London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics)

by Henry Mayhew

  ‘Another of our dodges – and it is a splendid dodge, though it wants a nerve to do it – is the brightening solution, which is nothing more than aqua distilled, or pure water. When we take a portrait, Jim, my mate, who stops in the room, hollows to me, “Is it bona?” That is – Is it good? If it is, I say, “Say” That is – Yes. If not, I say “Nanti.” If it is a good one he takes care to publicly expose that one, that all may see it, as a recommendation to others. If I say “Nanti,” then Jim takes it and finishes it up, drying it and putting it up in its frame. Then he wraps it up in a large piece of paper, so that it will take sometime to unroll it, at the same time crying out “Take sixpence from this lady, if you please.” Sometimes she says, “O let me see it first;” but he always answers, “Money first, if you please ma’am; pay for it first, and then you can do what you like with it. Here, take sixpence from this lady.” When she sees it, if it is a black one, she’ll say, “Why this ain’t like me; there’s no picture at all.” Then Jim says, “It will become better as it dries, and come to your natural complexion.” If she still grumbles, he tells her that if she likes to have it passed through the brightening solution, it will come out lighter in an hour or two. They in general have it brightened; and then, before their face, we dip it into some water. We then dry it off and replace it in the frame, wrap it up carefully, and tell them not to expose it to the air, but put it in their bosom, and in an hour or two it will be all right. This is only done when the portrait come out black, as it doesn’t pay to take two for sixpence. Sometimes they brings them back the next day, and says, “It’s not dried out as you told us;” and then we take another portrait, and charge them 3d. more.

  ‘We also do what we call the “bathing” – another dodge. Now to-day a party came in during a shower of rain, when it was so dark it was impossible to take a portrait; or they will come in, sometimes, just as we are shutting up, and when the gas is lighted, to have their portraits taken; then we do this. We never turn business away, and yet it’s impossible to take a portrait; so we ask them to sit down, and then we go through the whole process of taking a portrait, only we don’t put any plate in the camera. We always make ’em sit a long time, to make ’em think it’s all right – I’ve had them for two and a half minutes, till their eyes run down with water. We then tell them that we’ve taken the portrait, but that we shall have to keep it all night in the chemical bath to bring it out, because the weather’s so bad. We always take the money as a deposit, and give them a written paper as an order for the picture. If in the morning they come themselves we get them to sit again, and then we do really take a portrait of them; but if they send anybody, we either say that the bath was too strong and eat the picture out, or that it was too weak and didn’t bring it out; or else I blow up Jim, and pretend he has upset the bath and broke the picture. We have had as many as ten pictures to bathe in one afternoon.

  ‘If the eyes in a portrait are not seen, and they complain, we take a pin and dot them; and that brings the eye out, and they like it. If the hair, too, is not visible we takes the pin again, and soon puts in a beautiful head of hair. It requires a deal of nerve to do it; but if they still grumble I say, “It’s a beautiful picture, and worth half-a-crown, at the least;” and in the end they generally go off contented and happy.

  ‘When we are not busy, we always fill up the time taking specimens for the window. Anybody who’ll sit we take him; or we do one another, and the young woman in the shop who colours. Specimens are very useful things to us, for this reason – if anybody comes in a hurry, and won’t give us time to do the picture, then, as we can’t afford to let her go, we sit her and goes through all the business, and I says to Jim, “Get one from the window,” and then he takes the first specimen that comes to hand. Then we fold it up in paper, and don’t allow her to see it until she pays for it, and tell her not to expose it to the air for three days, and that if then she doesn’t approve of it and will call again we will take her another. Of course they in general comes back. We have made some queer mistakes doing this. One day a young lady came in, and wouldn’t wait, so Jim takes a specimen from the window, and, as luck would have it, it was the prtrait of a widow in her cap. She insisted upon opening, and then she said, “This isn’t me; it’s got a widow’s cap, and I was never married in all my life!” Jim answers, “Oh, miss! why it’s a beautiful picture, and a correct likeness” – and so it was, and no lies, but it wasn’t of her – Jim talked to her, and says he, “Why this ain’t a cap, it’s the shadow of the hair” – for she had ringlets – and she positively took it away believing that such was the case; and even promised to send us customers, which she did.

