Explore the full ebook collection and download it now at textbookfull.

com

The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know Klaus

Dodds

[Link]
needs-to-know-klaus-dodds/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Browse and Get More Ebook Downloads Instantly at [Link]

Click here to visit [Link] and download textbook now
 Your digital treasures (PDF, ePub, MOBI) await
Download instantly and pick your perfect format...

Read anywhere, anytime, on any device!

The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know

Shira Tarrant

[Link]
everyone-needs-to-know-shira-tarrant/

[Link]

Brazil : what everyone needs to know 1st Edition Roett

[Link]
know-1st-edition-roett/

[Link]

Drones : what everyone needs to know 1st Edition Kreps

[Link]
know-1st-edition-kreps/

[Link]

Antarctica: What Everyone Needs to Know® David Day

[Link]
know-david-day/

[Link]
Vaccines: What Everyone Needs To Know Kristen A. Feemster

[Link]
kristen-a-feemster/

[Link]

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (What Everyone Needs To

Know) Dov Waxman

[Link]
what-everyone-needs-to-know-dov-waxman/

[Link]

Iran : what everyone needs to know 1st Edition Michael

Axworthy

[Link]
edition-michael-axworthy/

[Link]

Advertising : what everyone needs to know 1st Edition Mara

Einstein

[Link]
know-1st-edition-mara-einstein/

[Link]

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know® Erica

Chenoweth

[Link]
to-know-erica-chenoweth/

[Link]
 THE ARCTIC
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
 THE ARCTIC
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®

KLAUS DODDS AND MARK NUTTALL

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

“What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of

Oxford University Press.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Dodds, Klaus, author. | Nuttall, Mark, author.
Title: The Arctic : what everyone needs to know /​
Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055473| ISBN 9780190649814 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190649807 (paperback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Arctic regions. | Arctic peoples. |
Arctic regions—​Environmental conditions. |
Environmental degradation—​Arctic regions. |
Conservation of natural resources—​Arctic regions. |
BISAC: HISTORY /​Historical Geography. | HISTORY /​Polar Regions. |
SCIENCE /​History.
Classification: LCC G606 .D64 2019 | DDC 998—​dc23
LC record available at [Link]

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
 CONTENTS

FOREWORD ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv

Introduction: One Arctic, Many Arctics 1

Where does the Arctic begin and end? 3

Who lives in the Arctic, and is that changing? 6
What effect is climate change having on those who live in the Arctic? 9
What are the competing visions of and for the Arctic? 11
Why is it important to resist Arctic stereotypes? 15
What are the main drivers for these multiple Arctics? 18

1. Locating True North 26

Why does anyone care what is and what is not “true north”? 27
How have we defined the Arctic? 30
Who lives in the Arctic? 36
How alike are the Arctic and the Antarctic? 43
How has the Arctic been represented in public culture? 46
What should guide how we look at the Arctic? 52
vi Contents

2. Land, Sea, and Ice 54

What was the Arctic like in the distant past? 55

What are the defining physical characteristics of contemporary
Arctic environments? 58
How has life adapted to the Arctic? 63
How has land, sea, and ice been represented? 66
Do our representations of Arctic land, sea, and ice still fit? 70

3. Arctic Homelands 72

What factors are shaping Arctic communities? 73

Are there tensions between indigenous and so-​called settler
populations in the Arctic? 75
How have the Arctic’s indigenous peoples been represented,
and how do they represent themselves? 78
Do the interests of indigenous and non-​indigenous northern
populations converge or diverge? 80
How is the nature of indigenous peoples’ relationships with their
Arctic homelands expressed? 86
Why do indigenous oral histories and stories matter about Arctic
homelands? 89
How has indigenous storytelling guided our sense of Arctic homelands? 91
Why do indigenous peoples matter in Arctic geopolitics? 95
What does indigenous legal and political activism reveal about the
state of Arctic homelands? 98
Are there human-​animal conflicts in Arctic homelands? 103
What do iconic species such as polar bears reveal about the state
of Arctic homelands? 108

4. From Colonization to Cooperation 121

Who came across the Bering Land Bridge? 122

Who were the first Europeans to colonize and settle the Arctic? 124
 Contents vii

Why did the Norse settlement not endure? 125

What was the next wave of European settlement in Greenland? 126
How was the North American Arctic colonized and settled? 128
How and why did Russia expand northward? 130
What impact did World War II have on the Arctic? 135
How did the Arctic become a frontline in the Cold War? 138
What was Project Iceworm? 140
What was the Thule disaster of 1968, and why does it matter? 142
What part did Arctic science play in Cold War geopolitical tension? 143
Did science and technology produce positive results in the Arctic? 147
Did the end of the Cold War provide a new opportunity to reshape
Arctic governance? 150
What are the latest developments in international cooperation in the
Arctic? 153
Do the legacies of settler colonialism still shape Arctic politics today? 155

5. Warming Arctic 160

Why does a warming Arctic matter? 162

What, so far, has been the impact of warming in the Arctic? 165
How has the Arctic changed in the past? 167
How is climate change influencing the Arctic today? 170
What will an ice-​free Arctic Ocean mean? 172

6. Resourceful Arctic 178

What is the history of resource development in the Arctic? 181

How are indigenous livelihoods affected by mining and oil and gas
exploration and development? 185
How does oil development entail different visions of the Arctic? 186
Who is investing in Arctic resources? 190
What are exclusive economic zones, and how do they work? 192
viii Contents

Can Arctic mega-​projects be sustainable? 195

Will the Arctic become a hotspot for renewable energy? 200

7. The Global Arctic 202

What is the global Arctic? 203

Why does a warming Arctic contribute to a global Arctic? 205
Will US-​Russian relations change the global Arctic? 210
What is the Svalbard Treaty, and why is it a potential flashpoint in
the Arctic? 212
What part are Asian states playing in the global Arctic? 214
What might the Arctic look like in 2050? 220

FURTHER READING 227

INDEX 233
 FOREWORD

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps.

