London Life: Victorian Coffee Sellers

My youngest son is into Warhammer.  Apparently the hobby isn’t as popular in the US, and recently he overheard one American gamer explaining to another, how Warhammer outlets are: ‘In every town in the UK, they’re like Starbucks over there. ‘.

A game of  Warhammer in progress

When my son told me this I laughed. The idea seemed absurd. Then I realised how true it is, that there is a Warhammer shop in pretty much every major town. But also, what does that say about the popularity of Starbucks? Which leads us neatly onto the topic of today’s blog post – coffee shops, or more precisely – selling coffee.

If you’ve read my post on the EHFA blog about an enterprising Victorian photographer, you will know my current bedtime reading is Henry Mayhew’s book, ‘London Labour and the London Poor’. First published in volumes during 1851-2, his great work chronicles everyday life as he saw it around him on London streets. Which leads me back to coffee selling.

A photograph of a typical street vendor selling coffee
Is that Queen Victoria herself  on the far left?

Mayhew writes evocatively about the barrows that popped up on street corners, selling tea and coffee to other traders, market goers, and the general public. But this was a relatively recent innovation, because 20 years previously the beverage on sale was ‘saloop’. This prompted a cross reference with a dictionary to find saloop was a hot drink made from sassafras with added milk and sugar. Of course, then I had to find out what sassafras is – turns out it’s an evergreen tree that likes hot humid conditions and looks a bit like laurel but with larger leaves.

Anyhow, inexplicably (or perhaps because tea and coffee taste nicer, and perhaps was being taxed less so was more affordable) saloop went out of fashion around about the time Victoria ascended to the throne, and beverages we still recognize today took over.

The illustration of a coffee seller taken
from Henry Mayhew's book.
Note the lamp for  night-time illumination

Mayhew records how these coffee vendors enhanced their profits by blending coffee beans with cheaper additives such as chicory, or cheaper still – baked carrots or saccharin root. Apparently 4,000 – 5,000 tons of chicory was grown each year, the majority of which all went to coffee adulteration.

The people running the stalls were often cabmen, policemen, artisans, or labourers not able to earn a living in the trade which they were apprenticed in. Some opened their stalls at midnight, specifically to cater for the ‘night-life’. The most lucrative pitch was said to be on the corner of Duke Street and Oxford Street, in London, with the best trade being done on market days.

A final thought. I wonder what the Victorians drank their street-bought coffee in? 

Cat coffee art

Presumably there were no disposable paper cups, and I wouldn’t have thought you’d take a mug wherever you went. This must mean the sellers leant out cups…hmmm…doesn’t sound terribly hygienic. 

Mud-larks of London: Dirty Endeavours on the Banks of the Thames

What is a mud-lark?

After 24 hours of constant rain the ground has turned to slush, which seems as good an excuse as any to post about mud-larks.

 

The Mud lark -
Illustration from Mayhew's
London Labour and the London Poor

In Victorian times necessity was the mother of invention and many poor people were driven to extraordinary lengths to make a living. A mud-lark is one such example, where people survived by scavenging through the mud left by the receding water of tidal rivers. The Thames is a capitol example as it was a water-way busy with all types of shipping where there was the potential for crew or passengers to drop things overboard.

 

Mud larks circa 1871

Mundane Treasure

In London, the mud-larks worked both banks of the Thames, covering a large area between Vauxhall Bridge and Woolwich. They weren't expecting to find gold, silver, or precious stones, - their treasure was of an altogether more mundane sort such as coal, rope, old-iron, copper nails, or even bones. Anything that might have come detached from a ship, or fallen overboard during repairs, had value to the mud-lark.

Boldness Rewarded

Sometimes the mud-lark become over bold, such as one boy (as described by Henry Mayhew, the chronicler of Victorian life) who got fed up picking up coal from the shoreline and climbed on board a empty coal barge, where he swept up the leavings. His endeavor earned him 7 days imprisonment in a House of Correction. Not that he seemed to mind too much as he remarked that he preferred incarceration to being a mud-lark, as at least had a meal every night.

Caps for Baskets

Indeed, the mud-larks arouse Mr. Mayhew's pity as he remarks that at one set of stairs (down to the fore-shore) he counted a dozen children wading through the mud, aged between 6 and 12 years old. Muddy slush dripped from their clothes and they left a puddle where they stood. When their basket was full, they'd remove their cap and fill it – adding to the general impression of filth and dirt. Spending all their time in mud, it wasn't worth wearing shoes (not that they could afford them), but these children felt the cold just like any other.

"It is very cold in winter, to stand in the mud without shoes."

