The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (68 page)

‘to six people’: Clare market: Phillips,
Wild Tribes
, p. 78; street with tripe boiler: George Godwin,
London Shadows: A Glance at the ‘Homes’ of the Thousands
(London, George Routledge, 1854), p. 62.

‘from birth to death’: William Waight: Health of Towns Association,
The Sanitary Condition of the City of London ... with the Sub-Committee’s Reply ...
(London, W. Clowes, 1848), p. 16; St Giles slaughterhouses: [Henry Morley], ‘Life and Death in St Giles’,
Household Words
, 13 and 18 November 1858, p. 526; ‘cattle-driving, cattle-slaughtering’: ‘A Monument to French Folly’, p. 331.

‘sold it wholesale’: [R. H. Horne], ‘The Cattle Road to Ruin’,
Household Words
, 14 and 29 June 1850, pp. 325–30.

‘and fire-wood’: types of lighting: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 9. ‘great jets’: Phillips,
Wild Tribes
, p. 78; ‘primitive tubes’: Sala,
Gaslight and Daylight
, pp. 260–2.

‘
Here’s
your turnips’: St Luke’s: Greenwood,
Unsentimental Journeys
, p. 10; Bethnal Green: Greenwood,
Wilds of London
, p. 32; New Cut: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 9–10.

‘trailing behind’: Wright,
The Great Unwashed
, pp. 208–15.

‘meagre and unwashed’: the women without bags: ‘Rough Sketches of London Life’, ‘II: The Brill’,
Church of England Temperance Magazine
, 2 April 1866, p. 102; church bells: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 11–12; Whitecross market: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 250ff.

‘Saturday-night heads’: barbers: Wright,
Some Habits and Customs of the Working Class
, pp. 219–23;
Nicholas Nickleby
, pp. 780–81, 784.

‘to paper mills’: the Exchange: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 250–56; breaking and turning: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 368–9, vol. 2, pp. 26–7; wholesale market: Mayhew and Binny,
The Criminal Prisons
, p. 40.

‘military suppliers’: admission, and subsidiary markets: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 368–9, vol. 2, pp. 26–7.

‘the cheapest shops’: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 369, vol. 2, p. 35.

‘horses and manure’: smell of Rag Fair: Mayhew and Binny,
The Criminal Prisons
, p. 39; quantities that horses eat: Asa Briggs,
Victorian Things
(Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1990), p. 415; Pickford’s, coal deliveries, and lack of quantifiable data: Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century Horse Sense’, pp. 60–81; footnote on pub names:
from ‘The Signs of the Times’, in Smith,
Little World of London
, pp. 129ff., although it is troubling that there is no information about how, or when, or why, this list was compiled.

‘at a great rate’: this paragraph and the next: Diana Donald, ‘“Beastly Sights”: The Treatment of Animals as a Moral Theme in Representations of London, c.1820–1850’, in Dana Arnold (ed.),
The Metropolis and its Image: Constructing Identities for London, c.1750–1950
(Oxford, Blackwell, 1999), pp. 60–62, Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 181, Mayhew and Binny,
The Criminal Prisons
, p. 20, Wheaton,
Journal of a Residence
, p. 128.

6.
SELLING THE STREETS

‘something outdoors’: number of street sellers: the discrepancy is noted in White,
London in the Nineteenth Century
, p. 198. It is to be expected that this trade, carried out by the very poor, would be difficult for the authorities to quantify, and in any case Mayhew’s statistics are notoriously unreliable (see, among others, Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘Mayhew’s Poor: A Problem of Identity’,
Victorian Studies
, 14 (March 1971), pp. 307–20); one out of every 150: the census gives a population of 2,363,341 in London in 1851.

‘Humrellars to mend’: income: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 54–5; housewives in the rain: Smith,
The Little World of London
, p. 90.; umbrella sellers and repairers: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 68–71.

‘4d a day’: ‘a full market hand’: A. Mayhew,
Paved with Gold
, p. 73; Hackney markets: Greenwood,
Wilds of London
, p. 183; general details of trade, and next paragraph: Greenwood,
Unsentimental Journeys
, pp. 118ff.

‘lettuces and onions’: number of stalls: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 6; costers’ carts: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 26–7; Lamb’s Conduit Street: Hudson,
Munby
, p. 227.

