish are never bred in London. The
English-reared gold fish are “raised” for the most part, as respects
the London market, in several places in Essex. In some parts they are
bred in warm ponds, the water being heated by the steam from adjacent
machinery, and in some places they are found to thrive well. Some are
imported from France, Holland, and Belgium; some are brought from the
Indies, and are usually sold to the dealers to improve their breed,
which every now and then, I was told, “required a foreign mixture,
or they didn’t keep up their colour.” The Indian and foreign fish,
however, are also sold in the streets; the dealers, or rather the
Essex breeders, who are often in London, have “just the pick of them,”
usually through the agency of their town customers. The English-reared
gold fish are not much short of three-fourths of the whole supply, as
the importation of these fishes is troublesome; and unless they are
sent under the care of a competent person, or unless the master or
steward of a vessel is made to incur a share in the venture, by being
paid so much freight-money for as many gold and silver fishes as are
landed in good health, and nothing for the dead or dying, it is very
hazardous sending them on shipboard at all, as in case of neglect they
may all die during the voyage.

The gold and silver fish are of the carp species, and are natives of
China, but they were first introduced into this country from Portugal
about 1690. Some are still brought from Portugal. They have been common
in England for about 120 years.

These fish are known in the street-trade as “globe” and “pond” fish.
The distinction is not one of species, nor even of the “variety” of a
species, but merely a distinction of size. The larger fish are “pond;”
the smaller, “globe.” But the difference on which the street-sellers
principally dwell is that the pond fish are far more troublesome to
keep by them in a “slack time,” as they must be fed and tended most
sedulously. Their food is stale bread or biscuit. The “globe” fish
are not fed at all by the street-dealer, as the animalcules and the
minute insects in the water suffice for their food. Soft, rain, or
sometimes Thames water, is used for the filling of the globe containing
a street-seller’s gold fish, the water being changed twice a day, at a
public-house or elsewhere, when the hawker is on a round. Spring-water
is usually rejected, as the soft water contains “more feed.” One man,
however, told me he had recourse to the street-pumps for a renewal
of water, twice, or occasionally thrice a day, when the weather was
sultry; but spring or well water “wouldn’t do at all.” He was quite
unconscious that he was using it from the pump.

The wholesale price of these fish ranges from 5_s._ to 18_s._ per
dozen, with a higher charge for “picked fish,” when high prices must
be paid. The cost of “large silvers,” for instance, which are scarcer
than “large golds,” so I heard them called, is sometimes 5_s._ apiece,
even to a retailer, and rarely less than 3_s._ 6_d._ The most frequent
price, retail from the hawker--for almost all the fish are hawked, but
only there, I presume, for a temporary purpose--is 2_s._ the pair. The
gold fish are now always hawked in glass globes, containing about a
dozen occupants, within a diameter of twelve inches. These globes are
sold by the hawker, or, if ordered, supplied by him on his next round
that way, the price being about 2_s._ Glass globes, for the display
of gold fish, are indeed manufactured at from 6_d._ to 1_l._ 10_s._
each, but 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ is the usual limit to the price of
those vended in the street. The fish are lifted out of the water in
the globe to consign to a purchaser, by being caught in a neat net,
of fine and different-coloured cordage, always carried by the hawker,
and manufactured for the trade at 2_s._ the dozen. Neat handles for
these nets, of stained or plain wood, are 1_s._ the dozen. The dealers
avoid touching the fish with their hands. Both gold fish and glass
globes are much cheaper than they were ten years ago; the globes are
cheaper, of course, since the alteration in the tax on glass, and the
street-sellers are, numerically, nearly double what they were.

From a well-looking and well-spoken youth of 21 or 22, I had the
following account. He was the son, and grandson, of costermongers, but
was--perhaps, in consequence of his gold-fish selling lying among a
class not usually the costermongers’ customers--of more refined manners
than the generality of the costers’ children.

