A History of the Cries of London Part 36

FINE HAMPSHIRE RABBITS.

Here I am with my rabbits Hanging on my pole, The finest Hampshire rabbits That e'er crept from a hole.

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HEARTHSTONE! HEARTHSTONE.

Hearthstones my pretty maids, I sell them four a penny, Hearthstones, come buy of me, As long as I have any.

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DUST OH! DUST OH!

Dust or ash this chap calls out, With all his might and main, He's got a mighty cinder heap Somewhere near Gray's Inn Lane.

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BUY A BONNET BOX OR CAP BOX

Bonnet boxes and cap boxes, The best that e'er was seen, They are so very nicely made, They'll keep your things so clean.

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ALL A GROWING AND A BLOWING.

Now ladies here's roots for your gardens, Come buy some of me if you please, There's tulips, heart's-ease, and roses, Sweet Williams, and sweet peas.

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ANY OLD POTS OR KETTLES TO MEND?

Any old pots or kettles, Or any old bra.s.s to mend Come my pretty maids all, To me your aid must lend.

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ANY OLD CHAIRS TO MEND?

Any old chairs to mend?

Any old chairs to seat?

I'll make them quite as good as new, And make them look so neat.

THE LONDON STREET-MARKETS ON A SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT.

Mr. Henry Mayhew has painted a minute yet vivid picture of the London street markets, street sellers and purchasers which are to be seen in the greatest number on a Sat.u.r.day night:--

"Here, and in the streets immediately adjoining, the working cla.s.ses generally purchase their Sunday's dinner; and after pay-time on Sat.u.r.day night, or early on Sunday morning, the crowd in the New-cut, and the Brill in particular, is almost impa.s.sable. Indeed, the scene in these parts has more the character of a fair than a market. There are hundreds of stalls, and every stall has its one or two lights; either it is illuminated by the intense white light of the new self-generating gas-lamp, or else it is brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-fashioned grease-lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddock with a candle stuck in a bundle of firewood; his neighbour makes a candlestick of a huge turnip, and the tallow gutters over its sides; whilst the boy shouting "Eight a penny, stunning pears!" has rolled his dip in a thick coat of brown paper, that flares away with the candle. Some stalls are crimson with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chesnut stove; others have handsome octohedral lamps, while a few have a candle shining through a sieve; these, with the sparkling ground-gla.s.s globes of the tea-dealers' shops, and the butchers' gaslights streaming and fluttering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour forth such a flood of light, that at a distance the atmosphere immediately above the spot is as lurid as if the street were on fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET-MARKET ON SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT.]

The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers.

The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hands, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. "So-old again," roars one. "Chesnuts, all'ot, a penny a score," bawls another. "An 'aypenny a skin, blacking," squeaks a boy.

"Buy, buy, buy, buy,--bu-u-uy!" cries the butcher. "Half-quire of paper for a penny," bellows the street-stationer. "An 'apenny a lot ing-uns."

"Twopence a pound, grapes." "Three a penny! Yarmouth bloaters." "Who'll buy a bonnet for fourpence?" "Pick 'em out cheap here! three pair for a-halfpenny, bootlaces." "Now's your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot." "Here's ha'p'orths," shouts the perambulating confectioner. "Come and look at'em! here's toasters!" bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a toasting fork. "Penny a lot, fine russets," calls the apple woman: and so the Babel goes on.

One man stands with his red-edge mats hanging over his back and chest, like a herald's coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts lifts her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as she screams, "Fine warnuts! sixteen a penny, fine war-r-nuts." A bootmaker, to "ensure custom," has illuminated his front-shop with a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only "the whites,"

and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him. The boy's sharp cry, the woman's cracked voice, the gruff, hoa.r.s.e shout of the man, are all mingled together. Sometimes an Irishman is heard with his "fine ating apples," or else the jingling music of an unseen organ breaks out, as the trio of street singers rest between the verses.