‘o’clock at night’: costers’ boys: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 33–4; their schedule: ibid., vol. 1, p. 36.

‘without some result’: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 346.

‘fronds in their carts’: draught excluders and fly-catchers: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 52; flowers in spring: Mayhew and Binny,
The Criminal Prisons
, pp. 172–3; gravellers: Smith,
Curiosities
, p. 339; ice sellers:
ILN
, 5 January 1850, p. 2; other seasonal greenery: Charles Hindley,
History of the Cries of London, Ancient and Modern
(London, Reeves and Turner, 1881), p. 221.

‘regarded as his’: Hyde Park: Amy Grinnell Smith and Mary Ermina Smith, ‘Letters from Europe, 1865–6’, ed. David Sanders Clark (Washington, DC, 1948; typescript in British Library), p. 24;
Our Mutual Friend
, pp. 52–3.

‘as fertilizer’: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 2, pp. 343, 357, 360.

‘and her meals’: Welsh dress: John Leighton,
London Cries & Public Edifices from Sketches on the Spot
(London, Grant and Griffith [1847]), p. 19; dress otherwise: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 40, and Sala,
Twice Round the Clock
, p. 72; cans, yokes, lowering milk, working hours and pay: Hudson,
Munby
, pp. 167, 99, 178–9.

‘all wearing caps’: costers: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 51ff.; butchers’ boys: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 41.

‘for resale’: footnote on clothing:
Our Mutual Friend
, p. 72,
Bleak House
, p. 180.

‘miles a day’: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 367.

‘respectable householders’: hats: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 39; secrecy: Phillips,
Wild Tribes
, p. 58.

‘lately swept up’:
Great Expectations
, p. 196; wash men: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 2, p. 132; hare skin sellers: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 39; tea leaves: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 2, p. 133. Mayhew claims this trade is ‘extensive’, yet his is the only mention of it I have found.

‘1d a door’: chairs to mend: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 52; prices for grinders: Jackson,
George Scharf’s London
, p. 53; sharpening penknives for office workers etc.: Leighton,
London Cries
, p. 21; knife-cleaning machine: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 27; step washing: Garwood,
Million Peopled City
, p. 80.

‘
GOES MAD
’:
Punch
, ‘The Demons of Pimlico’, 21 November 1857, p. 215.

‘from the damp’: Thomas Rowlandson,
Rowlandson’s Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders
(London, Samuel Leigh, 1820), no page; carrying methods: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 26–50, 367; delivery boys’ containers: A. Mayhew,
Paved with Gold
, p. 2.

‘penny a bit’: Schlesinger,
Saunterings
, p. 23.

‘Underground for it’: three o’clock: Sala,
Twice Round the Clock
, pp. 160–63; Shepherdess Walk seller:
ILN
, 18 January 1845, pp. 34–5, and a similar case in the Queen Street police office, ibid.; underground:
Punch
, ‘Metropolitan Improvements’, 17 January 1885, p. 34.

‘the public streets’: Drury Lane: MacKenzie,
The American in England
, vol. 1, p. 207; rhubarb seller: Phillips,
Wild Tribes
, p. 80. Phillips states the man was not a Turk, but an East End cadger. I can find no evidence either way, but throughout his book Phillips finds all the poor he writes about distasteful: the Irish, the Jews, or the plain poverty-stricken are all dubious at best, or thieves most likely.

‘an oil-painting’: stagecoach offices: ‘The Streets – Morning’,
Sketches by Boz
, p. 72; railway stations and penknives: Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 149;
Dombey and Son
, p. 237.

‘or a bird-warbler’: jewellery: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, pp. 346, 348;
Oliver Twist
, p. 400; malacca canes etc.: Andrew Tuer,
Old London Street Cries
(London, Field & Tuer, 1885), p. 50–51.

‘scraped them in return’: water pistol: Tuer,
Old London Street Cries
, p. 44; ‘All the Fun of the Fair’ is frequently reported: Tuer, ibid., p. 50; ‘a mischievous little’: David Masson,
Memories of London in the ’Forties,
ed. Flora Masson (Edinburgh, William Blackwood & Sons, 1908), p. 145, ‘These are for sale’: Colman,
European Life and Manners
, vol. 2, pp. 73–4, also reported by Nathaniel Hawthorne in
Hawthorne in England: Selections from Our Old Home and The English Note-books
, ed. Cushing Strout (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1965), p. 172.