I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or
Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration.
At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth,
and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on
a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on
it and say, “When I grow up I will go there.” The North
Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t
been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour’s
off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres.
I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won’t talk
about that. But there was one yet —​the biggest, the most
blank, so to speak —​that I had a hankering after.
—​Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
Everything—​our culture is based on the cold, the snow,
and the ice.
—​Sheila Watt-​Cloutier, “Climate Change Is a Human
Rights Issue: An Interview with Sheila Watt-​Cloutier,”
March 4, 2016
The Arctic occupies a contradictory space in the popular im-
agination—​remote and uninhabitable yet also fantastical
and alluring. It is also understood to be under threat from
rapid climate change; the future of its peoples, wildlife, and
x Foreword

environments imperiled by a warming trend that is affecting

the region twice as fast as the rest of the world. The Arctic is
in trouble.
For those who have never visited the Arctic, it is a region
of ice and polar bears. Children can and do imagine a mag-
ical world where Santa Claus and his reindeer live some-
where near the North Pole. The northern reaches of the world
are, of course, replete with fairy tales, sagas, and adventures
in volcanic, wind-​swept, and ice-​filled kingdoms. The dra-
matic, mysterious, and heroic are the stuff of adult story-
telling as well—​ a litany of explorers, sailors, and aviators
have encountered fame, misfortune, and disaster in the Arctic.
There is no shortage of candidates: from Sir Hugh Willoughby
and his crew, who disappeared on the coast of Russia’s Kola
Peninsula in the mid-​sixteenth century, to the unknown fate
of Henry Hudson in the bay that bears his name in 1611, to
Sir John Franklin’s doomed Northwest Passage expedition in
the mid-​nineteenth century and the disappearance of Roald
Amundsen on his way to Spitsbergen in the late 1920s and
Gino Watkins in East Greenland in the early 1930s.
But the impact of outsiders on the Arctic has been more
than an occasional expeditionary foray. From exploration,
trapping, whaling, sealing, and fishing to coal mining, oil
and gas exploration, and marine insurance, and scientific re-
search, the footprint of others is various and varied. In Britain,
a legion of whalers and traders started their Arctic adventures
in cities such as Aberdeen, Bristol, Cambridge, and London.
Elizabethan explorers such as Martin Frobisher voyaged to
what is now known as the Canadian Arctic in the 1570s, and
persuaded the Anglo-​Russian Muscovy Company to sponsor
exploratory work. Sailing into the bay he named for himself
in the southeastern part of Baffin Island (naming other parts
of the island after his political and commercial sponsors, e.g.,
Cape Walsingham after Sir Francis Walsingham), Frobisher
hoped to find a northern maritime passage to Asia—​in essence,
a shorter trade route—​as well as assess the potential for gold
 Foreword xi

discoveries along the way. Material he found on the southern

coast of Baffin Island turned out to be iron pyrite—​fool’s gold
rather than gold—​but Frobisher did not arrive home empty-​
handed. On their return from a second voyage in 1577, the
crew forcibly brought three Inuit with them from Baffin Island.
They died shortly after their arrival in England.
The Northwest Passage was thought to be a strait that
separated Baffin Island from another stretch of land. However,
it remained undiscovered by Frobisher. Later, the Hudson’s Bay
Company was active in the area Frobisher had traveled in, set-
ting up a trading post in 1914 and, at the head of Frobisher Bay,
the US Air Force established the beginnings of what is now the
community of Iqaluit in 1942. At the time, this was the largest
air base in the North American Arctic. The runway (which is
over 2,700 meters long) serves as an emergency landing site for
transatlantic flights and was an alternative NASA landing site
for the Space Shuttle. The town of Frobisher Bay was renamed
Iqaluit by the community in 1986 (it was formalized the fol-
lowing year), and it became the capital of the newly estab-
lished Canadian territory of Nunavut in 1999.
The search for the Northwest Passage remained an obses-
sion. Franklin and his men set off in 1845 to navigate through
the last unknown section of the passage in the central Canadian
Arctic. Their two ships became icebound near Victoria Strait
and all 129 crew disappeared. “The lost men’s bodies, waiting,
drift and freeze,” wrote the American poet Helen Hunt Jackson
in An Arctic Quest. After multiple search expeditions from
the mid-​nineteenth century onward, Franklin’s two vessels,
HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were finally found in northern
Canadian waters in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Inuit knowl­
edge contributed to determining where the wrecks lay on
the seabed off King William Island, though previously Inuit
oral testimony had been largely ignored. The ships have been
designated national Canadian historic sites and are under the
jurisdiction of Environment Canada. In October 2017, it was
announced that the United Kingdom was gifting the wrecks to
xii Foreword

Canada; Parks Canada has hired a number of Inuit guardians

to watch over the sites. An extraordinary ending for vessels
that were used initially by the Royal Navy as warships, in-
cluding service in patrolling the Mediterranean, and which
were then refitted for Antarctic and Arctic adventures.
In northern British cities, such as Dundee and Hull, the
Arctic whaling and fishing trades respectively were pathways
to wealth. Orkney was a major recruitment ground for the
Hudson’s Bay Company from the early eighteenth century
onward. By the late eighteenth century, the Hudson’s Bay
Company workforce in Canada was overwhelmingly sourced
from the small farms and fishing villages of many of the
Orkney islands. The relationship between the company and
the archipelago lasted until the early twentieth century.
Connections between the British Isles and the Arctic con-
tinued to be reinforced by disaster. The sinking of the British
trawler Gaul in mysterious circumstances in February 1974
while fishing in northern Norwegian waters was headline
news. Stories abounded that the trawler was a spy vessel and
might have been sunk by a Soviet submarine. Fame and for-
tune in the Arctic were always counterbalanced by disaster
and loss.
The vast majority of humanity will never visit the Arctic,
although the growth of polar tourism does mean more people
are heading north, many of them on cruise ships to the
Northwest Passage, to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard. They
are venturing into areas, though, that are being increasingly
affected by human activities. But it is important to remember
the Arctic has been a zone of human interaction for centuries,
and social and ecological relationships have been profoundly
disrupted in the past. For example, colonial powers and com-
mercial expeditions made their presence felt on indigenous
peoples and hunted and extracted fish, seals, minerals, and fur
pelts. What has changed in the intervening period is the scale
and intensity of human and climatological forces.
 Foreword xiii

