Part 9

Nothing can be more instructive and entertaining than to turn back in 1884 to facts, figures, calculations, estimates, and inferences which fitted the London of 1854. Instead of two millions and a half, the population resident at this moment within the metropolitan and city police districts amounts at least to four millions and three-quarters. The area already covered by the mighty town, which adds another big town to its entirety each successive year, is about four hundred and fifty thousand square acres, and there are more than seven hundred thousand houses to be provided for, of which it may be presumed that few can do without at least a pint of milk per diem. Assuming, however, that each member of this enormous population consumed no more than a quarter of a pint of milk--that is to say, a small tumblerful--per diem, we come to the astounding conclusion that nearly six hundred thousand quarts are wanted every day, nearly four million two hundred thousand quarts every week, and nearly two hundred and seventeen million quarts every year, to meet the demands of London. Few of us are able to fathom the meaning of two hundred million quarts of liquid until we are told what an immense reservoir, ten feet deep, it would take to hold such an amount. More intelligible are the calculations which tell us that, assuming a cow to yield ten--not twelve--quarts of milk daily, it would require nearly sixty thousand milch cows to maintain this supply from year's end to year's end. If these patient and valuable milkers are estimated as being worth no more than twenty-pounds apiece, they would represent in their aggregate a capital of little less than one million four hundred thousand pounds. Pure milk of a reliable character, costs five-pence per quart, and therefore, on the above basis, there is spent on milk, in the metropolis and its circumjacent districts, twelve thousand four hundred pounds per day, nearly eighty-seven thousand pounds per week, and considerably more than four and a half million pounds per annum. There are States which have made a considerable noise in the world, whose total revenue does not reach what London spends annually in milk alone. As for the distribution of this inconceivable amount of liquid, which is delivered every morning and afternoon in small quantities all over the enormous area of bricks-and-mortar to which we have referred, it would utterly baffle the most marvellous organiser and administrator that ever existed upon earth, to extemporise human machinery for carrying on so minute and yet so gigantic a trade. Nevertheless, how smoothly and imperceptibly, not only in this one small detail, but throughout the whole of its vast and endless complications and ramifications, does the commissariat of London work! We are told, for instance, that to distribute every sixteen gallons of milk one person is necessary, and that, without counting managers, clerks, shopmen and shopwomen, nearly five thousand human beings, assisted by more than fifteen hundred horses and mules, are needed to furnish London with milk every twenty-four hours. More than a quarter of a million pounds go yearly in wages to milkmen and milkwomen with whom we are all so familiar, and who will doubtless, acquire additional importance in the eyes of those who reflect that these humble servitors are but, in Pope's words, "parts of that stupendous whole" without whose useful, patient, and unintermitted labours the faultless machinery of the grandest camp of men that ever yet existed would instantly stand still.

Then it must not be forgotten that the milk trade exacts constant and unintermitted work from its employes--work from which neither Sundays nor holidays bring any relief--and demanding very early rising in the morning, to say nothing of the greatest personal cleanliness, and of an immense array of cans, varying from those capable of holding many gallons down to those which contain no more than half-a-pint--the milk-pail and its daily history might well attract notice from writers not inferior in grasp and imagination to Defoe or Dickens. In 1854 Dr. Wynter calculated that, as regards distribution, the commissariat of London was carried on by an army of one hundred thousand persons. In thirty years the population has all but doubled, and the machinery of distribution has been so improved that its working at present approaches very nearly to perfection. This perfection is due solely to freedom of trade and to universal competition, which so nicely adjust all the varying conditions of life, that, in serving themselves, they accomplish more than all the Governments on earth could effect by the most ingenious system of centralisation that human wit could devise.

In our neighbourhood, which, as the lodging-house-keepers advertise in _The Kingsland and Shacklewell Slopbasin_, and _The Dalston Dusthole_, is situate close to "Bus, Tram, and Rail," we have a milkman who is given to Poetry! and he circulates his "verses" pretty freely in the areas and letter-boxes about once a month.--

HOW F. WILSON MEETS HIS CUSTOMERS' VIEWS.

My readers may credit the words of my muse. When telling how Wilson meets Customers' Views; Wilson studies a straightforward system of trade, Whereby to elicit encouraging aid.

The pure farm-house Milk he daily brings out, Is such as we have no reason to doubt; Encouraged in business his course he pursues, And fails not in meeting his Customers' Views.

You'll not have occasion to doubt what I say, When testing his Pure Milk day after day; For cheapness and quality you'll find him in trade, As you did when he first asked the public for aid.