“I’ve been in the streets, sir,” he said, “helping my father, until I
was old enough to sell on my own account, since I was six years old.
_Yes, I like a street life, I’ll tell you the plain truth, for I was
put by my father to a paperstainer, and found I couldn’t bear to stay
in doors. It would have killed me._ Gold fish are as good a thing to
sell as anything else, perhaps, but I’ve been a costermonger as well,
and have sold both fruit and good fish--salmon and fine soles. Gold
fish are not good for eating. I tried one once, just out of curiosity,
and it tasted very bitter indeed; I tasted it boiled. I’ve worked both
town and country on gold fish. I’ve served both Brighton and Hastings.
The fish were sent to me by rail, in vessels with air-holes, when I
wanted more. I never stopped at lodging-houses, but at respectable
public-houses, where I could be well suited in the care of my fish.
It’s an expense, but there’s no help for it.” [A costermonger, when
I questioned him on the subject, told me that he had sometimes sold
gold fish in the country, and though he had often enough slept in
common lodging-houses, he never could carry his fish there, for he
felt satisfied, although he had never tested the fact, that in nine
out of ten such places, the fish, in the summer season, would half of
them die during the night from the foul air.] “Gold fish sell better
in the country than town,” the street-dealer continued; “much better.
They’re more thought of in the country. My father’s sold them all over
the world, as the saying is. I’ve sold both foreign and English fish. I
prefer English. They’re the hardiest; Essex fish. The foreign--I don’t
just know what part--are bred in milk ponds; kept fresh and sweet,
of course; and when they’re brought here, and come to be put in cold
water, they soon die. In Essex they’re bred in cold water. They live
about three years; that’s their lifetime if they’re properly seen to. I
don’t know what kind of fish gold fish are. I’ve heard that they first
came from China. No, I can’t read, and I’m very sorry for it. If I have
time next winter I’ll get taught. Gentlemen sometimes ask me to sit
down, and talk to me about fish, and their history (natural history),
and I’m often at a loss, which I mightn’t be if I could read. If I
have fish left after my day’s work, I never let them stay in the globe
I’ve hawked them in, but put them into a large pan, a tub sometimes,
three-parts full of water, where they have room. My customers are
ladies and gentlemen, but I have sold to shopkeepers, such as
buttermen, that often show gold fish and flowers in their shops. The
fish don’t live long in the very small globes, but they’re put in them
sometimes just to satisfy children. I’ve sold as many as two dozen at
a time to stock a pond in a gentleman’s garden. It’s the best sale a
little way out of town, in any direction. I sell six dozen a week, I
think, one week with another; they’ll run as to price at 1_s._ apiece.
That six dozen includes what I sell both in town and country. Perhaps I
sell them nearly three-parts of the year. Some hawk all the year, but
it’s a poor winter trade. Yes, I make a very fair living; 2_s._ 6_d._
or 3_s._ or so, a day, perhaps, on gold fish, when the weather suits.”

A man, to whom I was referred as an experienced gold fish-seller,
had just returned, when I saw him, from the sale of a stock of new
potatoes, peas, &c., which he “worked” in a donkey cart. He had not
this season, he said, started in the gold-fish line, and did very
little last year in it, as his costermongering trade kept steady, but
his wife thought gold fish-selling was a better trade, and she always
accompanied him in his street rounds; so he might take to it again. In
his youth he was in the service of an old lady who had several pets,
and among them were gold fish, of which she was very proud, always
endeavouring to procure the finest, a street-seller being sure of her
as a customer if he had fish larger or deeper or brighter-coloured than
usual. She kept them both in stone cisterns, or small ponds, in her
garden, and in glass globes in the house. Of these fish my informant
had the care, and was often commended for his good management of them.
After his mistress’s death he was very unlucky, he said, in his places.
His last master having been implicated, he believed, in some gambling
and bill-discounting transactions, left the kingdom suddenly, and my
informant was without a character, for the master he served previously
to the one who went off so abruptly was dead, and a character two
years back was of no use, for people said, “But where have you been
living since? Let me know all about that.” The man did not know what to
do, for his money was soon exhausted: “I had nothing left,” he said,
“which I could turn into money except a very good great coat, which had
belonged to my last master, and which was given to me because he went
off without paying me my wages. I thought of ’listing, for I was tired
of a footman’s life, _almost always in the house in such places as I
had_, but I was too old, I feared, and if I could have got over that
I knew I should be rejected because I was getting bald. I was sitting
thinking whatever could be done--I wasn’t married then--and had nobody
to consult with; when I heard the very man as used to serve my old
lady crying gold fish in the street. It struck me all of a heap, and I
wonder I hadn’t thought of it before, when I recollected how well I’d
managed the fish, that I’d sell gold fish too, and hawk it as he did,
as it didn’t seem such a bad trade. So I asked the man all about it,
and he told me, and I raised a sovereign on my great coat, and that was
my start in the streets. I was nervous, and a little ’shamed at first,
but I soon got over that, and in time turned my hand to fruit and other
things. Gold fish saved my life, sir; I do believe that, for I might
have pined into a consumption if I’d been without something to do, and
something to eat much longer.”

