The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern TimesSmith, John Thomas
History
The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern Times
Smith, John Thomas
Cries -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- Illustrations; Peddling -- England -- London
7. In the view of Winchester Street, p. 68, the person with the umbrella
went under the name of Count VERDION, well known to Book Collectors. This
person was a professor of languages; for several years frequented
Furnival's Inn Coffee-House; and was a member of a man's benefit society
held at the Genoa Arms public house, in Hays's Court, Newport Market. This
supposed Count eventually proved to be a female, and died of a cancer on
the 16th July 1802, at her lodgings in Charles Street, Hatton Garden, in
the 58th year of her age.
8. The short figure, carrying a little box, was sketched from the
celebrated corn-cutter, Mr. CORDEROY, who married a lady five feet six
inches high.
9. The figure beyond Mr. Corderoy, is that of the respectable Bishop of
St. POL DE LEON; of whom a portrait and memoir by Mr. Eardley Wilmot, will
be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1807.
10. In the view of Leadenhall Street, p. 52, the figure with a wig-box in
his hands represents JOSEPH WATKINS, born in 1739 at Richmond, in
Yorkshire; by trade a barber, and a man of retentive memory. He frequently
shaved Hogarth, whom he knew well, and said he was the last person in
London who wore a scarlet roquelaure. He had gathered blackberries on the
north side of the road now Oxford Street, and remembered the old
triangular gallows at Tyburn, as represented in the Execution Plate of the
Idle Apprentice.
11. The next figure is that of a draggle-tailed bawler of dying speeches,
horrid murders, elegies, &c.
12. The female in a morning jacket was sketched from the celebrated Mrs.
ELIZABETH CARTER, the learned translator of Epictetus. She died Feb. 19,
1806.
13. The clumsy figure in a white coat, holding a goose, was well known
about town as a vender of aged poultry.
14. The figure with a cocked hat, was a dealer in old iron, a man well
known at auctions of building materials, and was nicknamed by the brokers
as OLD RUSTY.
In 1815 Mr. Smith published a separate whole-length portrait of "Henry
Dinsdale, nicknamed Sir Harry Dimsdale, mayor of the mock Borough of
Garret, aged 38, anno 1800." It forms a good companion to his
Vagabondiana. Dinsdale was by trade a muffin-man. There is also a spirited
head of Dinsdale by Mr. Smith; and his portrait, in his court dress, is
copied into Hone's Every Day Book, vol. II. p. 829, where, by mistake, it
is called Sir Jeffrey Dunstan.
P. 9. Hand's Bun-house at Chelsea was pulled down April 18, 1839. See
Gentleman's Magazine for May 1839.
In p. 54 the cry of "Young Lambs to Sell" is noticed. It may be added,
that in Hone's Table Book, p. 396, is a spirited engraving of William
Liston, an old soldier, with one arm and one leg, who, in 1821, carried
about "Young Lambs to Sell." The _first_ crier of "Young Lambs to Sell,"
Mr. Hone says, "was a maimed sailor, and with him originated the
manufacture."
THE END.
J. B. Nichols and Son, Printers, 25, Parliament-street.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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