menu_book Chapter 30

Section 30 of London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew. Volume 1. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Yersley. The Street Folk, Part 30. Of the Street Sale of Drinkables. The street sellers of the drinkables, who have now to be considered, belong to the same class as I have described in treating of the sale of street provisions generally.

The buyers are not precisely of the same class, for the street eatables often supply a meal, but with the exception of the coffee stalls, and occasionally of the rice milk, the drinkables are more of a luxury than a meal. Thus the buyers are chiefly those who have a penny to spare, rather than those who have a penny to dine upon. I have described the different classes of purchasers, and perhaps the accounts,

as a picture of street life, are even more curious than those I have given of the purchases of the eatables, of, literally, the diners out. Of Coffee Stall Keepers The vending of tea and coffee in the streets was little, if at all, known twenty years ago, saloup being then the beverage supplied from stalls to the late and early wayfarers. Nor was it until after 1842 that the stalls approached to anything like their present number, which is said

to be upwards of three hundred, the majority of the proprietors being women. Prior to 1824, coffee was in little demand, even among the smaller tradesmen or farmers, but in that year the duty having been reduced from one shilling to sixpence per pound, the consumption throughout the kingdom in the next seven years was nearly trebled, the increase being from £7,933,041 in 1824 to £22,745,627 in 1831. In 1842 the duty on coffee was fixed at fourpence from

British possessions, and from foreign countries at sixpence. But it was not owing solely to the reduced price of coffee that the street vendors of it increased in the year or two subsequent to 1842 at least 100%. The great facilities then offered for a cheap adulteration by mixing ground chicory with the ground coffee was an enhancement of the profits, and a greater temptation to embark in the business, as a smaller amount of capital would suffice. Within these two or three years,

this cheapness has been still further promoted by the medium of adulteration, the chicory itself being in its turn adulterated by the admixture of baked carrots and the like saccharine roots, which of course are not subjected to any duty, while foreign chicory is charged sixpence per pound. English chicory is not chargeable with duty, and is now cultivated, I am assured, to the yield of between four thousand and five thousand tons yearly, and this nearly all used

in the adulteration of coffee. Nor is there greater culpability in this trade among street vendors than among respectable shopkeepers, for I was assured by a leading grocer that he could not mention twenty shops in the city, of which he could say, you can go and buy a pound of ground coffee there, and it will not be adulterated. The revelations recently made on this subject by the Lancet are a still more convincing proof of the general dishonesty of grocers.

The coffee stall keepers generally stand at the corner of a street. In the fruit and meat markets there are usually two or three coffee-stools, and one or two in the streets leading to them. In Covent Garden there are no less than four coffee-stools. Indeed, the stalls abound in all the great thoroughfares, and the most in those not accounted fashionable and great business routes, but such as are frequented by working people on their way to their day's labour.

The best pitch in London is supposed to be at the corner of Duke Street, Oxford Street. The proprietor of that stall is said to take full thirty shillings of a morning in half-pence. One stallkeeper, I was informed, when, upon the drink, thinks nothing of spending his ten pounds or fifteen pounds in a week. A party assured me that once, when the stallkeeper above mentioned was away on the spree,

He took up his stand there, and got from four shillings to five shillings in the course of ten minutes at the busy time of the morning. The coffee-stall usually consists of a spring barrow, with two and occasionally four wheels. Some are made up of tables, and some have a trestle and board. On the top of this are placed two or three, and sometimes four, large tin cans, holding upon an average five gallons each. Beneath each of these cans

is a small iron fire-pot, perforated like a rushlight shade, and here charcoal is continually burning, so as to keep the coffee or tea with which the cans are filled hot throughout the early part of the morning. The board of the stall has mostly a compartment for bread and butter, cake and ham sandwiches, and another for the coffee mugs. There is generally a small tub under each of the stalls, in which the mugs and saucers are washed.

The grandest stall in this line is the one before mentioned as standing at the corner of Duke Street, Oxford Street. Note, of which an engraving is here given. End note. It is a large truck on four wheels, and painted a bright green.

