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Title: A History of the Cries of London
       Ancient and Modern

Author: Charles Hindley

Illustrator: Thomas Bewick
             John Bewick

Release Date: August 17, 2011 [EBook #37114]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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[☞ SECOND EDITION.—GREATLY ENLARGED.]

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Hogarth’s Pieman.

“We frequently meet with the pieman in old prints; and, in Hogarth’s ‘March to Finchley,’ there he stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning with delight at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the victim of another. We learn from this admirable figure by the greatest painter of English life, that the pieman of the last century perambulated the streets in professional costume; and we gather further, from the burly dimensions of his wares, that he kept his trade alive by the laudable practice of giving ‘a good pennyworth for a penny.’ Justice compels us to observe that his successors of a later generation have not been very conscientious observers of this maxim.”

A HISTORY
OF THE
CRIES OF LONDON.

Ancient and Modern.

SECOND EDITION.
GREATLY ENLARGED AND CAREFULLY REVISED

BY
CHARLES HINDLEY, Esq.,

Editor of “The Old Book Collector’s Miscellany; or, a Collection of Readable Reprints
of Literary Rarities,” “Works of John Taylor—the Water Poet,” “The
Roxburghe Ballads,” “The Catnach Press,” “The Curiosities of
Street Literature,” “The Book of Ready Made Speeches,”
“Life and Times of James Catnach, late of the
Seven Dials, Ballad Monger,” “Tavern
Anecdotes and Sayings,” etc.

London:
CHARLES HINDLEY
[The Younger,]
BOOKSELLERS’ ROW, ST. CLEMENT DANES,
STRAND, W. C.

London:—
E. A. BECKETT, PRINTER, 111 & 113 KINGSLAND ROAD.

TO
HORATIO NOBLE PYM, Esq.,
OF
HARLEY STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE,
AS
A TESTIMONIAL OF ESTEEM
For His Private Worth,
AND AS
A PATRON OF LITERATURE:

A HISTORY OF THE CRIES OF LONDON,
Ancient and Modern,

Is Respectfully Dedicated by

Rectory Road, Stoke Newington,
London, N.

The idea of printing and publishing “A History of the Cries of London—Ancient and Modern,” somewhat in the manner and style here presented to the public, was first suggested to me by the late Rev:—

Author of “The Bewick Collector,” 1866. The Supplement to same, 1868, and “Bewick’s Woodcuts,” 1870, etc., and at the time, Rector of West Hackney Church, Stoke Newington, London, N., in the year 1876.

While actively engaged in preparing for publication “The Life and Times of

late of Seven Dials: Ballad Monger,”—to which the present work may be considered a sequel, and the completion of the series on the subject of the—

“CURIOSITIES OF STREET LITERATURE,”

I had frequently to consult the pages of “The Bewick Collector,” and other works of a kindred character for information respecting the elder Catnach, who, by himself, and afterwards in conjunction with his partner, and subsequently his successor, William Davison, employed Thomas Bewick, the famous English artist who imparted the first impulse to the art of wood engraving, for several of their Alnwick publications. This led to my communicating with the Rev. Thomas Hugo, wherein I informed him of my plans, and of the object I had in view with regard to the publication I was then preparing for the press: at the same time soliciting his co-operation, especially in reference to the loan of some of the Bewick wood-cuts, formerly possessed by the elder Catnach, while he was in business as a printer, in Narrowgate Street, Alnwick, an ancient borough and market-town in Northumberland.

In answer to my application, I received the letters that follow:—

The Rectory,
WEST HACKNEY,
STOKE NEWINGTON,
LONDON,
N.

21st August, 1876.

Dear Sir,

I shall be glad to aid you in any way. I must ask you to see me on some morning, between nine and eleven o’clock, and to make a previous appointment, as I am a working man, with plenty to do.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Hindley, Esq.,
76, Rose Hill Terrace,
Brighton.

West Hackney Rectory,
Amhurst Road, West,
Stoke Newington, N.

Tuesday Night. [13th September, 1876.]

Dear Sir,

I have been expecting you for the last ten days. In a few hours I am leaving town for my holiday; I shall not return till far on in October.

As Brighton is but a short way off, I shall hope to see you on my return. You shall be welcome to the loan of some Blocks. You had better examine my folio volume, called “Bewick’s Woodcuts,” in the British Museum, and give me the numbers of the cuts, when I will see what I can do for you.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. C. Hindley, Senr.,
(of Brighton,)
8, Booksellers’ Row,
Strand, W.C.

West Hackney Rectory,
Amhurst Road, West,
Stoke Newington, N.

8th Nov., 1876.

Dear Sir,

I can see you between 9.30 and 10.30 on Friday Morning.

Be so good as to advise me beforehand what you wish to see.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. C. Hindley, Esq.,
(of Brighton,)
8, Booksellers’ Row,
Strand, W.C.

The proposed interview took place at the Rectory-house, on the 10th of November, and was of a very delightful and intellectual character. The reverend gentleman found me an apt scholar in all matters with respect to his favourite “Hobby-horse,” viz:—the Brothers Bewick and their Works. All the rich and rare Bewickian gems were placed before me for inspection, and all the desired assistance I needed at his hands was freely offered and ultimately carried out. During our conversation the learned Rector said:—

I thanked the rev. gentleman, at the same time promising to bear the suggestion in mind for a future day.

West Hackney Rectory, Amhurst Road, West,
Stoke Newington, N., 14th Nov., 1876.

Dear Sir,

Accept my best thanks for your letter, books, and promises of future gifts, all of which I cordially accept.

To-morrow, if all be well, I shall have time to look out the Blocks, and they shall be with you soon afterwards.

Very truly yours,

C. Hindley, Esq., Rose Hill Terrace,
Brighton.

The somewhat sudden and unexpected death of the Rev. Thomas Hugo on the last day of the year 1876 is now a matter of history.

In Memoriam. The Rev. T. HUGO, M.A. Rector of West Hackney Church. Departed this life, Sunday, December 31st, 1876.

On Christmas Day, before the altar kneeling, Taking that Food by which our souls are fed; Around us all a solemn silence stealing, And broken only by the priests’ slow tread. Yes, he was there, our good and earnest Rector, And firmly strove his weakness to withstand, Giving the cup, he, the pure Faith’s protector— That cup of blessing with a trembling hand. His church, for which he felt such admiration, Was deck’d with flow’rs and evergreens that morn, In praise to Christ, who died for our salvation, And deign’d as a weak infant to be born. Ah! little did we think that happy morning— So truly, bravely kept he at his post— When next a Sabbath came, to us his warning And kind, yet noble, presence would be lost. That solemn sound, which tells of souls departed, Took the glad place of that which calls to prayer, And his loved people, shocked and broken-hearted, Could hardly enter, for he was not there. But when they heard it was his last desire That they should meet at midnight as was said, They met by thousands, mov’d with holy fire, And spoke in whispers of their shepherd—dead. No, no, not dead, but calm in Jesus sleeping; Free from all sorrow, all reproach, all pain: And though he leaves a congregration weeping Their earthly loss is his eternal gain. He loved the weak, and all the mute creation, In generous deeds he ever took his part; At Death, the thrice-repeated word Salvation Showed the firm trust of that true, tender heart. ······ Again we meet: they come his coffin bringing Midst solemn chant, and deck’d with purest flowers, And feel, whilst we his own sweet hymn are singing, The joy is his, the sad rememberance ours. Mrs. HILDRETH.

At the sale of the Hugo Collection, I purchased among many others:—

To carry out the suggestion before-mentioned, and to utilize the very pretty series of fifty-one woodcuts as above, and other Bewick, Bewickiana, and ultra anti-Bewickian woodcut blocks I possess, formed and accumulated by reason of my published works: “The Catnach Press,” 1868. “Curiosities of Street Literature,” 1871. And “Life and Times of James Catnach,” 1878.

In collecting information on the subject of “The Cries of London—Ancient and Modern,” I have availed myself of all existing authorities within reach, and therefore, to prevent the necessity of continual reference, here state that I have drawn largely from Charles Knight’s “London.” Mayhew’s “London Labour and the London Poor.” Hone’s “Every-Day Book.” An article on Old London Cries, in “Fraser’s Magazine.” “Cuthbert Bede.” Mr. Edwin Goadby’s “The England of Shakespeare,”—an excellent Text Book, forming one of Cassell’s Popular Shilling Library. “Our Milk Supply,” from the columns of The Daily Telegraph. Charles Manby Smith’s “Curiosities of London Life,” and his “Little World of London.” And what from various other sources was suitable for my purpose.

To the one lady, and many gentlemen friends who have responded to my enquiries for advice, material, and assistance, and by which they have so greatly enriched the contents of this volume, I beg to express my best thanks. I must in a more particular manner mention the names of—the one lady first—Mrs. Rose Hildreth; then Mr. John Furbor Dexter, Mr. William Mansell; next Messrs. W. H. & L. Collingridge, the Proprietors of The City Press, Aldersgate-street, London, for the use of the following woodcuts that have appeared in the pages of their ever-entertaining work, “Y^e Old City,” by Aleph.: 1.—Shakespeare’s London; 2.—Aldersgate; 3.—Cheapside Cross; 4.—Old Stage Waggon; 5.—Baynard’s Castle; 6.—Old London Shop; 7.—St. Pauls Cathedral. I have also to express my cordial thanks to Messrs. Longman, Green & Co., who kindly allowed the use of 1.—Colebrook Cottage; 2.—The Old Queen’s Head; and 3.—Canonbury Tower. From Howitt’s “Northern Heights of London.” Messrs. Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly: 1.—Charles Lamb’s House, Enfield; 2.—House at Edmonton, where Charles Lamb died; 3.—Edmonton Church. Messrs. Marks and Sons, Publishers of all kinds of Fancy Stationery, Toy-books, Valentines, &c., 72, Houndsditch, for the eight blocks used in their “Cries of London,” at pages 351 to 358. Messrs. Goode, Toy-book Manufacturers, Clerkenwell Green. Mr. John W. Jarvis, Mr. William Briggs, Mr. G. Skelly, Alnwick, and Dr. David Morgan, Brighton.

SECOND EDITION.

The rapid sale of the whole of the First Edition of this work—about one half of which went Due-North, that is to say, in and round about “Canny Newcassel” (the home-land of the Brothers Bewick), America taking the remainder,—will sufficiently explain the re-appearance of “A History of the Cries of London” in its new, and, the Author ventures to think, improved form.

Rectory Road, Stoke Newington,
London, N.

Lady-Day., 1884.

CATALOGUE
OF THE
CHOICE AND VALUABLE COLLECTION
OF
BOOKS, WOOD ENGRAVINGS,
AND
ENGRAVED WOODCUT BLOCKS,
Manuscripts, Autograph Letters & Proof Impressions,
BY OR RELATING TO
THOMAS AND JOHN BEWICK,
AND THEIR PUPILS,
GLEANED FROM EVERY AVAILABLE SOURCE BY THE LATE

WHICH WILL BE SOLD BY AUCTION,
BY MESSRS.
SOTHEBY, WILKINSON & HODGE,

Auctioneers of Literary Property & Works illustrative of the Fine Arts,
At their House, No. 13, Wellington Street, Strand, W.
On WEDNESDAY, 8th of AUGUST, 1877, and following Day,
At One O’clock precisely.
May be Viewed Two Days prior, and Catalogues had.

Dryden Press: J. Davy and Sons. 137, Long Acre.

Goldsmith and Parnell Poems: Published by William Bulmer, Shakespeare Printing Office, London, 1795. Embellished with thirteen designs on wood. Most of the cuts were drawn by Robert Johnson and John Bewick, and all were engraved by Thomas Bewick, except the vignettes on the title-pages, and the large cut of “The Sad Historian,” and the tail-piece at the end of the volume, which was done by John Bewick.

The most magnificent result of the efforts of the wood-engraver, type-founder, paper-maker, and printer, “that ever was produced in any age, or in any country.” Bulmer realized, after paying all expenses, a profit of £1,500 on the work these exquisite blocks adorned.

[John Bewick, del. et Sculp.]

THE SAD HISTORIAN.
Published January 1, 1795, by William Bulmer, at the
Shakespeare Printing Office, Cleveland Row.

John Johnson, del.] [T. Bewick, Sculp.

THE HERMIT AT HIS MORNING DEVOTIONS.
Published January 1, 1795, by William Bulmer, at the
Shakespeare Printing Office, Cleveland Row.

R Johnson, del.] [T. Bewick, Sculp.

THE HERMIT, ANGEL, AND GUIDE.
Published January 1, 1795, by William Bulmer, at the
Shakespeare Printing Office, Cleveland Row.

John Bewick, del.] [T. Bewick, sculp.

THE CHASE.
A POEM
BY William Somervile, Esq.

LONDON:
Printed by W. Bulmer & Co.,
Shakespeare Printing Office, Cleveland Row.
1796.

John Bewick, del.] [T. Bewick, sculp.

SOMERVILE’S CHASE.

This work contains the best specimens of John Bewick’s abilities as a designer; all the cuts were drawn by him except one, but none of them were engraved by him. Shortly after he had finished the drawings on the blocks, he left London and returned to the North in consequence of ill-health. They were engraved by Thomas Bewick, with the exception of the tail-piece at the end of the volume, which was engraved by Charles Nesbit, one of his pupils.

John Bewick, del.] [T. Bewick, sculp.

SOMERVILE’S CHASE.

The cuts in the Chase, on the whole, are superior in point of execution to those in the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell. Many conceive it impossible that such delicate effects could be produced from blocks of wood, and his late Majesty (George III.) ordered his bookseller, Mr. George Nicolls, to procure the blocks for his inspection, that he might convince himself of the fact.

John Bewick, del.] [T. Bewick, sculp.

SOMERVILE’S CHASE.

Speaking of the death of John Bewick, which took place at Ovingham on the 5th of December, 1795,—aged 35, a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine says, “The works of this young artist will be held in estimation, and the engravings to ‘Somervile’s Chase’ will be a monument of fame of more celebrity than marble can bestow.”

The Peacock.
(Pavo cristatus, Linn.——Le Paon, Buff.)
(From Bewick’s Land Birds.)

The Common Sandpiper.
(Bewick’s Water Birds).

The Water Ouzel.
(Bewick’s Water Birds.)

The Snipe.
(Bewick’s Water Birds.)

The Redstart.
(Bewick’s Water Birds.)

FIRST STATE!

“The Little House” and Pig, &c.

SECOND STATE!!

Among the very many and all much admired Tail-pieces drawn and engraved by Bewick himself, the above, which, in its—First state! is at page 285 of vol. i. of ‘A History of British Birds,’ 1797, has obtained by far the greatest notoriety. It appears that soon after publication, it was pointed out to Bewick that the nakedness of a prominent part of his subject required to be a little more covered—draped! So one of his apprentices was employed to blacken over with ink all the copies then remaining unsold. But by the time Bewick received the ‘gentle hint,’ a goodly number had been delivered to local subscribers and the London agents—Messrs. G. G. and J. Robinson. It is these ‘not inked!’ copies that are now so readily sought after by all “Bewick Collectors.”

THIRD STATE!!!

For the next, and all subsequent editions a plug was inserted in the block, and the representation of two bars of wood engraved upon it, to hide the part! However, it seems that before the block was thus altered and amended, many impressions on various papers were taken of the—First state! The late Rev. Hugo possessed several of such, one of which—Proof on paper—he gave me on the 10th of November, 1876.—C. H.

The Water Rail.
(Bewick’s Water Birds.)

The Red-necked Grebe.
(Bewick’s Water Birds.)

The Chillingham Wild Bull.
Used in Richardson’s Table Book, Vol. vi p. 15.
⁂ Attributed to T. Bewick.

T. Bewick.
Gin and Bitters.
The Sportsman’s Cabinet, 1803.

“Willie Brew’d a Peck o’Maut.”

The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. Engravings on Wood by Bewick, from designs by Thurston. Alnwick: Printed by Catnach and Davison, 1808. And London: Printed for T. Cadell and Davis, Strand, 1814. With cuts previously used in Davison’s publications.

“Many of the engravings produced for Burns’ Poems, are of a very superior class, and cannot be too highly commended.”—Hugo.

“And for whole days would wander in those places where she had been used to walk with Henry.”

The History of Crazy Jane.
By Sarah Wilkinson.
With a Frontispiece by Bewick.
Alnwick: Printed by W. Davison, 1813.

Jackson’s: A Treatise on Wood Engraving.
See Hugo’s “Bewick Collector.”—The Supplement.

The Repository of Select Literature.
Adorned with beautiful Engravings by Bewick.
Alnwick: Printed by W. Davison, 1808.

Arms of Newcastle.
(Signed Bewick, Sculpt.)

Bull Pursuing a Man.
The Poetical Works of Robert Ferguson, with his Life.
Engravings on Wood by Bewick.

“Sandie and Willie.”
The Poetical Works of Robert Ferguson.
Alnwick: Printed by W. Davison.—1814.

Scottish Ballads and Songs.
Printed and Sold by G. Nicholson,
Poughnill, Near Ludlow.

G. Nicholson, Printer,
Poughnill, near Ludlow.

G. Nicholson, Printer,
Poughnill, near Ludlow.

G. Nicholson, Printer.

Blair’s Grave.
Alnwick: Printed by Catnach and Davison,—1808.

From Newcastle.
Hugo’s Bewick’s Woodcuts, No. 1333.

View of Strawberry Hill.
With Shield of Arms of the Hon. Horace Walpole.

Mr. Bigge’s cut of the
Figure of Liberty.

Tyne-side Scene,
With Shield of Arms.

A Churchyard Memorial Cut.

The Sportsman’s Calender. 1818.
Hugo’s “Bewick’s Woodcuts,” No. 1309.

The Dog in the Manger.

Hastie’s Reading Easy.
From Angus’s Office, where the book was printed.

“Bewick cut for Mrs. Angus, twenty-four figures for the Alphabet:—The Fox and Grapes, the Crow and Pitcher, the Foolish Stag, Joseph and his Brethren, etc. All of them excellent cuts. The fortieth edition was printed in 1814, and the seventy-third in 1839, so that they must have been done in his early days.”

MS. Note of the late Mr. John Bell, of Newcastle. See Hugo’s Bewick’s Woodcuts. No. 240-276.

Fox and the Grapes.	The Crow and Pitcher.
The Foolish Stag.
Joseph and his Brethren.

T. Bewick.—Sculpt.

T. Bewick.—Sculpt.

[R. Johnson, del. Charlton Nesbit, sculpt.]

Cut to the memory of Robert Johnson.
Bewick’s favourite Pupil.

On the South side of Ovingham Church there is this tablet—

In Memory of
ROBERT JOHNSON,
Painter and Engraver.
A NATIVE OF THIS PARISH.
Who died at Kenmore in Perthshire,
The 29th, of October, 1796.
IN THE 26th, YEAR OF HIS AGE.

Thomas Bewick.

Thomas Bewick died at his house on the Windmill-Hills, Gateshead, November the 8th, 1828, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and on the 13th he was buried in the family burial-place at Ovingham, where his parents, wife, and brother were interred.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

A HISTORY

OF THE

CRIES OF LONDON.

[Pg 1]

HISTORY

OF THE

CRIES OF LONDON.

———

———

The cries of London have ever been very popular, whether as broadsides, books, ballads, or engravings. Artists of all countries and times have delighted to represent those peculiarities of costume and character which belong to the history of street-cries, and the criers thereof. Annibale Carracci—1560-1609—has immortalized the cries of Bologna; and from the time of Elizabeth to that of Queen Victoria, authors, artists and printers combined, have presented the Cries and Itinerant Trades of London, in almost numberless forms, and in various degrees of quality, from the roughest and rudest wood-cut-blocks to the finest of copper and steel plate engravings, or skilfully wrought etchings. While many of the early English dramatists often introduced the subject, eminent composers were wont to “set to music” as catch, glee, or roundelaye, all the London Cries then most in vogue,—“They were, I ween, ryght merrye songs, and the musick well engraved.”

The earliest mention of London trade-cries is by Dan John Lydgate (1370-1450), a Monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s, the friend and immediate follower of Geoffrey Chaucer, and one of the most prolific writers of his age[Pg 2] this country has produced. To enumerate Lydgate’s pieces would be to write out the catalogue of a small library. No poet seems to have possessed a greater versatility of talents. He moves with equal ease in every mode of composition; and among his minor pieces he has left us a very curious poem entitled “London Lyckpeny,” i.e., London Lackpenny: this has been frequently printed; by Strutt, Pugh, Nicolas, and partly by John Stow in “A Survey of London,” 1598. There are two copies in the British Museum, Harl. MSS., 367 and 542. We somewhat modernize the text of the former and best of these copies, which differ considerably from each other.