Then the sights, as you elbow your way through the crowd are equally multifarious. Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white gla.s.s. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along the pavement; now to a stand of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with red handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts, fluttering backwards and forwards, and a counter built up outside on the kerb, behind which are boys beseeching custom. At the door of a tea-shop, with its hundred white globes of light, stands a man delivering bills, thanking the public for past favours, and "defying compet.i.tion." Here, along side the road, are some half-dozen headless tailors' dummies, dressed in Chesterfields and fustian jackets, each labelled:--"Look at the prices," or "Observe the quality." After this a butcher's shop, crimson and white with meat piled up to the first-floor, in front of all the butcher himself, in his blue coat, walks up and down, sharpening his knife on the steel that hangs to his waist. A little further on stands the clean family, begging; the father with his head down as if in shame, and a box of lucifers held forth in his hand--the boys in newly-washed pinafores, and the tidyly got up mother with a child at her breast. This stall is green and white with bunches of turnips--that red with apples, the next yellow with onions, and another purple with pickling cabbages. One minute you pa.s.s a man with an umbrella turned inside up and full of prints; the next, you hear one with a peepshow of Mazeppa, and Paul Jones the pirate, describing the pictures to the boys looking in at the little round windows. Then is heard the sharp snap of the purcussion-cap from the crowd of lads firing at the target for nuts; and the moment afterwards, you see either a black man half-clad in white, and shivering in the cold with tracts in his hand, or else you hear the sounds of music from "Frazier's Circus," on the other side of the road, and the man outside the door of the penny concert, beseeching you to "Be in time--be in time!" as Mr. Somebody is just about to sing his favourite song of the "Knife Grinder." Such, indeed, is the riot, the struggle, and the scramble for a living, that the confusion and the uproar of the New-cut on Sat.u.r.day night have a bewildering and sad effect upon the thoughtful mind.

Each salesman tries his utmost to sell his wares, tempting the pa.s.sers-by with his bargains. The boy with his stock of herbs offers "a double 'andful of fine parsley for a penny;" the man with the donkey-cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him to their utmost, with their "Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of us here? A penny a bunch--hurrah for free trade! _Here's_ your turnips!" Until it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the scramble that is going on throughout London for a living. The same scene takes place at the Brill--the same in Leather-lane--the same in Tottenham-court-road--the same in Whitecross-street; go to whatever corner of the metropolis you please, either on a Sat.u.r.day night or a Sunday morning, and there is the same shouting and the same struggling to get the penny profit out of the poor man's Sunday's dinner.

Since the above description was written, the New Cut has lost much of its noisy and brilliant glory. In consequence of a New Police regulation, "stands" or "pitches" have been forbidden, and each coster, on a market night, is now obliged, under pain of the lock-up house, to carry his tray, or keep moving with his barrow. The gay stalls have been replaced by deal boards, some sodden with wet fish, others stained purple with blackberries, or brown with walnut peel; and the bright lamps are almost totally superseded by the dim, guttering candle. Even if the pole under the tray or "shallow" is seen resting on the ground, the policeman on duty is obliged to interfere.

The mob of purchasers has diminished one-half; and instead of the road being filled with customers and trucks, the pavement and kerbstones are scarcely crowded.

THE SUNDAY MORNING MARKETS.

Nearly every poor man's market does its Sunday trade. For a few hours on the Sabbath morning, the noise, bustle, and scramble of the Sat.u.r.day night are repeated, and but for this opportunity many a poor family would pa.s.s a dinnerless Sunday. The system of paying the mechanic late on the Sat.u.r.day night--and more particularly of paying a man his wages in a public-house--when he is tired with his day's work, lures him to the tavern, and there the hours fly quickly enough beside the warm tap-room fire, so that by the time the wife comes for her husband's wages, she finds a large portion of them gone in drink and the streets half cleared, thus the Sunday market is the only chance of getting the Sunday's dinner.

Of all these Sunday morning markets, the Brill, perhaps, furnishes the busiest scene; so that it may be taken as a type of the whole.