The cans are four in number, and of bright polished tin, mounted with brass plates. There are compartments for bread and butter, sandwiches and cake. It is lighted by three large oil lamps, with bright brass mountings, and covered with an oilcloth roof. The coffee stalls generally are lighted by candle lamps.

Some coffee stalls are covered over with tarpaulin, like a tent, and others screened from the sharp night or morning air by a clothes horse covered with blankets and drawn half round the stall. Some of the stall-keepers make their appearance at twelve at night, and some not till three or four in the morning. Those that come out at midnight are for the accommodation of the night-walkers, fast gentlemen and loose girls, and those that come out in the morning are for

the accommodation of the working men. It is, I may add, piteous enough to see a few young and good-looking girls, some without the indelible mark of habitual depravity on their countenance, clustering together for warmth round a coffee stall, to which a penny expenditure, or the charity of the proprietor, has admitted them. The thieves do not resort to the coffee stalls, which are so immediately under the eye of the policeman. The coffee stall keepers usually sell

coffee and tea, and some of them cocoa. They keep hot milk in one of the large cans, and coffee, tea, or cocoa in the others. They supply bread and butter or currant cake in slices, ham sandwiches, watercresses, and boiled eggs. The price is one penny per mug, or a halfpenny per half mug, for coffee, tea, or cocoa, and a halfpenny a slice, the bread and butter or cake. The ham sandwiches are tuppence, or a penny each, the boiled eggs a penny, and the watercresses

a halfpenny a bunch. The coffee, tea, cocoa, and sugar they generally purchase by the single pound at a grocer's. Those who do an extensive trade purchase in larger quantities. The coffee is usually bought in the berry and ground by themselves. All purchase chicory to mix with it. For the coffee they pay about one shilling, for the tea about three shillings, for the cocoa sixpence per pound, and for the sugar, threepence halfpenny to fourpence. For the chicory the price

is sixpence, which is the amount of the duty alone on foreign chicory, and it is mixed with the coffee at the rate of six ounces to the pound. Many use as much as nine and twelve ounces. The coffee is made of a dark colour by means of what are called finings, which consist of burnt sugar, such as is used for browning soups. Coffee is the article mostly sold at the stalls. Indeed, there is scarcely one stall in a hundred that is supplied with tea, and not more than a dozen

in all London that furnish cocoa. The stall keepers usually make the cake themselves. A four-pound cake generally consists of half a pound of currants, half a pound of sugar, six ounces of beef dripping, and a quarter of flour. The ham for sandwiches costs five pence halfpenny or six pence per pound, and when boiled produces in sandwiches about two shillings per pound. It is usually cut up in slices little thicker than paper. The bread is

usually second bread, the butter salt at about eight pence the pound. Some borrow their barrows and pay a shilling a week for the hire of them. Many borrow the capital upon which they trade, frequently of their landlord. Some get credit for their grocery, some for their bread. If they borrow, they pay about twenty per cent per week for the loan. I was told of one man that makes a practice of lending money to the coffee stall keepers and other hucksters at the

rate of at least twenty per cent a week. If the party wishing to borrow a pound or two is unknown to the money-lender, he requires security and the interest to be paid him weekly. This money-lender, I am informed, has been transported once for receiving stolen property, and would now purchase any amount of plate that might be taken to him. The class of persons usually belonging to the business have been either cabmen, policemen, labourers, or artisans. Many have been bred

to dealing in the streets, and brought up to no other employment, but many have taken to the business owing to the difficulty of obtaining work at their own trade. The generality of them are opposed to one another. I asked one in a small way of business what was the average amount of his profits, and his answer was, I usually buy ten ounces of coffee a night. That costs, when good, one shilling and a halfpenny. With this I should make five gallons of coffee, such as I sell in

the street, which would require three quarts of milk at threepence per quart, and one and a half pounds of sugar at threepence halfpenny per pound. There is some at threepence. This would come to two shillings and tuppence three farthings, and allowing for a penny farthing for a quarter of a peck of charcoal to keep the coffee hot, it would give two shillings and fourpence for the cost of five gallons of coffee. This I should sell at about a penny halfpenny per pint, so that the

