Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day: With Heaps of Quaint Cuts Including Hand-coloured FrontispieceTuer, Andrew White
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Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day: With Heaps of Quaint Cuts Including Hand-coloured Frontispiece
Tuer, Andrew White
Cries -- England -- London
The crudely drawn, but picturesquely treated "Catnach" cuts, from the
celebrated Catnach press in Seven Dials, now owned by Mr. W. S. Fortey,
hardly require separately indicating.
The four oval cuts, squared by the addition of perpendicular lines, "Hot
spice gingerbread!" "O' Clo!" "Knives to Grind!" and "Cabbages O!
Turnips!" are facsimiled from a little twopenny book, entitled, "The
Moving Market; or, Cries of London, for the amusement of good children,"
published in 1815 by J. Lumsden and Son, of Glasgow. It has a
frontispiece representing a curious little four-in-hand carriage with
dogs in place of horses, underneath which is printed this triplet:--
See, girls and boys who learning prize,
Round London drive to hear the cries,
Then learn your Book and ride likewise."
The quaint cuts, "'Ere's yer toys for girls an' boys!" "New-laid eggs,
eight a groat,--crack 'em and try 'em!" "Flowers, penny a bunch!"
(frontispiece), and the three ballad singers, apparently taken from one
of the earliest chap-books, are really but of yesterday. For these the
writer is indebted to his friend, Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, who uses his cutting tools direct on the wood without
any copy. Mr. Crawhall's "Chap-book Chaplets," and "Old ffrendes wyth
newe Faces," quaint quartos each with many hundreds of hand-coloured
cuts in his own peculiar and inimitable style, and "Izaak Walton, his
Wallet Book," are fair examples of his skill in this direction.
Two plates unenclosed with borders--"Old Chairs to mend!" and "Buy a
Live Goose?" are from that once common and now excessively scarce
child's book, _The Cries of London as they are Daily Practised_,
published in 1804 by J. Harris, the successor of "honest John Newbery,"
the well-known St. Paul's Churchyard bookseller and publisher.
George Cruikshank's London Barrow-woman ("Ripe Cherries"), "Tiddy Diddy
Doll," and other cuts, are from the original illustrations to Hone's
delightful "Every-Day Book," recently republished by Messrs. Ward, Lock
& Co.
The cuts illustrating modern cries--"Sw-e-e-p!"; "Dust, O!"; "Ow-oo!";
"Fresh Cabbidge!"; and "Stinking Fish!" are from the facile pencil of
Mr. D. McEgan.
Finally, in regard to the business card of pussy's butcher, the
veracious chronicler is inclined to think that an antiquarian might
hesitate in pronouncing it to be quite so genuine as it looks. This
opinion coincides with his own. In fact he made it himself. As a
set-off, however, to the confession, let it be said that this is the
sole _fantaisie d'occasion_ set down herein.
APPENDIX.
_From "Notes and Queries."_
LONDON STREET CRY.--What is the meaning of the old London cry, "Buy a
fine mousetrap, or a _tormentor for your fleas_"? Mention of it is found
in one of the Roxburghe ballads dated 1662, and, amongst others, in a
work dated about fifty years earlier. The cry torments me, and only its
elucidation will bring ease.
ANDREW W. TUER.
The Leadenhall Press, E.C.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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