The streets in the neighbourhood are quiet and empty. The shops are closed with their different coloured shutters, and the people round about are dressed in the shiny cloth of the holiday suit. There are no "cabs," and but few omnibuses to disturb the rest, and men walk in the road as safely as on the footpath.

As you enter the Brill the market sounds are scarcely heard. But at each step the low hum grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until at last the different cries become distinct, and the hubbub, din, and confusion of a thousand voices bellowing at once, again fill the air. The road and footpath are crowded, as on the over-night; the men are standing in groups, smoking and talking; whilst the women run to and fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled ap.r.o.ns, others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat dangling from their hands. Only a few of the shops are closed; but the butcher's and the coal shed are filled with customers, and from the door of the shut-up baker's, the women come streaming forth with bags of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber's, smoothing their clean-shaved chins.

Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions, braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and corn-plasters, are all bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with their pet terriers under their arms. The pavement is green with the refuse leaves of vegetables, and round a cabbage-barrow the women stand turning over the bunches, as the man shouts "Where you like, only a penny." Boys are running home with the breakfast herring held in a piece of paper, and the side-pocket of an apple man's stuff coat hangs down with the weight of halfpence stored within it. Presently the tolling of the neighbouring church bells break forth. Then the bustle doubles itself, the cries grow louder, the confusion greater. Women run about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers, for in half-an-hour the market will close. In a little time the butcher puts up his shutters, and leaves the door still open; the policemen in their clean gloves come round and drive the street-sellers before them, and as the clock strikes eleven the market finishes, and the Sunday's rest begins."

As it was in the beginning of our book and in the days of Queen Elizabeth:--

"When the City shopkeepers railed against itinerant traders of every denomination, and the Common Council declared that in ancient times the open streets and lanes had been used, and ought to be used only, as the common highway, and not for the hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to stand and sell their wares in"--

so it is now, in the Victorian age, and ever will be a very vexed question, and thinking representative men of varied social positions materially differ in opinion; some contending that the question is not of cla.s.s interest but that of the interest of the public at large; some argue in an effective but perfectly legal and orderly manner for the removal of what they term a greivous nuisance; others ask that an industrious and useful cla.s.s of men and women should be allowed their honest calling. They protest against the enforcement of an almost obsolete statute which conduces to the waste of fruit, fish, and vegetables, in London and large towns, which practically maintains a trade monopoly, and discourages an abundant supply. They claim for the public a right to buy in the cheapest market, and plead for a liberty which is enjoyed unmolested in many parts of the kingdom, and protest against a remnant of protectionist restriction being put into force against street-hawking.

By the side of this temperate reasoning, let us place the princ.i.p.al arguments which are so often reiterated by aldermen, deputies, councillors, vestrymen, and others, when "drest in a little brief authority," and come at once to the _gravamen_ of the charge against the hawkers, which we find to consist in the nuisance of the street cries.

London, as a commercial city, has numbers of visitors and residents to whom quiet is of vital importance. The street cries, it is alleged, const.i.tute a nuisance to the public, particularly to numbers of day-time-alone occupants, to whom time and thought is money. It is the same thing repeated with many of the suburban residents, in what is generally known as quiet neighbourhoods. Discounting duly the rhetorical exaggeration, it is to be feared the charge must be admitted. Therefore, the shopkeepers argue, let us put down the hawking of everything and everybody. But this does not follow at all. Not only so, but the proposed remedy is ridiculously inadequate to the occasion. Admit the principle, however, for the sake of argument and let us see whither it will lead us.