In “London Lackpenny” we have a most interesting and graphic picture of the hero coming to Westminster, in term time, to obtain legal redress for the wrong he had sustained, and explain to a man of law his case—“How my goods were defrauded me by falsehood,” but being without the means to pay even the preliminary fee, he was sent—“from pillar to post,” that is from one Law-court to another, but although he “crouched, kneeled, prayed for God’s sake, and Mary’s love, he could not get from one the—mum of his mouth.” So leaving the City of Westminster—minus his hood, he walked on to the City of London, which he tells us was crowded with peripatetic traders, but tempting as all their goods and offers were, his lack-of-money prevented him from indulging in any of them—But, however, let Lackpenny, through the ballad, speak for himself:—

[Pg 3]

London Lackpenny.

Spectacles to read before printing was invented must have had a rather limited market; but we must bear in mind where they were sold. In Westminster Hall there were lawyers and rich suitors congregated,—worshipful men, who had a written law to study and expound, and learned treatises diligently to peruse, and titles to hunt after through the labyrinths of fine and recovery. The dealer in spectacles was a dealer in hats, as we see; and the articles were no doubt both of foreign manufacture. But lawyers and suitors had also to feed, as well as to read with spectacles; and on the Thames side, instead of the coffee-houses of modern date, were tables in the open air, where men every day ate of “bread, ribs of beef, both fat and full fine,” and drank jollily of “ale and wine,” as they do now at a horse-race:—

[Pg 6]Passing from the City of Westminster, through the village of Charing and along Strand-side, to the City of London, the cries of food and feeding were first especially addressed to those who preferred a vegetable diet, with dessert and “spice, pepper, and saffron” to follow. “Hot peascod one began to cry,” Peascod being the shell of peas; the cod what we now call the pod:—

“Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise.” Rise—branch, twig, either a natural branch, or tied on sticks as we still see them.

In Chepe (Cheapside) he saw “much people” standing, who proclaimed the merits of their “velvets, silk, lawn, and Paris thread.” These, however, were shopkeepers; but their shops were not after the modern fashion of plate-glass windows, and carpeted floors, and lustres blazing at night with a splendour that would put to shame the glories of an eastern palace. They were rude booths, the owners of which bawled as loudly as the itinerants; and they went on bawling for several centuries, like butchers in a market, so that, in 1628, Alexander Gell, a bachelor of divinity, was sentenced to lose his ears and to be degraded from the ministry, for giving his opinion of Charles I.,[Pg 7] that he was fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop with an apron before him, and say “What do ye lack, what do ye lack? What lack ye?” than to govern a kingdom.

The London Stone, the lapis milliaris (mile stone) of the Romans, has never failed to arrest the attention of the “Countryman in Lunnun.” The Canwyke Street of the days of John Lydgate, is the Cannon Street of the present. “Hot sheep’s feet,” which were cried in the streets in the time of Henry V., are now sold cold as “sheep’s trotters,” and vended at the doors of the lower-priced theatres, music-halls, and public-houses. Henry Mayhew in his “London Labour and the London Poor,” estimates that there are sold weekly 20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet. The wholesale price at the “trotter yard” is five a penny, which gives an outlay by the street sellers of £3,033 6s. 8d. yearly. The cry which is still heard and tolerated by law, that of Mackerel rang through every street. The cry of Rushes-green tells us of by-gone customs. In ages[Pg 8] long before the luxury of carpets was known in England, the floors of houses were covered with rushes. The strewing of rushes in the way where processions were to pass is attributed by our poets to all times and countries. Thus at the coronation of Henry V., when the procession is coming, the grooms cry—

Not worth a rush became a common comparison for anything worthless; the rush being of so little value as to be trodden under foot. Rush-lights, or candles with rush wicks, are of the greatest antiquity.

Eastcheap, this ancient thoroughfare, originally extended from Tower-street westward to the south end of Clement’s-lane, where Cannon-street begins. It was the Eastern Cheap or Market, as distinguished from Westcheap, now Cheapside. The site of the Boar’s Head Tavern, first mentioned temp. Richard II., the scene of the revels of Falstaff and Henry V., when Prince of Wales, is very nearly that of the statue of King William IV. Lackpenny had presented to him several of the real Signs of the Times and of Life in London with “ribs of beef—many a pie—pewter pots—music and singing”—strange oaths, “Yea by Cock” being a vulgar corruption for a profane oath. Our own taverns still supply us with ballad-singers—“Buskers”—who will sing of “Jenkin and Julian”—Ben Block; or, She Wore a Wreath of Roses, “for their meed.”

[Pg 9]

The manners and customs of the dwellers in Cornhill in the time of John Lydgate, when a stranger could have his hood stolen at one end of the town and see it exposed for sale at the other, forcibly reminds us of Field-lane and the Jew Fagin, so faithfully sketched in pen and ink by Charles Dickens of our day. Where “a young man from the country” would run the risk of meeting with an Artful Dodger, to pick his pocket of his silk handkerchief at the entrance of the Lane, and it would be offered him for sale by a Jew fence at the end, not only “Once a Week” but “All the Year Round.” However, when Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist came in, Field-lane and Fagin went out.

At length the Kentish man being wearied, falls a prey to the invitation of a taverner, who with a cringing bow, and taking him by the sleeve:—“Sir,” saith he, “will you our wine assay?” Whereupon Lackpenny, coming to the safe conclusion that “a penny can do no more than it may,” enters the tempting and hospitable house of entertainment, and there spends his only penny, for which he is supplied with a pint of wine:—

[Pg 10]Worthy old John Stow supposes this interesting incident to have happened at the Pope’s Head, in Cornhill, and bids us enjoy the knowledge of the fact, that:—“Wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink it was given free in every taverne.” Yet Lydgate’s hero went away “Sore a-hungered,” for there was no eating at taverns at this time beyond a crust to relish the wine, and he who wished to dine before he drank had to go to the cook’s.

Wanting money, Lackpenny has now no choice but to return to the country, and applies to the watermen at Billingsgate:—

We have a corroboration of the accuracy of this picture in Lambarde’s “Perambulation of Kent.” The old topographer informs us that in the time of Richard II. the inhabitants of Milton and Gravesend agreed to carry in their boats, from London to Gravesend, a passenger with his truss or fardel [burden] for twopence.

[Pg 11]The poor Kentish suitor, without two-pence in his pocket to pay the Gravesend bargemen, whispers a mild anathema against London lawyers, then takes his solitary way on foot homeward—a sadder and a wiser man.

With unpaved streets, and no noise of coaches to drown any particular sound, we may readily imagine the din of the great London thoroughfares of four centuries ago, produced by all the vociferous demand for custom. The chief body of London retailers were then itinerant,—literally pedlars; and those who had attained some higher station were simply stall-keepers. The streets of trade must have borne a wonderful resemblance to a modern fair. Competition was then a very rude thing, and the loudest voice did something perhaps to carry the customer.

The London Stone.

 [Pg 12]

In the old play entitled:—“A ryght excellent and famous Comedy called the Three Ladies of London, wherein is Notable declared and set fourth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Love and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination. A Perfect Patterne of All Estates to looke into, and a worke ryght worthie to be marked. Written by R. W.; as it hath been publiquely played. At London, Printed by Roger Warde, dwelling neere Holburne Conduit at the sign of the Talbot, 1584,” is the following poetical description of some London cries:—

[Pg 13]

Enter Conscience, with brooms, singing as followeth:—

By another old comedy by the same author as the preceding one, which he entitles:—“The pleasant and Stately Morall of the Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. With the great Joye and Pompe, Solemnized at their Marriages: Commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall observations, and other important matters of due regard. By R. W., London. Printed by R. Ihones, at the Rose and Crowne, neere Holburne Bridge, 1590,” it appears that woodmen went about with their beetles and wedges on their backs, crying “Have you any wood to cleave?” It must be borne in mind that in consequence of the many complaints against coal as a public nuisance, it was not in common use in London until the reign of Charles I., 1625.

There is a character in the play named Simplicity, a poor Freeman of London, who for a purpose turns ballad-monger, and in answer to the question of “What dainty fine ballad have you now to be sold?” replies:—“I have ‘Chipping-Norton,’ ‘A mile from Chapel o’ th’ Heath’—‘A lamentable ballad of burning of the Pope’s dog;’ ‘The sweet ballad of the Lincolnshire bagpipes;’ and ‘Peggy and Willy: But now he is dead and gone; Mine own sweet Willy is laid in his grave.’”

[Pg 16]

SHAKESPEARE’S LONDON.

The London of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Co.,—Limited as it was within its great wall, occupied very much the same space as that now covered by the City proper; its streets were narrow and winding, yet there were still left many open spaces; it was covered with people; its river was full of shipping; it was rich, prosperous, and possessed of a considerable amount of[Pg 17] liberty. The great wall of London, broad and strong, with towers at intervals, was more than two miles long, from end to end, beginning at the Tower of London on the east, and ending at the Fleet River and the Thames on the west.

ALDERSGATE.

As regards the gates, there were anciently only four—namely, Aldersgate, Aldgate, Ludgate, and Bridgegate—that is to say, one for each of the cardinal points. Then other gates and posterns were added for the convenience of the citizens: Bishopsgate, for those who had business in the direction of Norfolk, Suffolk, or Cambridgeshire; Moorgate, for those who[Pg 18] would practice archery, or take their recreation in Moor Fields; Cripplegate, more ancient than the two preceding, had a prison for debtors attached to it; and there was also a postern for the Convent of Grey Friars, now Christ’s Hospital. At Newgate was a small, incommodious, and fever-haunted prison for criminals; and at Ludgate was another prison, appropriated to debtors, trespassers, and those who committed contempt of Court. Along the river-side were several water-gates, the chief of which were Blackfriars, Greenhithe, Dowgate and Billingsgate.

Within the narrow space of the City Walls there rose a forest of towers and spires. The piety of Merchants had erected no fewer than a hundred and three churches, which successive citizens were continually rebuilding, beautifying, or enlarging. They were filled with the effigies and splendid tombs, the painted and gilded arms, of their founders and benefactors, for whose souls masses were continually said.

CHEAPSIDE CROSS.

“London was divided into Wards, and was perhaps as catholic in its commercial and industrial pursuits then as now. Every kind of trade was carried on within its walls, just as every kind of merchandise was sold. The combination of fellows of the same craft began in very early times, guilds were formed for the protection of trade and its followers; the guild-brothers met once a month to consider the interests of the craft, regulating prices, recovering debts and so forth. But the London of the period was not so gay as Paris, nor so bustling and prosperous as Antwerp, nor so full of splendour and intellectual life as Venice.[1] Yet to the Englishman of the day it was an [Pg 19]ever-lasting wonder. Its towers and palaces, its episcopal residences and gentlemen’s inns, the bustle of its commerce, the number of its foreigners, the wealth of its Companies, and the bravery of its pageants, invested it with more poetry than can be claimed for it at the present time, unless Wealth be our deity, Hurry our companion, and Progress our muse. The rich were leaving their pleasant country mansions to plunge into its delights. At the law terms there was a regular influx of visitors, who seemed to think more of taking tobacco than of winning a lawsuit. Ambitious courtiers, hopeful ecclesiastics, pushing merchants, and poetic dreamers, were all caught by the fascinations of London. Site, antiquity, life, and, above all, abundance of the good things that make up half its charm, in[Pg 20] the shape of early delicacies, costly meats, and choice wines, combined to make it a miraculous city in the eyes of the Elizabethan.”

“The external appearance of the City was certainly picturesque. Old grey walls threw round it the arm of military protection. Their gates were conspicuous objects, and the white uniforms of the train-bands on guard, with their red crosses on the back, fully represented the valour which wraps itself in the British flag and dies in its defence. To the north were the various fields whose names survive, diversified by an occasional house, and Dutch-looking windmills, creaking in the breeze. Finsbury was a fenny tract, where the City archers practised; Spitalfields, an open, grassy place, with grounds for artillery exercise and a market cross; and Smithfield, or Smoothfield, was an unenclosed plain, where tournaments were held, horses were sold, and martyrs had been burnt. To the east was the Tower of London, black with age, armed with cannon and culverin, and representing the munificence which entertained royalty as well as the power which punished traitors. Beyond it was Wapping, the Port of London, with its narrow streets, its rope-walks and biscuit shops. Black fronted taverns, with low doorways and leaden framed windows, their rooms reeking with smoke and noisy with the chatter of ear-ringed sailors, were to be found in nearly every street. Here the merchant adventurer came to hire his seamen, and here the pamphleteer or the ballad-maker could any night gather materials for many a long-winded yarn about Drake and the Spanish main, negroes, pearls, and palm-groves.

[Pg 21]

OLD STAGE WAGGON.

“To the west, the scene was broken with hamlets, trees, and country roads. Marylebone and Hyde Park were a royal hunting-ground, with a manor house, where the Earls of Oxford lived in later times. Piccadilly was ‘the road to Reading,’ with foxgloves growing in its ditches, gathered by the simple dealers of Bucklersbury, to make anodynes for the weary-hearted. Chelsea was a village; Pimlico a country hamlet, where pudding-pies were eaten by strolling Londoners on a Sunday. Westminster was a city standing by itself, with its Royal Palace, its Great Hall for banquets and the trial of traitors, its sanctuary, its beautiful Abbey, and its famous Almonry. St. James’s Park was walled with red brick, and contained the palace Henry VIII. had built for Anne Boleyn. Whitehall Palace was in its glory. The Strand, along which gay ladies drove in their[Pg 22] ‘crab-shell coaches,’ had been recently paved, and its streams of water diverted. A few houses had made their appearance on the north side of the Strand, between the timber house and its narrow gateway, which then formed Temple Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, and the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. The southern side was adorned with noble episcopal residences, and with handsome turreted mansions, extending to the river, rich with trees and gardens, and relieved by flashes of sparkling water.

SMITH’S ARMS, BANKSIDE.[2]

[Pg 23]“To the south, Lambeth, with its palace and church, and Faux Hall, were conspicuous objects. Here were pretty gardens and rustic cottages. The village of Southwark, with its prisons, its public theatres, its palace, and its old Tabard Inn, had many charms. It was the abode of Shakespeare himself, as he resided in a good house in the Liberty of the Clink, and was assessed in the weekly payment of 6d., no one but Henslowe, Alleyn, Collins, and Barrett, being so highly rated. That part of the Borough of Southwark known as Bankside was not only famous in Shakespeare’s time for its Theatres, but also as the acknowledged retreat of the warmest of the demi-monde!

“We fear our best zeal for the drama will not authorise us to deny that Covent-garden and Drury-lane have succeeded to the Bank-side in every species of fame!

[Pg 24]

The Globe Theatre.

“We must not forget the river Thames. It was one of the sights of the time. Its waters were pure and bright, full of delicate salmon, and flecked by snowy swans, ‘white as Lemster wool.’ Wherries plied freely on its surface. Tall masts clustered by its banks. Silken-covered tiltboats, freighted with ruffed and feathered ladies and gentlemen, swept by, the watermen every now and then breaking the plash of the waves against their boats by singing out, in their bass voices, ‘Heave and how, rumbelow.’ At night, the scene reminded the travelled man of Venice. All the mansions by the water-side had river-terraces and steps, and each one its own tiltboat, barge, and watermen. Down these steps, lighted by torches and lanterns, stepped dainty ladies, in their coloured shoes, with masks on their faces, and gay gallants, in laced cloaks, by their side, bound for Richmond or Westminster, to mask and revel. Noisy parties of wits and Paul’s men crossed to Bankside to see Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet the Dane, or else ‘The most excellent[Pg 25] historie of the Merchant of Venice, with the extreme crueltie of Shylocke, the Jewe, towards the sayd merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and obtaining of Portia by the choyse of three caskets, as it hath diverse times been acted by the Lord Chamberlain, his servants. Written by William Shakespeare.’

BAYNARD’S CASTLE.

“From Westminster to London Bridge was a favourite trip. There was plenty to see. The fine Strand-side houses were always pointed out—Northumberland House, York House, Baynard’s Castle, the scene of the secret interview between the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, was singled out, between Paul’s Wharf and Puddle Dock. Next to the Temple, and between it and Whitefriars, was the region[Pg 26] known as Alsatia. Here safe from every document but the writ of the Lord Chief Justice and the Lords of the Privy Council, in dark dwellings, with subterranean passages, narrow streets, and trap-doors that led to the Thames, dwelt all the rascaldom of the time—men who had been ‘horned’ or outlawed, bankrupts, coiners, thieves, cheaters at dice and cards, duellists, homicides, and foreign bravoes, ready to do any desperate deed. At night the contents of this kingdom of villany were sprayed out over London, to the bewilderment of good-natured Dogberries, and country gentlemen, making their first visit to town.

“Still further down the river was the famous London Bridge. It consisted of twenty arches; its roadway was sixty feet from the river; and the length of the bridge from end to end was 926 feet.

“It was one of the wonders that strangers never ceased to admire. Its many shops were occupied by pin nacres, just beginning to feel the competition with the Netherland pin-makers, and the tower at its Southwark end was adorned with three hundred heads, stuck on poles, like gigantic pins, memorials of treachery and heresy.

“The roar of the river through the arches was almost deafening. ‘The noise at London Bridge is nothing near her,’ says one of the characters in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Woman’s Prize. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson & Co., must have crossed the bridge many a time on their visits to the City, to ‘gather humours of men daily,’ as Aubrey quaintly expresses it.”

The name of Ben Jonson reminds us that in The Silent Woman,—one of the most popular of his Comedies,—we have presented to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found of[Pg 27] the characteristic noises, and street-cries of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their resemblances and their differences with the roar which the great Babel now “sends through all her gates.” We propose, therefore, to put before our readers this passage of Jonson’s comedy; and then, classifying what he describes, illustrate our fine old dramatic painter of manners by references to other writers, and by the results of our own observation.

The principal character of Jonson’s Silent Woman is founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson designates this character by the name of[Pg 28] “Morose;” and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, not even that of ordinary talk. The plot turns upon this affectation; for having been entrapped into a marriage with the “Silent Woman,” she and her friends assail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune and is relieved of the “Silent Woman,” who is in reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue of the whole scene; the speakers being “Truewitt,” “Clerimont,” and a “Page”:—

The first class of noises, then, against which “Morose” protected his ears by “a huge turban of night-caps,” is that of the ancient and far-famed London Cries. We have here the very loudest of them—fish-wives, orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might almost say that there were hundreds of other cries; and therefore, reserving to ourselves some opportunity for a special enumeration of a few of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them, as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations.

We shall not readily associate any very agreeable sounds with the voices of the “fish-wives.” The one who cried “Mackerel” in Lydgate’s day had probably no such explanatory cry as the “Mackerel alive, alive ho!” of modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was “New Mackerel.” And in the same way there was:—

[Pg 30]

New Wall-Fleet Oysters.		New Flounders.
New Whiting.		New Salmon.

The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in those days of tardy intercourse. But quantity was also to be taken into the account, and so we find the cries[Pg 31] of “Buy my dish of Great Smelts;” “Great Plaice;” “Great Mussels.” Such are the fish-cries enumerated in Lauron’s and various other collections of “London Cries.”

Buy Great Smelts.		Buy Great Plaice.
Buy Great Mussels.		Buy Great Eels.

But, we are forgetting “Morose,” and his “turban of night-caps.” Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own:—

[Pg 32]

Enraged Musician.

In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist’s description of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid’s scream, the mackerel seller’s shout, the sweep upon the house top,—to match the fish-wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard-mongers. The smith, who was “ominous,” had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth’s time; the armourer was obsolete: but Hogarth can rival their noises with the pavior’s hammer, the sow-gelder’s horn, and the knife-grinder’s wheel. The waits of[Pg 33] the city had a pension not to come near “Morose’s” ward; but it was out of the power of the “Enraged Musician” to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct; but modern London had acquired the dustman’s bell. The bear-ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. “Morose” and the “Enraged Musician” had each the church bells to fill up the measure of discord.

The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great city of London thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court-road, Hoxton, Shoreditch,[Pg 34] Kingsland, Whitechapel, Hackney-road, and many other suburban districts, which still retain the character of a street-market, they stand in long rows as the evening draws in, with paper-lanterns stuck in their baskets on dark nights; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the olden time.

