Of the Swag-Shops of the Metropolis.

I describe this matter more fully than I might have deemed necessary, had I not found that both the “small masters” spoken of--for I called upon some of them again--and the street-sellers, very frequently confounded the “swag-shop” and the “slaughter-house.” The distinction I hold to be this:--The slaughterer buys as a rule, with hardly an exception, the furniture, or whatever it may be, made for the express purpose of being offered to him on speculation of sale. The swag shop-keeper orders his goods as a rule, and buys, as an exception, in the manner in which the slaughterer buys ordinarily. The slaughterer sells by retail; the swag-shop keeper only by wholesale.

Most of the articles, of the class of which I now treat, are “Brummagem made.” An experienced tradesman said to me: “All these low-priced metal things, fancy goods and all, which you see about, are made in Birmingham; in nineteen cases out of twenty at the least. They may be marked London, or Sheffield, or Paris, or any place--you can have them marked North Pole if you will--but they’re genuine Birmingham. The carriage is lower from Birmingham than from Sheffield--that’s one thing.”

The majority of the swag-shop proprietors are Jews. The wares which they supply to the cheap shops, the cheap John’s, and the street-sellers, in town and country, consist of every variety of article, apart from what is eatable, drinkable, or wearable, in which the trade class I have specified can deal. As regards what is wearable, indeed, such things as braces, garters, &c., form a portion of the stock of the swag-shop.

In one street (a thoroughfare at the east-end of London) are twenty-three of these establishments. In the windows there is little attempt at display; the design aimed at seems to be rather to crowd the window--as if to show the amplitude of the stores within, “the wonderful resources of this most extensive and universal establishment”--than to tempt purchasers by exhibiting tastefully what may have been tastefully executed by the artificer, or what it is desired should be held to be so executed.

In one of these windows the daylight is almost precluded from the interior by what may be called a perfect wall of “pots.” A street-seller who accompanied me called them merely “pots” (the trade term), but they were all pot ornaments. Among them were great store of shepherdesses, of greyhounds of a gamboge colour, of what I heard called “figures” (allegorical nymphs with and without birds or wreaths in their hands), very tall-looking Shaksperes (I did not see one of these windows without its Shakspere, a sitting figure), and some “pots” which seem to be either shepherds or musicians; from what I could learn, at the pleasure of the seller, the buyer, or the inquirer. The shepherd, or musician is usually seated under a tree; he wears a light blue coat, and yellow breeches, and his limbs, more than his body, are remarkable for their bulk; to call them merely fat does not sufficiently express their character, and in some “pots,” they are as short and stumpy as they are bulky. On my asking if the dogs were intended for Italian greyhounds, I was told, “No, they are German.” I alluded however to the species of the animal represented; my informant to the place of manufacture, for the pots were chiefly German. A number of mugs however, with the Crystal Palace very well depicted upon them, were unmistakably English. In another window of the same establishment was a conglomeration of pincushions, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps (all in bone), cribbage-boards and boxes (including a pack of cards), necklaces, and strings of beads.

The window of a neighbouring swag-shop presented, in the like crowding, and in greater confusion, an array of brooches (some in coloured glass to imitate rubies, topazes, &c., some containing portraits, deeply coloured, in purple attire, and red cheeks, and some being very large cameos), time-pieces (with and without glasses), French toys with moveable figures, telescopes, American clocks, musical boxes, shirt-studs, backgammon-boards, tea-trays (one with a nondescript bird of most gorgeous green plumage forming a sort of centrepiece), razor-strops writing-desks, sailors’ knives, hair-brushes, and tobacco-boxes.