If we calculate, in order to allow for the cessation of the trade
during the winter, and often in the summer when costermongering is
at its best, that but half the above-mentioned number of gold-fish
sellers hawk in the streets and that for but half a year, each selling
six dozen weekly at 12_s._ the dozen, we find 65,520 fish sold, at
an outlay of 3276_l._ As the country is also “worked” by the London
street-sellers, and the supply is derived from London, the number and
amount may be doubled to include this traffic, or 131,040 fish sold,
and 6552_l._ expended.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF TORTOISES.

The number of tortoises sold in the streets of London is far greater
than might be imagined, for it is a creature of no utility, and one
which is inanimate in this country for half its life.

Of live tortoises, there are 20,000 annually imported from the port of
Mogadore in Morocco. They are not brought over, as are the parrots,
&c., of which I have spoken, for amusement or as private ventures of
the seamen, but are regularly consigned from Jewish houses in Mogadore,
to Jewish merchants in London. They are a freight of which little care
is taken, as they are brought over principally as ballast in the ship’s
hold, where they remain torpid.

The street-sellers of tortoises are costermongers of the smarter
class. Sometimes the vendors of shells and foreign birds “work” also
a few tortoises, and occasionally a wholesale dealer (the consignee
of the Jewish house in Africa) will send out his own servants to sell
barrow-loads of tortoises in the street on his own account. They are
regularly ranged on the barrows, and certainly present a curious
appearance--half-alive creatures as they are (when the weather is not
of the warmest), brought from another continent for sale by thousands
in the streets of London, and retention in the gardens and grounds of
our civic villas. Of the number imported, one-half, or 10,000, are
yearly sold in the streets by the several open-air dealers I have
mentioned. The wholesale price is from 4_s._ to 6_s._ the dozen; they
are retailed from 6_d._ to 1_s._, a very fine well-grown tortoise being
sometimes worth 2_s._ 6_d._ The mass, however, are sold at 6_d._ to
9_d._ each, but many fetch 1_s._ They are bought for children, and
to keep in gardens as I have said, and when properly fed on lettuce
leaves, spinach, and similar vegetables, or on white bread sopped in
water, will live a long time. If the tortoise be neglected in a garden,
and have no access to his favourite food, he will eat almost any
green thing which comes in his way, and so may commit ravages. During
the winter, and the later autumn and earlier spring, the tortoise is
torpid, and may be kept in a drawer or any recess, until the approach
of summer “thaws” him, as I heard it called.

Calculating the average price of tortoises in street-sale at 8_d._
each, we find upwards of 333_l._ thus expended yearly.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SNAILS, FROGS, WORMS, SNAKES, HEDGEHOGS, ETC.

I class together these several kinds of live creatures, as they are
all “gathered” and sold by the same persons--principally by the men
who supply bird-food, of whom I have given accounts in my statements
concerning groundsel, chickweed, plaintain, and turf-selling.

The principal _snail-sellers_, however, are the turf-cutters, who are
young and active men, while the groundsel-sellers are often old and
infirm and incapable of working all night, as the necessities of the
snail-trade often require. Of turf-cutters there were, at the time of
my inquiry last winter, 42 in London, and of these full one-third are
regular purveyors of snails, such being the daintier diet of the caged
blackbirds and thrushes. These men obtain their supply of snails in the
market-gardens, the proprietors willingly granting leave to any known
or duly recommended person who will rid them of these depredators.
Seven-eighths of the quantity gathered are sold to the bird-dealers, to
whom the price is 2_d._ a quart. The other eighth is sold on a street
round at from 3_d._ to 6_d._ the quart. A quart contains at least 80
snails, not heaped up, their shells being measured along with them. One
man told me there were “100 snails to a fair quart.”