The “costard-monger” whom Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is still noisy. He bawls so loud even to this day, that he puts his hand behind his ear to mitigate the sensation which he inflicts upon his own tympanum. He was originally an apple-seller, whence his name; and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman. In Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,” he cries “pears.” Ford makes him cry “pippins.” He is a quarrelsome fellow, according to Beaumont and Fletcher:—

[Pg 35]The costermonger is now a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand: in the neighbourhood of the great markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in some silent streets stretching into the suburbs; and there, with his donkey and hampers stands at the door, as the servant-maid cheapens a bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were anciently represented by such cries as “Buy my artichokes, mistress;” “Ripe cowcumbers;” “White onions, white St. Thomas’ onions;” “White radish;” “Ripe young beans;” “Any baking pears;” “Ripe sparrowgrass.” He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen interfering with his wholesale operations. He would rail against them as the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries railed against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth, they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the common highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to stand or sit to sell their wares in, and to pass from street to street hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and the like, as “unruly people;” and they charge them somewhat unjustly, as it must appear, with “framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more easy life than by labour.”

The evil, as the citizens term it, seems to have increased; for in 1694 the common council threatened the pedlars and petty chapmen with the terrors of the laws against rogues and sturdy[Pg 36] beggars, the least penalty being whipping, whether for male or female. The reason for this terrible denunciation is very candidly put: the citizens and shopkeepers are greatly hindered and prejudiced in their trades by the hawkers and pedlars. Such denunciations as these had little share in putting down the itinerant traders. They continued to flourish, because society required them; and they vanished from our view when society required them no longer. In the middle of the last century they were fairly established as rivals to the shopkeepers. Dr. Johnson, than whom no man knew London better, thus writes in the “Adventurer:”—“The attention of a new-comer is generally first struck by the multiplicity of cries that stun him in the streets, and the variety of merchandise and manufactures which the shopkeepers expose on every hand.” The shopkeepers have now ruined the itinerants—not by putting them down by fiery penalties, but by the competition amongst themselves to have[Pg 37] every article at hand for every man’s use, which shall be better and cheaper than the wares of the itinerant. Whose ear is now ever deafened by the cries of the broom-man? He was a sturdy fellow in the days of old “Morose,” carrying on a barter which in itself speaks of the infancy of civilization. His cry was “Old Shoes for some Brooms.” Those proclamations for barter no doubt furnished a peculiar characteristic of the old London Cries. The itinerant buyers were as loud, though not so numerous, as the sellers.

New Brooms for Old Shoes!

Old Clowze, any old Clo’, Clo’.

The familiar voice of “Old Clowze, any old Clo’ Clo,” has lasted through some generations; but the glories of Monmouth-street were unknown when a lady in a peaked bonnet and a laced stomacher went about proclaiming “Old Satin, old Taffety, or Velvet.” And a singular looking party of the Hebrew persuasion, with a cocked hat on his head, and a bundle of rapiers and sword-sticks under his arm, which he was ready to barter for:—

[Pg 38]

Old Cloaks, Suits, or Coats.

Hats or Caps—Buy, Sell, or Exchange.

While another of the tribe proclaimed aloud from east to west—and back again, “From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,” his willingness to “Buy, sell, or exchange Hats or Caps.”[Pg 39] Why should the Hebrew race appear to possess a monopoly in the purchase and sale of dilapidated costumes? Why should their voices, and theirs alone, be employed in the constant iteration of the talismanic monosyllables “Old Clo’?” Is it because Judas carried the bag that all the children of Israel are to trudge through London streets to the end of their days with sack on shoulder? Artists generally represent the old clothesman with three, and sometimes four, hats, superposed one above the other. Now, although we have seen him with many hats in his hands or elsewhere, we never yet saw him with more than one hat on his head. The three-hatted clothesman, if ever he existed, is obsolete. According to Ingoldsby, however, when “Portia” pronounced the law adverse to “Shylock”:

Any Kitchen-Stuff have you Maids?

There was trading then going forward from house to house, which careful housewifery and a more vigilant police have[Pg 40] banished from the daylight, if they have not extirpated it altogether. Before the shops are open and the chimneys send forth their smoke, there may be now, sometimes, seen creeping up an area a sly-looking beldam, who treads as stealthily as a cat. Under her cloak she has a pan, whose unctuous contents will some day assist in the enlightenment or purification of the world, in the form of candles or soap. But the good lady of the house, who is a late riser, knows not of the transformation that is going forward. In the old days she would have heard the cry of a maiden, with tub on head and pence in hand, of “Any Kitchen-stuff have you Maids?” and she probably would have dealt with her herself, or have forbidden her maids to deal.

So it is with the old cry of “Any Old Iron take Money for?” The fellow who then went openly about with sack on back was a thief, and an encourager of thieves; he now keeps a marine-store.

Any Old Iron take Money for?

 [Pg 41]

Old London Shop.

Sir Walter Scott, in his Fortunes of Nigel, has left us a capital description of the shop of a London tradesman during the reign of King James in England, the shop in question being that of David Ramsay, maker of watches and horologes, within Temple-bar—a few yards eastward of St. Dunstan’s church, Fleet-street, and where his apprentice, Jenkin Vincent—abbreviated to Jin Vin, when not engaged in ’prentices-riots—is crying to every likely passer-by:—

The verbal proclaimers of the excellence of their commodities, had this advantage over those who, in the present day, use the public papers for the same purpose, that they could in many cases adapt their address to the peculiar appearance and apparent taste of the passengers. This direct and personal mode of invitation to customers became, however, a dangerous temptation to the young wags who were employed in the task of solicitation during the absence of the principal person interested in the traffic; and, confiding in their numbers and civic union, the ’prentices of London were often seduced into taking liberties with the passengers, and exercising their wit at the expense of those whom they had no hopes of converting into customers by their eloquence. If this were resented by any act of violence, the inmates of each shop were ready to pour forth in succour; and in the words of an old song which Dr. Johnson was used to hum,—

Desperate riots often arose on such occasions, especially when the Templars, or other youths connected with the aristocracy, were insulted, or conceived themselves so to be.[Pg 43] Upon such occasions, bare steel was frequently opposed to the clubs of the citizens, and death sometimes ensued on both sides. The tardy and inefficient police of the time had no other resource than by the Alderman of the ward calling out the[Pg 44] householders, and putting a stop to the strife by overpowering numbers, as the Capulets and Montagues are separated upon the stage.

St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It must not be imagined that these ’prentices of the City of London were of mean and humble origin. The sons of freemen of the City, or country boys of good and honourable families, alone were admitted to the seven years’ apprenticeship. The common people—the ascripti glebæ—the poor rustics who were bound to the soil, had little or no share in the fortunes of the City of London. Many of the burgesses were as proud of their descent as of their liberties.

A Street at Night—Shakespeare’s London.

[Pg 45]Once apprenticed, and having in a few weeks imbibed the spirit of the place, the lad became a Londoner. It is one of the characteristics of London, that he who comes up to the City from the country speedily becomes penetrated with the magic of the golden pavement, and falls in love with the great City. And he who has once felt that love of London can never again be happy beyond the sound of Bow Bells, which could formerly be heard for ten miles and more. The greatness of the City, its history, its associations, its ambitions, its pride, its hurrying crowds—all these things affect the imagination and fill the heart. There is no place in the world, and never has been, which so stirs the heart of her children with love and pride as the City of London.

A year or two later on, the boy would learn, with his fellow-’prentices that he must betake himself to the practice of bow and arrow, “pellet and bolt,” with a view to what might happen. Moorfields was convenient for the volunteers of the time. There was, however, never any lack of excitement and novelty in the City of London. But this is a digression.

[Pg 46]Amongst the earliest of the Cries of London we must class the “cry” of the City watchman; although it essentially differed from the “cries” of the shopkeepers and the hawkers; for they, as a rule, had something to exchange or sell—copen or buy? as Lydgate puts it—then the watchmen were wont to commence their “cry” at, or about, the hour of night when all others had finished for the day. After that it was the business of the watchman to make his first call, or cry after the manner inscribed over the figure here given.

[Pg 47]He had to deal with deaf listeners, and he therefore proclaimed with a voice of command, “Lanthorn!” but a lanthorn alone was a body without a soul; and he therefore demanded “a whole candle.” To render the mandate less individually oppressive, he went on to cry, “Hang out your Lights!” And, that even the sleepers might sleep no more, he ended with “Heare!” It will be seen that he carries his staff and lanthorn with the air of honest old Dogberry about him,—“A good man and true,” and “the most desartless man to be constable.”

The making of lanthorns was a great trade in the early times. We clung to King Alfred’s invention for the preservation of light with as reverend a love, during many centuries, as we bestowed upon his civil institutions. The horn of the favoured utensil was a very dense medium for illumination, but science had substituted nothing better; and, even when progressing people carried about a neat glass instrument with a brilliant reflector, the watchman held to his ponderous and murky relic of the past, making “night hideous” with his voice, to give news of the weather, such as: “Past eleven, and a starlight night;” or “Past one o’clock, and a windy morning;” in fact, disturbed your rest to tell you “what’s o’clock.”

We are told by the chroniclers that, as early as 1416, the mayor, Sir Henry Barton, ordered lanthorns and lights to be hanged out on the winter evenings, betwixt Allhallows and Candlemass. For three centuries this practice subsisted, constantly evaded, no doubt through the avarice or poverty of individuals, sometimes probably disused altogether, but still the custom of London up to the time of Queen Anne. The cry of the watchman, “Hang out your Lights,” was an exhortation to the negligent, which probably they answered only by snores,[Pg 48] equally indifferent to their own safety and the public preservation. A worthy mayor in the time of Queen Mary provided the watchman with a bell, with which instrument he accompanied the music of his voice down to the days of the Commonwealth. The “Statutes of the Streets,” in the time of Elizabeth, were careful enough for the preservation of silence in some things. They prescribed that, “no man shall blow any horn in the night, or whistle after the hour of nine o’clock in the night, under pain of imprisonment;” and, what was a harder thing to keep, they also forbade a man to make any “sudden outcry in the still of the night, as making any affray, or beating his wife.” Yet a privileged man was to go about knocking at doors and ringing his alarum—an intolerable nuisance if he did what he was ordered to do.

The Watch—Shakespeare’s London.

[Pg 49]But the watchmen were, no doubt, wise in their generation. With honest Dogberry, they could not “see how sleeping should offend;” and after the watch was set, they probably agreed to “go sit upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed.”

The Bellman—from Dekker, 1608.

We have observed in our old statutes, and in the pages of authors of various kinds, that separate mention is made of the Watchman and the Bellman. No doubt there were several degrees of office in the ancient Watch and Ward system, and that part of the office of the old Watch, or Bellman, was to bless the sleepers, whose door he passed, which blessing was often sung or said in verse—hence Bellman’s verse. These verses[Pg 50] were in many cases, the relics of the old incantations to keep off elves and hobgoblins. There is a curious work by Thomas Dekker—otherwise Decker,—entitled: “The Bellman of London. Bringing to light the most notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdom, Profitable for Gentlemen, Lawyers, Merchants, Citizens, Farmers, Masters of Households and all sortes of servants to Marke, and delightful for all men to Reade, Lege, Perlege, Relege.” Printed at London for Nathaniel Butter, 1608. Where he describes the Bellman as a person of some activity—“the child of darkness; a common nightwalker; a man that had no man to wait upon him, but only a dog; one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beat at men’s doors, bidding them (in mere mockery) to look to their candles, when they themselves were in their dead sleeps.” Stow says that in Queen Mary’s day one of each ward “began to go all night with a bell, and at every lane’s end, and at the ward’s end, gave warning of fire and candle, and to help the poor and pray for the dead.” Milton, in his “Il Penseroso,” has:—

In “A Bellman’s Song” of the same date, we have:—

Herrick, also, has given us a verse of Bellman’s poetry in one of the charming morsels of his “Hesperides:”—

[Pg 51]

But, with or without a bell, the real prosaic watchman continued to make the same demand as his predecessors for lights through a long series of years; and his demand tells us plainly that London was a city without lamps. But though he was a prosaic person, he had his own verses. He addressed himself to the “maids.” He exhorted them to make their lanthorns “bright and clear.” He told them how long their candles were expected to burn. And, finally, like a considerate lawgiver, he gave reason for his edict:—

Formerly it was the duty of the bellman of St. Sepulchre’s parish, near Newgate, to rouse the unfortunates condemned to death in that prison, the night before their execution, and solemnly exhort them to repentance with good words in bad rhyme, ending with

It was customary for the bellman to present at Christmas time to each householder in his district “A Copy of Verses,” and he expected from each in return some small gratuity. The execrable character of his poetry is indicated by the contempt with which the wits speak of “Bellman’s verses” and the [Pg 52]comparison they bear to “Cutler’s poetry upon a knife,” whose poesy was—“Love me, and leave me not.” On this subject there is a work entitled—“The British Bellman. Printed in the year of Saint’s Fear, Anno Domini 1648, and reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.” “The Merry Bellman’s Out-Cryes, or the Cities O Yes! being a mad merry Ditty, both Pleasant and Witty, to be cry’d in Prick-Song[3] Prose, through Country and City. Printed in the year of Bartledum Fair, 1655.” Also—“The Bell-man’s Treasury, containing above a Hundred several Verses fitted for all Humours and Fancies, and suited to all Times and Seasons. London, 1707.” It was from the riches of this “treasury” that the predecessors of the present parish Bellman mostly took their own (!) “Copy of Verses.”

In the Luttrell Collection of Broadsides (Brit. Mus.) is one dated 1683-4, entitled, “A Copy of Verses presented by Isaac Ragg, Bellman, to the Masters and Mistresses of Holbourn Division, in the Parish of St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields.” It is headed by a woodcut representing Isaac in his professional accoutrements, a pointed pole in his left hand, and in the right a bell, while his lanthorn hangs from his jacket in front; below is a series of verses, the only specimen worth giving here being the expression of Mr. Ragg’s official duty; it is as follows:—

[Pg 53]In a similar, but unadorned broadside, dated 1666, Thomas Law, Bellman, greets his Masters of “St. Giles, Cripplegate, within the Freedom,” in twenty-three dull stanzas, of which the last may be subjoined:—

We have in our possession a “copy of verses,” coming down to our own time. It is a folio broadside, and contains in addition to a portrait of the Bellman of the Parish and his dog on their rounds, fifteen smaller cuts, mostly Scriptural. It is entitled:—

[Pg 54]The “Verses” all contain allusions to the prominent events of the past year, and have various headings—first we have the:—

Cheap and Expeditious Printing by Steam Machinery,
executed by C. Reynell, 16, Little Pulteney Street,
Golden Square.—First printed in 1735.

[Pg 56]There is a very rare sheet of woodcuts in the Print-room of the British Museum, containing twelve cries, with figures of the “Criers” and the cries themselves beneath. The cuts are singularly characteristic, and may be assigned with safety, on the authority of Mr. John Thomas Smith, the late keeper of the prints and drawings, as of the same date as Ben Jonson’s “fish-wives,” “costard-mongers,” and “orange women.”

No. 1 on the sheet, is the “Watch;” he has no name, but carries a staff and a lanthorn, is well secured in a good frieze gabardine, leathern-girdle, and wears a serviceable hat to guard against the weather. The worthy here depicted has a most venerable face and beard, showing how ancient was the habit of parish officers to select the poor and feeble for the office of watchman, in order to keep them out of the poor-house. The “cry” of the “watch” is as follows:—

No. 2 is the “Bellman”—Dekker’s “Bellman of London and Dog.” (as at page 49.) He carries a halberd lanthorn, and bell, and his “cry” is curious:—

[Pg 57]No. 3 is the “Orange Woman,” a sort of full-grown Nell Gwynne, if we can only fancy Nelly, the favourite mistress of King Charles the Second, grown up in her humble occupation. She carries a basket of oranges and lemons under her arm, and seeks to sell them by the following “cry”:—

No. 4 is the “Hair-line Man,” with a bundle of lines under his arm, and a line in his hand. Clothes-pegs was, perhaps, a separate “cry.” Here is his:—

No. 5 is the “Radish and Lettuce Woman.”—Your fine “goss” lettuce is a modern cry:—

No. 6 is the man who sells “Marking Stones,” now, unless we except slate-pencils, completely out of use:—

[Pg 58]No. 7 is the “Sausage Woman,” holding a pound of sausages in her hand:—

No. 8 is a man with “Toasting-forks and Spice-graters”:—

No. 9 is the “Broom Man,” and here we have a “cry” different from the one we have already given. He carries a pair of old boots in his hand:—

No. 10 is a woman with a box of “Wash balls”:—

[Pg 59]No. 11 sells Ink and Pens.—He carries an ink-bottle hung by a stick behind him, and has a bunch of pens in his hand:—

The twelfth and last is a woman with a basket of Venice Glasses, such as a modern collector would give a great deal to get hold of:—

In the same collection, is a series of three plates, “Part of the Cries in London,” evidently belonging to the same set, though only one has got a title. Each plate contains thirty-six criers, with the addition of a principal “Crier” in the centre. These were evidently executed abroad, as late, perhaps, as the reign of Charles II. No. 1 (with the title page) is ornamented in the centre with the “Rat-Catcher,” carrying an emblazoned banner of rats, and attended by a boy. The leather investment of the rat-catcher of the present day is a pleasant memorial of the banner of the past. Beneath the rat-catcher, the following lines occur:—

[Pg 60]Proving, evidently that the rat-catcher courted more to his banner than his poetry. Then follow the thirty-six cries, some of which, it will be seen, are extremely curious. The names are given beneath the cuts, but without any verse or peculiarity of cry.

“Haie ye any work for John Cooper?” is the title of one of the Martin Marprelate pamphlets. “Haie ye ani gold ends to sell?” is mentioned as a “cry,” in “Pappe with a Hatchet” (cir. 1589). “Camphires,” means Samphires. The “Alminake” man has completely gone, and “Old Dublets” has degenerated into “Ogh Clo,” a “cry” which teased Coleridge for a time, and occasioned a ludicrous incident, which we had reserved for a place somewhat later in our history, had not “Old Dublets” brought it, not inopportunely, to mind. “The other day,” said Coleridge, “I was what you would call floored by a Jew. He passed me several times crying out for old clothes, in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to him, ‘Pray, why can’t you say ‘old clothes’ in a plain way, as I do?’ The Jew stopped, and[Pg 61] looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even accent, ‘Sir, I can say ‘old clothes’ as well as you can; but if you had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say Ogh Clo as I do now;’ and so he marched off.” Coleridge was so confounded with the justice of the retort that he followed and gave him a shilling—the only one he had.

The principal figure on the second plate is the “Bellman,” with dog, bell, halberd, and lanthorns. His “cry” is curious, though we have had it almost in the same form before, at page 56:—

The cries around him deserve transcription:—

On the third plate, the principal figure is the “Crier,” with his staff and keys:—

[Pg 62]

The figures surrounding the Common Crier are in the same style of art, and their cries characteristic of bygone times:—

The only crier in the series who has a horse and cart to attend him is the Worcestershire salt-man. Salt is still sold from carts in poor and crowded neighbourhoods.

We have been somewhat surprised in not finding a single Thames waterman among the criers of London; but the series was, perhaps, confined to the streets of London, and the watermen were thought to belong altogether to the stairs leading to their silent highway. Three of their cries have given titles to three good old English comedies, “Northward, ho!” “Eastward, ho!” and “Westward, ho!” But our series of cries is[Pg 63] still extremely incomplete. Every thing in early times was carried and cried, and we have seen two rare prints of old London Cries not to be found in the lists already enumerated. One is called “Clove Water, Stomock Water,” and the other “Buy an new Booke.” Others may still exist. In the Duke of Devonshire’s collection of drawings, by Inigo Jones, are several cries, drawn in pen-and-ink, for the masques at court in the reigns of James I. and Charles I.

The Light of Other Days.

[Pg 64]In Thomas Heywood’s, “The Rape of Lucrece, a True Roman Tragedy, acted by Her Majestie’s Servants at the Red-Bull, 1609,” is the following long list of London Cries, but called for the sake of the dramatic action of the scene, “Cries of Rome,” which was the common practice with the old dramatists, Rome being the canting name of London. Robert Greene, in his “Perimedes the Blacksmith, 1588,” when he wished to criticise the London Theatre at Shoreditch, talks of the Theatre in Rome; also in his “Never too Late, 1590,” when he talks of the London actors, he pretends only to speak of Roscius and the actors of Rome. In the pedlar’s French of the day Rome-vyle—or ville—was London, and Rome-mort the Queen [Elizabeth]. There is some humour in the classification, and if the cries were well imitated by the singer, the ballad—or as it would then be called “jig”—is likely to have been extremely popular in its day.

The Cries of Rome [i.e. London.]

[Pg 65]

Marking Stone.		Bread and Meat.
Worstershire Salt.		Buy a Mouse Trap.

[Pg 66]

[Pg 67]

Kitchen Stuff, Maids.		White Radish Lettuce.
Rock Sampier.		Mat, a Mill Mat.

