David Ross Locke

THERE is no Petticoat Lane any more, some finnicky board having very foolishly changed the good old name to Middlesex street. There was something suggestive in the name “Petticoat Lane,” for it indicated with great accuracy the business carried on there, but there is nothing suggestive about Middlesex street. It might as well have been called Wellington street, or Wesley street, or Washington street. I hate these changes. A street is a street, and calling it an avenue don’t make it so. Why not Petticoat Lane? By any other name it smells as strong. It is Petticoat Lane and always will be Petticoat Lane, and despite the edict of the board, the Londoner calls it by that title and always will.

Petticoat Lane is a long, tortuous narrow street, properly a lane, (about the width of an ordinary alley in an American city,) in the heart of the city proper. It is probably the dirtiest spot on the globe. If there is a dirtier I do not wish to see it—or, more especially, to smell it. It is the very acme of filth, the incarnation of dirt, and the very top, the peaked point of the summit of rottenness.

A friend of mine who had lost the sense of smell was condoled with on his misfortune.

“Don’t pity me,” he said, “please don’t. It is a blessing, and not a misfortune. In this imperfect world there are more bad smells than perfumes. If I am deprived of one delight I escape a dozen inflictions. If I can’t enjoy the rose, I, at least, dodge the tan yard.”

Precisely so another friend who had his right leg torn off in a threshing machine during the war, reveled in his cork leg, because, having but one flesh and blood foot, he only took half the chances of ordinary mortals of taking cold from wet feet.

So does philosophy turn misfortunes into blessings. To carry out the idea I suppose the more troubles happen to a man the happier he should be. Would that I could take life that way, but I can’t. Unfortunately the day I was in Petticoat Lane my sense of smell was unusually acute, at least so it seemed to me.

Philosophers of this school should spend a great deal of their time in Petticoat Lane, for in that savory locality all the senses one needs are his eyes and ears. A loss of smell there would be a blessing.

It is the especial street belonging to the Jews. Not the Jews we have in America, the bright, busy, active men, who have left their impress upon every spot they have touched, who have done so much to make America what it is—not the well-dressed, well-housed leader in business and everything else he puts his hands to, but the old kind of Jew, the Jew of Poland, with the long beard and long coat, very like the gaberdine we see in pictures and on the stage, the Jew of Shakespeare, the Jew who will trade in anything, and live in a way that no other race or section of a race on earth can live. There is a denser population in Petticoat Lane, I verily believe, than anywhere else on the globe, outside of China, and it is all Hebrew.

You should go Sunday morning, which is their especial day, and get there about ten o’clock, to see it in all its glory. All places for selling liquor in London are closed part of the day Sunday, except in this street; but here they are all open and in full blast. Whether there is a special exception made by law, or whether there is a tacit winking at the violation by the authorities because of the religion of the people, I do not know; but it is a fact that in this street the beer shops are open all day and a thriving business they do.

THE HOME OF SECOND-HAND.

It is the busiest place I ever saw. The streets are crowded, not the sidewalks only, but the streets, to the very center. You see no horse-drawn vehicles—it is all people. Barrows and carts drawn by people, men or women, are the only vehicles. There would be no room for any other. The fiery steed attached to a hansom, which shares its driver’s noble ambition to run down a foot passenger, would be tamed in Petticoat Lane. The number of opportunities to run down people would embarrass, and, finally, subdue him.

THE SIDEWALK SHOE-STORE.

What do all these people do? It would be easier to answer the question, What don’t they do? They do everything. If there is an article on earth—that is, a second-hand article,—that is not bought and sold in Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning, I have not seen it. You can buy anything you want there, provided you want it second-hand, from a knitting needle to a ship’s anchor. There is nothing in the street that is not second-hand, except the people. They all bear the stamp of originality, every one of them. They are born traders. If a pair of Petticoat Lane Jew twins in a cradle don’t trade teething rings, and attempt to swindle each other, the father and mother drop tears of sorrow over them, and as soon as they are old enough, take them out of the place and apprentice them to a trade. Without this manifestation they would not be considered good enough for Petticoat Lane. Very few have, however, been so apprenticed.