Climate change and ongoing resource extraction bring dif-

ferent kinds of threats and challenges—​in the Arctic we face the
ultimate paradox of human existence. How can we learn to live
sustainably with our planet? Will Arctic resources be left in the
ground and below the subsea floor as part of a global climate
change mitigation strategy? There is an urgent need to under-
stand the Arctic and more and more people are responding to
this. In some cases, they do this by simply wanting to visit the
Arctic and experience what they can of a region punctuated
with ice, water, mountains, and extreme weather. Or else they
visit in considerable numbers as part of Arctic exhibitions or-
ganized by august institutions such as the British Library and
National Maritime Museum in London.
The task of this book is to make sure that Arctic fairy tales
don’t obscure other stories that can and should be told about
this part of the world. The Arctic is in motion.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As ever, we have accumulated a reservoir of debts to people

and organizations who sponsor and support our research in
the Arctic/​High North. Our thanks to Tim Bent at Oxford
University Press who commissioned us to write the book in
the first place and to the proposal reviewers for their sup-
portive comments. Klaus Dodds is thankful to the Leverhulme
Trust for the award of a Major Research Fellowship (2017–​
2020), which gave time and space for completing this book. He
thanks the British Academy for an International Partnership
and Mobility Award (2016–​2018), which also supported his
Arctic-​related research. Mark Nuttall thanks the Department
of Anthropology at the University of Alberta as well as
Ilisimatusarfik/​University of Greenland and the Greenland
Climate Research Centre for research funding and institutional
support. We owe a debt of gratitude to our polar networks of
physical/​natural and social scientists, artists and filmmakers,
policy officials, journalists, and many people from northern
communities; colleagues and friends who have contributed
to conversations about the Arctic—​past, present, and future.
None of the above bear any responsibility for our analysis, ob-
servation, and judgment about Arctic affairs. Above all, how-
ever, we thank our respective families, who continue to be
immensely supportive of our endeavors, which often take us
away from our homes to various northern places.
 THE ARCTIC
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
 INTRODUCTION
ONE ARCTIC, MANY ARCTICS

Every week, stories about the Arctic, usually addressing the

state of sea ice extent and thickness, diminishing glaciers, rap-
idly thawing permafrost, acidification of the Arctic Ocean, the
resource potential of the region, the opening of new shipping
routes, and possible geopolitical tensions, appear in the media.
The headlines and accompanying reports are often grounded
in the experiences of the five coastal Arctic states—​Canada,
Norway, Denmark/​Greenland, Russia, and the United States—​
or linger on the Arctic-​focused aspirations of countries such as
China, India, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. Asian states
are noticeably investing in polar infrastructure, science, and
resource-​development projects.
As sea ice recedes, there is a widespread suggestion that
Arctic countries are determined to secure ever-​more territory
in the Far North, while non-​Arctic states seek greater access to
it. The ownership of the continental shelves of the maritime
Arctic will determine who has sovereign rights to exploit nat-
ural resources. Canada, Denmark/​Greenland, and Russia are
in pole-​position due to their geographical proximity to the
North Pole.
2 The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know

Much of this discussion is framed within a context of climate

change and the rapid melting of Arctic ice, which, it is often
suggested, might then facilitate further commercial extraction
of resources, as well as pose a threat to the region’s indigenous
cultures and to its wildlife. It provides plenty of raw material
for intrigue and speculation. The media is fond of pointing out
that there are some big numbers in the mix. The hydrocarbon
potential of the Arctic region, according to some assessments
and estimates, including those of the US Geological Survey,
may amount to 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30%
of its undiscovered natural gas.
These stories draw from and simplify the work of Arctic so-
cial scientists and natural and physical scientists. They trivi-
alize the geographies of the Arctic, simplify its geopolitics, and
are knowingly selective of what may make for eye-​catching
news—​there is more attention on diminishing ice in the Arctic
Ocean and starving polar bears, or on ships attempting to tran-
sect the Northwest Passage, than on the sensitivity of Finland’s
boreal forests to changing temperatures, for example, the de-
cline of Iceland’s fox population, or the health and well-​being
of the Arctic’s indigenous peoples. Some scientists write pop-
ular books with titles that indicate dramatic change and an un-
certain future for the Arctic as ecosystems approach tipping
points—​A Farewell to Ice by noted Cambridge oceanographer
and polar scientist Peter Wadhams being one example, while
Danish journalist Martin Breum’s recent book Cold Rush is one
of the latest additions to a literature concerned with threats
to Arctic security and potential conflicts over territory and re-
sources as the region warms. When indigenous peoples are
mentioned in these accounts, they are written about as trying
to maintain traditions under threat from globalization, global
warming, and resource development, or struggling with issues
of self-​determination.
These are, of course, critical issues. And, true, hunting,
fishing, and reindeer herding remain vitally important ac-
tivities for the livelihoods of many indigenous peoples; but
 Introduction: One Arctic, Many Arctics 3

human life in the Arctic is diverse and increasingly so. The vast
majority of Arctic residents live in towns and cities—​some of
them small, but still predominantly urban in character—​and
sometimes, on the surface at least, their daily lives are not
often dissimilar to their counterparts in more southerly parts
of North America, Nordic Europe, and Russia. In Greenland’s
capital, Nuuk, a city of 17,000 people, commuters have to con-
tend with an often frustrating morning rush hour on their
way to drop their children at school or headed to their jobs
in offices, retail, or fish-​processing plants; Tromsø in Arctic
Norway has a population of almost 72,000 who have access
to large shopping malls and the same kind of retail experience
one can find in Oslo; and Oulu in northern Finland, with a
population of some 200,000, is a hub for research and innova-
tion in technology and has recently branded itself as a smart
city. And across the Arctic today, there are many indigenous
communities actively involved in extractive industries and en-
gaged in businesses with an international reach.
A point we reinforce in this book is that the Arctic is not
disconnected from the rest of the world and has long been af-
fected and shaped by global influences. However, this history
is often little understood. There seems to be greater interest
in the Arctic than perhaps ever before, and this raises a series
of questions, some of which we consider and answer in the
following chapters. But where and what is the Arctic? Where
does it begin, and where does it end? Attempting to answer
this seems a good place to start.

Where does the Arctic begin and end?

Defining places and regions is rarely free from controversy.
As we will show in the next chapter, definitions of the Arctic
vary and diverge considerably, according to any number of
scientific, environmental, geographical, political, and cultural
perspectives and biases. And to complicate this further, climate
change is contributing to shifting many physical boundaries
4 The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know

that had been drawn as fixed points and zones and marked
ecosystems on maps and charts.
The Arctic is also synonymous with the “North” and the
“circumpolar North.” We also use these terms, although many
high latitude places defined as “northern” in this sense are not
necessarily “Arctic.” If anything, we show in this book that the
Arctic is a dynamic, complex, diverse, and integral part of the
world, a place with rich histories and disagreements about its
nature and about its future, rather than an empty, remote, dis-
tant, and forbidding region at the top of the globe. It is also a
place in motion.
So, an initial answer to our first question is that locating
and defining the Arctic is not so straightforward. And like
any definition, it can reveal and obscure the multiple ways we
divide the world into places and regions. Canadians refer to
“the North,” “mid-​North,” and the “provincial Norths,” while
Norwegians talks about the “High North.” In Russia, they get
around that issue by not only identifying a “Far North” but
also use the term “areas equivalent to it,” which allows slip-
page southward depending on the criteria used.
What makes this question a lot harder to answer than it
should be is unrelenting change. Once we might have thought
the Arctic could and should be defined by lines on maps such
as the Arctic Circle. Coupled with that latitudinal definition,
we might also point to adjectives like cold, ice, and snow as
material, sensory, and elemental markers of the Arctic. We con-
tend that the scale and scope of change scrambles a common-
sensical perception and understanding of the Arctic.
In January 2017, it was reported that 2016 had been the
warmest year on record for the globe as a whole, and that
warming ocean waters off Alaska were bringing widespread
ecological changes; that Norway’s Statoil was optimistic its
Korpfjell license area in the Barents Sea could contain 10 bil-
lion barrels of oil; and that Russian president Vladimir Putin
was pushing to strengthen national interests in the Arctic by
bolstering Russia’s military presence in its northern regions.
 Introduction: One Arctic, Many Arctics 5