‘on their earnings’: ‘Japan your shoes’: Tuer,
Old London Street Cries
, p. 44; footnote on the two Warrens: Altick,
Presence of the Present
, p. 232; Shoeblack Society: Garwood,
Million Peopled City
, pp. 74–9.

‘on their rounds’: two currents: J. MacGregor, ‘Ragamuffins’,
Leisure Hour
, 15 (1856), pp. 455–60; number of London papers: Richard Altick,
The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900
(Chicago, University
of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 329; newsboys’ day, in this paragraph and the next two: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 90ff.; rental prices: Schlesinger,
Saunterings
, p. 213.

‘possibility of truth’:
Old Curiosity Shop
, pp. 162, 594;
Dombey and Son
, p. 383; Badcock and Rowlandson,
Real Life in London
, vol. 1, p. 522.

‘householders’ buckets’: the chemist’s shopboy: A. Mayhew,
Paved with Gold
, p. 85; Haymarket boys: ibid., p. 108; the crippled knife cleaner: Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 1, p. 171; water boys: Smith,
Little World of London
, p. 66.

‘y’r honor pleases’: G. A. Sekon,
Locomotion in Victorian London
, pp. 90–91, which reflects the attitude that the boys were aggressive bullies; the American tourist: Joshua White,
Letters on England, Comprising Descriptive Scenes
(Philadelphia, privately printed, 1816), vol. 1, p. 5.

‘tear on his boots’: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 138–9.

‘state of exhaustion’: porters: Freeman and Aldcroft (eds),
Transport in Victorian Britain
, p. 136, and Walter M. Stern,
The Porters of London
(London, Longmans, Green, 1960), pp. 181ff.; Dickens, ‘The Chimes’, in
The Christmas Books
, vol. 1: ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘The Chimes’, ed. Michael Slater (first published 1843, 1844; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985);
David Copperfield
, p. 340.

‘out the rags’: the history of the development of the match in this and the next paragraph: Hall,
Retrospect of a Long Life
, vol. 1, p. 2, Hayward,
Days of Dickens
, p. 14,
ILN
, 13 October 1860, p. 352, [Charles Knight], ‘Illustrations of Cheapness: The Lucifer Match’,
Household Words
, 13 April 1850, pp. 54–6, and Trey Philpotts,
The Companion to Little Dorrit
(Robertsbridge, Helm Information, 2003), p. 306.

‘with magical rapidity’: lament for tinderbox: Sala,
Gaslight and Daylight
, p. 61.

‘the café door’: Rosamond Street explosion:
ILN
, 12 August 1843, p. 103; Haymarket street children: A. Mayhew,
Paved with Gold
, p. 108.

‘but as beggars’: cost of matches: Knight, ‘Illustrations of Cheapness’.

‘lucifers and onions’: outside the gin palace: John Fisher Murray, ‘Physiology of London Life’,
London Journal
, 16 October 1847, p. 103; Godwin,
London Shadows
, p. 22.

‘a living unviable’: John Thomas Smith,
Vagabondiana; or, Etchings of Remarkable Beggars, Itinerant Traders and other Persons ... in London and its Environs
(London, no publisher, 1817), pp. 41–3, and Mayhew,
London Labour
, vol. 2, pp. 136–40.

‘to the cold:
ILN
, 14 December 1844, p. 371.

‘for their donkeys’: the Watford labourers: Smith,
Vagabondiana
, p. 32; groundsel, chickweed and duckweed sellers: Smith,
Curiosities
, pp. 20–22; groundsel sellers also appear in Bennett,
London and Londoners
, p. 53; rheumatic chickweed seller: Smith,
Cries of London
, pp. 73–4; simplers: ibid., pp. 77–8; reeds for donkeys: Smith,
Curiosities
, p. 142.

‘a bare living’: pins and ink: Hindley,
History of the Cries of London
, p. 101; the idea of modernism pushing street sellers aside is elaborated in Richard Maxwell, ‘Henry Mayhew and the Life of the Streets’,
Journal of British Studies
, 17: 2 (spring 1978), pp. 87–105.