Here is a hideous old woman on the sidewalk with her stock in trade under her eye, and a sharp eye it is, arranged along the curb. What is it? A few dozen or more pairs of boots and shoes, in all stages of dilapidation, carefully polished, and made to look as respectable as possible, any pair of which (by the way, they are not always mates,) you shall buy, if you desire, at any price ranging from a penny to a shilling. No matter what the ancient dame gets for them, she has made a profit. She picked them up on the streets, save a few that she may have borrowed when the owner was not looking. What anybody wants of these remnants, these ghosts of foot wear, I can’t conceive. But she sells them. The trade is consummated easily after the chaffering is over with. The purchaser pays the woman, and sheds the worse ones he has on, and puts on his acquisition, and wends his way. Probably in an hour he would be glad to trade back, but it is too late.

Next to her stands a cart, which is a portable hardware store. There are hinges, nails, all second-hand, carpenter’s tools, axes, locks, keys, and all sorts of iron-mongery, and he sells, too. Somebody wants these goods, and he gets his price. As these things are collected as were the boots, the vender is happy at every pennyworth he sells.

Here is a clothing merchant with his stock laid conveniently on the sidewalk. It is a motley mass, and his method of disposing of it is precisely the same as that of the second-hand clothing dealer the world over. I don’t know as these dealers rise to the sublime height of the New York Chatham street Jew, who claimed that a villainous green coat was made for General Grant, but that he wouldn’t have it because the velvet on the collar was too fine for his taste, but they approach it. He has everything that one can conceive of. There are flunkeys’ uniforms, sailors’ jackets, worn-out dress coats that once figured in the best society, but they decayed, and went down and down through all the grades of society, till they finally landed in Petticoat Lane, where they will be sold for a shilling, and the purchaser will tear the tails off as useless encumbrances that give no warmth and are simply in the way, and comfortable jackets will be made of them.

Under this head I might ring in Hamlet’s soliloquy about the dust of great men stopping cracks, and preach a very pretty sermon on the mutability of human affairs, but I won’t. Petticoat Lane is not exactly the place for philosophizing, nor will it be for me till I get its smell out of my nostrils. Visiting Petticoat Lane is very much like eating onions—you carry the taste with you a long time, which is a blessing—for those who like onions. The onion is an economical vegetable at any price. It may come high to begin with, but it lasts a long time.

I saw General’s uniforms, American sack-coats, trowsers that may have graced the legs of royalty, and a great many that had not, there not being many of the royalty. There were French blouses, police uniforms, Irish knee-breeches, everything. One coat I saw sold for a penny, the vender originally asking two shillings for it.

Next to this merchant was a man who had an assortment of sewing machines—Wheeler & Wilson, Wilcox & Gibbs, the Domestic, Singer—all the American machines were represented, and he sold them, too. People come there to buy these things. They went as low as three dollars, and as high as five. One bloated aristocrat, who was particular as to appearances, actually paid seven dollars for a Wheeler & Wilson, and was not above carrying it off himself.

In Petticoat Lane they don’t have wagons to deliver your purchases as they do in Regent street and elsewhere, nor do they sell on time. You buy, and pay for what you buy, and to prevent mistakes you pay for your goods just before you get them. It’s a habit they have.

The furniture stores—all on the sidewalk—are curiosities. It would delight a gatherer-up of unconsidered trifles to see one of them. I did not notice a whole piece of furniture in the lot. There was either a leg gone, or two legs, or the top, or the side, something must be gone. But the dealer didn’t mind that. “You see, ma teer, all you hef to do ish to get dot leg put on, and its shoost ash goot as new, efery bit.” Bureaus with missing drawers, tables with three legs where four were essential, chairs with the top, bottom and legs gone; in short, everything that was broken and condemned as useless by everybody finds its last resting-place here. Surely there can be no lower depth for the disabled.

As I gazed in wonder upon some of the articles I saw, and noticed how little of the original article could be sold, I bethought myself of the cooper who was brought a bung hole, with the request that he build a barrel about it.

The street vendors of eatables formed no small portion of the traffic that was going on incessantly. You can get a slice of roast beef with greens (greens is what these people call cabbage, and, by the way, they call a lemonade a “lemon squash”), for a penny, and you shall see it cut from the joint, otherwise you wouldn’t know what it was. True the plate on which the satisfying food was placed had been merely dipped in cold water, and true it was that the two hundred pound woman who served it had never washed her hands since the day she was married, but that did not matter. The dish was taken and devoured, the ceremony of paying before getting it being religiously observed. There were shrimps, and snails, and lettuce salads, and moldy fruit, and everything else that the British public eats, all on the street, which is convenient, to say the least.

