The street cries of New York used to be more numerous and peculiar in the last generation than they are at present. One would argue at first that it was just the other way, as New York is ever so much larger now than it was; but somehow the street population of our big city is not as varied or characteristic in its cries, in proportion to population, as London.
But thirty years ago the streets of New York, if not exactly musical with cries, were quite noisy with ‘em, and I used to spend a good portion of my spare time getting’ posted in ‘em, and getting’ acquainted with the people who cried ‘em.
The old milkmen used to utter a wild, blood-curdlin’ yell, about the last kind of a cry one would expect to hear such a mild article as “milk” announced by, and the man who sold me my charcoal uttered a cry to announce his approach as peculiar as the milkman, yet entirely different.
The charcoal man’s cry wasn’t blood-curdlin’, it was blood-freezin’. It struck a chill through you to your very marrow, it was so confoundedly depressin’–the concentrated essence of half a dozen funerals. Why charcoal should be so mournfully announced I never could find out. I merely record the fact.
I knew one charcoal man, who, years before, durin’ a cholera season, had driven it around a dead cart through the infected down-town portion of New York, and had called out in a dismal tone for the livin’ to bring out the bodies of the dead. After the cholera was over he had taken to peddlin’ charcoal, and had, naturally enough, got into the habit of callin’ out for charcoal in the same tone in which she had formally called out for corpses. This would account for the mournful character of the charcoal cry in this particular case, but it wouldn’t account for it in the other cases. Yet I have never heard the cry of charcoal unless it was delivered in this terribly mournful and depressin’ fashion.
Yet, by way of contrast, most of the charcoal vendors seem to be jolly. My charcoal man for years was about the jolliest fellow I knew. Yet the moment he took to cryin “charcoal” his note was as long-drawn and mournful as if he was buryin’ his mother-in-law, only more so.
Another peculiar street cry of old New York used to be that of the chimney-sweeps, a cry which is now ceased to be heard at all. This cry of the sweeps was a sort of Tyrolean peasant “yodel song,” with negro minstrel variations. Its basis was very simple–three notes only, upper middle and lower register–but each sweep made his own “improvements.” One sweep who used to go up and down old Houston Street was a rather original sort of a chap, and when “Home, Sweet Home” was in the height of its popularity–even more popular than it is now–this chap used to sing his three notes to this tune, and thus attracted a good deal of attention, and secured a good deal of custom.
The people who peddle berries in the streets have always had their characteristic cries. I have noticed, strange to say, that few young girls ever cry their berries, though one would think this would be just the line of business for ‘em. But the berry peddlin’ business seems to be monopolized by a class of middle-aged women, who commence callin’ out “strawber-rees,” then “raspber-rees,” then “blackber-rees,” and wind up with “huckleber-rees,” thus markin’ the rise, progress and wane of the Summer season.
One of these very women who peddled round Grand Street and the Bowery some twenty-five years ago used to employ an assistant whom she called “Katy” to carry one of her baskets and take turns with her in cryin’ out her goods. This berry woman had a great passion for liquor; always carried a bottle of it with her, which she liberally shared with her companion, and not unfrequently both would become very boozy. I remember an occasion meetin’ the twain, Katy bein’ a little in advance and doing the cryin’. She was singin’ out “Hu-u-hu-u-uckleber-rees!” while the boss berry merchant, who was too far gone to make such an exertion as that, would simply hiccough “I-too-Kay.” It was a peculiar team.
One of the familiar cries of old New York which is seldom heard now was “hot corn.” This cry was rendered almost famous in its day by a book that was written called “Hot Corn,” a Tribune book composed by Solon Robinson.
“Hot Corn” was perhaps the sweetest of all the old time street cries of New York. Yet it has a sort of sadness in it, too. Most of the vendors of hot corn were women and young girls. “Katy, the hot corn girl,” was quite a locally celebrated character.
“Clio, the hot corn girl of the South,” was another local celebrity in this line. She was about twenty years of age, was rumored to have been the daughter of a fugitive slave and was quite pretty, though quite black. She had a fine voice and cried her “hot corn” in a way that was perfect music. Steven C. Foster tried to put her cry into meter to make a song of it, but although he got quite friendly with Clio and although she did all she could to aid him, yet somehow Foster never succeeded to his own satisfaction in reducin’ her cry to set music. There was “a weird, wild wooin’ somethin’ (I use Foster’s own words) which he never was able to put into print.” So he gave it up. Clio had a way of slowly, sweetly chantin’ her cry; then she would raise her voice, then let it fall, getting’ lower and lower till it seemed to die away of itself—dyin’ like the swan, in music.
The licensed vendors of New York have, it is estimated, twenty different cries between ‘em, but there never has been anythin’ “distinctive” about ‘em. The broom peddlers used to have a very dismal cry, which announced their progress naturally enough, as most of the “Brum” men in New York were blind. I used to know one of these blind broom men who was quite a poet, and who, if you paid him a little extra, would make up a verse or two for you, or about you, impromptu. Spite of his double racket of broom and poetry the poor man didn’t do well. His verses were generally better than the brooms, and as most people didn’t really care much about poetry, but did care a good deal about their brooms, why, he came to grief. He never sold brooms to the same party twice. Yet he seemed to be well-satisfied with himself, and as long as you praised him about his verses he didn’t seem to bother himself about his brooms. There are a lot of folks like him who have their eyes open, and who deal in other things besides brooms.