five gallons would produce me five shillings, or two shillings and eight pence clear. I generally get rid of one quarter and loaf and six ounces of butter with this quantity of coffee, and for this I pay five pence the loaf and three pence the butter, making eight pence, and these I make in twenty-eight slices at a halfpenny per slice, so the whole brings me in one shilling and tuppence, or about sixpence clear. Added to this, I sell a four-pound cake,

which costs me threepence-halfpenny per pound, one shilling and tuppence the entire cake, and this, in twenty-eight slices at a penny per slice, would yield two shillings and fourpence, or one shilling and tuppence clear, so that altogether my clear gains would be four shillings and fourpence upon an expenditure of two shillings and tuppence, say two hundred percent. This is said to be about the usual profit of the trade.

Sometimes they give credit. One person assured me he trusted as much as ninepence ha'penny that morning, and out of that he was satisfied there was fourpence at least he should never see. Most of the stalls are stationary, but some are locomotive. Some cans are carried about with yolks, like milk cans, the mugs being kept in a basket.

The best district for the night trade is the city and the approaches to the bridges. There are more men and women, I was told, walking along Cheapside, Aldersgate Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Fleet Street. In the latter place a good trade is frequently done between twelve at night and two in the morning. For the morning trade, the best districts are the Strand, Oxford Street, City Road, New Road, from one end to the other, the markets,

especially Covent Garden, Billingsgate, Newgate, and the Borough. There are no coffee stalls in Smithfield. The reason is that the drovers, on arriving at the market, are generally tired and cold, and prefer sitting down to their coffee in a warm shop, rather than drink it in the open street. The best days for coffee stalls are market mornings, namely Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

On these days the receipts are generally half as much a gain as those of the other mornings. The best time of the year for the business is the summer. This is, I am told, because the workpeople and costumongers have more money to spend. Some stall-keepers save sufficient to take a shop, but these are only such as have a pitch in the best thoroughfares.

One who did a little business informed me that he usually cleared, including Sunday, fourteen shillings. Last week his gains were fifteen shillings. The week before that he could not remember. He is very frequently out all night, and does not earn sixpence. This is on wet and cold nights, when there are few people about. His is generally the night trade. The average weekly earnings of the trade throughout the year are said to be one pound.

The trade, I am assured by all, is overstocked. They are half too many, they say. Two of us, to use their own words, are eating one man's bread. When coffee in the streets first came up, a man could go and earn, I am told, his eight shillings a night at the very lowest, but now the same class of men cannot earn more than three shillings. Some men may earn comparatively a large sum, as much as thirty eight shillings or two pounds, but the generality

of the trade cannot make more than one pound per week, if so much. The following is the statement of one of the class. I was a mason's labourer, a smith's labourer, a plasterer's labourer, or a bricklayer's labourer. I was indeed a labouring man. I could not get employment. I was for six months without any employment. I did not know which way to support my wife and child. I have only one child. Being so long out of employment, I saw no other means of getting a

living but out of the streets. I was almost starving before I took to it. That I certainly was. I'm not ashamed of telling anybody that, because it's true, and I sought for a livelihood wherever I could. Many said they wouldn't do such a thing as keep a coffee store, but I said I'd do anything to get a bit of bread honestly. Years ago, when I was a boy, I used to go out selling watercresses and apples, oranges and radishes with a barrow for my landlord. So I thought, when I was thrown

out of employment, I would take to selling coffee in the streets. I went to a tin man and paid him ten shillings and sixpence, the last of my savings, after I'd been four or five months out of work, for I can. I didn't care how I got my living, so long as I could turn an honest penny. Well, I went on and knocked about and couldn't get a pitch anywhere. But at last I heard that an old man who had been in the habit of standing for many years

at the entrance of one of the markets had fell ill. So what did I do but I goes and pops into his pitch? And there I've done better than ever I did afore. I get twenty shillings now where I got ten shillings one time. And if I only had such a thing as five pounds or ten pounds,

I might get a good living for life. I cannot do half as much as the man that was there before me. He used to make his coffee down there, and had a can for hot water as well. But I have but one can to keep coffee and all in, and I have to borrow my barrow and pay a shilling a week for it.