Sharpers were not wanting to complete this variegated scene. The thimble-rigger was there, his game being confined to a penny, so as to harmonize with the general cheapness of the locality, and, to keep it in perfect accord, his little portable table, and his thimbles were second-hand. There were street acrobats, nigger minstrels, hand organs, hurdy-gurdys, street singers, and the inevitable street brass band, made up of four sad-looking men who appeared as though there was nothing in life for them, and that they were playing in expiation of some great crime, and were compelled to play on forever. How these people live I never could make out. During the whole day I never saw a penny given them, except one which one of our party threw them. They took it up with an expression of the most intense surprise, as though it was an astounding and unlooked-for occurrence, and immediately stopped playing, and made for the nearest cook stand and invested the whole of it in a plate of beef and greens, which was divided among the four. I was about to throw them another penny, but was checked by our guide. He protested against pampering them. I understood him. The American Indian will consume a month’s provisions in a single day’s feast, and starve the other twenty-nine. Had I given them another penny they would have had another plate of beef on the spot, and then gone hungry a week. As we intended to come again next Sunday, for their own good I reserved the penny for that occasion.

Understand it is not Jews who are the purchasers of these wrecks of goods, these reminiscences of furniture and the like; they are the sellers. The purchasers are the British public proper, who come here for bargains. They get them—perhaps.

The question is, where do all these things come from? If there are more than one in the Jewish family, and whether there is or not depends upon the age, for they marry very young, and have children as rapidly as possible, all but one of them roam through the country incessantly, buying, bartering for and picking up all the stuff, which, after bought or picked up, is brought here and fixed as far as the skill and ingenuity of the purchaser and the rottenness of the material will permit. Then it is sold, at no matter what price. The motto in Petticoat Lane is, “no reasonable offer refused.”

It is not, however, only the second-hand that Petticoat Lane deals in. You see moving among the crowd here and there quite another class of Israelites from those who are vending dilapidated clothing and broken furniture. They are well dressed men, with coats buttoned up very closely. Their raven locks are surmounted with tall hats, and their boots cleaned as carefully as any swell’s in London. They are all distinctively Hebrew, there being no exception to this rule.

Across the way is a beer-shop, kept by a Hebrew, the bar-maids and all being Hebrew. On the one side of the bar is a small dining room; back of that a kitchen, and from the bar-room is a flight of stairs. Follow your guide, who in this instance was an American Hebrew, and you find yourself in a low room just the size of the bar below, and a curious scene presents itself. These rooms, and there are scores of them in Petticoat Lane, contain on an average any number of millions of pounds that you choose to say. I could say that there were a hundred millions of wealth in each one, and perhaps wouldn’t be very much out of the way, but as I desire to be accurate, I will not. If there is anything I detest, it is exaggeration. I hope to distinguish myself by being the first tourist who adhered strictly to the naked truth.

These rooms are diamond marts. In them all the diamonds that deck out royalty and the wives of patent medicine men, gamblers, negro minstrels, and other people who are not royal, are first handled. To these dingy dens in the very heart of the worst quarter of the worst city in the world, comes the diamond merchant, and here he meets the broker who deals with the manufacturer in the city. Here all the diamonds of London are first bought and sold.

One looks at it with amazement. Enter a young Jew with the preternaturally sharp features that distinguish the race. All the merchants, and there may be a dozen, each sitting at his little table, hail him, and all in the language that the new comer speaks the best. The Hebrew speaks all languages, and all of them well. (Facts crowd upon me so fast that it is difficult to keep to my subject.) The young fellow unbuttons his coat, and then the top buttons of his vest, and takes from an inner pocket a long leather pocket-book, which he opens carefully. There are disclosed a dozen papers folded like an apothecary’s package, and he opens them. Your eyes dance as you see the contents. Diamonds! I never dreamed there were so many in the world. Each paper contains a handful of all sizes and qualities, cut and uncut, of all colors and shades known to the diamond, and the ancient Jews at the tables take these papers and examine critically the different sparklers, going over the lot as the Western farmer would his cattle. With a little steel instrument he separates this one from his fellows and puts it under a glass, and screws his eye into the stone, and then little tiny scales, which would turn under the weight of a sunbeam, are brought into requisition, and then would come more chaffering and bargaining than would suffice to buy and sell an empire.