Responding to the news that Russia was investing in more nu-

clear icebreakers and equipping its Northern Fleet (based near
Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula) with ice-​capable corvettes
carrying cruise missiles, US Defense Secretary James Mattis
commented that Moscow was taking “aggressive steps” in the
Arctic. It was a news-​filled month for an increasingly globally
significant region.
A couple of months later, at the end of March 2017, scientists
from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in
Boulder, Colorado, published the results of research that
suggested a new record for low levels of winter ice in the
Arctic Ocean had been set. A number of scientists were quoted
in various media as saying the findings were “disturbing” and
that the Arctic was now in a “deep hole.”
In April, a paper published in Science reported on research
carried out in the eastern Eurasian basin—​north of the Laptev
and East Siberian Seas—​that found that warm Atlantic water
is increasingly pushing to the surface and melting floating sea
ice. This mixing, the authors said, has not only contributed to
thinner ice and to larger areas of previously ice-​covered open
water, but it is also changing the state of Arctic waters in a pro-
cess they termed “Atlantification”—​and they warned this could
soon spread across more of the Arctic Ocean, transforming it
fundamentally. Other scientists speak of “Pacification” and
report farther movements of warmer and denser waters into
the previously frozen ocean. Heat, nutrients, lower latitude
species, pollutants, and microplastics are following in their
collective wake.
So, in that one year, 2017, we can point to reports of Arctic
change on many different fronts—​biological, geophysical, and
resourceful. Move forward to summer 2018, forest fires raged
north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, and research published
by scientists working for NASA, who had constructed a sixty-​
year overview of Arctic sea ice thickness beginning in 1958,
concluded, since scientists began observing and recording it,
that the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover is now younger and thinner.
6 The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know

Meanwhile, in August 2018 it was reported that sea ice off the
north coast of Greenland, which is the oldest and thickest in
the Arctic Ocean, and compacted by the Transpolar Drift, had
started to break up. Scientists from the Danish Meteorological
Institute expressed alarm that this ice was becoming more
mobile in waters where ice is, on average four meters thick
and not easily moved. The following month, Danish shipping
company Maersk announced that its container vessel Venta
Maersk had completed a trial passage of Russia’s Northern
Sea Route (NSR), from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, while at
the end of October Sovcomflot’s oil tanker Lomonosov Prospect,
which is powered by liquified natural gas (LNG), voyaged
over 2,000 nautical miles in under eight days through the NSR
carrying petroleum products from South Korea to northern
Europe. Lomonosov Prospect only required nuclear icebreaker
assistance in the region of the Ayon ice massif in the East
Siberian Sea. These trends, movements, and mobilities are set
to continue.

Who lives in the Arctic, and is that changing?

So much of what we are told about the Arctic is partial, out of
date, and simply wrong. Many children grow up imagining
the Arctic as populated by native peoples (simplified as
“Eskimos”) living in igloos. Indigenous cultures are diverse,
and many indigenous peoples live below the Arctic Circle. In
most parts of the circumpolar North, non-​indigenous residents
far outnumber indigenous Arctic peoples, largely because of
the legacies of colonialism and settlement, but also because of
recent trends in immigration, rural-​urban migration, and the
global processes of demographic change. The communities
living in the Arctic are not unchanging. Arctic regions are
also cosmopolitan places, with indigenous writers such as
Greenland’s Niviaq Korneliussen charting their social, cul-
tural, and sexual—​and urban—​complexities.
 Introduction: One Arctic, Many Arctics 7

In ­chapter 3 we will explore the ways in which indigenous

peoples think about their Arctic surroundings as homelands
and how this is central to land claims, self-​determination, and
self-​government. In some parts of the Arctic, however, everyone
is a migrant, an incomer, or a settler who nurtures their own
relationships and senses of place with their surroundings—​
and the composition of Arctic towns and communities is far
more diversified than many people imagine. In Longyearbyen,
the administrative center of Svalbard (Norway’s Arctic Ocean
archipelago, which has a population of around 2,600), a Thai
community has grown there since the early 1980s. Working
mainly in the hotel sector, Thais make up the second-​biggest
community, after Norwegians, but the town’s international
character is also defined by many other foreign long-​term and
seasonal residents. Longyearbyen may have its origins in a set-
tlement established by the Boston-​based Arctic Coal Company
in 1906, but now you are far more likely to meet people working
there who are from Malaysia, Armenia, and Argentina, and see
Asian tourists rather than coal miners. Longyearbyen is also a
busy place throughout the year, not just when a large number
of cruise ships visit during summer—​international students
study changing Arctic ecosystems at UNIS, the University
Centre in Svalbard, while the town is host to a number of
festivals, even during the coldest winter months. Svalbard has
been branded the “the cultural capital of the High Arctic” by
the archipelago’s official tourist board. Longyearbyen plays
host to the world’s most northerly Oktoberfest, the annual
Polarjazz festival at the end of each January, and the annual
Dark Season Blues festival, among many others.
In Greenland, people from Thailand and the Philippines
work in low-​ wage service sectors, especially in hotels,
restaurants, and housekeeping, but they also run their own
successful businesses. Many have families—​some have mar-
ried Greenlanders and Danes—​ and their children learn
Greenlandic and Danish in school; an earlier generation born
in Greenland, and now in their early twenties, are making
8 The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know