His farm-house Milk and Eggs, which thoroughly please, Are positive proofs of assertions like these; 'Tis certain that better can ne'er be supplied, He trusts that in this you'll all coincide.

The highest of interest his Milk doth possess, Thus boldly we state, for we cannot state less; F. Wilson supplies what all purchasers choose, And thus he is meeting his Customers' Views.

TERMS CASH.

Customers can have their Milk left in cans any time after 5 a.m. Note the address * * * All complaints to be addressed to Mr. F. Wilson.

This celebrated vendor of gingerbread, from his eccentricity of character, and extensive dealing in his particular way, was always hailed as the King of itinerant tradesmen. He was a constant attendant in the crowd at all metropolitan fairs, mob meetings, Lord Mayor's shows, public executions, and all other holiday and festive gatherings! In his person he was tall, well made, and his features handsome. He affected to dress like a person of rank; white and gold lace suit of clothes, lace ruffled shirt, laced hat and feather, white stockings, with the addition of a white apron. Among his harangues to gain customers, take the following piece as a fair sample of the whole:--

"Mary, Mary, where are you _now_, Mary? I live, when at home, at the second house in Little diddy-ball-street, two steps under ground, with a wiscum, riscum, and a why-not. Walk in, ladies and gentlemen; my shop is on the second-floor backwards, with a brass knocker on the door, and steel steps before it. Here is your nice gingerbread, it will melt in your mouth like a red-hot brickbat, and rumble in your inside like Punch and his wheelbarrow." He always finished his address by singing this fag end of some popular ballad:--

"Ti-tid-ty, ti-tid-ty. Ti-tid-ty--tiddy-loll. Ti-tid-ty, ti-tid-ty. Ti-tid-ty--tiddy-doll."

Hence arose his nickname "_Tiddy-Doll_." In Hogarth's print of the "IDLE 'PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN," Tiddy-Doll is seen holding up a gingerbread cake with his left hand, his right hand within his coat, to imply that he is speaking the truth from his heart, while describing the superiority of his wares over those of any other vendor in the fair! while he still anxiously inquires:--

"Mary, Mary, where are you _now_, Mary?"

His proper name was Ford, and so well known was he that, on his once being missed for a week from his usual stand in the Haymarket, on the occasion of a visit which he paid to a country fair, a "Catch penny" account of his alleged murder was printed, and sold in the streets by thousands.

Allusions to Tiddy-Doll, and sayings derived from him, have reached to our own time, thus, we still say to an over-dressed person--"You are as tawdry as Diddy-doll," "You are quite Tiddy-doll, you look as fine as Tiddy-doll," he or she is said to be "All Tiddy-doll," &c.

The class of men formerly well known to the citizens of London as News-criers, or Hornmen, must now be spoken of in the past sense, as the further use of the horn was prohibited long ago by the magistracy, subject to a penalty of ten shillings for the first offence, and twenty shillings on the conviction of repeating so heinous a crime.

"GREAT NEWS, BLOODY BATTLE, GREAT VICTORY! EXTRAORDINARY GAZETTE! SECOND EDITION!"

were the usual loud bellowing of fellows with stentorian lungs, accompanied by a loud blast of a long tin-horn, which announced to the delighted populace of London the martial achievements of a Marlborough, Howe, Hood, Nelson, or Wellington. A copy of the "Gazette" or newspaper they "cried" was usually affixed under the hatband, in front, and their demand was generally one shilling.

At least one of these news criers has been immortalized. In a volume of "Miscellaneous Poems," edited by Elijah Fenton, and printed by Bernard Lintot, without date, but anterior to 1720, there are the lines that follow, to one old Bennet, who seems to have made a great noise in the world of London during the early part of last century:--

"ON THE DEATH OF OLD BENNET, THE NEWS CRYER

"One evening, when the sun was just gone down, And I was walking thro' the noisy town, A sudden silence through each street was spread, As if the soul of London had been fled. Much I enquired the cause, but could not hear, Till fame, so frightened, that she did not dare To raise her voice, thus whisper'd in my ear:-- Bennet, the prince of hawkers, is no more, Bennet, my _Herald_ on the British shore, Bennet, by whom, I own myself outdone, Tho' I a hundred mouths, he had but one, He, when the list'ning town he would amuse, Made _Echo_ tremble with his '_Bloody news!_' No more shall _Echo_, now his voice return, _Echo_ for ever must in silence mourn,-- Lament, ye heroes, who frequent the wars, The great proclaimer of your dreadful scars. Thus wept the conqueror who the world o'ercame, Homer was waiting to enlarge his fame, Homer, the first of hawkers that is known, _Great News_ from Troy, cried up and down the town, None like him has there been for ages past, Till our stentorian Bennet came at last, Homer and Bennet were in this agreed, Homer was blind, and Bennet could not read!"

