Mathematical Instruments.

COMBS--Side, Dressing, Curl, Pocket, Ivory, Small-Tooth, &c.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--Violins, Violincellos, Bows, &c., Flutes, Clarionets, Trombones, Ophoclides, Cornopeans, French-Horns, Post-Horns, Trumpets, and Passes, Violin Tailboards, Pegs, and Bridges.

ACCORDIONS--French and German of every size and style.

It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of “fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only the “windows” and outward appearances of these places--the interior being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers, General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens, and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”

Table Cutlery.

s. d. Common knives and forks, per doz. 2 0 Ivory-handle table knives and fork, per set of fifty-pieces 30 0 Tables, per doz. 15 0 Desserts, per doz. 11 3 Carvers, per pair 4 0

Fire-Irons.

Strong wrought-iron for kitchens, per set 2s. to 6 0 Ditto for parlours or libraries, bright pans, 4s. 6d. to 7 0

Fenders.

Kitchen fenders, 3 ft. long, with sliding bar 3 0 Green ditto, brass tops, for bed rooms 1 8

“Britannia Metal Goods” (tea-pots, &c.), “German Silver Goods” (tea-spoons, 1s. to 2s. per dozen, &c.).

Bellows.

Kitchen, each 10d. to 2 0 Parlour ditto, brass pipes and nails 2s. 3d. to 3 0

Japanned goods, brass goods, iron saucepans, oval iron pots, iron tea-kettles, &c., iron stew-pans, &c. The prices here run very systematically:--

One quart 1 2 Three pints 1 8 Two quarts 2 0 Three quarts 3 0 Four quarts 3 9 Five quarts 4 0

Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans, tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods (kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove, shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools, plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical instruments (accordions from 1s. to 5s., &c.). Then come dials and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera glasses, each 10d. to 10s., China ornaments, lamps, sundries (these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping and goffering-machines, from 14s., looking-glasses, pictures, &c., beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols, powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6d. to 2s., nut-cracks, 6d. to 1s. 6d., folding measures, each 2s. to 4s., silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2s. to 10s., carpet bags, each 3s. to 10s., egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.

Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the “Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest “swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.

The swag-shops (of which I state the numbers in a parenthesis) are in Houndsditch (their principal locality) (23), Minories (4), Whitechapel (2), Ratcliffe-highway (20), Shoreditch (1), Long-lane, Smithfield (4), Fleet-lane (2), Holywell-street, Strand (1), Tothill-street (4), Compton-street, Soho (1), Hatton-garden (2), Clerkenwell (10), Kent-street, Borough (8), New-cut (6), Blackman-street (2), Tooley-street (3), London-road (3), Borough-road (1), Waterloo-road (4)--in all 101; but a person who had been upwards of twenty years a frequenter of these places counted up fifty others, many of them in obscure courts and alleys near Houndsditch, Ratcliffe Highway, &c., &c. These “outsiders” are generally of a smaller class than those I have described; “and I can tell you, sir,” the same man said, “some of them--ay, and some of the big ones, too--are real swag-shops still,--partly so, that is; you understand me, sir.” The word “swag,” I should inform my polite readers, means in slang language, “plunder.”

It may be safely calculated, then, that there are 150 swag-shops to which the different classes of street-sellers resort for the purchase of stock. Among these establishments are pot swag, stationery swag, haberdashery swag, jewellery swag, and miscellaneous swag--the latter comprise far more than half of the entire number, and constitute the warehouses which are described by their owners as “Birmingham and Sheffield,” or “English and Foreign,” or “English and German.” It is in these last-mentioned “swags” that the class I now treat of--the street-sellers of metal manufactures--find the commodities of their trade. To this, however, there is one exception. Tins for household use are not sold at the general swag-shops; but “fancy tins,” such as japanned and embellished trays, are vended there extensively. The street-sellers of this order are supplied at the “tin-shops,”--the number of the wholesale tin-men supplying the street-sellers is about fifty. The principle on which the business is conducted is precisely that of the more general swag-shop; but I shall speak of them when I treat of the street-sellers of tins.

An intelligent man, who had been employed in different capacities in some of the principal swag-shops, told me of one which had been carried on by the same family, from father to son, for more than seventy years. In the largest of the “swags” about 200 “hands” are employed, in the various capacities of salesmen, buyers, clerks, travellers, unpackers, packers, porters, &c., &c. On some mornings twenty-five large packages--some of small articles entirely--are received from the carriers. In one week, when my informant assisted in “making up the books,” the receipts were upwards of 3000l. “In my opinion, sir,” he said, “and it’s from an insight into the business, Mr. ----’s profit on that 3000l. was not less than thirty-five per cent.; for he’s a great capitalist, and pays for everything down upon the nail; that’s more than 1000l. profit in a week. Certainly it was an extra week, and there’s the 200 hands to pay,--but that wouldn’t range higher than 300l., indeed, not so high; and there’s heavy rent and taxes, and rates, no doubt, and he (the proprietor is a Jew) is a fair man to the trade, and not an uncharitable man--but he will drive a good bargain where it’s possible; so considering everything, sir, the profits must be very great, and they are mostly made out of poor buyers, who sell it to poor people in the streets, or in small shops. It’s a wonderful trade.”

From the best information I could obtain I come to the conclusion that, including small and large shops, 3000l. yearly is the average receipt of each--or, as it is most frequently expressed, that sum is “turned over” by the swag-shop keepers yearly. There is great competition in the trade, and much of what is called “cutting,” or one tradesman underselling another. The profit consequently varies from twenty to thirty-five and (rarely) fifty per cent. Sometimes a swag-shop proprietor is “hung-up” with a stock the demand for which has ceased, and he must dispose of it as “a job lot,” to make room for other goods, and thus is necessarily “out of pocket.” The smaller swag-shops do not “turn over” 500l. a year. The calculation I have given shows an outlay, yearly, of 450,000l. at the swag-shops of London; “but,” said a partner in one of these establishments, “what proportion of the goods find their way into the streets, what to the shops, what to the country, and what for shipping, I cannot form even a guess, for we never ask a customer for what purpose he wants the goods, though sometimes he will say, ‘I must have what is best for such or such a trade.’ Say half a million turned over in a year, sir, by the warehousemen who sell to the street-people, among others, and you’re within the mark.”

I found the street-sellers characterize the “swags” as hard and grinding men, taking every advantage “in the way of trade.” There is, too, I was told by a man lately employed in a swag-shop a constant collision of clamour and bargaining, not to say of wits, between the smarter street-sellers--the pattering class especially--and the swag-men with whom they are familiar.

The points in which the “swag-shops” resemble the “slaughter-houses,” are in the traffic in work-boxes, desks, and dressing-cases.