At early morn how often are our matutinal slumbers disturbed by a prolonged shriek, as of some unfortunate cat in mortal agony, but which simply signifies that Mr. Skyblue, the milkman, is on his rounds. The milkman, it is evident, must be abolished. People can easily get their breakfast milk at any respectable dairyman's shop, and get it, too, with less danger of an aqueous dilution. After breakfast--to say nothing of German bands and itinerant organ grinders--a gentleman with a barrow wakens the echoes by the announcement of fresh mackerel, salmon, cod, whiting, soles or plaice, with various additional epithets, descriptive of their recent arrival from the sea. The voice is more loud than melodious, the repet.i.tion is frequent, and the effect is the reverse of pleasing to the public ear. Accordingly we must abolish fish hawking: any respectable fishmonger will supply us with better fish without making so much noise over it; and if he charges a higher price it is only the indubitable right of a respectable tradesman and a ratepayer. Then comes on the scene, and determined to have a voice--and a loud one, too, in the morning's hullabaloo, the costermonger--Bill Smith, he declares with stentorian lungs that his cherries, plums, apples, pears, turnips, carrots, cabbages, _cow_c.u.mbers, _sparrow_-gra.s.s, _colly_-flow-ers, _inguns_, _ru-bub_, and _taters_, is, and allus vos rounder, sounder, longer, stronger, heavier, fresher, and ever-so-much cheaper than any shopkeeping greengrocer as ever vos: Why? "Vy? cos he don't keep not no slap-up shop vith all plate-gla.s.s vinders and a 'andsom sixty-five guinea 'oss and trap to take the missus and the kids out on-a-arternoon, nor yet send his sons and darters to a boarding school to larn French, German, Greek, nor playing on the pianoforte." All this may be very true; but Bill Smith, the costermonger, is a noisy vulgar fellow; therefore must be put down. Mrs. Curate, Mrs.

Lawyer, Mrs. Chemist, and Miss Seventy-four must be taught to go to the greengrocer of the district, Mr. Manners, a highly respectable man, a Vestryman and a Churchwarden, who keeps:--

PLATE, WAITERS, AND LINEN FOR HIRE.

N.B.--EVENING PARTIES ATTENDED.

As the morning wears on we have:--"I say!--I say!! Old hats I buy," "Rags or bones," "Hearthstones," "Scissors to grind--pots, pans, kettles or old umbrellas to mend," "Old clo! clo," "Cat or dog's meat," "Old china I mend," "Clothes props," "Any old chairs to mend?" "Any ornaments for your fire stove," "Ripe strawberries," "Any hare skins,"--"rabbit skins," "Pots or pans--jugs or mugs," "I say, Bow! wow! and they are all a-growing and a-blowing--three pots for sixpence," and other regular acquaintances, with the occasional accompaniment of the dustman's bell, conclude the morning's performance, which, altogether is reminiscent of the "Market Chorus" in the opera of _Masaniello_; and if the public quiet is to be protected, our sapient Town Councillors would abolish one and all of these, dustman included. One of the latest innovations upon the peace and happiness of an invalid, an author, or a quiet-loving resident, is the street vendor of coals. "Tyne Main," or "Blow-me-Tight's," Coals! "C-o-a-l-s, _one and tuppence a underd--see'em weighed_." This is the New Cry. Small waggons, attended by a man and a boy, go to our modern railway sidings to be filled or replenished with sacks containing 56 lbs. or 112 lbs. of coals, and then proceed to the different suburban quiet neighbourhoods, where the man and boy commence a kind of one done the other go on duet to the above words, which is enough to drive the strongest trained one crazy. All the great coal merchants seem to have adopted this method of retailing coals, and have thus caused the almost total abolition of coal sheds, and the greengrocer and general dealer to abandon the latter part of his calling.

Our afternoon hours, after the pa.s.sing of the m.u.f.fin bell, are made harmonious by public references to shrimps, fine Yarmouth bloaters, haddocks, periwinkles, boiled whelks, and water_creases_, which are too familiar to need description; and our local governors in their wisdom would bid us no longer be luxurious at our tea, or else go to respectable shops and buy our "little creature comforts." Professing an anxiety to put down street cries, our police persecute one cla.s.s out of a mult.i.tude, and leave all the rest untouched. It is not only an inadequate remedy, but the remedy is sought in the wrong direction. The fact is, that the street noises are an undoubted evil, and in the interests of the public, action should be taken not to put them down, but to regulate them by local bye-laws, leaving the course of trade otherwise free. It is a plan adopted in most of the greater towns which have in any way dealt with the subject.