their own careers and homes in places such as Nuuk and

Ilulissat. One of the newer restaurants to have opened in Nuuk
specializes in Greenlandic-​ Filipino fusion cuisine. Tourists
arriving at Ilulissat airport will be greeted in the baggage
claim area by a sign advertising a Chinese and Thai fast food
café, alongside an advertisement for muskox trophy-​hunting
adventures. In Alaska, Filipinos have been working and living
on Kodiak Island for more than 150 years, mainly employed
in the fishing and salmon-​canning industries. Over 30% of the
community is Filipino or Filipino-​American by heritage. Many
other ethnic communities live in Alaska—​for example, there
are around 11,500 Mexicans in Anchorage (a city of just over
298,000 people), many of whom retain their links with Mexico
and spend time there and in Alaska, while a Vietnamese-​
American community has grown since the 1970s and 1980s in
Nome, a town of some 3,800 people on the Seward Peninsula
on Alaska’s Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea.
A traveler arriving at Iqaluit’s airport would very likely take
a cab to their hotel driven by a migrant to Canada from Syria or
Somalia, just as they would from airports in Montreal, Toronto,
or Edmonton. Nunavut’s capital is home to around one hun-
dred Muslims, who work as doctors, engineers, and govern-
ment officials, as well as in service industries; and the Islamic
Society of Nunavut opened a building in February 2016 that
acts as a mosque and community space. The most northerly
mosque in Canada opened in Inuvik, in the Mackenzie Delta
region of the Northwest Territories (NWT) in November 2010.
In the Russian North and in Siberia the mix of ethnic groups
is similarly cosmopolitan—​the city of Yakutsk in the Sakha
Republic, for instance, is home to Yakuts, Russians, Ukrainians,
and Tatars, as well as to people from a number of Siberian in-
digenous groups, including Yukaghir, Dolgans, Evens, Evenks,
and Chukchis. Non-​indigenous settlers from other parts of the
Russian Federation also make their homes in many other parts
of the Russian North and Russian Far East.
 Introduction: One Arctic, Many Arctics 9

So, the Arctic is made up of a series of multiethnic and mul-

ticultural homelands—​and as we shall see later in this book,
there is diversity within indigenous populations themselves.
And those homelands are changing and changeable. Asian,
European, and American communities are integral to Arctic
economies and societies and have been for decades if not
centuries.

What effect is climate change having on those who live in the Arctic?
Climate change dominates contemporary discussion of the
Arctic. Warming brings with it profound consequences for
people, animals, and ecosystems. The impact of warming is
uneven; the loss of sea ice and the thawing of permafrost mean
risks and vulnerabilities, but also allow opportunities and
possibilities.
For some involved in extractive industries, further resource
development in the Arctic is thought of as being made easier
by climate change, as remote places become more accessible. It
is assumed by many that as the frozen Arctic Ocean becomes
less so, it becomes more navigable to shipping. For others, the
loss of sea ice is disastrous because it affects a way of life de-
pendent on moving across that very substance that is melting
and less secure. Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-​Cloutier,
a former international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council
(ICC), an indigenous peoples’ organization that represents
Inuit throughout the Arctic, wrote in her memoir, The Right to
Be Cold which was published in 2015, that a warming Arctic
poses an existential threat to a people and a culture predicated
on a semipermanent state of cold, snow, and ice. For her and
others, the presence of snow and ice is necessary for the sur-
vival of Inuit culture and livelihoods. A melting Arctic means
indigenous homelands are in danger of being changed dra-
matically. Thinning sea ice makes travel and hunting more pre-
carious. Travel is more expensive if one is using more fuel to
battle through ice-​clogged waters in boats during winter and
10 The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know