This young fellow does not own these precious stones. He is a broker. The diamond is first brought to light in Brazil, India, or the Cape of Good Hope. From the original producer it passes into the hands of the resident buyer, who consigns it to the broker to sell, and he does it on commission the same as the elevator men handle wheat. The buyer in Petticoat Lane either cuts and sets it himself, or re-sells it to the fashionable jeweler, as he can make the most profit. Trust them for doing that. It is something the London Hebrew understands long before he cuts his teeth.

But it is not alone diamonds you find in these rooms. On the various tables may be seen jewelry of every possible description, and all sorts of goods, from a tooth-pick up. You can buy a watch or a jack-knife, a button-hook or a diamond bracelet. Especially is the variety of curious old jewelry very extensive. You find there rings and brooches set with all sorts of stones, of every period in the world’s history, which makes it the resort of the wealthy collectors of the ancient and curious. Here is a brooch, said to have been worn by Queen Anne, and another by one of the mistresses of Louis XVIII., of France. The seller says it was, and if he happens to be mistaken, what difference does it make so that you believe it? It is just as good to you as though the history was accurate. One should not be particular in such matters, though I saw enough brooches that were once the property of an English Queen to have set up a very large jewelry store, and were they all genuine it explains the high taxes in England, and justifies all the rebellions the country has suffered. But it is all well enough. The goods are actually quaint and beautiful. It is darkly hinted that these Jews have factories where jewelry once worn by royalty is manufactured by the bushel, and I should not wonder thereat. For, you see, a brooch of modern style, worth say fifty pounds, is worth one hundred pounds if it were once Queen Anne’s. “Dose goots, ma tear sir, vat ish anshent, and hef historical associations, are wort any money. At one hundred pounts it ish a bargain.”

As the price doubles because of historical features it pays very nicely to manufacture the old styles, and tarnish the gold, and make antiques. But possibly this is a weak invention of the Gentiles who do not deal in antiques.

One would suppose that it would be rather hazardous to carry about so much wealth in a paper. What is to prevent the Jew at the table who has a paper before him containing, say, two hundred diamonds, from secreting one or two? The broker hands a paper to one, and another to another, and divides his time between them, and to take a stone would be as easy as lying.

Possibly it would be hazardous among Gentiles, but not so among these Jews. There is an unwritten code among them which makes the property as safe in their hands as though one diamond were shown at a time. There is absolute honor among them, which was never yet known to be tarnished. It is absolute and perfect.

One venerable Jew was very anxious to sell me a ring, the price of which he fixed at one hundred and twenty dollars, “and no abatement.” (When a Jew diamond merchant says “no abatement,” that settles it. There is none.)

“Dake dot ring, put him in your bocket, go to any scheweler in Rechent street, and oof you can get him vor dwice de monish I will give him to you.”

“What!” was my reply, “do you say that I, a perfect stranger to you, may carry off a ring worth forty pounds? Suppose I shouldn’t come back with it?”

“Ach, ma tear sir, Philip (my American friend) vouldn’t pring nobody here vot vould do such a ting. Dake der ring, ma tear sir, and see about him. It ish a bargain.”

Philip or any one of the guild would be allowed to carry away a king’s ransom.

Would, oh would, that the other people of the world were equally honest and upright. Still, I wouldn’t advise any one to depend upon their word in a purchase. They have two kinds of morality. A trade with them is a battle royal, in which each tries to get the better of the other, but the word once passed is never broken.

The merchant sits all day at his table, his meals, always a cut of beef and greens, with a pewter of bitter beer, being brought to him from the kitchen below. He sits and eats, never permitting, however, his eating and drinking to interfere with his business. He would put down his pot of beer to continue a trade any time, something I know a great many Americans would not do.

Petticoat Lane is one of the curiosities of London, and the day was well spent. It is a world by itself—a foreign nation preserving its religion and customs intact, injected into the very heart of London.