[Pg 68]

[Pg 69]

Whiting Maids, Whiting.		Hot Fine Oat Cakes.
Small Coals Here.		St. Thomas’ Onions.

[Pg 70]From “Deuteromelia: or, the Second Part of Pleasant Roundelayes; K. H. Mirth, or Freeman’s Songs, and such delightful Catches. London, printed for Thomas Adams, dwelling in Paul’s Church-yard, at the sign of the White Lion, 1609.”

Thomas Morely, a musical composer, set music of four, six, eight and ten parts, to the cries in his time, among them are some used by the milliners’ girls in the New Exchange, which was on the south side of the Strand, opposite the now Adelphi[Pg 71] Theatre, it was built in the reign of James I., and pulled down towards the end of the last century; among others are “Italian falling Bands,” “French Garters,” “Robatos,” a kind of ruff then fashionable, “Nun’s Thread,” &c.

The effeminacy and coxcombry of a man’s ruff and band are well ridiculed by many of our dramatic writers. There is a small tract bearing the following title—“A Merrie Dialogue between Band, Cuffe and Ruffe. Done by an excellent Wit, and lately acted in a Shew in the Famous Universitie of Cambridge. London, printed by W. Stansby for Miles Partrich, and are to be sold at his shop neere Saint Dunstone’s Church-yard in Fleet Street, 1615.” This brochure is a bonne-bouche of the period, written in dramatic dialogue form, and full of puns as any modern comedy or farcical sketch from the pen of the greatest word-twister of the day—Henry J. Byron (who, on Cyril’s Success, Married in Haste, Our Boys, and The Girls,)—and is of considerable value as an illustration of the history of the costume of the period. The band, as an article of ornament for the neck, was the common wear of gentlemen, though now exclusively retained by the clergy and lawyers; the cuff, as a fold at the end of a sleeve, or the part of the sleeve turned back from the hand, was made highly fantastical by means of “cut work;” the ruff, as a female neck ornament, made of plaited lawn, or other material, is well-known, but it was formerly worn by both sexes.

In a Roxburghe Ballad entitled “The Batchelor’s Feast,” &c., we have:—

[Pg 72]In another, “The Lamentations of a New Married Man, briefly declaring the sorrow and grief that comes by marrying a young wanton wife”:—

In “Loyal Subject,” by Beaumont and Fletcher, act iii., sc. 5, we find that in the reign of James I., potatoes had become so common, that “Potatoes! ripe Potatoes!” were publicly hawked about the city.

Potatoes! ripe Potatoes.

Orlando Gibbons,—1583-1625—set music in madrigals to several common cries of the day. In a play called “Tarquin and Lucrece,” some of the music of the following occur,—“Rock Samphire,” “A Marking Stone,” “Bread and Meat for the poor Prisoners,” “Hassock for your pew,” “Lanthorne and Candlelight,” &c.

[Pg 73]In the Bridgewater library (in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere) is a series of engravings on copper thirty-two in number, without date or engraver’s name; but called, in the handwriting of the second Earl of Bridgewater, “The Manner of Crying Things in London.” They are, it is said, by a foreign artist, and probably proof impressions, for on the margin of one of the engravings is a small part of another, as if it had been taken off for a trial of the plate. Curious and characteristic they certainly are, and of a date anterior to 1686; in which year the second Earl of Bridgewater died. The very titles kindle old recollections as you read them over:—

1. Lanthorne and a whole candell light: hang out your lights heare!
2. I have fresh cheese and creame.
3. Buy a brush or a table book.
4. Fine oranges, fine lemons.
5. Ells or yeards: buy yeard or ells.
6. I have ripe straw-buryes, ripe straw-buryes.
7. I have screenes, if you desier to keepe y^r butey from y^e fire.
8. Codlinges hot, hot codlinges.
9. Buy a steele or a tinder box.
10. Quicke peravinkells, quicke, quicke.
11. Worke for a cooper; worke for a cooper.
12. Bandestringes, or handkercher buttons.
13. A tanker bearer.
14. Macarell new: maca-rell.
15. Buy a hone, or a whetstone, or a marking stone.
16. White unions, white St. Thomas unions.
17. Mate for a bed, buy a doore mate.
18. Radishes or lettis, two bunches a penny.
19. Have you any work for a tinker?
20. Buy my hartichokes, mistris.
21. Maribones, maides, maribones.
22. I ha’ ripe cowcumber, ripe cowcumber.
23. Chimney sweepe.
24. New flounders new.
25. Some broken breade and meate for y^e poore prisoners; for the Lord’s sake pittey the poore.
26. Buy my dish of great smelts.
27. Have you any chaires to mend?
28. Buy a cocke, or a gelding.
29. Old showes or bootes; will you buy some broome?
30. Mussels, lilly white mussels.
31. Small cole a penny a peake.
32. What kitchen stuff have you, maides?

[Pg 74]The figures, male and female, in the engravings, are all three-quarter lengths, furnished with the implements of their various trades, or with the articles in which they deal. The Watchman (one of the best) is a fine old fellow, with a broad brim to his hat, a reverential beard, a halberd in one hand, and a lanthorn in the other (after the manner of the one we have given at page 46). But perhaps the most curious engraving in the set is the “cry” called “Some broken breade and meate for y^e poore prisoners: for the Lord’s sake pittey the poore.” This represents a poor prisoner with a sealed box in his hand, and a basket at his back—the box for alms in the shape of money, and the basket for broken bread and meat. There is also preserved a small handbill printed in 1664, and entitled, “The Humble Petition of the Poor Distressed Prisoners in Ludgate, being above an hundred and fourscore poor persons in number, against the time of the Birth of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “We most humbly beseech you,” says the handbill “(even for God’s cause), to relieve us with your charitable benevolence, and to put into this Bearers Boxe, the same being sealed with the house seale as it is figured on this Petition.”

[Pg 75]To, “O, rare Ben Jonson!” we are indebted for the most perfect picture of Smithfield at “Barthol’me-tide,” which he gives us, together with the popular cries in vogue at the time, in his comedy of “Bartholomew Fair,” produced at the Hope Theatre, on the Bankside, 1614, and acted, as Jonson tells us, by the lady Elizabeth’s servants.

The second act opens with “The Fair. A number of Booths, Stalls, &c., set out.” The characters presented are “Lanthorn Leatherhead,” a hobby-horse seller. “Bartholomew Cokes,” an esquire of Harrow. “Nightingale,” a ballad-singer, a costard-monger, mousetrap-man, corn cutter. “Joan Trash,” a gingerbread woman. “Leatherhead” calls—“What do you lack? what is’t you buy? what do you lack? rattles, drums, halberts, horses, babies o’ the best? fiddles o’ the finest.” “Joan Trash” cries, “Buy my gingerbread, gilt gingerbread!” the costard-monger, bawls out, “Buy any pears, pears, fine, very fine pears!” “Nightingale,” the ballad man sings—

“What do you lack?” continues Leatherhead, “What do you lack, gentlemen? my pretty mistress, buy a fine hobby-horse for your young master; cost you but a token a week for his provender.” The corn cutter cries, “Have you any corns in your feet or toes?” The tinder-box man calls, “Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, or a tormentor for a flea!” Trash[Pg 76] cries, “Buy some gingerbread!” Nightingale bawls, “Ballads, ballads, fine new ballads!” Leatherhead repeats, “What do you lack, gentlemen, what is’t you lack? a fine horse? a lion? a bull? a bear? a dog? or a cat? an excellent fine Bartholomew bird? or an instrument? what is’t you lack, what do you buy, mistress? a fine hobby-horse, to make your son a tilter? a drum, to make him a soldier? a fiddle, to make him a reveller? what is’t you lack? little dogs for your daughters? or babies, male and female? fine purses, pouches, pincases, pipes; what is’t you lack? a pair o’ smiths to wake you i’ the morning? or a fine whistling bird?” A character named “Bartholomew Cokes,” a silly “Esquire of Harrow,” stops at Leatherhead’s stall to purchase.—“Those six horses, friend, I’ll have, and the three Jew’s trumps; and half a dozen o’ birds; and that drum; and your smiths—I like that devise o’ your smiths, and four halberts; and let me see, that fine painted great lady, and her three women of state, I’ll have. A set of those violins I would buy too, for a delicate young noise[4] I have i’ the country, that are every one a size less than another, just like your fiddles.” Joan Trash invites the Esquire to buy her gingerbread, and he turns to her basket, whereupon Leatherhead says, “Is this well, Goody Joan, to interrupt my market in the midst, and call away my customers? Can you answer this at the Pie-poudres?”[5] whereto Joan Trash replies, “Why, if his master-ship have a[Pg 77] mind to buy, I hope my ware lies as open as anothers; I may show my ware as well as you yours.” Nightingale begins to sing:—

Squire Cokes hears this, and says, “Ballads! hark, hark! pray thee, fellow, stay a little! what ballads hast thou? let me see, let me see myself—How dost thou call it? A Caveat against Cut-purses!—a good jest i’ faith; I would fain see that demon, your cut-purse, you talk of;” He then shows his purse boastingly, and enquires “Ballad-man, do any cut-purses haunt hereabout? pray thee raise me one or two: begin and show me one.” Nightingale answers, “Sir, this is a spell against ’em, spick and span new: and ’tis made as ’twere in mine own person, and I sing it in mine own defence. But ’twill cost a penny alone if you buy it.” The Squire replies: “No matter for the price; thou dost not know me, I see, I am an old Bartholomew.” The ballad has “pictures,” and Nightingale tells him, “It was intended, sir, as if a purse should chance to be cut in my presence, now, I may be blameless though; as by the sequel will more plainly appear.” He adds, “It is, to the tune of Paggington’s Pound, sir.” and he finally sings the ballad, the first and last stanzas of which follow:—

While Nightingale sings this ballad, a fellow tickles Coke’s ear with a straw, to make him withdraw his hand from his pocket, and privately robs him of his purse, which, at the end of the song, he secretly conveys to the ballad-singer; who notwithstanding his “Caveat against cut-purses,” is their principal confederate, and in that quality, becomes the unsuspected depository of the plunder.

In the years 1600-18, there was published a musical work, entitled “Pammelia—Mvsickes Miscellanie; Or, Mixed Varietie of pleasant Rovndelays and delightful Catches. London, Printed by Thomas Snodhom, for Matthew Lownes and Iohn Browne.” It was compiled by some eminent musicians, who had a practice of setting the cries of London to music, retaining only the very musical notes of them, here we find, “What Kitchen-Stuffe haue you maids,” and there is a Round in six parts to the cry of “New Oysters:”—

[Pg 79]From “Meligmata: Musical Phantasies, fitting the Court, City, and Country Manners, to three, four and five Voices”—

“London, printed by William Stansby, for Thos. Adams, 1611,” we take as follows:—

“Cittie Rounds.

Some of the “Common Cryes i’ th’ City,” as Oysters, Codlings, Kitchen-stuff, Matches for your Tinder-box, &c., are enumerated in Richard Brome’s—The “Court Beggar, A Comedie acted at the Cock-pit, by His Majesties Servants, Anno 1632.”

“The London Chanticleers, a witty Comedy full of Various and Delightful Mirth,” 1659. This piece is rather an interlude than a play, and is amusing and curious, the characters being, with two exceptions, all London criers. The allusions to old usages, with the mention of many well known ballads, and some known no longer, contribute to give the piece an interest and a value of its own.

[Pg 80]The principal dramatis personæ consists of:—

The Sorrowful Lamentations
of the
Pedlars and Petty Chapmen,

For the Hardness of the Times and the Decay of Trade.

To the Tune of “My Life and my Death.”

“Printed for J. Back, at the Black-boy, on London Bridge.”

In “Merry Drollery Complete, or, a Collection of Jovial Poems, Merry Songs, Witty Drolleries, Intermixed with Pleasant Catches, London, Printed for William Miller, at the Gilded Acorn, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1661,” the Catch which follows will be found. The Rev. J. Woodfall Ebsworth, M.A., Cantab, who has carefully edited and reprinted [1875] “Both Parts”; says in his Appendix of Notes:—“Hare-skin and Rabbit-skin collectors, have always been queer characters. This catch is by John Fletcher, in his ‘Beggar’s Bush,’ act iii., sc. 1, where it is sung by ‘Clause’ his boy. Clause, the vagabond beggar, was a popular favourite, reproduced in ‘Drolls.’ We see him represented in the frontispiece of The Wits, by Kirkman and Cox.”

[Pg 84]

A Catch.

In the same Collection there is a vigorous song exposing the cheats of mendicants. The hero of which declares:—“I am a Rogue, and a stout one.” And that among the many cheats, counterfeits, deceits and dodges he has to resort to, at times he may be seen:—

For the counterpart of this Rogue and Vagabond, the reader is referred to Vol. I, No. 42-3 of the Roxburghe Ballads—(British Museum.) Where there is one entitled:—

The Cunning Northern Beggar.

To the Tune of Tom of Bedlam.

[Pg 86]

The following ballad was published in “Playford’s Select Ayres,” 1659, p. 95; with music by Dr. John Wilson, and Musical Companion, 1673. It is in the Percy Folio MS., iii., 308-11. Also in “Windsor Drollery,” 2; and “Le Prince d’Amour,” 1660, p. 177. It is attributed to Shakespeare, but with only manuscript evidence.

“The Song of the Pedlars.

[Pg 89]Mr. John Payne Collier, in his “A Book of Roxburghe Ballads,” London, 1847, reproduces a capital ditty; “ryhte merrie and very excellent in its way,” relating to the popular pursuits and the customs of London and the Londoners in the early part of the seventeenth century. It is printed verbatim from a broadside, signed W. Turner, and called:—

The only known copy is dated 1662, but contains internal evidence, in the following stanza (which occurs in the opening of The Second Part,) that it was written in the reign of James I.

Shancke.—John Shancke the comic actor here mentioned was celebrated for singing rhymes, and what were technically “jigs”[Pg 90] on the stage. In this respect, as a low comedian he had been the legitimate successor of Tarlton, Kempe, Phillips, and Singer. He was on the stage from 1603 to 1635, when he died. Then, John Taylor the Water Poet, no mean authority, informs us that the Swan Theatre, on the Bankside, in the Liberty of Paris Gardens, had been abandoned by the players in 1613. The Curtain Theatre in Holywell street—or Halliwell street, as it was usually spelt at that time—Shoreditch Fields[7] had also fallen into disuse before the reign of Charles I. The Globe on the Bankside, and the [Red] Bull Theatre at the upper end of St. John’s street, Clerkenwell were employed until after the restoration. The allusion to the Waterman carrying “bonny lasses over to the plays,” is also a curious note of time. With these matters before us, we may safely conclude that “Turner’s Dish of Stuff” is but a reprint of an earlier production. As we find it, so we lay it before our readers: thus:—

[Pg 91]

“The Common Cries of London Town:
Some go up street, some go down.

With Turner’s Dish of Stuff, or a Gallymaufery.

To the tune of Wotton Towns End.”

 [Pg 95]

THE SECOND PART.

To the same Tune.

[Pg 99]The “tink, terry tink” of the Tinker’s “Cry” is preserved in a Miscellany of the year 1667, called “Catch that Catch Can; or, the Musical Champion.”

“The Tinker.

[Pg 100]The tinker’s “Cry” forms the opening lines of “Clout the Cauldron,” one of the best of our old Scottish songs:—

But the song is so well known to all who take an interest in our northern minstrelsy, and is to be found, moreover, in every good collection of Scottish Songs, that it is enough to refer to it.

Honest John Bunyan was a travelling tinker originally. Reader! just for a moment fancy the inspired author—poet we may call him—of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” crying the “cry” of his trade through the streets of Bedford, thus—“Mistress, have you any work for the tinker? pots, pans, kettles I mend, old brass, lead or old copper I buy. Anything in my way to-day, maids?” While at the same time, through his brain was floating visions of Vanity Fair, the Holy War, the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Barren Fig Tree, the Water of Life, &c. beneath the long head of hair, shaggy and dirty, too, as a tinker’s generally is.

 [Pg 101]

Hot Codlings:—A Catch.

This will be found in “Windsor Drollery,” and, with music for three voices, by Thomas Holmes, in John Hilton’s “Catch that Catch Can;” and also Walsh’s “Catch Club.” Part II., p. 25.

[Pg 102]The best known collection of cries is “The Cryes of the City of London. Drawne after the Life. P. Tempest, Excudit,” a small folio volume, which when published, in 1688, consisted of only fifty plates, as the following advertisement, extracted from the London Gazette of May 28-31, 1688, sufficiently proves:—

Samuel Pepys, the eccentric diarist, who died 1703, left to Magdalene College, Cambridge, an invaluable collection of ballads, manuscript naval memoirs, ancient English poetry, three volumes of “Penny Merriments,” and a numerous assemblage of etchings and engravings. Among the latter are a number of Tempest’s Cries in the first state. These are still preserved in the Pepysian Library in the same College.

In 1711 another edition of Tempest’s Cries was published, containing seventy-four plates, several of which can scarcely be called cries. They are popular “London Characters” rather than “criers.” As the book, however, is extremely rare, and consequently costly, and as a history of the old London Cries would be very imperfect without a particular account of Tempest’s volume being made, with a few words about Mauron, who designed, and Pearce Tempest, who engraved these cries, that which follows will not, we trust, be altogether out of place. Of Mauron, we can find no better account than the notice in Walpole.

[Pg 103]“Marcellus Mauron—sometimes spelt Lauron, was born at the Hague in 1643, and learnt to paint of his father, with whom he came when young into England. Here he was placed with one La Zoon, a portrait-painter, and then with Flesshier, but owed his chief improvement to his own application. He lived several years in Yorkshire, and when he returned again to London he had very much improved himself in his art. He drew correctly, studied nature diligently, copied closely, and so surpassed all his contemporaries in drapery, that Sir Godfrey Kneller employed him to clothe his portraits. He likewise excelled in imitating the different styles of eminent masters, executed conversation pieces of considerable merit. Several prints were made from his works, and several plates he etched and scraped himself. A book on fencing, and the procession at the coronation of William and Mary, were designed by him. He lived in Bow-street, Covent-garden, on the west side, about three doors up, and at the back of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s house in the Piazza; there he died of consumption March 11th, 1702.”

Of Pearce Tempest, the engraver, the particulars collected by Vertue were so extremely slight that Horace Walpole merely enumerates him among those of whom nothing is known. It may be told of him, however, that he lived in the Strand, over-against Somerset House, and dying in 1717, was buried on the 14th of April, in the church-yard of St. Paul, Covent-garden.

The six woodcuts following are reduced copies of the engraved figures that appear in Marcellus Mauron cum Tempest’s “The Cryes of the City of London;” first we have:—

[Pg 104]

Fine Writing Ink!

This engraving pretty well describes the occupation of the figure represented. He carries a barrel on his back—pens in his right hand, with a pint measure and funnel at his side. But since Mauron’s time the cry of “Fine Writing Ink” has ceased to be heard in the streets of the metropolis, so we no longer hear:—

 [Pg 105]

Buy an Iron Fork, or a Shovel?

The demand for such an iron fork, or such a shovel as the old woman carries is now discontinued.

 [Pg 106]

Troop, Every One, One!

The man blowing a trumpet, “Troop, every one, one!” was a street seller of hobby-horses—toys for children of three hundred years ago.

He carried them, as represented in the engraving, in a partitioned frame, on his shoulder, and to each horse’s head was a small flag with two bells attached. It was a pretty plaything for a “little master,” and helped him to imitate the galloping of the real and larger hobby-horse in the pageants and mummeries that passed along the streets, or pranced in the shows at fairs and on the stage. Now-a-days we give a boy the first stick at hand to[Pg 107] thrust between his legs as a Bucephalus—the shadow of a shadow—or the good natured grandpapa wishing to give my “young master” something of the semblance of the generous animal—for the horse is no less popular with boys than formerly, takes his charge to the nearest toyshop and buys him a painted stick on which is a sawn-out representation of a horse’s head, which with the addition of a whip will enable him to:—

Buy a Fine Singing Bird!

The cries of singing birds are extinct; we have only bird-sellers. The above engraving, therefore represents a by-gone character.

 [Pg 108]

Strawberries Ripe, and Cherries in the Rise.

In the earlier days, the above was at once a musical and a poetical cry. It must have come over the ear, telling of sunny gardens not a sparrow’s flight from the City, such as that of the Bishop of Ely in Holborn, and of plenteous orchards which could spare their boughs as well as their fruit:—

 [Pg 109]

Fine Oranges and Lemons.