spring instead of moving across the frozen surface of the sea

by snowmobile or dogsled. Traditional indigenous knowledge
becomes less reliable than it once was, making it difficult to
anticipate what lies ahead on a journey, and this in turn means
there is increased potential for stranding, accidents, and even
drowning while out hunting. Sea ice is akin to critical infra-
structure to Inuit.
Russian leaders might take a more benign view about the
loss of sea ice in the Arctic. A northern port such as Sabetta, on
the Yamal Peninsula, could develop as a major hub for ship-
ping oil and LNG through the NSR. The Yamal Peninsula is
a breathtaking prospect for Russia with total reserves and re-
sources in the fields estimated to be 26.5 trillion cubic meters
of gas, 1.6 billion tons of gas condensate, and 300 million
tons of oil. President Putin and his government detect eco-
nomic opportunities in a changing Arctic, which may enhance
prospects for the country’s future as an Arctic energy super-
power. Russians do worry about environmental change in the
Arctic, but they also recognize that there is too much resource
potential in the north of their country to ignore. Less sea ice
means that LNG shipping could be easier to operate.
If Putin senses opportunities to develop the Russian North
further (and one must remember that it was industrialized
heavily during the Stalin era), elsewhere other senior
politicians, such as Donald Tusk, president of the European
Council, and former UN Secretary-​General Ban Ki-​moon, have
been warning of the dangers of unrelenting environmental
change. These warnings have often been made during visits
to Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in Disko Bay, which has become an iconic place for world
leaders to travel to and ponder the situation we find ourselves
in. Standing as close as they can manage to the edge of the
glacial ice of Sermeq Kujalleq (also known as the Jakobshavn
Glacier) or moving on tourist boats through iceberg-​studded
waters, distinguished visitors to the icefjord appear to express
astonishment at how climate change is happening before their
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 Street-sellers of Pickled Whelks.
According to the Billingsgate returns, there are nearly
5,000,000 of whelks sold yearly in the streets of London.
These are retailed in a boiled state, and flavoured with £5,000
vinegar, at four a penny. 150 vendors take on an average
13s. weekly. This gives an annual street expenditure, of
Street-sellers of Fried Fish.
150 sellers make 10s. 6d. weekly, or yearly 27l. 6s.; and
150 sellers make half that amount, 13l. 13s. per annum.
Reckoning 20l. a year as a medium earning, and adding
£11,400
90 per cent. for profit, the annual consumption of fried
fish supplied by London street-sellers amounts to 684,000
lbs., and the sum expended thereupon to
Street-sellers of Sheep’s Trotters.
In the wholesale “trotter” establishment there are
prepared, weekly, 20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet; giving a
yearly average of 4,160,000 trotters, or the feet of
1,040,000 sheep. Of this quantity the street-folk buy
seven-eighths, or 3,640,000 trotters yearly. The number
of sheep trotter-sellers may be taken at 300; which gives
an average of nearly 60 sets a week per individual. There £6,000
is then expended yearly in London streets on trotters,
calculating their sale, retail, at ½d. each, 6,500l.; but
though the regular price is ½d., some trotters are sold at
four for 1½d., very few higher than ½d., and some are
kept until they are unsaleable, so that the amount thus
expended may be estimated at
Street-sellers of Ham-sandwiches.
60 vendors, take 8s. a week, and sell annually 486,800
£1,800
sandwiches, at a cost of
Street-sellers of Baked ’Tatoes.
300 vendors, sell upon an average ¾ cwt. of baked £14,000
potatoes daily, or 1,755 tons in the season. The average
takings of each vendor amount to 6s. a day; and the
receipts of the whole number throughout the season
(which lasts from the latter end of September till March
inclusive), a period of 6 months, are
The Street-sellers of Hot Green Peas.
The chief man of business sells 3 gallons a day (which, at
1d. the quarter-pint, would be 8s., my informant said 7s.),
the other three together sell the same quantity; hence £250
there is an annual street consumption of 1,870 gallons,
and a street expenditure on “hot green peas” of
Street-sellers of Meat.
The hawking butchers, taking their number at 150, sell
£12,450
747,000 lbs. of meat, and take annually
Street-sellers of Bread.
25 men take 45s. a day for five months in the summer,
and 12 regular traders take 1l. 12s. per day; this gives an
£9,000
annual street consumption of 700,000 quartern loaves of
bread, and a street expenditure of
Street-sellers of Cats and Dogs’ Meat.
There are 300,000 cats in the metropolis, and from 900 to
1,000 horses, averaging 2 cwt. of meat each, boiled down
every week; the quantity of cats’ and dogs’ meat used
throughout London is about 200,000 lbs. per week, and £100,000
this, sold at the rate of 2½d. per lb., gives 2,000l. a week
for the money spent in cats’ and dogs’ meat, or per year,
upwards of
Street-sellers of Coffee, Tea, &c.
Each coffee-stall keeper on an average clears 1l. a week,
and his takings may be said to be at least double that
sum; hence the quantity of coffee sold annually in the £31,200
streets, is about 550,000 gallons, while the yearly street
expenditure for tea, coffee, &c., amounts to
Street-sellers of Ginger-beer.
The bottles of ginger-beer sold yearly in the streets £14,660
number about 4,798,000, and the total street
consumption of the same beverage may be said to be
about 250,000 gallons per annum. 200 street-sellers of
ginger-beer in the bottle trade of the penny class take
30s. a week each (thus allowing for inferior receipts in
bad weather); 300 take 20s. each, selling their “beer” for
the most part at ½d. the bottle, while the remaining 400
“in a small way” take 6s. each; hence there is expended
in the bottled ginger-beer of the streets 11,480l. Adding
the receipts from the fountains and the barrels, the barrel
season continuing only ten weeks, the total sum
expended annually in street ginger-beer amounts
altogether to
Street-sellers of Lemonade, Sherbet, Nectar, &c.
There are 200 persons, chiefly men, selling solely
lemonade, &c., and an additional 300 uniting the sale with
that of ginger-beer. Their average receipts on fine days
are 3s. 6d. a day, or, allowing for wet weather and
diminished receipts, 10s. a week. The receipts, then, for
£4,900
this street luxury, show a street expenditure in such a
summer as the last, of 2,800l., among those who do not
unite ginger-beer with the trade. Calculating that those
who do unite ginger-beer with it sell only one-half as
much as the others, we find a total outlay of
Street-sellers of Elder-wine.
50 vendors clear 5s. a week for 16 weeks by the sale of
elder-wine in the streets, their profit being at least cent.
£200
per cent.; hence the street consumption of this beverage
in the course of the year is 1,500 gallons, and the outlay
Street-sellers of Peppermint-water.
Calculating that 4 “pepperminters” take 2s. a day the year
round, Sundays excepted, we find that 900 gallons of
peppermint-water are consumed every year in the streets £125
of London, while the sum expended in it amounts
annually to
Street-sellers of Milk in the Markets, Parks, &c.
The vendors in the markets clear about 1s. 6d. a day £344
each, for three months; and as the profit is rather more
than cent. per cent., there are about 4,000 gallons of milk
thus sold yearly. The quantity sold in the park averages
20 quarts a day for a period of nine months, or 1,170
gallons in the year. This is retailed at 4d. per quart; hence
the annual expenditure is
Street-sellers of Curds and Whey.
50 sellers dispose of 12½ gallons in 3 weeks; the other
50 sell only half as much. Taking the season at 3 months,
the annual consumption of curds and whey in the streets £412
is 2,812 double gallons (as regards the ingredients of
milk), which is retailed at a cost to the purchasers of
Street-sellers of Rice-milk.
Calculating that 50 sellers dispose of 24 quarts weekly,
while one-half of the remaining 25 sell 12 quarts each per
week at 1d. the half-pint, and the other half vend 24
£320
quarts at ½d. the half-pint, there are about 3,000 gallons
of rice-milk yearly consumed in the streets of London,
while the expenditure amounts to
Water-carriers.
The number of water-carriers are sixty, and their average
earnings through the year 5s. a week; hence the sum £780
annually expended in water thus obtained amounts to
Street Piemen.
There are fifty street piemen plying their trade in London,
the year through, their average takings are one guinea a
week; hence there is an annual street consumption of £3,000