Another window presented even a more “miscellaneous assortment;” dirks (apparently not very formidable weapons), a mess of steel pens, in brown-paper packages and cases, and of black-lead pencils, pipe-heads, cigar-cases, snuff-boxes, razors, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps, metal tea-pots, metal tea-spoons, glass globes with artificial flowers and leaves within the glass (an improvement one man thought on the old ornament of a reel in a bottle), Peel medals, Exhibition medals, roulette-boxes, scent bottles, quill pens with artificial flowers in the feathery part, fans, side-combs, glass pen-holders, and pot figures (caricatures) of Louis Philippe, carrying a very red umbrella, Marshal Haynau, with some instrument of torture in his hand, while over all boomed a huge English seaman, in yellow waistcoat and with a brick-coloured face.

Sometimes the furniture of a swag-shop window is less plentiful, but quite as heterogenous. In one were only American clocks, French toys (large), opera-glasses, knives and forks, and powder-flasks.

In some windows the predominant character is jewellery. Ear-drops (generally gilt), rings of all kinds, brooches of every size and shade of coloured glass, shawl-pins, shirt-studs, necklaces, bead purses, small paintings of the Crystal-palace, in “burnished ‘gold’ frames,” watch-guards, watch-seals (each with three impressions or mottoes), watch-chains and keys, “silver” tooth-picks, medals, and snuff-boxes. It might be expected that the jewellery shops would present the most imposing display of any; they are, on the contrary, among the dingiest, as if it were not worth the trouble to put clean things in the window, but merely what sufficed to characterise the nature of the trade carried on.

Of the twenty-three swag-shops in question, five were confined to the trade in all the branches of stationery. Of these I saw one, the large window of which was perfectly packed from bottom to top with note-paper, account and copy-books, steel-pens, pencils, sealing-wax, enamelled wafers (in boxes), ink-stands, &c.

Of the other shops, two had cases of watches, with no attempt at display, or even arrangement. “Poor things,” I was told by a person familiar with the trade in them, “fit only to offer to countrymen when they’ve been drinking at a fair, and think themselves clever.”

I have so far described the exterior of these street-dealers’ bazaars, the swag-shops, in what may be called their head-quarters. Upon entering some of these places of business, spacious rooms are seen to extend behind the shop or warehouse which opens to the street. Some are almost blocked up with what appears a litter of packing-cases, packages, and bales--but which are no doubt ordered systematically enough--while the shelves are crammed with goods in brown paper, or in cases or boxes. This uniformity of package, so to speak, has the effect of destroying the true character of these swag store-rooms; for they present the appearance of only three or four different kinds of merchandise being deposited on a range of shelves, when, perhaps, there are a hundred. In some of these swag-shops it appears certain, both from what fell under my own observation, and from what I learned through my inquiries of persons long familiar with such places, that the “litter” I have spoken of is disposed so as to present the appearance of an affluence of goods without the reality of possession.

In no warehouses (properly “swag,” or wholesale traders) is there any arranged display of the wares vended. “Ve don’t vant people here,” one street-seller had often heard a swag-shopkeeper say, “as looks about them, and says, ‘’Ow purty!--Vot nice things!’ Ve vants to sell, and not to show. Ve is all for bisness, and be d----d.” All of these places which I saw were dark, more or less so, in the interior, as if a customer’s inspection were uncared for.

Some of the swag-shop people present cards, or “circulars with prices,” to their street and other customers, calling attention to the variety of their wares. These circulars are not given without inquiry, as if it were felt that one must not be wasted. On one I find the following enumeration:--

Shopkeepers and Dealers supplied with the following Articles:--

CLOCKS--American, French, German, and English eight-day dials.

WATCHES--Gold and Silver.

MUSICAL BOXES--Two, Four, Six, and Eight Airs.

WATCH-GLASSES--Common Flint, Geneva, and Lunettes.

MAIN-SPRINGS--Blue and Straw-colour, English and Geneva.

WATCH MATERIALS--Of every description.

JEWELLERY--A general assortment.

SPECTACLES--Gold, Silver, Steel, Horn, and Metal Frames, Concave, Convex, Coloured, and Smoked Eyes.

TELESCOPES--One, two, and three draws.