‘“The bills being at that period mostly proclamations and declarations,
and which were only a demy size, the manner of posting the bills (as they
did not use brushes) was by means of a piece of wood which they called a
‘dabber.’ Thus things continued till such time as the State Lottery was
passed, and then the printers began to print larger bills, and men were
employed instead of women, as the State Lottery Commissioners then began
to send men all over England to post bills, and would keep them out for
six or eight months at a time, and they were called by the London
bill-stickers ‘trampers,’ their wages at the time being ten shillings per
day, besides expenses. They used sometimes to be stationed in large
towns for five or six months together, distributing the schemes to all
the houses in the town. And then there were more caricature wood-block
engravings for posting-bills than there are at the present time, the
principal printers, at that time, of posting-bills being Messrs. Evans
and Ruffy, of Budge Row; Thoroughgood and Whiting, of the present day;
and Messrs. Gye and Balne, Gracechurch Street, City. The largest bills
printed at that period were a two-sheet double crown; and when they
commenced printing four-sheet bills, two bill-stickers would work
together. They had no settled wages per week, but had a fixed price for
their work, and the London bill-stickers, during a lottery week, have
been known to earn, each, eight or nine pounds per week, till the day of
drawing; likewise the men who carried boards in the street used to have
one pound per week, and the bill-stickers at that time would not allow
any one to wilfully cover or destroy their bills, as they had a society
amongst themselves, and very frequently dined together at some
public-house where they used to go of an evening to have their work
delivered out untoe ’em.”’
All this His Majesty delivered in a gallant manner; posting it, as it
were, before me, in a great proclamation. I took advantage of the pause
he now made, to inquire what a ‘two-sheet double crown’ might express?
‘A two-sheet double crown,’ replied the King, ‘is a bill thirty-nine
inches wide by thirty inches high.’
‘Is it possible,’ said I, my mind reverting to the gigantic admonitions
we were then displaying to the multitude—which were as infants to some of
the posting-bills on the rotten old warehouse—‘that some few years ago
the largest bill was no larger than that?’
‘The fact,’ returned the King, ‘is undoubtedly so.’ Here he instantly
rushed again into the scroll.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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