A mud-lark

 

The tidal shore of the Thames, as seen from the Millenium Bridge
Note the Shard in the background.

The only positive in the dismal picture, it that mud-larking was an early form of recycling.  The mud-lark sell scavenged coal to the poor. Whilst the iron, bones, and rope they sold to rag shops. Any tools, such as hammers or saws, they exchanged with seamen for biscuits and meat.

A Twist  in the Tale

Henry Mayhew wrote in 1951, and by 1904 although a person could claim "mud lark" as his occupation, public sensibility decreed it an unacceptable pursuit. The word however, re-emerged around 1936 when schoolchildren re-invented mud-larking but with a twist. This time they challenged passers-by to throw coins into the mud, and then entertained the onlookers by running to fetch (and pocket) it.

 

The shore of the Thames

A recent twist is that metal-detectorists who ply the banks of the Thames looking for historical artefacts, also call themselves mud-larks. Indeed, there is a London Mud-lark FB page, where examples of recent finds are shared. 

Of Rats, Rat-Catchers ... and Beatrix Potter!

“The large grey rats, having superior bodily powers…”

Charles Fothergill 1813

This week’s post is on the unsavoury topic of rats – or more precisely, rat-catching. More significant than just scaring gentlewomen and spoiling food in larders, rats could do immense damage to crops in the field. And if the corn was destroy the price of grain (and thus, bread) rose, leaving the common man either hungry or broke.

A rat-catcher with his dogs.

In the past with mice and rats a part of everyday life, an animal that was good at killing such vermin was much prized. Cats are perhaps more traditionally associated with catching rodents, but this is not exclusively feline territory with terriers and some famous rat-catching dogs excelling at this skill as we find out later in this post.

In the early 19^th century Charles Fothergill attempted to work out how many rats were rampant in London. He estimated that a breeding pair of rats could produce three million young during their three year lifespan and his nightmarish vision predicted:

“The whole surface of the earth in a very few years would be rendered a barren and hideous waste, covered with myriads of famished grey rats, against which man himself would contend in vain.”

Jack Black

To counter balance this scenario an efficient rat-killer could destroy around 8,000 rats a year. One such famous rat-catcher was a colourful character called Jack Black. He was well known in Victorian London from both his antics and self-made uniform of a scarlet topcoat, waistcoat and breeches, with a wide leather belt inset with iron rats.  A record of his work has come down to us as he was interviewed by the Victorian chronicler of London life, Henry Mayhew. It seems as a young boy Black enjoyed showed off his rat-handling skills in Regents Park.

“I wasn’t afraid to handle rats even then. It seem to come nat’ral to me. I very soon had some in my pocket, and some in my hands…I didn’t know the bites were so many, or I dare say I shouldn’t have been so venturesome as I was.”

Rat Baiting

However, Black’s motives for catching rats may not just have been to rid people of an infestation, because he also had a profitable side line in selling live rats to rat-baiting dens.  This was a popular pastime (I hesitate to say ‘sport’) in London taverns where dog owners set their dog in a pit and bet on how many rats they could kill. One such dog was Bulldog-Billy. His claim to fame was killing a hundred rats in five-and-a-half minutes, during a contest at Cock Pit, Duck Lane, Westminster. Billy’s owner spotted a business opportunity and charged the princely sum of £10 per mating for the dog’s stud services. Indeed, such was Billy’s fame that in 1814 Princess Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s daughter, bred her three tricolor toy spaniels with him!

A New Jersey Rat Pit

The trade of rat-catching could be potentially lucrative in more ways than one. Whilst ridding a house of rodents, Jack Black told Mayhew of a stash of silver he found in the cellar.

“I found under on floor in a gent’s house a great quantity of table napkins and silver spoons and forks, which the rats had carried away for the grease on ‘em – shoes and boots gnawed to pieces, shifts, aprons, gowns, pieces of silk, and I don’t kow what not. Servants had been discharged, accused of stealing them there things. Of course I had to give them up; but there they was.”

Black spotted the opportunity for making money from his best rat catching dogs. He had a black and tan terrier who was second to none and reportedly the father of most of the similar looking terriers in London. Black reports selling one of the dogs to the Austrian Ambassador, and he was offered a sovereign per pound of body weight for his dogs, which Black declined as too mean a price.

And finally, Black was very much poacher turned game-keeper as he was also partly responsible for establishing ‘fancy’ rats as pets. When he caught unusually coloured rats he bred them together to establish new colour varieties. He then sold these on as domesticated pets “To well-bred young ladies to keep in squirrel cages.” Beatrix Potter is reputedly one of his customers and dedicated her book Samuel Whiskers to her pet rat of the same name!