In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears; and there are now penalties, with police constables to enforce them, against "All persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms." These are the words of the Police Act of 1839; and they are stringent enough to have nearly banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels.

Mr. Henry Mayhew, in his admirable work of "London Labour and London Poor," writing in 1851, under the head "Of the Sellers of Second Editions," says:--

"I believe that there is not now in existence--unless it be in a workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other avocation, and lost sight of by them--any one who sold 'Second Editions' of the _Courier_ evening paper at the time of the Duke of York's Walcheren expedition, at the period of the battle of the Nile, during the continuance of the Peninsular war, or even at the battle of Waterloo. There were a few old men--some of whom had been soldiers or sailors, and others who have simulated it--surviving within these five or six years and some later, who 'worked Waterloo,' but they were swept off, I was told, by the cholera."

"About thirty years before the cry of 'Clean your boots, sir!' became familiar to the ears of the present generation of Londoners," Mr. Charles Knight informs us that:--"In one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet-street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, 'The last of the London shoe-blacks.' One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a Negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few pence to recreate himself beyond what he should carry home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade; and two or three little woolly-headed _decrotteurs_ nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client. He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improvement of the streets; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot pavements widening; the large flag-stones carefully laid down; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, and known to him and London chairmen as a '_Beau-trap_'[11] instantly removed: he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened: he saw experiment upon experiment made in the repair of the carriage-way, and the holes, which were to him as the 'old familiar faces' which he loved, filled up with a haste that appeared quite unnecessary, if not insulting. One solitary country shopkeeper, who had come to London once a year during a long life, clung to our sable friend; for he was the only one of the fraternity that he could find remaining, in his walk from Charing-cross to Cheapside."

Hone, in "_The Table Book_," 1827, under an article on the Old London cries has:--"A Shoeblack; A boy, with a small basket beside him, brushes a shoe on a stone, and addresses himself to a wigged beau, who carries his cocked hat under his left arm, with a crooked-headed walking stick in his left hand, as was the fashion among the dandies of old times. I recollect shoeblacks formerly at the corner of almost every street, especially in great thoroughfares. There were several every morning on the steps of St. Andrew's church, Holborn, till late in the forenoon. But the greatest exhibition of these artists was on the site of Finsbury-square, when it was an open field, and a depository for the stones used in paving and street-masonry. There, a whole army of shoeblacks intercepted the citizens and their clerks on their way from Islington and Hoxton to the counting-houses and shops in the city, with 'Shoeblack, your honour! Black your shoes, sir!'"

Each of them had a large, old tin-kettle, containing his apparatus, viz:--a capacious pipkin, or other large earthen-pot, containing the blacking, which was made of ivory-black, the coarsest moist sugar, and pure water with a little vinegar--a knife, two or three brushes, and an old wig. The old wig was an indispensable requisite to a shoeblack; it whisked away the dust, or thoroughly wiped off the wet dirt, which his knife and brushes could not entirely detach; a rag tied to the end of a stick smeared his viscid blacking on the shoe, and if the blacking was "real japan," it shone. The old experienced shoe-wearers preferred an oleaginous, lustreless blacking. A more liquid blacking, which took a polish from the brush, was of later use and invention. Nobody at that time wore boots except on horseback; and everybody wore breeches and stockings: pantaloons, or trousers, were unheard of. The old shoeblacks operated on the shoes while they were on the feet, and so dexterously as not to soil the fine white cotton stocking, which was at that time the extreme of fashion, or to smear the buckles, which were universally worn. Latterly, you were accommodated with an old pair of shoes to stand in, and the yesterday's paper to read, while your shoes were cleaning and polishing, and your buckles were whitened and brushed. When shoestrings first came into vogue, the Prince of Wales (Geo. IV.) appeared with them in his shoes, when immediately a deputation from the buckle-makers of Birmingham presented a petition to his Royal Highness to resume the wearing of buckles, which was good-naturedly complied with. Yet, in a short time, shoestrings entirely superseded buckles. The first incursion on the shoeblacks was by the makers of "Patent Cake Blacking" on sticks formed with a handle, like a small battledoor; they suffered a more fearful invasion from the makers of liquid blacking in bottles. Soon afterwards, when "Day and Martin" manufactured the _ne plus ultra_ of blacking, private shoeblacking became general, public shoeblacks rapidly disappeared, and in [1827] they became extinct. The last shoeblack that I remember in London sat under the covered entrance of Red Lion-court, Fleet-street within the last six years. This unfortunate, "The Last of the London Shoeblacks"--was probably the "short, large headed son of Africa" alluded to by Charles Knight, under the heading of "Clean your honour's shoes," in his "History of London."