The “orange-women” of Ben Jonson we have figured to the life. The familiar mention of the orange-sellers in the “Silent Woman,” and this very early representation of one of them, show how general the use of this fruit had become in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is stated, though the story is somewhat apocryphal, that the first oranges were imported by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is probable that about his time they first became an article of general commerce. We now consume about three hundred and fifty millions of oranges every year.

The class of bold young women—“Orange Wenches,” that Nell Gwynne made famous is sufficiently alluded to in a passage in the Spectator, No. 141:

[Pg 110]Rowe and other writers go far to prove that the “Orange Wenches” who frequented theatres had

beside supplying refreshment to the young gallants of the day.

In Douglas Jerrold’s comedy of “Nell Gwynne,” which was first represented at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 9th of January, 1833, with the following cast of characters:—

There is the following scene and song:—

The orange-woman who carried the golden fruit through every street and alley, with the musical cry of:—“Fine Oranges and Lemons,” lasted for a century or two. Then the orange-woman became, as everything else became, a more prosaic person as she approached our own times. She was a barrow-woman at the end of the last century: and Porson has thus described her:—

The transformation was the same with the strawberry and cherry-women.

[Pg 113]From the “Collection of Ancient Songs and Ballads, written on various subjects, and printed between the years MDLX. and MDCC.” in the British Museum, and now known as the Roxburghe Ballads, we take the ballad of:—

THE CRIES OF LONDON.

Tune—The Merry Christ-church Bells.

Printed and sold at the Printing-office in Bow-church-yard, London.

[Pg 117]“Holloway cheese-cakes” was once one of the London cries; they were sold by a man on horseback; and in “Jack Drum’s Entertainment,” a Comedy, 1601, in a random song, the festive character of this district is denoted:—

Drunken Barnaby, at the “Mother Red Cap,” at Holloway, found very bad company:—

[Pg 118]Addison, the essayist and poet, 1672-1719, contributed a capital paper to the Spectator, on the subject of London Cries, which we deem so much to the purpose, that it is here reproduced in extenso.

There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frightens a country ’squire, than the cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will Honeycombe calls them the Ramage de la ville, and prefers them to the sound of larks, and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.

SIR,

I am a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burdening the subject, but I cannot get the parliament to listen to me, who look upon me forsooth as a crack, and a projector; so[Pg 119] that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

The post I would aim at, is to be comptroller-general of the London cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

The cries of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together with the twankling of a brass kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman’s thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder’s horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore propose that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of her majesty’s liege subjects.

Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and indeed so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above Ela, and it sounds so exceedingly shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest bass, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the[Pg 120] lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets, as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares; and to take care in particular, that those may not make the most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the venders of card matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of Much cry, but little wool.

Some of these last mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the street where he lived; but what was the effect of this contract? Why, the whole tribe of card-match-makers which frequent that quarter, passed by his door the very next day, in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

It is another great imperfection in our London-cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should indeed be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as fire; yet this is generally the case: a bloody battle arms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry, that one would think the enemy were at our gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit, under this head, those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest our[Pg 121] streets in turnip-season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

There are others who affect a very slow time, and are, in my opinion, much more tunable than the former; the cooper in particular swells his last note in a hollow voice, that is not without its harmony; nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public are very often asked, If they have any chairs to mend? Your own memory may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature, in which music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cucumbers; but alas! this cry, like the song of the nightingale, is not heard above two months. It would therefore be worth while to consider, whether the same air might not in some cases be adapted to other words.

It might likewise deserve our most serious consideration, how far, in a well-regulated city, those humourists are to be tolerated, who, not content with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have invented particular songs and tunes of their own: such as was not many years since, the pastry-man, commonly known by the name of the Colly-Molly-Puff; and such as is at this day the vender of powder and wash-ball, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the name of Powder-Watt.

 [Pg 122]

Colly-Molly-Puff.

[Pg 123]I must not here omit one particular absurdity which runs through this whole vociferous generation, and which renders their cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the public; I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of them aim at, of crying so as not to be understood. Whether or no they have learned this from several of our affected singers, I will not take upon me to say; but most certain it is, that people know the wares they deal in rather by their tunes than by their words: insomuch that I have sometimes seen a country boy run out to buy apples of a bellows-mender, and ginger-bread from a grinder of knives and scissors. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some very eminent artists of this particular grace in a cry, that none but their acquaintance are able to guess at their profession; for who else can know, that work if I had it, should be the signification of a corn-cutter.

Forasmuch, therefore, as persons of this rank are seldom men of genius or capacity, I think it would be very proper, that some man of good sense and sound judgment should preside over these public cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices in our streets, that have not tunable throats, and are not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their respective merchandises in apt phrases, and in the most distinct and agreeable sounds. I do therefore humbly recommend myself as a person rightly qualified for this post; and if I meet with fitting encouragement, shall communicate some other projects which I have by me, that may no less conduce to the emolument of the public.

I am,
Sir, &c.
Ralph Crotchet.

[Pg 124]A curious parallel might be carried out between the itinerant occupations which the progress of society has entirely superseded, and those which even the most advanced civilization is compelled to retain. We here only hastily glance at a few of these differences.

Of the street trades which are past and forgotten, the small-coal-man was one of the most remarkable. He tells the tale of a city with few fires; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling “Small Coals” from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry had, however, a rival in that of “Any Wood to cleave.”

********

But here we must pause awhile to make a passing remark—even if it be no more than a mere wayside nod to the memory of Thomas Britton, the celebrated “Musical Small Coal Man,”—1654-1714.—to whom Britain is greatly indebted for the introduction and cultivation of concerted music, and whose influence has been indirectly felt in musical circles throughout the world:—

This singular man had a small coal shop at the corner of a passage in Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell-green, and his concert-room! which was over that, could only be reached by stairs from the outside of the house. The facetious Ned Ward, confirms this statement, thus:—

 [Pg 125]

Thomas Britton,
The Musical Small Coal Man.

Britton was buried in the church-yard of Clerkenwell, being attended to the grave by a great concourse of people, especially by those who had been used to frequent his concerts.

[Pg 126]To resume our argument, we may ask what chance would an aged man now have with his flattering solicitation of “Pretty Pins, pretty Women?” and the musical distich:—

Every stationer’s or general-shop can now supply all the “Fine Writing-ink,” wanted either by clerks or authors. There is a grocer’s shop, or co-operative store at every turn; and who therefore needs him who cried aloud “Lilly white Vinegar, three-pence a quart?” When everybody, old and young, wore wigs—when the price for a common one was a guinea, and a journeyman had a new one every year; when it was an article in every city apprentice’s indenture that his master should find him in “One good and sufficent wig, yearly, and every year, for, and during, and unto the expiration of the full end and term of his apprenticeship”—then, a wig-seller made his stand in the street, or called from door to door, and talked of a “Fine Tie, or a fine Bob-wig sir?” Formerly, women cried “Four pair for a shilling, Holland Socks,” also “Long Thread Laces, long and strong,” “Scotch or Russian Cloth,” “Buy any Wafers or Wax.” “London’s Gazette, here?” The history of cries is a history of social changes. Many of the working trades, as well as the vendors of things that can be bought in every shop, are now nearly banished from our thoroughfares. “Old Chairs to mend,” or “A brass Pot or an iron Pot to mend?” still salutes us in some retired suburb; and we still see the knife-grinder’s wheel; but who vociferates “Any work for John Cooper?” The trades are gone to those who pay scot and lot. What should we think of prison discipline, now-a-days, if the voice of lamentation was heard in every street, “Some Bread and Meat for the poor[Pg 127] Prisoners; for the Lord’s sake, pity the Poor?” John Howard put down this cry. Or what should we say of the vigilance of excise-officers if the cry of “Aqua Vitæ” met our ears? The Chiropodist has now his guinea, a country villa, and railway season ticket; in the old days he stood at corners, with knife and scissors in hand, crying “Corns to pick.” There are some occupations of the streets, however, which remain essentially the same, though the form be somewhat varied. The sellers of food are of course among these. “Hot Peascod,” and “Hot Sheep’s-feet,” are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. “Hot Wardens,” and “Hot Codlings,” are not the cries which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire; also roasted chesnuts, and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the “fruit” when cut; the London pieman still holds his ground in spite of the many penny pie-shops now established. Rice-milk is yet sold out in halfpennyworths. But furmety, barley broth, greasy sausages—“bags of mystery,” redolent of onions and marjoram—crisp brown flounders, and saloop are no longer in request.

The cry of “Water-cresses” used to be heard from some barefoot nymph of the brook, who at sunrise had dipped her foot into the bubbling runnel, to carry the green luxury to the citizens’ breakfast-tables. Water-cresses are now cultivated, like cabbages, in market-gardens. The cry of “Rosemary and Briar” once resounded through the throughfares; and every alley smelt “like Bucklersbury in simple time,” when the whole street was a mart for odoriferous herbs. Cries like these are rare enough now; yet we do hear them occasionally, when crossing some bye-street, and have then smelt an unwonted fragrance in the air; and as[Pg 128] someone has truly said that scents call up the most vivid associations, we have had visions of a fair garden afar off, and the sports of childhood, and the song of the lark that:—

Then comes a pale-looking woman with little bunches in her hand, who, with a feeble voice, cries “Buy my sweet Briar, any Rosemary?” There are still, however, plenty of saucy wenches—of doubtful morality—in the more crowded and fashionable thoroughfares, who present the passengers with moss-roses, and violets. Gay tells us:—

We no longer hear the cries which had some association of harmonious sounds with fragrant flowers. The din of “noiseful gain” exterminated them.

 [Pg 129]

The Water Carrier.
“Any fresh and fair Spring Water here?”

This was formerly a very popular London cry, but has now become extinct, although it was long kept in vogue by reason of the old prejudices of old fashioned people, whose sympathy was with the complaints of the water-bearer, who daily vociferated in and about the environs of London, “Any fresh and fair spring water here! none of your pipe sludge?”—though their own old tubs were often not particularly nice and clean to look at, and the water was likely to receive various impurities in being carried along the streets in all weathers.—“Ah dear?” cried his customers, “Ah dear! Well, what’ll the world come to!—they won’t let poor people live at all by-and-bye—Ah dear! here they are breaking up all the roads and [Pg 130]footpaths again, and we shall be all under water some day or another with all their fine new fandangle goings on, but I’ll stick to the poor old lame and nearly blind water-carrier, as my old father did before me, as long as he has a pailful and I’ve a penny, and when we haven’t we must go to the workhouse together.”

This was the talk and reasoning of many honest people of that day, who preferred taxing themselves, to the daily payment of a penny and very often twopence to the water-carrier, in preference to having “Company’s water” at a fixed or pro-rata sum per annum.

The First View of the New River—From London.

This is seen immediately on coming within view of Sadler’s Wells, a place of dramatic entertainment; after manifold windings and tunnellings from its source the New River passes beneath the arch in the engraving, and forms a basin within the large[Pg 131] walled enclosure, from whence diverging main pipes convey the water to all parts of London. At the back of the boy angling on the wall is a public-house, with tea-gardens and skittle-ground, and known as Sir Hugh Myddleton’s Head, also as Deacon’s Music Hall, which has been immortalized by Hogarth in his print of Evening. But how changed the scene from what he represented it! To this stream, as the water nearest London favourable to sport, anglers of inferior note used to resort:—

We have said above, anglers used to resort, and we have said so advisedly, as that portion of the river is now arched over to the end of Colebrooke Row.

The New River, Islington, its vicinity, and our own favourite author—Charles Lamb, are, as it were, so inseparably bound together, that we hope to be excused for occupying a little of our reader’s time with Elia—His Friends—His Haunts—His Walks, and Talk(s), particularly about the neighbourhood of:—

[Pg 132]Into the old parlour of the ancient “Sir Hugh Myddleton’s Head”—Elia, would often introduce his own, for there he would be sure to find, from its proximity to Sadler’s Wells Theatre, some play-going old crony with whom he could exchange a convival “crack,” and hear the celebrated Joe Grimaldi call for his tumbler of rum-punch; challenging Boniface to bring it to a rummer! Many a gleeful hour has been spent in this once rural hostelrie. But:—“All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

Colebrooke Cottage.

——“to Colebrooke-row, within half a stone’s throw of a cottage; endeared to me, in later years by its being the abode of ‘as much virtue as can live.’” Hone, in his Every-day Book, Oct. 10, 1827.

[Pg 133]Colebrooke Row was built in 1708. Here Charles Lamb, resided with his sister Mary, from 1823 to 1826; during which period—viz, on Tuesday, the 29th March, 1825, he closed his thirty-three years’ clerkship at the East India House. Lamb very graphically describes the event in a letter to Bernard Barton, dated September 2, 1823, thus:—

And again, in the November following, in a letter to Robert Southey, he informs the bard, who had promised him a call, that he is “at Colebrooke Cottage, left hand coming from Sadler’s Wells.” It was here that that amiable bookworm, George Dyer, editor of the Delphin Classics, walked quietly into the New River from Charles Lamb’s door, but was soon recovered, thanks to the kind care of Miss Lamb.

The Old Queen’s Head.

The late Mr. George Daniel, of Canonbury Square, Islington, who formerly possessed the “Elizabethan Garland,” which consists of Seventy Ballads, printed between the years 1559 and 1597; a pleasing chatty writer and great snapper-up of unconsidered literary trifles, was an old friend and jolly companion of Charles Lamb’s and frequently accompanied him in his favourite walks on the banks of the New River, and to the ancient hostelries in and round-about “Merrie Islington.” At the[Pg 134] Old Queen’s Head, they, in company with many retired citizens, and thirsty wayfarers, met, on at least one occasion, with Theodore Hook, indulged in reminiscences of bygone days, merrily puffed their long pipes of the true “Churchwarden” or yard of clay type, and quaffed nut-brown ale, out of the festivious tankard presented by a choice spirit!—one Master Cranch,—to a former host; and in the old oak parlour, too, where, according to tradition, the gallant Sir Walter Raleigh received, “full souse” in his face, the humming contents of a jolly Black Jack[10] from an affrighted clown, who, seeing clouds of tobacco-smoke curling from the knight’s nose and mouth, thought he was all on fire! fire!! fire!!!

[Pg 135].

Canonbury Tower.

Lamb took special delight in watching the setting sun from the top of old Canonbury Tower, until the cold night air warned him to retire. He was intimate with Goodman Symes, the then tenant-keeper of the Tower, and bailiff of the Manor, and a brother antiquary in a small way; who took pleasure in entertaining him in the antique panelled chamber where Goldsmith wrote his Traveller, and supped frugally on buttermilk; and in pointing to a small portrait of Shakespeare, in a curiously carved gilt frame, which Lamb would look at longingly. He was never weary of toiling up and down the winding and narrow stairs of this suburban pile, and peeping into its quaint corners and cupboards, as if he expected to discover there some hitherto hidden clue to its mysterious origin.

 [Pg 136]

From Islington, Charles Lamb moved to Enfield Chase Side, there he lived from 1827 to 1833, shut out almost entirely from the world, and his favourite London in particular.

Charles Lamb’s House, Enfield.

Lamb, in a merry mood, writing to Novello, in 1827, says:—

 [Pg 137]

The Crown and Horse Shoes Inn, Enfield Chase Side.

The above represents one of the humble and wayside “Pubs” of the neighbourhood in which Charles Lamb is said to have tested the friendship of “fine” friends, by proposing to them a drink of unsophisticated porter from bright pewter pots. So did he treat Wordsworth, and that “Child of Nature” actress, Miss Frances Maria Kelly, who without hesitation entered the tavern, with:—

About the Midsummer of 1833, Charles Lamb and his sister removed to Bay-cottage, Church-street, Edmonton, kept by[Pg 138] Mr. Walden, whose wife acted as a professional nurse. There, in that poor melancholy looking tenement, the delightful humourist found the home in which he breathed his last on Saturday, the 27th December, 1834. He was buried in:—

House at Edmonton Where Charles Lamb Died.

Edmonton Church.

 [Pg 139]

Time and circumstances have effectually disposed of the water-carrier, his occupation is gone, it is impossible London can ever again see a man bent beneath the weight of a yoke and two enormous pails, vociferating “Any fresh and fair Spring Water here?” But the cry of “Milk,” or the rattle of the milk-pail will never cease to be heard in our streets. There can be no reservoirs of milk, no pipes through which it flows into the houses. The more extensive the great capital becomes, the more active must be the individual exertion to carry about this article of food. The old cry was “Any Milk here?” and it was sometimes mingled with the sound of “Fresh Cheese and Cream;” and it then passed into “Milk, maids below;” and it was then shortened into “Milk below;” and was finally corrupted into “Mio,” which some wag interpreted into mi-eau—demi-eau—half water. But it must still be cried, whatever be the cry. The supply of milk to the metropolis is perhaps one of the most beautiful combinations of industry we have. The days have long since passed when Finsbury had its pleasant groves, and Clerkenwell was a village, and there were green pastures in Holborn, when St. Pancras boasted only a little church standing in meadows, and St. Martin’s was literally in the fields. Slowly but surely does the baked clay of Mr. Jerry, “the speculative builder” stride over the clover and the buttercup; and yet every family in London may be supplied with milk by eight o’clock every morning at their own doors. Where do the cows abide? They are congregated in wondrous herds in the suburbs; and though in spring-time they go out to pasture in the fields which[Pg 140] lie under the Hampstead and Highgate hills, or in the vales of Dulwich and Sydenham, and there crop the tender blade,—

yet for the rest of the year the coarse grass is carted to their stalls, or they devour what the breweries and distilleries cannot extract from the grain harvest. Long before “the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd” are the London cows milked; and the great wholesale vendors of the commodity, who have it consigned to them daily from more distant parts to the various railway stations in the metropolis, bear it in carts to every part of the town, and distribute it to the hundreds of shopkeepers and itinerants, who are anxiously waiting to receive it for re-distribution amongst their own customers. It is evident that a perishable commodity which everyone requires at a given hour, must be so distributed. The distribution has lost its romance. Misson, in his “Travels” published at the beginning of the last century, tells of May-games of the London milkmaids thus:—“On the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very neatly, and borrow abundance of Silver-Plate, whereof they make a pyramid, which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads, instead of their common milk pails. In this equipage, accompanied with some of their fellow milkmaids, and a bagpipe or fiddle, they go from door to door, dancing before the houses of their customers, in the midst of boys and girls that follow them in troops, and everybody gives them something.” Alas! the May-games and pretty young country girls have both departed, and a milk-woman has become a very unpoetical personage. There are few indeed of [Pg 141]milkwomen who remain. So it is with most of the occupations that associate London with the country.

Kate Smith,
The Merry Milkmaid.

 [Pg 142]

Thirty years ago there appeared in the “Quarterly Review” a remarkable article on the Commissariat of London, from the pen of Dr. Andrew Wynter. In it we were told for how many miles the beasts brought annually to the metropolis would stretch, if ranged ten abreast in a seemingly interminable column. In order to convey some notion of the stupendous quantities of ale, beer, and porter consumed, Dr. Wynter fixed upon Hyde Park as his exhibition ground, and piled together all the barrels containing the malt liquor drunk by what, in 1854, was a population of two million and a half souls. He came to the conclusion that these barrels would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular height. And among other statistics, Dr. Wynter calculated that there were at that time about twenty thousand cows in the metropolitan and suburban dairies, some[Pg 143] of which establishments contained five hundred cows apiece. He also noticed that, the London and suburban dairies could not alone supply the population of the metropolis, seeing that twenty thousand cows, giving on an average twelve quarts each per diem, would not yield more than two hundred and forty thousand quarts. If we suppose this quantity increased by the iron-tailed cow to three hundred thousand quarts, the allowance to each of the two millions and a half of human beings then living within the Bills of Mortality would be about a quarter of a pint per head. The “Quarterly” Reviewer, therefore, assumed that, to meet the existing demands of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, half as much again as three hundred thousand quarts was consumed annually in London. For this excess he looked to the country to supplement the efforts of the metropolis and of its suburbs as suppliers of milk, and noticed that the precious white liquid was brought daily to London from farms lying as far away as eighty miles from the metropolitan railway stations to which it was consigned.

Nothing can be more instructive and entertaining than to turn back in 1884 to facts, figures, calculations, estimates, and[Pg 144] 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[Pg 145] 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 employés—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,[Pg 146] 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.—

 [Pg 147]

Glorious News! Glorious News!

How F. Wilson Meets 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.

 [Pg 148]

Tiddy Diddy Doll-loll, Loll, Loll.

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:—

[Pg 149]“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:—

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:—

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.

[Pg 150]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[Pg 151] 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

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[Pg 152] 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:—

 [Pg 153]

Clean Your Honour’s Shoes.