If I sell my can out, I can't do any more. The struggle to get a living is so great that, what with one and another in the coffee trade, it's only those as can get good pitches that can get a crust at it. As it appears that each coffee stall keeper, on an average, clears £1 a week, and his takings may be said to be at least double that sum, the yearly street expenditure for tea, coffee, and so on amounts to £31,200. The quantity of coffee sold annually in the streets appears to be about 550,000 gallons.

To commence as a coffee stall keeper, in a moderate manner, requires about £5 capital. The truck costs £2, and the other utensils and materials £3. The expense of the cans is near upon 16 shillings each. The stock money is a few shillings. Of the Street Sale of Ginger Beer, Sherbet, Lemonade, and so on

The street trade in ginger beer, now a very considerable traffic, was not known to any extent until about thirty years ago. About that time, 1822, a man, during a most sultry drought, sold extraordinary quantities of cool ginger beer and of soda powders near the Royal Exchange, clearing, for the three or four weeks the heat continued,

thirty shillings a day, or nine pounds weekly. Soda water he sold in powders, the acid and the alkali, being mixed in the water of the glass held by the customer, and drunk whilst effervescing. His prices were tuppence and threepence a glass for ginger beer, and threepence and fourpence for soda water, according to the quality, though there was in reality no difference

whatever in the quality, only in the price. From that time the numbers pursuing this street avocation increased gradually. They have, however, fallen off of late years. The street sellers who brew their own beer generally prepare half a gross, six dozen, at a time. For a good quality or the penny bottle trade, the following are the ingredients and the mode of preparation. Three gallons of water, one pound of ginger, sixpence, lemon acid,

tuppence, essence of cloves, tuppence, yeast, tuppence, and one pound of raw sugar, sevenpence. This admixture, the yeast being the last ingredient introduced, stands 24 hours and is then ready for bottling. If the beverage be required in 12 hours, double the quantity of yeast is used. The bottles are filled only to the ridge,

but the liquid and the froth more than fill a full-sized half-pint glass. Only half froth, I was told, is reckoned very fair, and it's just the same in the shops. Thus, 72 bottles, each to be sold at one penny, cost, apart from any outlay in utensils or any consideration of the value of labour,

only one shilling and seven pence, and yield at one penny per bottle six shillings. For the cheaper beverage, called Playhouse Ginger Beer in the trade, instead of sugar, molasses from the private distilleries is made available. The private distilleries are the illicit ones. Jiggers we call them, said one man, and I could pass a hundred in ten minutes' walk from where we're talking.

Molasses costing thruppence at a jiggers is sufficient for a half-gross of bottles of ginger beer, and of the other ingredients only half the quantity is used, the cloves being altogether dispensed with, but the same amount of yeast is generally applied. This quality of beer is sold at a halfpenny the glass. About five years ago, fountains for the production of ginger beer became common in the streets.

The ginger beer trade in the open air is only for a summer season, extending from four to seven months, according to the weather. The season last year having been over in about four months. There were then 200 fountains in the streets, all of which, excepting twenty or thirty of the best, were hired of the ginger-beer manufacturers

who drive a profitable trade in them. The average value of a street fountain, with a handsome frame or stand, which is usually fixed on a wheeled and movable truck, so as one man's strength may be sufficient to propel it, is seven pounds, and for the rent of such a fountain six shillings a week is paid when the season is brisk, and four shillings when it is slack, but last summer, I am told, four shillings and sixpence was an average.

