rum-and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We were also
furnished with a tumbler, and I was provided with a pipe. His
Majesty, then observing that we might combine business with
conversation, gave the word for the car to proceed; and, to my
great delight, we jogged away at a foot pace.
I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, and
it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of the city
in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, surrounded by the
roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. Occasionally,
blows from whips fell heavily on the Temple’s walls, when by
stopping up the road longer than usual, we irritated carters and
coachmen to madness; but they fell harmless upon us within and
disturbed not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I looked
upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the Astronomer Royal. I was
enchanted by the contrast between the freezing nature of our
external mission on the blood of the populace, and the perfect
composure reigning within those sacred precincts: where His
Majesty, reclining easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and
drank his rum-and-water from his own side of the tumbler, which
stood impartially between us. As I looked down from the clouds and
caught his royal eye, he understood my reflections. ‘I have an
idea,’ he observed, with an upward glance, ‘of training scarlet
runners across in the season, – making a arbour of it, – and
sometimes taking tea in the same, according to the song.’
I nodded approval.
‘And here you repose and think?’ said I.
‘And think,’ said he, ‘of posters – walls – and hoardings.’
We were both silent, contemplating the vastness of the subject. I
remembered a surprising fancy of dear THOMAS HOOD’S, and wondered
whether this monarch ever sighed to repair to the great wall of
China, and stick bills all over it.
‘And so,’ said he, rousing himself, ‘it’s facts as you collect?’
‘Facts,’ said I.
‘The facts of bill-sticking,’ pursued His Majesty, in a benignant
manner, ‘as known to myself, air as following. When my father was
Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew’s,
Holborn, he employed women to post bills for him. He employed
women to post bills at the time of the riots of London. He died at
the age of seventy-five year, and was buried by the murdered Eliza
Grimwood, over in the Waterloo Road.’
As this was somewhat in the nature of a royal speech, I listened
with deference and silently. His Majesty, taking a scroll from his
pocket, proceeded, with great distinctness, to pour out the
following flood of information:-
‘”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
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
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 billstickers
‘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