“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[Pg 154] 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 décrotteurs 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.”

[Pg 155]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:[Pg 156] 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[Pg 157] 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 £656. 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.

 [Pg 158]

The Hearth-Stone Merchant.

“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.

 [Pg 159]

The Flying Stationer, otherwise Patterer.

“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:—

[Pg 161]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.

At the time Jemmy Catnach commenced business in Seven Dials it took all the prudence and tact which he could command to maintain his position, as at that time “Johnny” Pitts,[12] of the Toy and Marble Warehouse, No. 6, Great St. Andrew-street, was the acknowledged and established printer of street literature for the “Dials” district; therefore, as may be easily imagined, a powerful rivalry and vindictive jealousy soon arose between these “two of a trade”—most especially on the part of “Old Mother” Pitts, who is described as being a coarse and vulgar-minded personage, and as having originally followed the trade of a bumboat woman at Portsmouth: she “wowed wengeance” against the young fellow in the court for daring to set up in their business, and also spoke of him as a young “Catsnatch,” “Catblock,” “Cut-throat;” many other opprobrious terms being also freely given to the new comer. Pitts’ staff of “bards” were duly cautioned of the consequences which would inevitably follow should they dare to write a line for Catnach—the new cove in the court. The injunction was for a time obeyed, but the “Seven Bards of the Seven Dials” soon found it not[Pg 162] only convenient, but also more profitable to sell copies of their effusions to both sides at the same time, and by keeping their council they avoided detection, as each printer accused the other of buying an early sold copy, and then reprinting it off with the utmost speed, and which was in reality often the case, as “Both Houses” had emissaries on the constant look-out for any new production suitable for street-sale. Now, although this style of “double dealing” and competition tended much to lessen the cost price to the “middle-man,” or vendor, the public in this case did not get any of the reduction, as a penny broadside was still a penny, and a quarter-sheet still a halfpenny to them, the “street-patterer” obtaining the whole of the reduction as extra profit.

The feud existing between these rival publishers, who have been somewhat aptly designated as the Colburn and Bentley of the “paper” trade, never abated, but, on the contrary, increased in acrimony of temper until at last not being content to vilify each other by words alone, they resorted to printing off virulent lampoons, in which Catnach never failed to let the world know that “Old Mother Pitts” had been formerly a bumboat woman, while the Pitts’ party announced that—

[Pg 164]There can be little doubt that Catnach, the great publisher of the Seven Dials, next to children’s books, had his mind mostly centred upon the chronicling of doubtful scandals, fabulous duels between ladies of fashion, “cooked” assassinations, and sudden deaths of eminent individuals, apochryphal elopements, real or catch-penny accounts of murders, impossible robberies, delusive suicides, dark deeds and public executions, to which was usually attached the all-important and necessary “Sorrowful Lamentations,” or “Copy of Affectionate Verses,” which, according to the established custom, the criminal composed in the condemned cell the night before his execution, after this manner:—

Or take another and stereotyped example, which from time to time has served equally well for the verses written by the culprit—Brown, Jones, Robinson, or Smith:

Occasionally the Last Sorrowful Lamentations contained a “Love Letter”—the criminal being unable, in some instances, to read or write, being no obstacle to the composition—written according to the street patterer’s statement: “from the depths of the condemned cell, with the condemned pen, ink, and paper.”[Pg 165] This mode of procedure in “gallows” literature, and this style of composition having prevailed for from sixty to seventy years.

Then they would say: “Here you have also an exact likeness of the murderer, taken at the bar of the Old Bailey by an eminent artist!” when all the time it was an old woodcut that had been used for every criminal for many years.

“There’s nothing beats a stunning good murder after all,” said a “running patterer” to Mr. Henry Mayhew, the author of “London Labour and London Poor.” It is only fair to assume that Mr. James Catnach shared in the sentiment, for it is said that he made over £500 by the publication of:—

“The Full, True and Particular Account of the Murder of Mr. Weare by John Thurtell and his Companions, which took place on the 24th of October, 1823, in Gill’s Hill-lane, near Elstree, in Hertfordshire:—Only One Penny.” There were eight formes set up, for old Jemmy had no notion of stereotyping in those days, and pressmen had to re-cover their own sheep-skins. But by working night and day for a week they managed to get off about 250,000 copies with the four presses, each working two formes at a time.

As the trial progressed, and the case became more fully developed, the public mind became almost insatiable. Every night and morning large bundles were despatched to the principal towns in the three kingdoms.

One of the many street-ballads on the subject informed the British public that:—

 [Pg 166]

Thurtell Murdering Mr. Weare.

In connection with the murder of Mr. Weare by Thurtell and Co., Sir Walter Scott, collected the printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have to hand the contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them. He admired particularly this verse of Theodore Hook’s[13] broadside:—

 [Pg 168]

ATROCIOUS MURDER OF A YOUNG WOMAN
IN SUFFOLK.
SINGULAR DISCOVERY OF THE BODY
FROM A DREAM.

The Red Barn.

THE SCENE OF THE MURDER, AND WHERE THE BODY OF MARIA MARTEN WAS FOUND CONCEALED.

Four years after the Thurtell and Weare affair, namely, in the month of April, 1828, another “sensational” murder was discovered—that of Maria Marten, by William Corder, in the Red Barn, at Polstead, in the county of Suffolk. The circumstances that led to the discovery of this most atrocious murder were of an extraordinary and romantic nature, and manifest an almost special interposition of Providence in marking out the offender. As the mother of the girl had on three several nights dreamt that her daughter was murdered and buried in Corder’s Red Barn, and as this proved to be the case, an additional “charm” was given to the circumstance. Hence the “Catnach Press” was again set working both day and night to meet the great demand for the “Full Particulars.” In due course came the gratifying announcement of the apprehension of the murderer! and the sale continued unabatingly, in both town and country, every “Flying Stationer” making great profits by the sale.

[Pg 169]

Likeness of William Corder.

The trial of Corder took place at Bury St. Edmonds, on the 7th of August, 1828, before the Lord Chief Baron (Anderson). The prisoner pleaded “Not Guilty,” and the trial proceeded. On being called on for his defence, Corder read a manuscript paper. He declared that he deeply deplored the death of the unfortunate deceased, and he urged the jury to dismiss from their minds all that prejudice which must necessarily have been excited against him by the public press, &c. Having concluded his address, the Lord Chief Baron summed up, and a verdict of “Guilty” was returned. The Last Dying Speech and confession had an enormous sale—estimated at 1,166,000, a fac-simile copy of which, with the “Lamentable Verses,” said to have been written by Old Jemmy Catnach, will be found on the opposite page.

 [Pg 171]

LIFE, TRIAL, CONFESSION, & EXECUTION
OF

FOR THE
EDGEWARE ROAD MURDER.

On the 22nd of April, James Greenacre was found guilty of the wilful murder of Hannah Brown, and Sarah Gale with being accessary after the fact. A long and connected chain of evidence was produced, which showed, that the sack in which the body was found was the property of Mr. Ward; that is was usually deposited in a part of the premises which led to the workshop, and could without observation have been carried away by him; that the said sack contained several fragments of shavings of mahogany, such as were made in the course of business by Ward; and that it contained some pieces of linen cloth, which had been patched with nankeen; that this linen cloth matched exactly with a frock which was found on Greenacre’s premises, and which belonged to the female prisoner. Feltham, a police-officer, deposed, that on the 26th of March he apprehended the prisoners at the lodgings of Greenacre; that on searching the trowsers pockets of that person, he took therefrom a pawnbroker’s duplicate for two silk gowns, and from the fingers of the female prisoner two rings, and also a similar duplicate for two veils, and an old-fashioned silver watch, which she was endeavouring to conceal; and it was further proved that these articles were pledged by the prisoners, and that they had been the property of the deceased woman.—Two surgeons were examined, whose evidence was most important, and whose depositions were of the greatest consequence in throwing a clear light on the manner in which the female, Hannah Brown, met with her death. Mr. Birtwhistle deposed, that he had carefully examined the head; that the right eye had been knocked out by a blow inflicted while the person was living; there was also a cut on the cheek, and the jaw was fractured, these two last wounds were, in his opinion, produced after death; there was also a bruise on the head, which had occurred after death; the head had been separated by cutting, and the bone sawed nearly through, and then broken off; there were the marks of a saw, which fitted with a saw which was found in Greenacre’s box. Mr. Girdwood, a surgeon, very minutely and skilfully described the appearances presented on the head, and showed incontestibly, that the head had been severed from the body while the person was yet alive; that this was proved by the retraction, or drawing back, of the muscles at the parts where they were separated by the knife, and further, by the blood-vessels being empty, the body was drained of blood. This part of the evidence produced a thrill of horror throughout the court, but Greenacre remained quite unmoved.

After a most impressive and impartial summing up by the learned Judge, the jury retired, and, after the absence of a quarter of an hour, returned into court, and pronounced a verdict of “Guilty” against both the prisoners.

The prisoners heard the verdict without evincing the least emotion, or the slightest change of countenance. After an awful silence of a few minutes, the Lord Chief Justice said they might retire, as they would be remanded until the end of the session.

They were then conducted from the bar, and on going down the steps, the unfortunate female prisoner kissed Greenacre with every mark of tenderness and affection.

The crowd outside the court on this day was even greater than on either of the preceding; and when the result of the trial was made known in the street, a sudden and general shout succeeded, and continued huzzas were heard for several minutes.

THE EXECUTION.

At half past seven the sheriff arrived in his carriage, and in a short time the press-yard was thronged with gentlemen who had been admitted by tickets. The unhappy convict was now led from his cell. When he arrived in the press-yard, his whole appearance pourtrayed the utmost misery and spirit-broken dejection; his countenance haggard, and his whole frame agitated; all that self-possession and fortitude which he displayed in the early part of his imprisonment, had utterly forsaken him, and had left him a victim of hopelessness and despair. He requested the executioner to give him as little pain as possible in the process of pinioning his arms and wrists; he uttered not a word in allusion to his crime; neither did he make any dying request, except that his spectacles might be given to Sarah Gale; he exhibited no sign of hope; he showed no symptom of reconciliation with his offended God! When the venerable ordinary preceded him in the solemn procession through the vaulted passage to the fatal drop, he was so overcome and unmanned, that he could not support himself without the aid of the assistant executioner. At the moment he ascended the faithless floor, from which he was to be launched into eternity, the most terrific yells, groans, and cheers were vociferated by the immense multitude surrounding the place of execution. Greenacre bowed to the sheriff, and begged he might not be allowed to remain long in the concourse; and almost immediately the fatal bolt was withdrawn, and, without a struggle, he became a lifeless corse.—Thus ended the days of Greenacre, a man endowed with more than ordinary talents, respectably connected, and desirably placed in society; but a want of probity, an absolute dearth of principle, led him on from one crime to another, until at length he perpetrated the sanguinary deed which brought his career to an awful and disgraceful period, and which has enrolled his name among the most notorious of those who have expiated their crime on the gallows.

On hearing the death-bell toll, Gale became dreadfully agitated; and when she heard the brutal shouts of the crowd of spectators, she fainted, and remained in a state of alternate mental agony and insensibility throughout the whole day.

After having been suspended the usual time, his body was cut down, and buried in a hole dug in one of the passages of the prison, near the spot where Thistlewood and his associates were deposited.

J. Catnach, Printer, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court.

[Pg 172]The following is a fac-simile of the “Execution Paper,” from the press of Paul and Co.,—successors of Catnach.

[Pg 173]But the gallows was not always a fruit-bearing tree, and a “stunning good murder” did not happen every day. Nevertheless the street patterer must live, and lest the increase of public virtue should condemn him to starvation, the “Seven Dials Press,” stepped forward to his aid, and considerately supplied him with a species of street-literature well known to the trade as “Cocks,” and which are defined in “Hotton’s Slang Dictionary” thus:—

The late Mr. Albert Smith, the humourist and novelist, has very happily hit off this style of thing in “The Man in the Moon,” one of the many rivals to “Punch,” and edited by that very promising son of genius, the late Angus B. Reach, 1832-56. It is entitled—

A COPY OF VERSES

Found among the Papers of Mr. Catnach, the spirited Publisher of Seven Dials; originally intended to have been “printed and published at the Toy and Marble Warehouse, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, Seven Dials.”

DEDICATED TO THE AUTHOR OF “LUCRETIA.”

I.

The Hero claims the attention of virtuous persons, and leads them to anticipate a painful disclosure.

 [Pg 174]

II.

He names the place and hour of the disgraceful penalty he is about to undergo.

III.

He hints at his atrocity; and the ebullition produced by the mere recollection of it.

IV.

He speaks of the happy hours of Childhood, never more to return.

[Pg 175]

V.

The revelation of his name and profession; and subsequent avowal of his guilt.

VI.

He acknowledges the justice of his sentence.

VII.

And pictures what might have taken place but for the interference of Destiny.

[Pg 176]

VIII.

He is particular as to the date of the occurrence.

IX.

And narrates the means employed, and the circumstances which led him to destroy his betrothed.

X.

He is led away by bad passions.

[Pg 177]

XI.

His bosom is torn by conflicting resolutions; but he is at last decided.

XII.

The victim falls into the snare.

XIII.

He feels that his perception comes too late.

[Pg 178]

XIV.

He commits his secret to the earth.

XV.

But the earth refuses to keep it.

XVI.

Remorse and self examination.

[Pg 179]

XVII.

His countrymen form a just estimate of his delinquency.

XVIII.

He conjures up a painful image.

XIX.

His last words convey a moral lesson.

 [Pg 180]

One class of literature which the late Jemmy Catnach made almost his own, was children’s farthing and halfpenny books. Among the great many that he published we select, from our own private collection, the following as a fair sample:—“The Tragical Death of an Apple Pie,” “The House that Jack Built,” “Jumping Joan,” “The Butterflies Ball and Grasshoppers’ Feast,” “Jerry Diddle and his Fiddle,” “Nurse Love-Child’s Gift,” “The Death and Burial of Cock Robin,” “The Cries of London,” “Simple Simon,” “Jacky Jingle and Suky Shingle,” and—“Here you have just prin—ted and pub—lish—ed, and a—dor—ned with eight beau—ti—ful and ele—gantly engraved embellish—ments, and for the low charge of one farden—Yes! one farden buys.”

 [Pg 181]

NURSERY RHYMES.

———

———

———

———

———

[Pg 182]

———

———

———

———

J. Catnach, Printer, 2, Monmouth Court, 7 Dials.

 [Pg 183]

THE CRIES OF LONDON.

Cherries.

———

Oranges.

———

Milk below.

———

Crumpling Codlings.

———

[Pg 184]

Filberts.

———

Clothes Pegs, Props, or Lines.

———

Sweep.

———

Peas and Beans.

———

[Pg 185]

Young Lambs to Sell.

———

———

Strawberries.

———

———

London:
Printed by J. Catnach, 2, Monmouth
Court, 7 Dials.

[Pg 186]“Songs! Songs! Songs! Beautiful songs! Love songs; Newest songs! Old songs! Popular songs! Songs, Three Yards a Penny!” was a “standing dish” at the “Catnach Press,” and Catnach was the Leo X. of street publishers. And it is said that he at one time kept a fiddler on the premises, and that he used to sit receiving ballad writers and singers, and judging of the merits of any production which was brought to him, by having it sung then and there to some popular air played by his own fiddler, and so that the ballad-singer should be enabled to start at once, not only with the new song, but also the tune to which it was adapted. His broad-sheets contain all sorts of songs and ballads, for he had a most catholic taste, and introduced the custom of taking from any writer, living or dead, whatever he fancied, and printing it side by side with the productions of his own clients.

Catnach, towards the latter part of his time and in his threefold capacity of publisher, compositor, and poet, was in the habit of taking things very easy, and always appeared to the best advantage when in his printing office, or stationed behind the ricketty counter which for a number of years had done good service in the shop in Monmouth-court. In this uncongenial atmosphere, where the rays of the sun are seldom or never seen, Jemmy was as happy as a prince. “A poor man’s home is his castle,” so says an old proverb, and no one could have been prouder than he was when despatching to almost every town in the kingdom some specialty in the printing department. He naturally had a bit of a taste for old ballads, music, and song writing; and in this respect he was far in advance of many of his contemporaries. To bring within the reach of all, the standard and popular works of the day, had been the ambition[Pg 187] of the elder Catnach; whilst the son was, nolens volens, incessant in his endeavours in trying to promulgate and advance, not the beauty, elegance, and harmony which pervades many of our national airs and ballad poety, but very often the worst and vilest of each and every description—in other words, those most suitable for street sale. His stock of songs was very like his customers, diversified. There were all kinds, to suit all classes. Love, sentimental, and comic songs were so interwoven as to form a trio of no ordinary amount of novelty. At ordinary times, when the Awfuls and Sensationals were flat, Jemmy did a large stroke of business in this line.

It is said that when the “Songs—Three-yards-a-penny”—first came out and had all the attractions of novelty, some men sold twelve or fourteen dozen on fine days during three or four of the summer months, so clearing between 6s. and 7s. a day, but on the average about 25s. per week profit. The “long songs,” however, have been quite superseded by the “Monster” and “Giant Penny Song Books.” Still there are a vast number of halfpenny ballad-sheets worked off, and in proportion to their size, far more than the “Monsters” or “Giants.” One song book, entitled the “Little Warbler,” was published in parts, and had an enormous sale.

There are invariably but two songs printed on the half-penny ballad-sheets—generally a new and popular song with another older ditty, or a comic and sentimental, and “adorned” with two woodcuts. These are selected without any regard to their fitness to the subject, and in most cases have not the slightest reference to the ballad of which they form the headpiece. For instance:—“The Heart that can feel for another” is illustrated by a gaunt and savage-looking lion; “When I was first Breeched,” by an engraving of a Highlander sans culotte;[Pg 188] “The Poacher” comes under the cut of a youth with a large watering-pot, tending flowers; “Ben Block” is heralded by the rising sun; “The London Oyster Girl,” by Sir Walter Raleigh; “The Sailors Grave,” by the figure of Justice; “Alice Grey” comes under the very dilapidated figure of a sailor, or “Jolly Young Waterman;” “Bright Hours are in store for us yet” is headed with a tail-piece of an urn, on which is inscribed Finis. (?) “Watercresses,” with the portrait of a Silly Billy; “The Wild Boar Hunt,” by two wolves chasing a deer; “The Dying Child to its Mother,” by an Angel appearing to an old man; “Crazy Jane,” by the Royal Arms of England; “Autumn Leaves lie strew’d around,” by a ship in full sail; “Cherry Ripe,” by Death’s Head and Cross Bones; “Jack at the Windlass,” falls under a Roadside Inn; while “William Tell” is presented to the British public in form and style of an old woman nursing an infant of a squally nature. Here are a few examples:—

The Smuggler King.

Let me like a Soldier fall.

 [Pg 189]

Fair Phœbe and her Dark-Eyed Sailor.		My Pretty Jane.
The Thorn.		The Saucy Arethusa.
The Gipsy King.		Hearts of Oak.

 [Pg 190]

Harry Bluff.		Death of Nelson.
John Anderson, my Jo.

 [Pg 191]

Old English Gentleman.		The Bleeding Heart.
Wapping Old Stairs.		Poor Bessy was a Sailor’s Bride.
Poor Mary Anne.		The Muleteer.

 [Pg 192]

Tom Bowling.		Ye Banks an’ Braes.
The Mistletoe Bough.
The Woodpecker.		The Soldier’s Tear.

 [Pg 193]

Long-song Seller.

Besides the chanters, who sing the songs through the streets of every city, town, village, and hamlet in the kingdom—the long-song seller, who shouts their titles on the kerb-stone, and the countless small shop-keepers, who, in swag-shops, toy-shops, sweetstuff-shops, tobacco-shops, and general shops, keep them as part of their stock for the supply of the street boys and the servant girls—there is another important functionary engaged in their distribution, and who is well known to the inhabitants of large towns, this is the pinner-up, who takes his stand against a dead wall or a long range of iron railings, and first festooning it liberally with twine, pins up one or two hundred ballads for public perusal and selection. Time was when this was a thriving trade: and we are old enough to remember the day when a good[Pg 194] half-mile of wall fluttered with the minstrelsy of war and love, under the guardianship of a scattered file of pinners-up, along the south side of Oxford-street alone. Thirty years ago the dead walls gave place to shop fronts, and the pinners-up departed to their long homes. As they died out very few succeeded to their honours and emoluments. There is one pinner-up, seemingly the last of his race, who makes his display on the dead wall of the underground railway in Farringdon road.