When it is moonlight at this season of the year, the snail gatherers
sometimes work all night; at other times from an hour before sunset to
the decline of daylight, the work being resumed at the dawn. To gather
12 quarts in a night, or a long evening and morning, is accounted a
prosperous harvest. Half that quantity is “pretty tidy.” An experienced
man said to me:--

“The best snail grounds, sir, you may take my word for it, is in Putney
and Barnes. It’s the ‘greys’ we go for, the fellows with the shells
on ’em; the black snails or slugs is no good to us. I think snails is
the slowest got money of any. I don’t suppose they get’s scarcer, but
there’s good seasons for snails and there’s bad. Warm and wet is best.
We don’t take the little ’uns. They come next year. I may make 1_l._ a
year, or a little more, in snails. In winter there’s hardly anything
done in them, and the snails is on the ground; in summer they’re on the
walls or leaves. They’ll keep six months without injury; they’ll keep
the winter round indeed in a proper place.”

I am informed that the 14 snail gatherers on the average gather six
dozen quarts each in a year, which supplies a total of 12,096 quarts,
or individually, 1,189,440 snails. The labourers in the gardens, I am
informed, may gather somewhat more than an equal quantity,--all being
sold to the bird-shops; so that altogether the supply of snails for the
caged thrushes and blackbirds of London is about two millions and a
half. Computing them at 24,000 quarts, and only at 2_d._ a quart, the
outlay is 200_l._ per annum.

The _Frogs_ sold by street-people are, at the rate of about 36 dozen
a year, disposed of in equal proportion to University and King’s
Colleges. Only two men collect the frogs, one for each hospital.
They are charged 1_d._ each:--“I’ve sometimes,” said one of the
frog-purveyors, “come on a place where I could have got six or seven
dozen in a day, but that’s mostly been when I didn’t want them. At
other times I’ve gone days without collaring a single frog. I only want
them four times a year, and four or five dozen at a time. The low part
of Hampstead’s the best ground for them, I think. The doctors like
big fellows. They keep them in water ’til they’re wanted to dissect.”
One man thought that there might be 50 more frogs or upwards ordered
yearly, through the bird-shops, for experiments under air-pumps, &c.
This gives about 500 frogs sold yearly by the street-people. One year,
however, I was told, the supply was larger, for a Camberwell gentleman
ordered 40 frogs to stock a watery place at the foot of his garden, as
he liked to hear and see them.

The _Toad_ trade is almost a nonentity. One man, who was confident
he had as good a trade in that line as any of his fellows, told me
that last year he only supplied one toad; in one year, he forgot the
precise time, he collected ten. He was confident that from 12 to 24 a
year was now the extent of the toad trade, perhaps 20. There was no
regular price, and the men only “work to order.” “It’s just what the
shopkeeper, mostly a herbalist, likes to give.” I was told, from 1_d._
to 6_d._ according to size. “I don’t know what they’re wanted for,
something about the doctors, I believe. But if you want any toads, sir,
for anything, I know a place between Hampstead and Willesden, where
there’s real stunners.”

_Worms_ are collected in small quantities by the street-sellers, and
very grudgingly, for they are to be supplied gratuitously to the
shopkeepers who are the customers of the turf-cutters, and snail and
worm collectors. “They expects it as a parquisite, like.” One man told
me that they only gathered ground worms for the bird-fanciers.

Of the _Snakes_ and _Hedgehogs_ I have already spoken, when treating of
the collection of birds’-nests. I am told that some few _glow-worms_
are collected.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MINERAL PRODUCTIONS AND NATURAL CURIOSITIES.

The class of which I have now to treat, including as it does the
street-sellers of coal, coke, tan-turf, salt, and sand, seem to have
been called into existence principally by the necessities of the
poorer classes. As the earnings of thousands of men, in all the slop,
“slaughter-house,” or “scamping” branches of tailoring, shoe-making,
cabinet-making, joining, &c. have become lower and lower, they are
compelled to purchase the indispensable articles of daily consumption
in the smallest quantities, and at irregular times, just as the
money is in their possession. This is more especially the case as
regards chamber-masters and garret-masters (among the shoemakers)
and cabinet-makers, who, as they are small masters, and working on
their own account, have not even such a regularity of payment as the
journeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor artizans, moreover,
the wife must slave with the husband, and it is often an object with
them to save the time lost in going out to the chandler’s-shop or the
coal-shed, to have such things as coal, and coke brought to their very
doors, and vended in the smallest quantities. It is the same with the
women who work for the slop-shirt merchants, &c., or make cap-fronts,
&c., on their own account, for the supply of the shopkeepers, or the
wholesale swag-men, who sell low-priced millinery. The street-sellers
of the class I have now to notice are, then, the principal purveyors of
the very poor.