pies of nearly to three-quarters of a million, and a street
expenditure amounting to
Street-sellers of Meat and Currant Puddings.
Each street-seller gets rid of, on an average, 85 dozen, or £270
1,020 puddings; there are now but six street-sellers
(regularly) of these comestibles; hence the weekly
aggregate would be—allowing for bad weather—5,400,
and the total 129,600 meat and currant puddings sold in
the streets, in a season of 24 weeks. This gives an annual
expenditure on the part of the street boys and girls (who
are the principal purchasers), and of the poor persons
who patronise the street-trade, of about
Street-sellers of Plum “duff.”
Calculating 42s. a week as the takings of six persons, for
five months, we find there is yearly expended in the £250
street purchase of plum dough upwards of
Street-sellers of Cakes, Tarts, &c.
Reckoning 150 cake-sellers, each taking 6s. a week—a
sufficiently low average—the street consumption of cakes,
£2,350
tarts, &c., will be 1,123,200 every year, and the street
outlay about
Street-sellers of other and inferior Cakes.
The sale of the inferior street cakes realises about a fifth
of that taken by the other cake-sellers; hence it may be £450
estimated yearly at
Street-sellers of Gingerbread-nuts.
150 gingerbread-nut-sellers take 17s. each weekly
(clearing 9s.); at this rate the sum spent yearly in “spice” £6,630
nuts in the streets of London amounts to
Street-sellers of Hot-cross Buns.
There are nearly 100,000 hot-cross buns sold every Good
Friday in the streets of London; hence there is expended £300
in one day, upon the buns thus bought about
Street-sellers of Muffins and Crumpets.
There are 500 muffin-sellers, each clearing 4s. and taking
12s. a week on an average; hence the metropolitan street
£6,000
sale of muffins and crumpets will be in 20 weeks about
120,000 dozen, and the sum expended thereon
Street-sellers of Sweet-stuff.
The number of sweet-stuff sellers in London amounts to £10,000
200, each of whom, on an average, clears 10s., and takes
20s. weekly; the yearly consumption, therefore, of rocks,
candies, hard-bakes, &c., purchased in the streets is
nearly two and a half millions of halfpenny-worths, or (at
the rate of ½d. an ounce) about 70 tons weight per
annum, costing the consumers about
Street-sellers of Cough-drops.
The earnings of the principal man in the “cough-drop”
street trade may be taken at 30s. a week for twenty
weeks; that of another at 15s. for the same period; and
those of the remaining four street-sellers of the same £130
compound at 5s. each, weekly; allowing the usual cent.
per cent., we find there is annually expended by street-
buyers on cough-drops
Street-sellers of Ice Creams.
The sale of street ices may be calculated at twenty
persons, taking 1s. 6d. daily for four weeks. This gives a
£42
street consumption of 10,000 penny ices, and an annual
expenditure thereon of
Total Sum expended Yearly on Street Eatables and Drinkables £203,115
 OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF
STATIONERY, LITERATURE, AND
THE FINE ARTS.
We now come to a class of street-folk wholly distinct from any
before treated of. As yet we have been dealing principally with the
uneducated portion of the street-people—men whom, for the most
part, are allowed to remain in nearly the same primitive and brutish
state as the savage—creatures with nothing but their appetites,
instincts, and passions to move them, and made up of the same
crude combination of virtue and vice—the same generosity combined
with the same predatory tendencies as the Bedouins of the desert—
the same love of revenge and disregard of pain, and often the same
gratitude and susceptibility to kindness as the Red Indian—and,
furthermore, the same insensibility to female honour and abuse of
female weakness, and the same utter ignorance of the Divine nature
of the Godhead as marks either Bosjesman, Carib, or Thug.
The costers and many other of the street-sellers before described,
however, are bad—not so much from their own perversity as from
our selfishness. That they partake of the natural evil of human
nature is not their fault but ours,—who would be like them if we had
not been taught by others better than ourselves to controul the bad
and cherish the good principles of our hearts.
The street-sellers of stationery, literature, and the fine arts, however,
differ from all before treated of in the general, though far from
universal, education of the sect. They constitute principally the class
of street-orators, known in these days as “patterers,” and formerly
termed “mountebanks,”—people who, in the words of Strutt, strive
to “help off their wares by pompous speeches, in which little regard
is paid either to truth or propriety.” To patter, is a slang term,
meaning to speak. To indulge in this kind of oral puffery, of course,
requires a certain exercise of the intellect, and it is the
consciousness of their mental superiority which makes the patterers
look down upon the costermongers as an inferior body, with whom
they object either to be classed or to associate. The scorn of some
of the “patterers” for the mere costers is as profound as the
contempt of the pickpocket for the pure beggar. Those who have not
witnessed this pride of class among even the most degraded, can
form no adequate idea of the arrogance with which the skilled man,
no matter how base the art, looks upon the unskilled. “We are the
haristocracy of the streets,” was said to me by one of the street-
folks, who told penny fortunes with a bottle. “People don’t pay us for
what we gives ’em, but only to hear us talk. We live like yourself, sir,
by the hexercise of our hintellects—we by talking, and you by
writing.”
But notwithstanding the self-esteem of the patterers, I am inclined
to think that they are less impressionable and less susceptible of
kindness than the costers whom they despise. Dr. Conolly has told
us that, even among the insane, the educated classes are the most
difficult to move and govern through their affections. They are
invariably suspicious, attributing unworthy motives to every benefit
conferred, and consequently incapable of being touched by any
sympathy on the part of those who may be affected by their
distress. So far as my experience goes it is the same with the street-
patterers. Any attempt to befriend them is almost sure to be met
with distrust. Nor does their mode of life serve in any way to lessen
their misgivings. Conscious how much their own livelihood depends
upon assumption and trickery, they naturally consider that others
have some “dodge,” as they call it, or some latent object in view
when any good is sought to be done them. The impulsive
costermonger, however, approximating more closely to the primitive
man, moved solely by his feelings, is as easily humanized by any
kindness as he is brutified by any injury.
The patterers, again, though certainly more intellectual, are scarcely
less immoral than the costers. Their superior cleverness gives them
the power of justifying and speciously glossing their evil practices,
but serves in no way to restrain them; thus affording the social
philosopher another melancholy instance of the evil of developing
the intellect without the conscience—of teaching people to know
what is morally beautiful and ugly, without teaching them at the
same time to feel and delight in the one and abhor the other—or, in
other words, of quickening the cunning and checking the emotions
of the individual.
Among the patterers marriage is as little frequent as among the
costermongers; with the exception of the older class, who “were
perhaps married before they took to the streets.” Hardly one of the
patterers, however, has been bred to a street life; and this
constitutes another line of demarcation between them and the
costermongers.
The costers, we have seen, are mostly hereditary wanderers—having
been as it were born to frequent the public thoroughfares; some few
of the itinerant dealers in fish, fruit, and vegetables, have it is true
been driven by want of employment to adopt street-selling as a
means of living, but these are, so to speak, the aliens rather than
the natives of the streets. The patterers, on the other hand, have for
the most part neither been born and bred nor driven to a street life
—but have rather taken to it from a natural love of what they call
“roving.” This propensity to lapse from a civilized into a nomad state
—to pass from a settler into a wanderer—is a peculiar characteristic
of the pattering tribe. The tendency however is by no means
extraordinary; for ethnology teaches us, that whereas many
abandon the habits of civilized life to adopt those of a nomadic state
of existence, but few of the wandering tribes give up vagabondising
and betake themselves to settled occupations. The innate “love of a