One of the queerest street cries has always been that of the glazier. I remember that once in a paper there were published nine different ways in which the writer of the article and other persons try to spell out the glazier’s cry of “glass put in” as the glazier pronounced it, but none of the nine seemed to be exactly right. The real way of spellin’ out this glazier’s cry appears to be somethin’ like this: “Glass t’p’een.” If anybody can exactly pronounce that as it is written, then he can exactly imitate the glazier. I can’t. I have always had a curiosity in this glazier line, and have found that the glaziers are about the most arrant Bohemians and knaves. They come almost without exception, from Germany, France and Italy. All are communists or socialists, and are inveterate card gamblers and sharpers. I knew one glazier chap some twenty-five years ago, who got very much exercised over the draft that had been talked about in New York city, and who prophesied that if they tried to enforce it there would be trouble. I asked him how on earth in a riot could help him, and he told me with a wink that there were always a great number of windows shattered in a riot. This was lookin’ at politics from a glazier’s point of view.
The ragman, the soapfat man and the tinware peddler all have their peculiar cries, but there used to be one pleasant cry that is now seldom heard in our streets, that of “honeycomb.” For about three weeks in the Fall of the year I used to see a half a dozen men here and there, in white jackets and aprons, with white linen caps on their heads, hawkin’ honeycomb on large wooden trays which they used to balance with as much skill as a professional acrobat. One chap, called Reising, peddled honeycomb around my way, and he was really an expert in carryin’ his tray to and fro among the crowd, but without ever puttin’ his hands to the tray. I don’t believe I could have done it if I had practiced at it a hundred years. Only once did he come to grief, and then there was hardly any crowd around at all, and no special reason why he should have let his tray fall. But he did, and was never really the same man afterwards. Perhaps the reason was that quite a pretty girl came along, and Reising got careless and forgot all about his honeycombs in lookin’ at this still sweeter sight. Other men besides Reising have let their trays fall when they got to lookin’ at a woman.
Durin’ the old time Winters there used to be the firewood man makin’ his rounds–more frequently than now, before the days when coal got into such general use. His cry was somewhat characteristic. It was the one word wood, pronounced “wud,” uttered four or five times in quick succession and in a tone of shy sadness, as if the word “wud” was somethin’ to be ashamed of. I have often wondered why on earth this cry of wood should have been uttered in such a mournful manner–firewood in itself, especially in cold, Christmas weather, bein’ a decidedly cheerful thing.
The knife-grinders, tinkers, “umbrellas to mend” and “old rags” men had their street cries, etc., but I never could find out anything peculiar or special about ‘em, though I dare say even these classes of people could be made interesting enough if one could only study ‘em carefully; for I never yet studied up any kind of human bein’s but what I found ‘em “pan out” well in the way of interest.
But of all the street cries and criers I ever heard or saw the one that interested me the most was the one I understood the least. I remember this particular strange case as if it had been but yesterday, though it was over twenty years ago.
He was an old man–a very old man. I should have guessed he was eighty, or more, by the wrinkles in his face (which are what I tell a man’s age by, just as I do a horse’s age by its teeth), and he used to totter along Houston street and Crosby street for several weeks, pretty nearly every day. He was dressed in parti-colored rags, hardly hangin’ together, and in each of his tremblin’ hands he carried a little tin pail, with a cover on it, and, I suppose, somethin’ in it, though what that somethin’ was I never found out, and I never came across anybody who did.
He was a queer old chap. His appearance, with his many colored rags and his two little pails, was queer; but his street-cry was the queerest of all–the queerest cry I have ever heard. It wasn’t exactly a screech, or a yell, or a roar, or a groan; it was a kind of mixture, and altogether was as unpleasant and unmusical as it was uncommon. The first time I heard that cry I opened my window to see what the deuce was the matter, and I saw a lot of boys and men pokin’ fun at him, while some put their fingers to their ears to keep out the sound of it. He used to vary this cry occasionally with another, which was a sort of combination wheeze, sneeze and shriek. Of the two, I think the last was the worst. I got mad at the old chap at first; then I got to pityin’ the poor devil; for he was directly in earnest in this cry of his. It meant bread and butter–life and death, probably–to him; but it meant nothin’, or a mystery, as well as a nuisance, to everybody else. So the poor old mystery of a man one day disappeared and was never since seen. Probably he died of starvation, because nobody could, or would, understand his street cry.
[Editor’s notes: The source for this column is from an article in The Atlantic Monthly of February, 1870, titled “The Street Cries of New York.” Prior to that, there had been several thin illustrated books published on the criers of London, New York, and Philadelphia.
The enchanting song of the hot-corn girl is described in this Atlantic Monthly article, but it is the above Harry Hill’s Gotham article that names the singer as “Clio” and associates her with Stephen C. Foster–an anecdote that has been repeated many times ever since, but seems to have no prior source with those specifics–bringing it into question.]