The men engaged in the street-sale of coal and coke--the chief articles
of this branch of the street-sale--are of the costermonger class,
as, indeed, is usually the case where an exercise of bodily strength
is requisite. Costermongers, too, are better versed than any other
street-folk in the management of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or
horses, so that when these vehicles and these animals are a necessary
part of any open-air business, it will generally be found in the hands
of the coster class.

Nor is this branch of the street-traffic confined solely to articles of
necessity. Under my present enumeration will be found the street-sale
of _shells_, an ornament of the mantel-piece above the fire-grate to
which coal is a necessity.

The present division will complete the subject of Street _Sale_ in the
metropolis.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF COALS.

According to the returns of the coal market for the last few years,
there has been imported into London, on an average, 3,500,000 tons
of sea-borne coal annually. Besides this immense supply, the various
railways have lately poured in a continuous stream of the same
commodity from the inland districts, which has found a ready sale
without sensibly affecting the accustomed vend of the north country
coals, long established on the Coal Exchange.

To the very poor the importance of coal can be scarcely estimated.
Physiological and medical writers tell us that carbonaceous food is
that which produces heat in the body, and is therefore the fuel of the
system. Experience tells us that this is true; for who that has had
an opportunity of visiting the habitations of the poor--the dwellers
in ill-furnished rooms and garrets--has not remarked the more than
half-starved slop needle-woman, the wretched half-naked children of the
casually employed labourer, as the dock-man, or those whose earnings
are extorted from them by their employers, such as the ballast-man,
sitting crouched around the smouldering embers in the place where the
fire ought to be? The reason of this is, because the system of the
sufferer by long want of food has been deprived of the necessary
internal heat, and so seeks instinctively to supply the deficiency by
imbibing it from some outward source. It is on this account chiefly,
I believe, that I have found the ill-paid and ill-fed workpeople
prize warmth almost more than food. Among the poorest Irish, I have
invariably found them crowding round the wretched fire when they had
nothing to eat.

The census returns of the present year (according to the accounts
published in the newspapers) estimate the number of the inhabitants of
London at 2,363,141, and the number of inhabited houses as 307,722.
Now if we take into consideration that in the immense suburbs of
the metropolis, there are branching off from almost every street,
labyrinths of courts and alleys, teeming with human beings, and that
almost every room has its separate family--for it takes a multitude of
poor to make one rich man--we may be able to arrive at the conclusion
that by far the greater proportion of coals brought into London are
consumed by the poorer classes. It is on this account of the highest
importance, that honesty should be the characteristic of those engaged
in the vend and distribution of an article so necessary not only to the
comfort but to the very existence of the great masses of the population.

The modes in which the coals imported into London are distributed to
the various classes of consumers are worthy of observation, as they
unmistakably exhibit not only the wealth of the few, but the poverty
of the many. The inhabitants of Belgravia, the wealthy shopkeepers,
and many others periodically see at their doors the well-loaded waggon
of the coal merchant, with two or three swarthy “coal-porters” bending
beneath the black heavy sacks, in the act of laying in the 10 or 20
tons for yearly or half-yearly consumption. But this class is supplied
from a very different quarter from that of the artizans, labourers, and
many others, who, being unable to spare money sufficient to lay in at
once a ton or two of coals, must have recourse to other means. To meet
their limited resources, there may be found in every part, always in
back streets, persons known as coal-shed men, who get the coals from
the merchant in 7, 14, or 20 tons at a time, and retail them from 1/4
cwt. upwards. The coal-shed men are a very numerous class, for there is
not a low neighbourhood in any part of the city which contains not two
or three of them in every street.