  ‘There was another lady that came in a hurry, and would stop if we were not more than a minute; so Jim ups with a specimen, without looking at it, and it was the picture of a woman and her child. We went through the business of focussing the camera, and then gave her the portrait and took the 6d. When she saw it she cries out, “Bless me! there’s a child: I haven’t ne’er a child!” Jim looked at her, and then at the picture, as if comparing, and says he, “It is certainly a wonderful likeness, miss, and one of the best we ever took. It’s the way you sat; and what has occasioned it was a child passing through the yard.’ She said she supposed it must be so, and took the portrait away highly delighted.

  ‘Once a sailor came in, and as he was in haste, I shoved on to him the picture of a carpenter, who was to call in the afternoon for his portrait. The jacket was dark, but there was a white waistcoat; still I persuaded him that it was his blue Guernsey which had come up very light, and he was so pleased that he gave us 9d. instead of 6d. The fact is, people don’t know their own faces. Half of ’em have never looked in a glass half a dozen times in their life, and directly they see a pair of eyes and a nose, they fancy they are their own.

  ‘The only time we were done was with an old woman. We had only one specimen left, and that was a sailor man, very dark – one of our black pictures. But she put on her spectacles, and she looked at it up and down, and says, “Eh?” I said, “Did you speak, ma’am?” and she cries, “Why, this is a man! here’s the whiskers.” I left, and Jim tried to humbug her, for I was bursting with laughing. Jim said, “It’s you ma’am; and a very excellent likeness, I assure you.” But she kept on saying, “Nonsense, I ain’t a man,” and wouldn’t have it. Jim wanted her to leave a deposit, and come next day, but she never called. It was a little too strong.

  ‘There was an old woman come in once and wanted to be taken with a favourite hen in her lap. It was a very bad picture, and so black there was nothing but the outline of her face and a white speck for the beak of the bird. When she saw it, she asked where the bird was? So Jim took a pin and scratched in an eye, and said, “There it is, ma’am – that’s her eye, it’s coming out,” and then he made a line for the comb on the head, and she kept saying, “Wonderful!” and was quite delighted.

  ‘The only bad money we have taken was from a Methodist clergyman, who came in for a 1s. 6d. portrait. He gave us a bad sixpence.

  ‘For colouring we charge 3d. more. If the portraits are bad or dark we tell them, that if they have them coloured the likeness will be perfect. We flesh the face, scratch the eye in, and blue the coat and colour the tablecloth. Sometimes the girl who does it puts in such a lot of flesh paint, that you can scarcely distinguish a feature of the person. If they grumble, we tell them it will be all right when the picture’s dry. If it’s a good picture, the colour looks very nice, but in the black ones we are obliged to stick it on at a tremendous rate, to make it show.

  ‘Jim stands at the door, and he keeps on saying, “A correct portrait, framed and glazed, for sixpence, beautifully enamelled.” Then, when they are listening, he shows the specimen in his hands, and adds, “If not approved of, no charge made.”

  ‘One morning, when we had been doing “quisby”, that is, stopping idle, we hit upon another dodge. Some friends dropped in to see me, and as I left to accompany them to a tavern close by, I crie
d to Jim, “Take that public-house opposite.” He brought the camera and stand to the door, and a mob soon collected. He kept saying, “Stand back, gentlemen, stand back! I am about to take the public-house in front by this wonderful process.” Then he went over to the house, and asked the landlord, and asked some gentlemen drinking there to step into the road whilst he took the house with them facing it. Then he went to a policeman and asked him to stop the carts from passing, and he actually did. By this way he got up a tremendous mob. He then put in the slide, pulled off the cap of the camera, and focussed the house, and pretended to take the picture, though he had no prepared glass, nor nothing. When he had done, he called out, “Portraits taken in one minute. We are now taking portraits for 6d. only. Time of sitting, two seconds only. Step inside and have your’n taken immediately.” There was a regular rush, and I had to be fetched, and we took 6s. worth right off.

