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Source: London Labour and the London Poor Henry Mayhew (1861) Of the Street Pinners-Up, or Wall Song-SellersThe pinners-up are the men and women who sell songs which they have pinned to a sort of screen or large board, or have attached them, in any convenient way, to a blank wall; and they differ from the other song-sellers, inasmuch as that they have generally been mechanics, porters, or servants, and reduced to struggle for a living as pinners-up. These street-traders, when I gave an account of them in the winter of 1849, were not 50 in number; they are now, I learn, about 30.One of the best-known of the pinners-up was a stout old man, wearing a great-coat in all weathers, who pinned-up in an alley leading from Whitefriars-street to the Temple, but now thrown into an open street. He had old books for sale on a stall, in addition to his ballads, and every morning was seen reading the newspaper, borrowed from a neighbouring public-house which he used, for he was a keen politician. He would quarrel with any one, said a person who then resided in the neighbourhood, mostly about politics, or about the books and songs he sold. If a person came up and said, `Oh, Burn's Works, 1s.; I can't understand him,' - then the old boy would abuse him for a fool! Suppose another came and said, `Ah! Burns - he was a poet!' that didn't pass; for the jolly old pinner-up would say, `Well, now, I don't know about that.' In my opinion, he cared nothing about this side or that - this notion or the opposite - but he liked to shine. The old man was carried off in the prevalence of the cholera in 1849. I received the following statement from a man who at that time pinned-up by Harewood-place, Oxfordstreet: I'm forty-nine. I couldn't get any work, so nine or ten years back I went into this line. I knew a man what done well in it - but times was better then - and that put it into my head. It cost me 2l. 10s. to stock my stall, and get all together comfortable; for I started with old books as well as songs. I got leave to stand here from the landlord. I sell ballads and manuscript music, which is `transposed' from the nigger songs. They're transposed for the violin. One that does them is a musicianer, who plays outside public-houses. I sell my songs at a halfpenny, - and, when I can get it, a penny a piece. I don't yarn, one week with another, not 10s., sometimes not 5s. I am at my stall at nine in the morning, and sometimes I have walked five or six miles to buy my `pubs' before that. I stop till ten at night oft enough. The wet days is the ruin of us; and I think wet days increases. Such a day as yesterday now I didn't take what would pay for a pint of beer and a bit of bread and cheese. Generally, these dealers know little of the songs they sell, - taking the printer's word, when they purchase, as to what was going. The most popular comic songs are not sold so abundantly as others, - because, I was told, boys soon picked them up by heart, hearing them so often, and so did not buy them. Neither was there a great demand for nigger songs, nor for flash ditties, but for such productions as `A Life on the Ocean Wave,' `I'm Afloat,' `There's a Good Time coming,' `Farewell to the Mountain,' &c.;, &c.; Indecent songs are not sold by the pinners-up. One man of whom I made inquiries was quite indignant that I should even think it necessary to ask such questions. |