There is yet another class of purchasers of coals, however, which I
have called the ‘very poor,’--the inhabitants of two pairs back--the
dwellers in garrets, &c. It seems to have been for the purpose of
meeting the wants of this class that the street-sellers of coals have
sprung into existence. Those who know nothing of the decent pride which
often lingers among the famishing poor, can scarcely be expected to
comprehend the great boon that the street-sellers of coals, if they
could only be made honest and conscientious dealers, are calculated
to confer on these people. “I have seen,” says a correspondent, “the
starveling child of misery, in the gloom of the evening, steal timidly
into the shop of the coal-shed man, and in a tremulous voice ask, as if
begging a great favour, for _seven pound of coals_. The coal-shed man
has set down his pint of beer, taken the pipe from his mouth, blowing
after it a cloud of smoke, and in a gruff voice, at which the little
wretch has shrunk up (if it were possible) into a less space than
famine had already reduced her to, and demanded--‘Who told you as how
I sarves seven pound o’ coal?--Go to Bill C---- he may sarve you if he
likes--I won’t, and that’s an end on ’t--I wonders what people wants
with seven pound o’ coal.’ The coal-shed man, after delivering himself
of this enlightened observation, has placidly resumed his pipe, while
the poor child, gliding out into the drizzling sleet, disappeared in
the darkness.”

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. The police
reports of the last year show that many of the coal merchants, standing
high in the estimation of the world, have been heavily fined for using
false weights; and, did the present inquiry admit of it, there might
be mentioned many other infamous practices by which the public are
shamefully plundered in this commodity, and which go far to prove
that the coal trade, _in toto_, is a gigantic fraud. May I ask how it
is possible for the street-sellers, with such examples of barefaced
dishonesty before their eyes, even to dream of acting honestly? If
not actually certain, yet strongly suspecting, that they themselves
are defrauded by the merchant, how can it be otherwise than that they
should resort to every possible mode of defrauding their customers, and
so add to the already almost unendurable burdens of the poorest of the
poor, who by one means or other are made to bear all the burdens of the
country?

The usual quantity of coals consumed in the poorest rooms, in which
a family resides, is 1/2 cwt. per week in summer, and 1 cwt. do. in
winter, or about 2 tons per annum.

The street sale of coals was carried on to a considerable extent during
the earlier part of the last century, “small coalmen” being among the
regular street-traders. The best known of these was Tom Britton, who
died through fright occasioned by a practical joke. He was a great
fosterer of a taste for music among the people; for, after hawking his
coals during the day, he had a musical gathering in his humble abode
in the evening, to which many distinguished persons resorted. This is
alluded to in the lines, by Hughes, under Tom Britton’s portrait, and
the allusion, according to the poetic fashion of the time being made by
means of a strained classicality:--

    “Cyllenius so, as fables tell, and Jove,
    Came willing guests to poor Philemon’s grove.”

The trade seems to have disappeared gradually, but has recently been
revived in another form.

Some few years ago an ingenious and enterprising costermonger, during
a “slack” in his own business, conceived the idea of purchasing some
of the refuse of the coals at the wharfs, conveying them round the
poorer localities of his beat, in his ass- or pony-cart, and vending
them to “room-keepers” and others, in small quantities and at a reduced
rate, so as to undersell the coal-shed men, while making for himself a
considerable profit. The example was not lost upon his fraternity, and
no long time had elapsed before many others had started in the same
line; this eventually took so much custom from the regular coal-shed
men, that, as a matter of self-defence, those among them who had a
horse and cart, found it necessary to compete with the originators of
the system in their own way, and, being possessed of more ample means,
they succeeded, in a great measure, in driving the costers out of the
field. The success of the coal-shed men was for a time so well followed
up, that they began by degrees to edge away from the lanes and alleys,
extending their excursions into quarters somewhat more aristocratic,
and even there establishing a trade amongst those who had previously
taken their ton or half ton of coals from the “brass-plate merchant,”
as he is called in the trade, being a person who merely procures orders
for coals, gets some merchant who buys in the coal market to execute
them in his name, and manages to make a living by the profits of these
transactions. Some of this latter class consequently found themselves
compelled to adopt a mode of doing their business somewhat similar, and
for that purpose hired vans from the proprietors of those vehicles,
loaded them with sacks of coals, drove round among their customers,
prepared to furnish them with sacks or half sacks, as they felt
disposed. Finally, many of the van proprietors themselves, finding that
business might be done in this way, started in the line, and, being in
general men of some means, established it as a regular trade. The van
proprietors at the present time do the greater part of the business,
but there may occasionally be seen, employed in this traffic, all sorts
of conveyances, from the donkey-cart of the costermonger, or dock
labourer, the latter of whom endeavours to make up for the miserable
pittance he can earn at the rate of fourpence per hour, by the profits
of this calling, to the aristocratic van, drawn along by two plump,
well-fed horses, the property of a man worth 800_l._ or 900_l._