The largest and handsomest ginger-beer fountain in London was, I speak of last summer, in use at the East End, usually standing in Petticoat Lane, and is the property of a dancing-master. It is made of mahogany, and presents somewhat the form of an upright piano on wheels. It has two pumps, and the brass of the pump handles and the glass receivers is always kept bright and clean, so that the whole glitters handsomely to the light. Two persons serve at this fountain,

and on a fine Sunday morning from six to one, that being the best trading time, they take seven pounds or eight pounds in half pennies, for the beer is a halfpenny a glass, and two pounds each other day of the week. This machine, as it may be called, is drawn by two ponies, said to be worth ten pounds apiece, and the whole cost is pronounced, perhaps with a sufficient exaggeration, to have been one hundred and fifty pounds. There were in the same

neighbourhood two more fountains on a similar scale, but commoner, each drawn by only one pony instead of the aristocratic pear. The ingredients required to feed the ginger beer fountains are of a very cheap description. To supply ten gallons, two quarts of lime juice, as it is called, but it is in reality lemon juice, costing three shillings and sixpence, are placed in the recess, sometimes with the addition of a pound of sugar, fourpence, while some, I am assured, put in a smaller quantity

of juice, and add two pennyworth of oil of vitriol, which brings out the sharpness of the lime juice. The rest is water. No process of brewing or fermentation is necessary, for the fixed air pumped into the liquid, as it is drawn from the fountain, communicates a sufficient briskness or effervescence. "'The harder you pumps,' said one man, who had worked a fountain,

the frothier it comes, and though it seems to fill a big glass, and the glass ain't so big for holding as it looks, let it settle, and there's only a quarter of a pint. The hirer of a fountain is required to give security. This is not, as in some slop trades, a deposit of money, but a householder must, by written agreement, make himself responsible for any damage the fountain may sustain, as well as for its return, or make good the loss. The street ginger beer

seller is alone responsible for the rent of the machine. It is, however, only men that are known who are trusted in this way. Of the fountains thus hired, fifty are usually to be found at the neighbouring fairs and races. As the ginger beer men carry lime juice and so on with them, Only water is required to complete the brewing of the beer, and so conveyance is not difficult. There is another kind of ginger beer, or rather of small acid tiff,

which is sold out of barrels at street saws at a halfpenny the glass. To make two and a half gallons of this there is used a half a pound of tartaric or other acid, one shilling, half a pound alkali, soda, ten pence, half pound lump sugar, bruised, fine, four pence, and yeast, one penny. Of these barrel men, there are now about one hundred. Another class of street sellers obtain their stock of ginger beer from the manufacturers.

One of the largest manufacturers for the street trade resides near Ratcliffe Highway, and another in the commercial road. The charge by the wholesale traders is eight pence the dozen, while to a known man or for ready money, thirteen are given to the dozen. The beer, however, is often let out on credit, or in some cases security is given in the same way as for the fountains, and the empty bottles must be duly returned. It is not uncommon for two gross of beer to be let

out in this way at a time. For the itinerant trade, these are placed on a truck or barrow, fitted up with four shelves, on which are ranged the bottles. These barrows are hired in the same way as the costas barrows. Some sell their beer at stalls fitted up exclusively for the trade, a kind of tank being let into the centre of the board,

and filled with water, in which the glasses are rinsed or washed. Underneath the stall there is usually a reserve of the beer, and a keg containing water. Some of the best-frequented stalls were in Whitechapel, Old Street Road, City Road, Tottenham Court Road, The New Cut, Elephant and Castle,

The Commercial Road, Tower Hill, The Strand, and near Westminster Bridge. The stationary beer business is, for the most part, carried on in the more public streets, such as Hoban and Oxford Street, and in the markets of Covent Garden, Smithfield, and Billingsgate, while the peripatetic trade, which is briskest on the Sundays, when, indeed, some of the stationary hands become itinerant, is more for the suburbs—Victoria