Catnach, to the day of his retirement from business in 1838, when he purchased the freehold of a disused public-house, which had been known as the Lion Inn, together with the grounds attached at Dancer’s-hill, South Mimms, near Barnet, in the county of Middlesex, worked and toiled in the office of the “Seven Dials Press,” in which he had moved as the pivot, or directing mind, for upwards of a quarter of a century. He lived and died a bachelor. His only idea of all earthly happiness and mental enjoyment was now to get away in retirement to a convenient distance from his old place of business, so to give him an opportunity occasionally to go up to town and have a chat and a friendly glass with one or two old paper-workers and ballad-writers, and a few others connected with his peculiar trade who had shown any disposition to work when work was to be done. To them he was always willing to give or advance a few pence or shillings, in money or stock, and a glass.

Catnach left the whole of the business to Mrs. Anne Ryle, his sister, charged, nevertheless, to the amount of £1,000, payable at his death to the estate of his niece, Marion Martha Ryle. In the meanwhile Mr. James Paul acted as managing man for Mrs. Ryle. This Mr. Paul—of whom Jemmy was very fond, and rumour saith, had no great dislike to the mother—had grown[Pg 195] from a boy to a man in the office of the “Catnach Press.” He was, therefore, well acquainted with the customers, by whom he was much respected; and it was by his tact and judgment that the business was kept so well together. At Catnach’s death he entered into partnership with Mrs. Ryle, and the business was carried on under the title and style of Paul & Co. In 1845 the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Paul receiving £800 in settlement. He then entered into the public line, taking the Spencer’s Arms, at the corner of Monmouth-court. A son that was born to him in 1847, he had christened James Catnach Paul. About this date “The Catnach Press” had a formidable rival in “The Nassau Steam Press,” which was originally started in Nassau Street, Soho, and afterwards removed to No. 60, St. Martin’s Lane. Mr. Paul was especially engaged to manage the song department at this office. He died in the year 1870, just six weeks after Mrs. Ryle, and lies buried in the next grave but one to Catnach and his sister, in Highgate Cemetery.

After Mr. Paul had left the business it was carried on as A. Ryle & Co., and ultimately became the property of Mr. W. S. Fortey, who still carries on the old business in the same premises. A copy of whose trade announcement runs thus:—

 [Pg 196]

Sir Jeffery Dunstan,
Late Mayor of Garratt, and Itinerant Dealer in Wigs.

[Pg 197]Sir Jeffery Dunstan—thrice Mayor of Garratt! was the most popular candidate that ever appeared on the Hustings at that very Free and Independent Borough! His occupation was that of buying old wigs, once an article of trade like that of old clothes. Sir Jeffery usually carried his wig bag over his shoulder, and to avoid the charge of vagrancy, vociferated, as he passed along the street, “Old Wigs,” but having a person like Æsop, and a countenance and manner marked by irresistible humour, he never appeared without a train of boys and curious persons, whom he entertained by his sallies of wit, shrewd sayings, and smart repartees; and from whom, without begging, he collected sufficient to help to maintain his dignity of Mayor and Knight.

From the earliest period of Sir Jeffery’s life, he was a friend to “good measures,” especially those for “spirituous liquors,” and he never saw the inside of a pot without going to the bottom of it. This determination of character created difficulties to him; for his freedom was not always regulated by the doctrines of meum et tuum, or, of the great Blackstone, “on the rights of persons,” and consequences ensued that were occasionally injurious to Sir Jeffery’s eyes, face, and nose. The same enlightened Judge’s views of “the rights of property,” were not comprehended by Sir Jeffery, he had long made free with the porter of manifold pots, and at length he made free with a few of the pots—which the publicans in London seemed to show in the streets as much as to say “Come and steal me.” For this he was “questioned” in the high Commission Court of oyer and terminer, and suffered an imprisonment, which, according to his manner of life, and his notions of the liberty of the subject, was “frivolous and vexatious.” On his liberation, he returned to an occupation he had long followed, the dealing in “Old Wigs.” Some other circumstances, developed in course of the preceding inquiry, seem to favour a supposition that the bag he carried had enabled him to conceal his previous “free trade” in pewter pots. But, be that as it might, it is[Pg 198] certain that in his armorial bearings of four wigs, he added a quart pot for a crest.

Sir Jeffery was remarkably dirty in his person, and always had his shirt thrown open, which exposed his breast to public view. This was in him a sort of pride; for he would frequently in an exulting manner say to inferiors “I’ve got a collar to my shirt, sir.” He had a filthy habit, when he saw a number of girls around him, of spitting in their faces, saying, “There, go about your business.”

Sir Jeffery, in the days of his prosperity, took his “Hodges’ best,” at the “Blind Beggar of Bethnal-green,” or the “Horse and Leaping Bar,” High-street, Whitechapel, at one or other of these favourite retreats, he got in a regular manner “regularly drunk.” Then it was that he sung in his best style various popular “London Cries,” mimicking others in their crying, especially one who vended “Lily, lily, lily, lily white—sand oh! oh!! oh!!!” this afforded sport to a merry company. Afterwards, should Sir Jeffery receive sufficient metalic support from his friends, he was placed in an arm chair on the table, when he recited to the students of the London Hospital and the Bucks of the East, his mock-election speeches. He was no respecter of persons, and was so severe in his jokes on the corruptions and compromises of power, that he was prosecuted for using what were then called seditious expressions. In consequence of this affair, and some few charges of dishonesty, he lost his popularity, and, at the next general election was ousted by Sir Harry Dimsdale, muffin-seller, a man as much deformed as himself. Sir Jeffery could not long survive his fall, but, in death as in life, he proved a satire on the vices of the proud, for he died, like Alexander the Great, the sailor in Lord Byron’s “Don Juan,” and many other heroes renowned in history—of suffocation from excessive drinking!.

[Pg 199]

Sir Harry Dimsdale, M.P., for Garratt,
Cosmopolite and Muffin-Seller.

“Muffins, oh! Crumpets, oh,” rank among the old cries of London, and at least one of the calling has been made famous, namely, Harry Dimsdale, sometime Mayor of Garratt, who, from the moment he stood as candidate, received mock knighthood, and was ever after known under the appellation of “Sir Harry.” This half-witted character was a dealer in tin-ware—together with threads, tapes and bootlaces, during the morning, and a muffin-seller in the afternoon, when he had a little bell, which he held to his ear, and smiling ironically at its tinkling he would cry:—“Muffins! muffins! ladies come buy me! pretty, handsome, blooming, smiling maids!”

Mr. J. T. Smith, in his ever-charming work of “A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years[Pg 200] 1766-1833,” writing under date 1787, gives the following graphic sketch of the sayings and doings—taken from life, of “Sir Harry.”

“One of the curious scenes I witnessed on a nocturnal visit to the watch house of St. Anne, Soho, afforded me no small amusement. Sir Harry Dinsdale, usually called Dimsdale, a short, feeble little man, was brought in, charged by two colossal guardians of the night with conduct most unruly. ‘What have you, Sir Harry, to say to all this?’ asked the Dogberry of St. Anne. The knight, who had been roughly handled, commenced like a true orator, in a low tone of voice. ‘May it please ye, my magistrate, I am not drunk; it is languor. A parcel of the Bloods of the Garden have treated me cruelly, because I would not treat them. This day, sir, I was sent for by Mr. Sheridan, to make a speech upon the table at the Shakespeare Tavern, in Common Garden; he wrote the speech for me, and always gives half a guinea; he sends for me to the tavern. You see I didn’t go in my Royal robes, I only put ’um on when I stand to be a member.’ The constable—‘Well, but Sir Harry, why are you brought here?’ One of the watchmen then observed, ‘That though Sir Harry was but a little shambling fellow, he was so upstroppolus, and kicked him about at such a rate, that it was as much as he and his comrade could do to bring him along.’ As there was no one to support the charge, Sir Harry was advised to go home, which, however, he swore he would not do at midnight without an escort. ‘Do you know,’ said he, ‘there’s a parcel of raps now on the outside waiting for me.’

“The constable of the night gave orders for him to be protected to the public-house opposite the west end of St. Giles’s Church, where he then lodged. Sir Harry, hearing a noise in the street, muttered, ‘I shall catch it; I know I shall.’ (Cries without,) ‘See the conquering hero comes.’ ‘Ay, they always use that tune when I gain my election at Garratt.’

“There are several portraits of this singular little object, by some called ‘Honey-juice.’ Flaxman, the sculptor, and Mrs. Mathews, of blue-stocking memory, equipped him as a hardware man, and as such I made two etchings of him.”

[Pg 201]

The Muffin Man.
(T. Dibden.)

Spoken.—What have I to do with politicians? And for your Parliament cakes. Why! everybody knows they are bought and sold, and often done brown, and made crusty all over the nation. No, no, its enough for me to cry—

Lily-white muffins, &c.

Spoken.—What do I care for lawyers? A’nt I a baker, and consequently, Master of the Rolls:—Droll enough, too, for a Master of the Rolls to be crying—

Lily-white muffins, &c.

 [Pg 202]

The Muffin Man.

The ringing of the muffin-man’s bell—attached to which the pleasant associations are not a few—is prohibited by a ponderous Act of Parliament, but the prohibition has been all but inoperative, for the muffin bell still tinkles along the streets, and is rung vigorously in the suburbs, and just at the time when City gents, at winter’s eve, are comfortably enveloped in fancy-patterned dressing gowns, prettily-worked smoking-caps, and easy-going and highly-coloured slippers, and saying within themselves or aloud:—

[Pg 203]“Hot Cross Buns!” Perhaps no “cry”—though it is only for one day in the year, is more familiar to the ears of a Londoner, than that of “One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross-buns.” We lie awake early upon Good Friday morning and listen to the London bells:—

And all the other London bells having rung—or, rather toll’d out their own tale of joy or trouble: then comes—rattling over the stones—W. H. Smith’s well-known red Express-carts laden with the early printed newspapers of the coming day, while all night long the carts and waggons come rumbling in from the country to Covent-garden, and not the least pleasant sound—pleasant for its old recollections—is the time-honoured old cry of “Hot Cross-Buns.” Century after century passes by, and those who busily drove their carts day after day from Isleworth, Romford, Enfield, Battersea, Blackheath, or Richmond, one hundred years ago, are as still and silent as if they had never been; yet still, Passion week after Passion week, comes that old cry, nobody knows how old, “Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns.” And as we lie in a half dreamy state we hear and think of the chimes of St. Clement Danes, which may still be heard, as Fallstaff describes, having heard them with Justice Shallow; also, how Pope, as he lay in Holywell-street—now Bookseller’s-row; and Addison and Johnson; and, before their time, Waller, at the house of his old friend the merchant[Pg 204] of St. Giles’s; and the goodly company of poets that lived at the cost of the king, near Whitehall; then of the quaint old gossiping diarist, Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty; John Taylor, the Water-Poet; even Shakespeare himself, having each in their turn been awakened on the Good Friday morning by the same sound ringing in their ears. For this is a custom which can hardly be traced to a beginning: and all we know about it is, that as far as we can go back, the Good Friday was ushered in by the old Good Friday bun; and that the baker in the towns, and the old good wife in the country, would have thought the day but badly kept, and augured badly for the coming summer’s luck, without it.

But between the cakes of Cecrops and the modern Hot Cross Bun there is a wide gulf of 3,400 years; and yet the one may be traced up to the other. There are some, indeed, who would wish to give to the Good Friday Hot Cross Bun a still longer pedigree, and to take it back to the time of the Patriarchs and their consecrated bread; and there are others who would go yet further, and trace it to the earliest age of the world, in a portion of Cain’s sacrifice. We may, however, content ourselves with stopping short at the era of the Egyptian Cecrops, founder of Athens, who made his sweet cakes of flour and honey. Such cakes as these, as we learn from the prophet Jeremiah, were offered by the idolatrous Hebrew women to “the Queen of Heaven,”

Some can even discern Astarte in our “Easter.” The Jews of old had the shew-bread and the wafer of unleavened bread; and the Egyptians, under the Pharaohs, had also their cakes,[Pg 205] round, oval, and triangular. The Persians had their sacred cakes of flour and honey; and Herodotus speaks of similar cakes being offered by the Athenians to a sacred serpent in the temple of their citadel. And, not to mention other nations, the circumstance that accompanied the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, 1857, will make memorable the “chupatties” or sacred cakes of Khrishna.

The cakes that were offered to Luna by the Greeks and Romans were either crescent-shaped, or were marked with the crescent moon; and this stamp must have been very similar to that impressed on the cakes offered by the Hebrew women to the Queen of Heaven. This mark also resembles that representing the horns of the sacred ox which was stamped on the Grecian cakes; and the ox was bous, and, in one of its oblique cases, boun, so we derive from that word boun our familiar “bun.” There were not only horn-marked cakes, but horn-marked pieces of money; so that it is very difficult to ascertain the true meaning of that passage in the opening of the “Agamemnon” of Æschylus, where the watchman says that a great bous has come, or set foot, upon his tongue. Although it might mean that something as weighty as an ox’s hoof had weighed down his tongue, yet it more probably signifies either that he was bribed to silence with a piece of money marked with the ox’s horns, or that the partaking of a sacred horn-marked cake had initiated him into a certain secret. Curiously enough, in the argot of thieves, at the present day, a crown piece is termed “a bull;” and it may also be noted that pecunia, “money,” is derived from pecus, “cattle;” and “bull” is derived from bous, and also “cow” from the same word, through the Sanscrit gou, the b and g being convertible.

[Pg 206]Thus, originally, the boun or bun was the cake marked with the horns of the sacred ox. The cross mark was first adopted by the Greeks and Romans to facilitate the division of the cake into four equal parts; and two such cross-marked cakes were found in the ruins of Herculaneum. These cakes were adopted by the early Christians in a spirit of symbolism; but, although the cross was marked on the cake in token of the badge of their faith, yet it was also used by the priest for the breaking of the cake, or Eucharistic wafer, into four pieces; and this was so ordered in the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The cross-marked buns are now, for popular use, reserved for Good Friday, and, as Lenten cakes, are peculiar to this country. Among the Syrian Christians of Travancore and Cochin, who trace their descent from those who were converted by St. Thomas on his (supposed) visit to India, a peculiar cake is made for “Sorrowful Friday”—as they term Good Friday. The cake is stuffed with sweetmeats in the form of an eye, to represent the evil eye of Judas, coveting the thirty pieces of silver; and the cake is flung at with sticks by the members of the family until the eye is quite put out; they then share the remains of the cake among them.

In the days before the Reformation, eulogiæ, or cross-marked consecrated cakes, were made from the dough of the mass-bread, and distributed by the priests to be eaten at home by those who had been prevented by sickness or infirmity from attending the mass. After the Reformation, Protestants would readily retain the custom of eating in their houses a cross marked cake, although no longer connecting it with a sacred rite, but restricting its use to that one day of the year known as “Holy Friday,” or “Long Friday”—from the length[Pg 207] of the service on that day—but which gradually came to be called, by the Anglican Church, “Good Friday,” in remembrance of the good things secured to mankind on that day. The presence upon the breakfast-table of the cross marked bun, flavoured with allspice, in token of the spices that were prepared by the pious women of Galilee, was, therefore, regarded in the light of a remembrancer of the solemnities of the day. The buns were made on the previous evening, Maundy Thursday so called, either from the “maunds,” or baskets, in which Easter gifts were distributed, or, more probably, because it was the Dies mandati, the day of the command, “That thou doest, do quickly!” as also, “Do this in remembrance of Me!” and that the disciples should love one another and should show humility in the washing of feet.

As Chelsea was long famous for its buns—which are mentioned by Swift to Stella, in 1712—it was not to be wondered at that it should be celebrated for its production of hot cross buns on Good Friday. Early in the present century there were two bun-houses at Chelsea, both claiming to be “Royal” as well as “Original,” until, at last, one of the two proclaimed itself to be “The Real Old Original Bun House.” These two houses did a roaring trade during the whole of Good Friday, their piazzas being crowded, from six in the morning to six in the evening, by crowds of purchasers, loungers, and gossipers. Good King George the Third would come there with his children; and, of course, the nobility and gentry followed his example. These two bun-houses were swallowed up, in the march of improvement, some forty years ago; but on Good Friday, 1830, 240,000 hot cross buns were sold there.

[Pg 208]The cross bun is not without its folk-lore. Country folks attach much virtue to the Good Friday buns; and many are kept for “luck’s sake” in cottages from one Good Friday to another. They are not only considered to be preservatives from sickness and disease, but also as safeguards from fire and lightning. They are supposed never to get mouldy, as was noted by “Poor Robin,” in his Almanack for 1733, under the head of March:—

Furthermore, be it known, then, in the interests of suffering humanity, that if a piece of a Good Friday bun is grated and eaten, it will cure as many diseases as were ever cured by a patent pill; moreover, the animal world is not shut out from sharing in its benefits, for it will cure a calf from “scouring,” and mixed in a warm mash, it is the very best remedy for your cow. Thus the bun is good for the boun; in fact, it is good both for man and beast.

The sellers of the Good Friday buns are composed of old men and young men, old women and young women, big children and little children, but principally boys, and they are of mixed classes, as, costers’ boys, boys habitually and boys occasionally street-sellers, and boys—“some cry now who never cried before,” and for that occasion only. One great inducement to embark in the trade is the hope of raising a little money for the Easter holidays following.

[Pg 209]The “cry” of the Hot Cross Bun vendor varies at times and in places—as thus:—

While some of a humorous turn of mind like to introduce a little bit of their own, or the borrowed wit of those who have gone before them, and effect the one step which is said to exist from the sublime to the ridiculous, and cry—

But the street hot-cross-bun trade is languishing—and languishing, will ultimately die a natural death, as the master bakers and pastrycooks have entered into it more freely, and now send round to their regular customers for orders some few days before each succeeding Good Friday.

A capital writer of Notes, Comment and Gossip, who contributes every week to the City Press, under the nom de plume of “Dogberry,” gave—inter alia—a few “Good Words,” the result of his “Leisure Hours” in that journal, on the subject of “Good Friday Customs.” March 24, 1883, thus:—

Hot Cross Buns.

By Miss Eliza Cook.

[Pg 211]And so, awaking in the early morning, we hear the streets ringing with the cry, “Hot Cross Buns.” And perhaps when all that we have wrought shall be forgotten, when our name shall be as though it had been written on water, and many institutions great and noble shall have perished, this little bun will live on unharmed. Others, as well as ourselves, will, it may be, lie awake upon their beds, and listen to the murmurs going to and fro within the great heart of London, and, thinking on the half-forgotten days of the nineteenth century, wonder perhaps whether, in these olden times, we too heard the sound of “Hot Cross Buns.”

The street Pieman with his “cry,” of “Pies all hot! hot!! hot!!!—Penny pies, all hot! hot!!—fruit, eel, beef, veal or kidney pies! pies, all hot-hot-hot,” is one of the most ancient of street callings, and to London boys of every degree, “Familiar in their mouths as household words.” Nor is the itinerant trade in pies—“Eel, beef, veal, kidney or fruit,” confined to the great metropolis. All large provincial towns have, from a time going back much farther than even the proverbial “oldest inhabitant” can recollect, had their old and favourite “Penny Pieman,” or, “Old-all-Hot!” as folks were ever wont to call him. He was generally a merry dog, and mostly to be found where merriment was going on, he scrupled not to force his way through the thickest of the crowd, knowing that the very centre of action was the best market for his wares.

 [Pg 212]

The Pieman;
OR, O LORD! WHAT A PLACE IS A CAMP.

[Pg 213]History informs us, through the medium of the halfpenny plain and penny coloured chap book, editions issued by the “Catnach Press,” that, one:—

But history is silent as to the birth, parentage, or, even place and date of the death of the said Simple Simon, or of this very particular pieman. Halliwell informs us, through one of the “Nursery Rhymes of England,” that on one occasion:—

James Lackington—1746-1816—one of the most celebrated of our early cheap booksellers, lived at the “Temple of Muses,” Finsbury-place—the shop, into which a coach and six could be driven. This curious mixture of cobbler’s wax, piety, vanity, and love of business, has left us in his autobiography, which he published under the title of his “Memoirs and Confessions,” his experience as a pie-boy! or seller of pies, thus:—

We frequently meet with the pieman in old prints; and in Hogarth’s “March to Finchley,” there he stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning with delight at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the victim of another. We learn from this admirable figure by the greatest painter of English[Pg 214] life, that the pieman of the last century perambulated the streets in professional costume; and we gather further, from the burly dimensions of his wares that he kept his trade alive by the laudable practice of giving “a good pennyworth for a penny.” Justice compels us to observe that his successors of a later generation have not been very conscientious observers of this maxim.

Hogarth’s Pieman.