In 1851, some gentlemen connected with the Ragged Schools determined to revive the brotherhood of boot cleaners for the convenience of the foreign visitors to the Exhibition, and commenced the experiment by sending out five boys in the now well-known red uniform. The scheme succeeded beyond expection; the boys were patronized by natives as well as aliens, and the Shoeblack Society and its brigade were regularly organized. During the exhibition season, about twenty-five boys were constantly employed, and cleaned no less than 100,000 pairs of boots. The receipts of the brigade during its first year amounted to L656. Since that time, thanks to the combination of discipline and liberality, the Shoeblack Society has gone on and prospered, and proved the Parent of other Societies. Every district in London now has its corps of shoeblacks, in every variety of uniform, and while the number of boys has increased from tens to hundreds, their earnings have increased from hundreds to thousands. Numbers of London waifs and strays have been rescued from idleness and crime. The Ragged School Union, and Shoeblack Brigades, therefore hold a prominent place among the indirectly preventive agencies for the suppression of crime: for since ignorance is generally the parent of vice, any means of securing the benefits of education to those who are hopelessly deprived of it, must operate in favour of the well-being of society.

"Hearth-stones! Do you want any hearth-stones? Now, my maids, here's your right sort--reg'lar good'uns, and no mistake--vorth two o'your shop harticles, and at half the price. Now my pretty von, lay out a _tanner_, and charge your missus a _bob_--and no cheating neither! the cook has always a right to make her market penny and to assist a poor cove like me in the bargain.

"They're good uns, you vill find-- Choose any, marm, as you prefer. You look so handsome and so kind, I'm sure you'll be a customer. Three halfpence, marm, for this here pair-- I only vish as you vould try 'em; I'm sure you'll say the price is fair-- Come marm, a penny if you'll buy 'em."

"Here's tidings sad, for owld and young, Of von who liv'd for years by macing; And vos this werry morning hung, The Debtor's Door at Newgate facing.

"Here's his confession upon hoath, The vords he spoke ven he vos dying, His birth and eddycation both-- The whole pertic'lers--vell vorth the buying.

"Here's an account of robberies sad. In vich he alus vos a hactor; You must to read the life be glad-- Of such a famous malefactor!

"How to the mob he spinn'd a yarn, And varn'd them from a course unproper, You may, vith all his history, larn-- For the small valley of a copper!"

"Now my kind-hearted, haffectionated and wery ready-money Christian-hearted, pious and hinfidel customers, here you have the last speech and dying vords, life, character, and behaviour of the hunfortunate malefactor that vas hexecuted this morning hopposit the Debtor's door in the Hold Bailey! together with a full confession of the hoffence vherevith he vos found guilty before a hupright Judge and a wery himpartial Jury! Here you have likewise a copy of a most affecting letter, written by the criminal in the condemned cell the night afore hexecution to his hinnocent vife and hunoffending babbies, vith a copy of werses consarning the same--all for the small charge of von halfpenny. Yes, my friends, von halfpenny buys the werses as follows--von arter the 'tother:--

"Come, all you blessed Christians dear, That's a-tender, kind, and free, While I a story do relate Of a dreadful tragedy, Which happened in London town, As you shall all be told; But when you hear the horrid deed 'Twill make your blood run cold.-- _For the small charge of a ha'penny!_

"'Twas in the merry month of May, When my true love I did meet; She look'd all like an angel bright, So beautiful and sweet. I told her I loved her much, And she could not say nay; 'Twas then I stung her tender heart, And led her all astray.-- _Only a ha'penny!_"

JAMES--or as he was popularly called, "_Jemmy_," or, "_Old Jemmy_" Catnach, (_Kat-nak_,) late of the Seven Dials, London, printer and publisher of ballads, battledores, lotteries, primers, &c., and whose name is ever associated with the literature of the streets, was the son of John Catnach, a printer, of Alnwick, an ancient borough, market town, and parish of Northumberland, where he was born on August 18th, 1792.