Park, Battersea Fields, Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill, Kennington Common, and Camerwell Green, being approved Sunday haunts. The London street sellers of ginger beer, say the more experienced, may be computed at three thousand, of whom about one-third are women. I heard them frequently estimated at five thousand, and some urged that the number was at least as near five thousand as three thousand. For my own part, I am inclined to believe that half the smaller number would be

nearer the truth. Judging by the number of miles of streets throughout the metropolis, and comparing the street sellers of ginger beer with the fruit stall keepers, I am satisfied that in estimating the ginger beer sellers at fifteen hundred, we are rather over than under the truth. This body of street sellers were more numerous five years back by fifteen or twenty percent, but the introduction of the street fountains, and the trade being resorted to by the keepers

of coal sheds and the small shopkeepers, who have frequently a stand with ginger beer in front of their shops, have reduced the amount of the street sellers. In 1842 there were 1,200 ginger beer sellers in the streets, who had attached to their stalls or trucks, labels showing that they were members, or assumed to be members, of the Society of Odd Fellows. This was done in hopes of a greater amount of custom from the other members of the Society, but the expectation

was not realised, and so the Odd Fellowship of the Ginger Beer people disappeared. Of the street traders, two hundred work fountains, and of the remaining portion the stationery and the itinerant are about equally divided. Of the whole number, however, not above an eighth confine themselves to the trade, but usually sell with their pop some other article of open-air traffic, fruit, sweet stuff, or shellfish. There are of the entire number about three hundred and fifty,

who, whenever the weather permits, stay out all night with their stands or barrows, and are to be found especially in all the approaches to Covent Garden, and the other markets to which there is a resort during the night or at daybreak. These men, I was told by one of their body, worked from eight in the evening to eight or ten next morning, then went to bed, rose at three, and, plenty of them, then goes to the Skittles, or to get drunk.

The character of the ginger-beer sellers does not differ from what I have described as pertaining to the costamonger class, and to street traders generally. There is the same admixture of the reduced mechanic, the broken-down gentleman's servant, the man of any class in life who cannot brook the confinement and restraint of ordinary indoor labour, and of the man brought up to the streets. One experienced and trustworthy man told me that, from his own knowledge, he could count up twenty classical men, as he styled them, who were in the street ginger-beer trade, and of these four had been, or were said to have been, Parsons, two being of the same name, Mr. S. blank, but my informant

did not know if they stood in any degree of consanguinity, one to another. The women are the wives, daughters, or other connections of the men. Some of the stalls at which ginger-beer is sold, and it is the same at the coal-sheds and the chandlers' shops, are adorned pictorially. Erected at the end of a stall is often a painting, papered on a board, in which a gentleman with the bluest of coats, the whitest of trousers, the yellowest of waistcoats, and the largest of

guard-chains or eyeglasses, is handing a glass of ginger-beer, frothed up like a pot of stout, and containing, apparently a pint and a half, to some lady in flowing white robes, or gorgeous in purple or orange. To commence in this branch of the street business requires, in all, eighteen shillings and threepence, six glasses, two shillings and ninepence, Board, five shillings. Tank, one shilling. Keg, one shilling. Gross of beer, eight shillings.

Note, this is where the seller is not also the maker. End note. And for towels and so on, sixpence. If, however, the street seller brew his own beer, he will require half a gross of bottles, five shillings and sixpence, and the ingredients I have enumerated, one shilling and sevenpence. In addition to the street sale of ginger beer is that of other summer drinks. Of these the principal is lemonade, the consumption of which is as much as that of all the others together.

Indeed, the high-sounding names given to some of these beverages, such as Nectar and Persian Sherbet, are but other names for lemonade, in a slightly different colour or fashion. Lemonade is made by those vendors who deal in the best articles after the following method. One pound of carbonate of soda, sixpence. One pound of tartaric acid, one shilling and fourpence.

Note, at least, said an informant, I pay one shilling and fourpence at Pothgarry's Hall, but it can be had at a shilling. End note. One pound of loaf sugar, fivepence halfpenny. Essence of lemon, threepence.