  ‘People seem to think the camera will do anything. We actually persuade them that it will mesmerise them. After their portrait is taken, we ask them if they would like to be mesmerised by the camera, and the charge is only 2d. We then focus the camera, and tell them to look firm at the tube; and they stop there for two or three minutes staring, till their eyes begin to water, and then they complain of a dizziness in the head, and give it up, saying they “can’t stand it”. I always tell them the operation was beginning, and they were just going off, only they didn’t stay long enough. They always remark, “Well, it certainly is a wonderful machine, and a most curious invention.” Once a coalheaver came in to be mesmerised, but he got into a rage after five or six minutes, and said, “Strike me dead, ain’t you keeping me a while!” He wouldn’t stop still, so Jim told him his sensitive nerves was too powerful, and sent him off cursing and swearing because he couldn’t be mesmerised. We don’t have many of these mesmerism customers, not more than four in these five months; but it’s a curious circumstance, proving what fools people is. Jim says he only introduces these games when business is dull, to keep my spirits up – and they certainly are most laughable.

  ‘I also profess to remove warts, which I do by touching them with nitric acid. My price is a penny a wart, or a shilling for the job; for some of the hands is pretty well smothered with them. You see, we never turn money away, for it’s hard work to make a living at sixpenny portraits. My wart patients seldom come twice, for they screams out ten thousand blue murders when the acid bites them.

  ‘Another of my callings is to dye the hair. You see I have a good many refuse baths, which is mostly nitrate of silver, the same as all hair-dyes is composed of. I dyes the whiskers and moustache for Is. The worst of it is, that nitrate of silver also blacks the skin wherever it touches. One fellow with carroty hair came in one day to have his whiskers died, and I went clumsily to work and let the stuff trickle down his chin and on his cheeks, as well as making the flesh at the roots as black as a hat. He came the next day to have it taken off, and I made him pay 3d. more, and then removed it with cyanide, which certainly did clean him, but made him smart awfully.

  ‘I have been told that there are near upon 250 houses in London now getting a livelihood taking sixpenny portraits. There’s ninety of ’em I’m personally acquainted with, and one man I know has ten different shops of his own. There’s eight in the Whitechapel-road alone, from Butcher-row to the Mile-end turnpike. Bless you, yes! they all make a good living at it. Why, I could go to-morrow, and they would be glad to employ me at 2l. a week – indeed they have told me so.

  ‘If we had begun earlier this summer, we could, only with our little affair, have made from 8l. to 10l. a week, and about one-third of that is expenses. You see, I operate myself, and that cuts out 2l. a week.’

  TOYS

  The Doll’s-eye Maker

  [pp. 241–3] A curious part of the street toy business is the sale of dolls, and especially that odd branch of it, doll’s-eye making. There are only two persons following this business in London, and by the most intelligent of these I was furnished with the following curious information –

  ‘I make all kinds of eyes,’ the eye-manufacturer said, ‘both dolls’ and human eyes; birds’ eyes are mostly manufactured in Birmingham, and as you say, sir, bulls’ eyes at the confectioner’s. Of dolls’ eyes there are two sorts, the common and the natural, as we call it. The common are simply small hollow glass spheres, made of white enamel, and coloured either black or blue, for only two colours of these are made. The bettermost dolls’ eyes, or the natural ones, are made in a superior manner, but after a similar fashion to the commoner sort. The price of the common black and blue dolls’ eyes is five shillings for twelve dozen pair. We make very few of the bettermost kind, or natural eyes for dolls, for the price of those is about fourpence a pair, but they are only for the very best dolls. Average it throughout the year, a journeyman doll’s-eye maker earns about thirty shillings a week. The common dolls’ eyes were twelve shillings the twelve dozen pairs twenty-five years ago, but now they are only five shillings. The decrease of the price is owing to competition, for though there are only two of us in the trade in London, still the other party is always pushing his eyes and underselling our’n. Immediately the demand ceases at all, he goes round the trade with his eyes in a box, and offers them at a lower figure than in the regular season, and so the prices have been falling every year. There is a brisk and a slack season in our business, as well as in most others. After the Christmas holidays up to March we have generally little to do, but from that time eyes begin to look up a bit, and the business remains pretty good till the end of October. Where we make one pair of eyes for home consumption, we make ten for exportation; a great many eyes go abroad. Yes, I suppose we should be soon over-populated with dolls if a great number of them were not to emigrate every year. The annual increase of dolls goes on at an alarming rate. As you say, sir, the yearly rate of mortality must be very high, to be sure, but still it’s nothing to the rate at which they are brought into the world. They can’t make wax dolls in America, sir, so we ship off a great many there. The reason why they can’t produce dolls in America is owing to the climate. The wax won’t set in very hot weather, and it cracks in extreme cold. I knew a party who went out to the United States to start as doll-maker. He took several gross of my eyes with him, but he couldn’t succeed. The eyes that we make for Spanish America are all black. A blue-eyed doll wouldn’t sell at all there. Here, however, nothing but blue eyes goes down; that’s because it’s the colour of the Queen’s eyes, and she sets the fashion in our eyes as in other things. We make the same kind of eyes for the gutta-percha dolls as for the wax. It is true, the gutta-percha complexion isn’t particularly clear; nevertheless, the eyes I make for the washable faces are all of the natural tint, and if the gutta-percha dolls look rather bilious, why I ain’t a going to make my eyes look bilious to match.