 [Pg 215]

Nice New! Nice New!
All hot! All Hot Hot! All Hot!
Here they are, two sizes bigger than last week.

At this date there was James Sharpe England, a noted flying pieman, who attended all the metropolitan festive gatherings; he walked about hatless, to sell his savoury wares, with his hair powdered and tied en queue, his dress neat, apron spotless, jesting wherever he went, with a mighty voice in recommendation of the puddings and pies, which, for the sake of greater oddity he sometimes carried on a wooden platter.

 [Pg 216]

James Sharpe England,
The Flying Pieman.

[Pg 217]The London pieman, as he takes his walks abroad, makes a practice of “looking in” at all the taverns on his way. Here his customers are found principally in the tap-room. “Here they are, all ’ot!” the pieman cries, as he walks in; “toss or buy! up and win ’em!” For be it known to all whom it may concern, the pieman is a gambler, both from inclination and principle, and will toss with his customers, either by the dallying shilly-shally process of “best five in nine,” or “best two in three,” or the desperate dash of “sudden death!” in which latter case the first toss decides the matter, viz:—a pie for a penny, or your penny gone for nothing, but he invariably declines the mysterious process of “odd man,” not being altogether free from suspicion on the subject of collusion between a couple of hungry, and not over honestly inclined customers.

Of the “stuff” which pie-dealers usually make their wares, much has been sung and said, and in some neighbourhoods the sight of an approaching pieman seems to get about an immediate desire for imitating the harmless cat and its “Mee-yow,” or the “Bow-wow-wow!” of the dog. And opprobrious epithets are hurled at the piemen as they parade the streets and alleys, and even kidnapping has been slyly hinted at, for the mother of Tom Cladpole, finding her son so determined to make a “Jurney to Lunnun”—least he should die a fool, tries to frighten the boy out of his fixed intention by informing him in pure Sussex dialect that:—

It was ever a safe piece of comic business with Old Joey Grimaldi and his favourite pupil and successor, Tom Matthews,[Pg 218] together with all other stage clowns following them, that a penny pieman and the bright shining block-tin can should be introduced into every Christmas pantomime. The pataloon is made to be tossing the safe game of—“heads I win, tails you lose” with the stage pieman, while the roguish clown is adroitly managing to swallow the whole of the stock of pies from the can, and which are made by the stage property-man for the occasion out of tissue-paper painted in water-colours. Then follows the wry faces and spasmodic stomach-pinchings of the clown, accompanied with the echoing cries of “Mee, mee, mow, woo!” while the pantaloon takes from the pieman’s can some seven or eight fine young kittens and the old tabby-cat—also the handy-work of the stage property-man. The whole scene usually finishes by the pantaloon pointedly sympathizing with the now woebegone clown to the tune of “Serve ye right—Greedy! greedy!! greedy!!!” when enter six supernumeraries dressed as large and motherly-looking tabbies with aprons and bibs, and bedizened with white linen night caps of the pattern known in private life to middle-aged married men only. The clown and pantaloon then work together in hunting down, and then handing over the poor pieman to the tender mercies and talons of the stage-cats, who finish up the “business” of the scene by popping the pieman into what looks like a copper of boiling water.

Mr. Samuel Weller,—otherwise, Veller, that great modern authority on Y^e Manners and Y^e Customs, of Y^e English in general, and of London Life wery Particular:—for “Mr. Weller’s knowldge of London was extensive and peculiar”—has left us his own ideas of the baked “mysteries” of the pieman’s ware:—

The “gravy” given with the meat-pies is poured out of an oil-can and consists of a little salt and water browned. A hole is made with the little finger in the top of the pie and the “gravy” poured in until the crust rises sufficiently to satisfy the young critical gourmand’s taste.

“The London piemen,” says Mr. Henry Mayhew, “May be numbered at about forty in winter, and twice that number in summer.” Calculating that there are only fifty plying their trade the year through, and their average earnings at 8s. a week, we find a street expenditure exceeding £1,040, and a street consumption of pies amounting to nearly three quarters of a million yearly.

 [Pg 220]

Young Lambs to Sell.

The engraving represents an old “London Crier,” one William Liston, from a drawing for which he purposely stood in 1826.

This “public character” was born in the City of Glasgow. He became a soldier in the waggon-train commanded by Colonel Hamilton, and served under the Duke of York in Holland, where, on the 6th of October, 1799, he lost his right arm and left leg, and his place in the army. His misfortunes thrust distinction upon him. From having been a private in the ranks, where he would have remained undistinguished, he became one of the popular street-characters of his day.

[Pg 221]In Miss Eliza Cook’s Poem “Old Cries” she sings in no feeble strain the praises of the old man of her youthful days, who cried—“Merry and free as a marriage bell”:—

Young Lambs to Sell.

 [Pg 222]

The London Barrow-Woman.

The late George Cruikshank, whose pencil was ever distinguished by power of decision in every character he sketched, and whose close observation of passing men and manners was unrivalled by any artist of his day, contributed the “London Barrow-woman” to the pages of Hone’s Every-Day Book in 1826 from his own recollection of her.

 [Pg 223]

Buy a Broom.

Buy a Broom? was formerly a very popular London-cry, when it was usually rendered thus:—“Puy a Proom, puy a prooms? a leetle von for ze papy, and a pig vons for ze lady: Puy a Proom.” Fifty years ago Madame Vestris charmed the town by her singing and displaying her legs as a Buy-a-Broom Girl.

But time and fashion has swept both the brooms and the girls from our shores.—Madame Vestris lies head-to-head with Charles Mathews in Kensal Green Cemetery. Tempus omnia revelat.

 [Pg 224]

The Lady as Cries Cats’ Meat.

 [Pg 225]

Our Dandy Cats’ and Dogs’ Meat Man.

Every morning as true as the clock—the quiet of “Our Village Green” is broken by a peculiar and suggestive cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Pincher, our black and tan terrier dog, and Smut, our black and white cat, have both caught the well-known accents, and each with natural characteristic—the one wagging his tail, the other with a stiff perpendicular [dorsel appendage] sidles towards the door, demanding as plainly as possible, to be let out. Yes, it is “Our Dandy Cats’ and Dogs’ Meat Man,” with his “Ca’ me-e-et—dogs’ me yet—Ca’ or do-args-me-a-yet, me a-t—me-yett!!!” that fills the morning air, and arouses exactly seven dogs of various kinds, and exactly thirty-one responsive feline voices—there is a cat to every house on “Our Village Green”—and causes thirty-one aspiring cat’s-tails to point to the zenith. We do not know how it is, but the Cat’s-meat man is the most unerring and punctual of all those peripatetic functionaries who undertake to cater for the public. The baker, the butcher, the grocer, the butterman, the fishmonger, and the coster, occasionally forget your necessities, or omit to call for your orders—the cat’s-meat man never!

 [Pg 226]

Guy Fawkes—Guy.

There cannot be a better representation of “Guy Fawkes,” as he was borne about the metropolis in effigy in the days “When George the Third was King,” than the above sketch by George Cruikshank.

 [Pg 227]

Henry Lemoine,
The Literary and Pedestrian Bookseller and Author,
A well known
Eccentric Character of the City of London.

 [Pg 228]

All Round my Hat I Vears a Green Villow.

Spoken.—She’s a nice wegitable countenance; turnup nose, redish cheeks, and carroty hair.

Spoken.—Here’s your fine colliflowers.

Spoken.—Here’s your precious turnups.

Spoken.—Here’s your hard-hearted cabbages.

Spoken.—It’s a precious long time ’fore I does any trade to-day.

Spoken.—Here’s your nice heads of salary!

Spoken.—Here’s your Valnuts; crack’em and try’em, a shilling a hundred!

Spoken.—Do you vant any hingons to-day, marm?

Spoken.—Bless her h-eyes,

Spoken.—Here’s your fine spring redishes.

All round, &c.

 [Pg 230]

The New London Cries.

Tune—“The Night Coach.”

 [Pg 232]

Billingsgate has from time immemorial had much to do with “The Cries of London,” and although a rough and unromantic place at the present day, has an ancient legend of its own, that associates it with royal names and venerable folk. Geoffrey of Monmouth deposeth that about 400 years before Christ’s nativity, Belin, a king of the Britons, built this gate and gave it its name, and that when he was dead the royal body was burnt, and the ashes set over the gate in a vessel of brass, upon a high pinnacle of stone. The London historian, John Stow, more prosaic, on the other hand, is quite satisfied that one Biling once owned the wharf, and troubles himself no further.

Byllngsgate Dock is mentioned as an important quay in “Brompton’s Chronicle” (Edward III.), under the date 976, when King Ethelred, being then at Wantage, in Berkshire, made laws for regulating the customs on ships at Byllngsgate, then the only wharf in London. 1. Small vessels were to pay one halfpenny. 2. Larger ones, with sails, one penny. 3. Keeles, or hulks, still larger, fourpence. 4. Ships laden with wood, one log shall be given for toll. 5. Boats with fish, according to size, a halfpenny. 6. Men of Rouen, who came with wine or peas, and men of Flanders and Liege, were to pay toll before they began to sell, but the Emperor’s men (Germans of the Steel Yard) paid an annual toll. 7. Bread was tolled three times a week, cattle were paid for in kind, and butter and cheese were paid more for before Christmas than after.

[Pg 233]Hence we gather that at a very early period Billingsgate was not merely a fish-market, but for the sale of general commodities. Paying toll in kind is a curious fiscal regulation; though, doubtless, when barter was the ordinary mode of transacting business, taxes must have been collected in the form of an instalment of the goods brought to market.

Our ancestors four hundred years ago had, in proportion to the population of London, much more abundant and much cheaper fish than we have now. According to the “Noble Boke off Cookry,” a reprint of which, from the rare manuscript in the Holkham Collection, has just been edited by Mrs. Alexander Napier, Londoners in the reign of Henry VII. could regale on “baked porpois,” “turbert,” “pik in braissille,” “mortins of ffishe,” “eles in bruet,” “fresh lamprey bak,” “breme,” in “sauce” and in “brasse,” “soal in brasse,” “sturgion boiled,” “haddock in cevy,” “codling haddock,” “congur,” “halobut,” “gurnard or rocket boiled,” “plaice or flounders boiled,” “whelks boiled,” “perche boiled,” “freeke makrell,” “bace molet,” “musculles,” in “shelles” and in “brothe,” “tench in cevy,” and “lossenge for ffishe daies.” For the rich there were “potages of oysters,” “blang mang” and “rape” of “ffishe,” to say nothing of “lampry in galantyn” and “lampry bak.” Our forefathers ate more varieties of fish, cooked it better, and paid much less for it than we do, with all our railways and steamboats, our Fisheries’ Inspectors, our Fisheries Exhibion and new Fish Markets with their liberal rules and regulations. To be sure, those same forefathers of ours not only enacted certain very stringent laws against “forestalling” and “regrating,” but were likewise accustomed to enforce them, and to make short work upon occasion of the forestalled and regraters of fish, as of other commodities.

[Pg 234]In Donald Lupton’s “London and the Covntrey Carbonadoed and Quartred into seuerall Characters. London, Printed by Nicholas Okes, 1632,” the nymphs of the locality are thus described:—

The above quaint account of the ancient Billingsgate ladies answers exactly to the costermonger’s wives of the present day, who are just as careless and improvident; they are merry over their rope of onions, and laugh over a basketful of stale sprats. In their dealings and disputes they are as noisy as ever, and rather apt to put decency and good manners to the blush. Billingsgate eloquence has long been proverbial for coarse language, so that low abuse is often termed, “That’s talking Billingsgate!”[Pg 235] or, that, “You are no better than a Billingsgate fish-fag”—i.e., You are as rude and ill-mannered as the women of Billingsgate fish-market (Saxon, bellan, “to bawl,” and gate, “quay,” meaning the noisy quay). The French say “Maubert,” instead of Billingsgate, as “Your compliments are like those of the Place Maubert”—i.e., No compliments at all, but vulgar dirt-flinging. The “Place Maubert,” has long been noted for its market.

 [Pg 236]

The Crier of Poor John.

“It is well thou art not a fish, for then thou would’st have been Poor John”—Romeo and Juliet.

The introduction of steamboats has much altered the aspect of Billingsgate. Formerly, passengers embarked here for Gravesend and other places down the river, and a great many sailors mingled with the salesmen and fishermen. The boats sailed only when the tide served, and the necessity of being ready at the strangest hours rendered many taverns necessary for the accommodation of travellers. The market formerly opened two hours earlier than at present, and the result was demoralising and exhausting. Drink led to ribald language and fighting, but the refreshment now taken is chiefly tea or coffee, and the general language and behaviour has improved. The fish-fags of Ned Ward’s time have disappeared, and the business is done smarter and quicker. As late as 1842 coaches would sometimes arrive at Billingsgate from Dover or Brighton, and so affect the market. The old circle from which dealers in their carts attended the market, included Windsor, St. Alban’s, Hertford, Romford, and other places within twenty-five miles. Railways have now enlarged the area of purchasers to an indefinite degree.

To see this market in its busiest time, says Mr. Mayhew, “the visitor should be there about seven o’clock on a Friday morning.” The market opens at four, but for the first two or three hours it is attended solely by the regular fishmongers and “bummarees,” who have the pick of the best there. As soon[Pg 237] as these are gone the costermonger’s sale begins. Many of the costers that usually deal in vegetables buy a little fish on the Friday. It is the fast day of the Irish, and the mechanics’ wives run short of money at the end of the week, and so make up their dinners with fish: for this reason the attendance of costers’ barrows at Billingsgate on a Friday morning is always very great. As soon as you reach the Monument you see a line of them, with one or two tall fishmongers’ carts breaking the uniformity, and the din of the cries and commotion of the distant market begin to break on the ear like the buzzing of a hornet’s nest. The whole neighbourhood is covered with hand-barrows, some laden with baskets, others with sacks. The air is filled with a kind of sea-weedy odour, reminding one of the sea-shore; and on entering the market, the smell of whelks, red herrings, sprats, and a hundred other sorts of fish, is almost overpowering. The wooden barn looking square[14] where the fish is sold is, soon after six o’clock, crowded with shiny cord jackets and greasy caps. Everybody comes to Billingsgate in his worst clothes; and no one knows the length of time a coat can be worn until they have been to a fish sale. Through the bright opening at the end are seen the tangled rigging of the oyster boats, and the red-worsted caps of the sailors. Over the hum of voices is heard the shouts of the salesmen, who, with their white aprons, peering above the heads of the mob, stand on their tables roaring out their prices. All are bawling together—salesmen and hucksters of provisions, capes, hardware, and newspapers—till the place is a perfect Babel of competition.

Billingsgate; or, the School of Rhetoric.

[Pg 239]The sale of hot green peas in the streets of London is of great antiquity, that is to say, if the cry of “Hot peascods! one began to cry,” recorded by Lydgate in his London Lackpenny, may be taken as having intimated the sale of the same article under the modern cry of “Hot green peas! all hot, all hot! Here’s your peas, hot, hot, hot!” In many parts of the country it is, or was, customary to have a “scalding of peas,” as a sort of rustic festivity, at which green peas scalded or slightly boiled with their pods on are the main dish. Being set on the table in the midst of the party, each person dips his peapod in a common cup of melted butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, and extracts the peas by the agency of his teeth. At times one bean, shell and all is put into the steaming mass, whoever gets this bean is to be first married.

The sellers of green peas “hot, all hot!” have no stands but carry them in a tin pot or pan which is wrapped round with a thick cloth, to retain the heat. The peas are served out with a ladle, and eaten by the customers out of basins provided with spoons by the vendor. Salt and pepper are supplied at discretion, but the fresh! butter to grease ’em (avec votre permission.)

The hot green peas are sold out in halfpennyworths and pennyworths, some vendors, in addition to the usual seasoning supplied, add a suck of bacon. The “suck of bacon” is obtained by the street Arabs from a piece of that article, securely fastened by a string, to obtain a “relish” for the peas, or as is usually said “to flavour ’em;” sometimes these young gamins manage to bite the string and then bolt not only the bacon, but away from the vendors. The popular saying “a plate of veal cut with a hammy knife” is but a refined rendering of the pea and suck-’o-bacon, street luxury trick.

Pea soup is also sold in the streets of London, but not to the extent it was twenty years ago, when the chilled labourer and others having only a halfpenny to spend would indulge in a basin of—“All hot!”

 [Pg 240]

The Flower-Pot Man.

With the coming in of spring there is a large sale of Palm; on the Saturday preceding and on Palm Sunday; also of May, the fragrant flower of the hawthorn, and lilac in flower. But perhaps the pleasantest of all cries in early spring is that of “Flowers—All a-growing—all a-blowing,” heard for the first time in the season. Their beauty and fragrance gladden the senses; and the first and unexpected sight of them may prompt hopes of the coming year, such as seem proper to the spring.

[Pg 241]The sale of English and Foreign nuts in London is enormous, the annual export from Tarragona alone is estimated at 10,000 tons. Of the various kinds, we may mention the “Spanish,” the “Barcelona,” the “Brazil,” the “Coker-nut,” the “Chesnut,” and “Though last, not least, in love”—The “Walnut!”

The walnut-tree has long existed in England, and it is estimated that upwards of 50,000 bushels of walnuts are disposed of in the wholesale markets of the London district annually. Who is not pleased to hear every Autumn the familiar cry of:—

The history of the happy and social walnut involves some curious misconceptions. Take its name to begin with. Why walnut? What has this splendid, wide-spreading tree to do with walls, except such as are used as stepping-stones for the boys to climb up into the branches and steal the fruit? Nothing whatever! for, if we are to believe the learned in such matters, this fine old English tree, as it is sometimes called, is not an English tree at all, but a distinct and emphatic foreigner, and hence the derivation. The walnut is a native of Persia, and has been so named to distinguish the naturalised European from its companions, the hazel, the filbert, and the chesnut. In “the authorities” we are told that “gual” or “wall” means “strange” or “exotic,” the same root being found in Welsh and[Pg 242] kindred tongues; hence walnut. It is true, at any rate, that in France they retain the distinctive name “Noix Persique.” There is another mistaken theory connected with the tree which bears a fruit so dear to society at large, for someone has been hazardous enough to assert that:—

And this ribald rhyme—which is of Latin origin, is now an established English proverb, or proverbial phrase, but variously construed. See Nash’s “Have with you to Saffron-Walden; or, Gabriel Harvey’s Hunt is up,” 1596.—Reprinted by J. P. Collier, 1870. Moor, in his “Suffolk Words,” pp. 465, furnishes another version, which is rather an epigram than a proverb:—

[Pg 243]Now all these statements are at once unkind and erroneous all round. We know what is declared of the “man who, save in the way of kindness, lays his hand upon a woman,” to say nothing of the punishment awaiting him at the adjacent police court.[15] As to dogs, those who respect the calves of their legs had best beware of the danger of applying this recipe to any but low-spirited animals. In the case of the walnut-tree, the recommendation is again distinctly false, and the results mis-described. Possibly there are walnut-trees, as there are women, dogs, and horses, who seem none the worse for the stick; but, as a general rule, kindly treatment, for vegetable and animal alike, is the best, and, in the long run, the wisest.

In “The Miller’s Daughter,” one of the most homely and charming poems ever penned by the Poet Laureate, occurs a quatrain, spoken by an old gentleman addressing his faithful spouse:—

 [Pg 244]

The Christmas Holly.

In London a large sale is carried on in “Christmasing,” or in the sale of holly, ivy, laurel, evergreens, bay, and mistletoe, for Christmas sports and decorations, by the family greengrocer and the costermongers. The latter of whom make the streets ring with their stentorian cry of:—

Holly! Holly!! Holly, oh!!! Christmas Holly, oh!

Old Cries.

By Miss Eliza Cook.

 [Pg 248]

Dust, O!—Dust, O!

 [Pg 249]

The Dustman.

 [Pg 250]

The Birdman.

 [Pg 251]

Buy a Door-Mat or a Table-Mat.

 [Pg 252]

The Chimney Sweeper.

 [Pg 253]

The Dumpling Woman.

 [Pg 254]

The Yorkshire Cake Man.

 [Pg 255]

Flowers, Cut Flowers.

 [Pg 256]

Cucumbers.

 [Pg 257]

Rosemary and Sweetbriar.

 [Pg 258]

Newcastle Salmon.

 [Pg 259]

Cranberries.

 [Pg 260]

Sticks and Canes.

 [Pg 261]

Gooseberries.

 [Pg 262]

Ripe Pears.

 [Pg 263]

Hot Cross Buns.

 [Pg 264]

The Tinker.

 [Pg 265]

Capers, Anchovies.

 [Pg 266]

Mulberries.

 [Pg 267]