This admixture is kept in the form of a powder in a jar, and water is drawn from what the street sellers call a stone barrel, which is a stone jar, something like the common-shaped filters with a tap, and a larger or smaller spoonful of the admixture in a glass of water supplies an effervescing draught for one penny or a halfpenny. There's sometimes shocking roguishness in the trade, said one man, and there is in a many trades. Some uses vitriol. Lemonade made after

the recipe I have given is sometimes bottled by the street sellers, and sold in the same way as ginger beer. It is bought also for street sale of the ginger beer manufacturers, the profit being the same, but so bought to less than a twentieth of the whole sale. The water in the stone barrel is spring water, obtained from the nearest pump, and in hot weather obtained frequently, so as to be served in as cool a state as possible. Sometimes lemonade powders are used.

They are bought at a chemist's at one shilling and sixpence the pound. Sherbet is the same admixture, with cream of tartar instead of tartaric acid. Raspberry has sometimes the addition of a few crushed raspberries, and a colouring of cochineal, with generally a greater degree of sweetening than lemonade. If cochineal is used for colouring, said one man,

it sometimes turns brown in the sun, and the raspberry don't sell. A little lake's better. Lemon juice is again lemonade, with a slight infusion of saffron to give it a yellow or pale orange colour. Nectar, in imitation of soyers, has more sugar and less acid than the lemonade.

Spices such as cinnamon is used to flavour it. and the colouring is from lake and saffron. These cooling drinks are sold from the powder or the jar, as I have described, from fountains and from bottles. The fountain sale is not above a tenth of the whole. All is sold in a halfpenny and one-penny glasses, except the nectar, which is never less than one penny. The customers are the same as those who buy ginger beer,

but one lemonader with whom I conversed seemed inclined to insist that they were a more respectable class. Boys are good customers, better perhaps than for the beer, as the colour and the fine names attracts them. The cooling drink season, like that of the ginger beer, is determined by the weather, and last summer it was only four months. It was computed for me that there were two hundred persons, chiefly men, selling solely lemonade and so on, and an additional three hundred

uniting the sale with that of ginger beer. One man, whose statement was confirmed by others, told me that on fine days he took three shillings and sixpence, out of which he cleared two shillings to two shillings and sixpence, and he concluded that his brother tradesman cleared as much every fine day, and so, allowing for wet weather and diminished receipts, made ten shillings a week. The receipts, then, for this street luxury, a receipt of 17 shillings and sixpence,

affording a profit of 10 shillings, show a street expenditure in such a summer as the last of £2,800 by those who do not unite ginger beer with the trade. Calculating that those who do unite ginger beer with it sell only one-half as much as the others, we find a total outlay of £4,900. One of the best trades is in the hands of a man who works Smithfield, and on the market days clears generally from six shillings to nine shillings. The stalls and so on are of the

same character as those of the ginger-beer sellers. The capital required to start is stone barrel with brass tap, five shillings and sixpence, stand and trestle, six shillings, six tumbler glasses, two shillings and threepence, two towels, sixpence, stock money, two shillings and sixpence, jar, two shillings, twelve bottles, when used, three shillings and sixpence, in all, about a guinea. In showing the money expended in the ginger-beer trade,

it must be borne in mind that a large portion of the profits accrues to persons who cannot be properly classed with the regular street traders. Such is the proprietor of the great fountain of which I have spoken, who is to be classed as a speculative man, ready to embark capital in any way, whether connected with street traffic or not, likely to be remunerative. The other and large participants in the profits are the wholesale ginger beer manufacturers,

who are also the letters out of fountains, one of them having generally nine let out at a time. For a street trader to sell three gross of ginger beer in bottle is now accounted a good week, and for that the receipts will be thirty-six shillings, with a profit in the penny bottle trade to the seller, if he buy of a manufacturer, of twelve shillings, if he be his own brewer, reckoning a fair compensation for labour, and for money invested in utensils and in bottles and so

of twenty shillings. An ordinary week's sale is too gross, costing the public twenty-four shillings, with the same proportion of profit in the same trade to the seller. In a bad week, or in a small way to help out other things, not more than one gross is sold. The fountain trade is the most profitable to the proprietors, whether they send out their machines on their own account, or let them out on hire, but perhaps there are only an eighth of the number not let out on hire.