  ‘I also make human eyes. These are two cases; in the one I have black and hazel, and in the other blue and grey.’ [Here the man took the lids off a couple of boxes, about as big as binnacles, that stood on the table: they each contained 190 different eyes, and so like nature, that the effect produced upon a person unaccustomed to the sight was most peculiar, and far from pleasant. The whole of the 380 optics all seemed to be staring directly at the spectator, and occasioned a feeling somewhat similar to the bewilderment one experiences on suddenly becoming an object of general notice; as if the eyes, indeed, of a whole lecture-room were crammed into a few square inches, and all turned full upon you. The eyes of the whole world, as we say, literally appeared to be fixed upon one, and it was almost impossible at first to look at them without instinctively averting the head. The hundred eyes of Argus were positively insignificant in comparison to the 380 belonging to the human eye-maker.] ‘Here you see are the ladies’ eyes,’ he continued, taking one from the blue-eye tray. ‘You see there’s more sparkle and brilliance about them than the gentlemen’s. Here’s two different ladies’ eyes; they belong to fine-looking young women, both of them. When a lady or gentleman comes to
us for an eye, we are obliged to have a sitting just like a portrait-painter. We take no sketch, but study the tints of the perfect eye. There are a number of eyes come over from France, but these are generally what we call misfits; they are sold cheap, and seldom match the other eye. Again, from not fitting tight over the ball like those that are made expressly for the person, they seldom move “consentaneously”, as it is termed, with the natural eye, and have therefore a very unpleasant and fixed stare, worse almost than the defective eye itself. Now, the eyes we make move so freely, and have such a natural appearance, that I can assure you a gentleman who had one of his from me passed nine doctors without the deception being detected.

  ‘There is a lady customer of mine who has been married three years to her husband, and I believe he doesn’t know that she has a false eye to this day.

  ‘The generality of persons whom we serve take out their eyes when they go to bed, and sleep with them either under their pillow, or else in a tumbler of water on the toilet-table at their side. Most married ladies, however, never take their eyes out at all.

  ‘Some people wear out a false eye in half the time of others. This doesn’t arise from the greater use of them, or rolling them about, but from the increased secretion of the tears, which act on the false eye like acid on metal, and so corrodes and roughens the surface. This roughness produces inflammation, and then a new eye becomes necessary. The Scotch lose a great many eyes, why I cannot say; and the men in this country lose more eyes, nearly two to one. We generally make only one eye, but I did once make two false eyes for a widow lady. She lost one first, and we repaired the loss so well, that on her losing the other eye she got us to make her a second.

  ‘False eyes are a great charity to servants. If they lose an eye no one will engage them. In Paris there is a charitable institution for the supply of false eyes to the poor; and I really think, if there was a similar establishment in this country for furnishing artificial eyes to those whose bread depends on their looks, like servants, it would do a great deal of good. We always supplies eyes to such people at half-price. My usual price is 2l. 2s. for one of my best eyes. That eye is a couple of guineas, and as fine an eye as you would wish to see in any young woman’s head.