Calculating that a fountain be let out for three successive seasons of twenty weeks each, at only four shillings the week, the gross receipts are twelve pounds, for what on the first day of hire was worth only seven pounds, so that the returns from two hundred machines let out for the same term would be £2,400, or a profit of £1,000, over and above the worth of the fountain, which, having been thus paid for, is, of course, in a succeeding year the means of

a clear profit of £4. I am assured that the weekly average of a fountain's takings, when in the hands of the regular street dealers, is 18 shillings. The barrel traders may be taken as, in the average receipt of six shillings a week. The duration of the season was, last year, only sixteen weeks. Calculating from the best data I could acquire, it appears that, for this period, two hundred street sellers of ginger beer in the bottle trade of the penny class take thirty

shillings a week each, thus allowing for the inferior receipts in bad weather. Three hundred take twenty shillings each, selling for the most part at a halfpenny the bottle, and that the remaining four hundred, in a small way, take six shillings each. Hence we find eleven thousand four hundred and eighty pounds expended in the bottled ginger beer of the streets. Adding the receipts from the fountains and the barrels, the barrel season continuing only ten weeks,

The total sum expended annually in street ginger beer is altogether £14,660. The bottles of ginger beer sold yearly in the streets will number about 4,798,000, and the total street consumption of the same beverage may be said to be about 250,000 gallons per annum. Of the Experience and Customers of a Ginger Beer Cellar A slim, well-spoken man with a half-military appearance, as he had a well-trimmed moustache

and was very cleanly dressed, gave me the following account. I've known the ginger-beer trade for eight years and every branch of it. Indeed, I think I've tried all sorts of street business. I've been a costumunger, a lot seller, a nut seller, a secret paper seller, with straws, you know, sir.

A cap seller, a street printer, a cake man, a clown, an umbrella maker, a toasting fork maker, a sovereign seller, and a ginger beer seller. I hardly know what I haven't been. I made my own when last I worked beer. Sunday was my best day, or rather Sunday mornings, when there's no public houses open.

Drinking Saturday nights makes dry Sunday mornings. Many a time men have said to me, let's have a bottle to quench a spark in my throat or my mouth's like an oven i've had to help people to lift the glass to their lips their hands trembled so they couldn't have written their names plain if there was a sovereign for it but these was only chance customers one or two in a morning and five or six on a sunday morning i've been a teetotaler myself for fifteen years no sir i didn't turn one but i never was a drinker not from any great respect for the ginger-beer trade but because i thought it gave one a better chance of getting on i once had saved money but it went in a long sickness i used to be off early on sunday mornings sometimes to hackney marsh and sell my beer there to gentlemen oldest gentlemen some of them going a-fishing others were going there to swim

one week i took thirty-five shillings at a penny a bottle by going out early in the morning perhaps twenty shillings of it was profit but my earnings in the trade in a good season wasn't more than twelve shillings one week with another All the trades in the streets are bad now, I think. Eight years back I could make half as much more in ginger beer as could be made last summer. Working people and boys were my other customers. I stuck to ginger beer in the season, and then went into something else, for I can turn my hand to anything.

I began a street life at eight years old by selling memorandum books in the Bullring at Birmingham. My parents were ill and hadn't a farthing in the house. I began with one penny stock money, and I bought three memorandum books for it at Cheap Jack's Thatched House. I've been in London seventeen or eighteen years. I'm a roulette maker now. I mean, the roulette boxes that gentlemen take with them to play with when travelling on a railway or such

times. I make loaded dice too, and supply gaming houses. I think I know more gaming houses than any man in London. I've sold them to gentlemen and to parsons, that is, ministers of religion. I can prove that. I don't sell those sort of things in the streets. I could do very well in the trade, but it's so uncertain and so little's wanted compared to what would keep a man going, and I have a mother that's sixty to support. Altogether my present business is inferior to

the ginger beer, but the fountains will destroy all the fair ginger beer trade. End of section 30