roving life,” which many of the street-people themselves speak of as
the cause of their originally taking to the streets, appears to be
accompanied by several peculiar characteristics; among the most
marked of these are an indomitable “self-will” or hatred of the least
restraint or controul—an innate aversion to every species of law or
government, whether political, moral, or domestic—a stubborn,
contradictory nature—an incapability of continuous labour, or
remaining long in the same place occupied with the same object, or
attending to the same subject—an unusual predilection for
amusements, and especially for what partakes of the ludicrous—
together with a great relish of all that is ingenious, and so finding
extreme delight in tricks and frauds of every kind. There are two
patterers now in the streets (brothers)—well-educated and
respectably connected—who candidly confess they prefer that kind
of life to any other, and would not leave it if they could.
Nor are the patterers less remarkable than the costermongers for
their utter absence of all religious feeling. There is, however, this
distinction between the two classes—that whereas the creedlessness
of the one is but the consequence of brutish ignorance, that of the
other is the result of natural perversity and educated scepticism—as
the street-patterers include many men of respectable connections,
and even classical attainments. Among them, may be found the son
of a military officer, a clergyman, a man brought up to the profession
of medicine, two Grecians of the Blue-coat School, clerks, shopmen,
and a class who have been educated to no especial calling—some of
the latter being the natural sons of gentlemen and noblemen—and
who, when deprived of the support of their parents or friends, have
taken to the streets for bread. Many of the younger and smarter
men, I am assured, reside with women of the town, though they
may not be dependent for their livelihood on the wages got by the
infamy of these women. Not a few of the patterers, too, in their
dress and appearance, present but little difference to that of the
“gent.” Some wear a moustache, while others indulge in a Henri-
Quatre beard. The patterers are, moreover, as a body, not
distinguished by that good and friendly feeling one to another which
is remarkable among costermongers. If an absence of heartiness
and good fellowship be characteristic of an aristocracy—as some
political philosophers contend—then the patterers may indeed be
said to be the aristocrats of the streets.
The patterers or oratorical street-sellers include among their class
many itinerant traders, other than the wandering “paper-workers”—
as those vending the several varieties of street-literature are
generally denominated. The Cheap Jacks, or oratorical hucksters of
hardware at fairs and other places, are among the most celebrated
and humorous of this class. The commercial arts and jests of some
of these people, display considerable cleverness. Many of their jokes,
it is true, are traditional—and as purely a matter of parrotry as the
witticisms of the “funny gentlemen” on the stage, but their ready
adaptation of accidental circumstances to the purposes of their
business, betrays a modicum of wit far beyond that which falls to the
share of ordinary “low comedians.” The street-vendors of cough
drops—infallible cures for the toothache and other ailments—also
belong to the pattering class. These are, as was before stated, the
remains of the obsolete mountebanks of England and the
saltinbanque of France—a class of al fresco orators who derived their
names from the bench—the street pulpit, rostrum, or platform—that
they ascended, in order the better to deliver their harangues. The
street jugglers, actors, and showmen, as well as the street-sellers of
grease-removing compositions, corn-salve, razor-paste, plating-balls,
waterproof blacking, rat poisons, sovereigns sold for wagers, and a
multiplicity of similar street-trickeries—such as oratorical begging—
are other ingenious and wordy members of the same chattering,
jabbering, or “pattering” fraternity. These will all be spoken of under
the head of the different things they respectively sell or do. For the
present we have only to deal with that portion of the “pattering”
body who are engaged in the street sale of literature—or the “paper-
workers” as they call themselves. The latter include the “running
patterers,” or “death-hunters;” being men (no women) engaged in
vending last dying speeches and confessions—in hawking “se-cond
edi-tions” of newspapers—or else in “working,” that is to say, in
getting rid of what are technically termed “cocks;” which, in polite
language, means accounts of fabulous duels between ladies of
fashion—of apocryphal elopements, or fictitious love-letters of
sporting noblemen and certain young milliners not a hundred miles
from the spot—“cooked” assassinations and sudden deaths of
eminent individuals—pretended jealous affrays between Her Majesty
and the Prince Consort (but these papers are now never worked)—
or awful tragedies, including mendacious murders, impossible
robberies, and delusive suicides.
The sellers of these choice articles, however, belong more
particularly to that order or species of the pattering genus known as
“running patterers,” or “flying stationers,” from the fact of their being
continually on the move while describing the attractions of the
“papers” they have to sell. Contradistinguished from them, however,
are the “standing patterers,” or those for whose less startling
announcements a crowd is necessary, in order that the audience
may have time to swallow the many marvels worked by their wares.
The standing patterers require, therefore, what they term a “pitch,”
that is to say a fixed locality, where they can hold forth to a gaping
multitude for, at least, some few minutes continuously. They are
mainly such street-sellers as deal in nostrums and the different kinds
of street “wonders.” Occasionally, however, the running patterer
(who is especially literary) transmigrates into a standing one,
betaking himself to “board work,” as it is termed in street
technology, and stopping at the corners of thoroughfares with a
large pictorial placard raised upon a pole, and glowing with a highly-
coloured exaggeration of the interesting terrors of the pamphlet he
has for sale. This is either “The Life of Calcraft, the Hangman,” “The
Diabolical Practices of Dr. —— on his Patients when in a state of
Mesmerism,” or “The Secret Doings at the White House, Soho,” and
other similar attractively-repulsive details. Akin to this “board work”
is the practice of what is called “strawing,” or selling straws in the
street, and giving away with them something that is either really or
fictionally forbidden to be sold,—as indecent papers, political songs,
and the like. This practice, however, is now seldom resorted to, while
the sale of “secret papers” is rarely carried on in public. It is true,
there are three or four patterers who live chiefly by professing to
dispose of “sealed packets” of obscene drawings and cards for
gentlemen; but this is generally a trick adopted to extort money
from old debauchees, young libertines, and people of degraded or
diseased tastes; for the packets, on being opened, seldom contain
anything but an odd number of some defunct periodical. There is,
however, a large traffic in such secret papers carried on in what is
called “the public-house trade,” that is to say, by itinerant “paper-
workers” (mostly women), who never make their appearance in the
streets, but obtain a livelihood by “busking,” as it is technically
termed, or, in other words, by offering their goods for sale only at
the bars and in the tap-rooms and parlours of taverns. The excessive
indulgence of one appetite is often accompanied by the disease of a
second; the drunkard, of course, is supereminently a sensualist, and
is therefore easily taken by anything that tends to stimulate his
exhausted desires: so sure is it that one form of bestiality is a
necessary concomitant of another. There is another species of
patterer, who, though usually included among the standing
patterers, belongs rather to an intermediate class, viz., those who
neither stand nor “run,” as they descant upon what they sell; but
those walk at so slow a rate that, though never stationary, they can
hardly be said to move. These are the reciters of dialogues, litanies,
and the various street “squibs” upon passing events; they also
include the public propounders of conundrums, and the “hundred
and fifty popular song” enumerators—such as are represented in the
engraving here given. Closely connected with them are the
“chaunters,” or those who do not cry, but (if one may so far stretch
the English language) sing the contents of the “papers” they vend.
These traffickers constitute the principal street-sellers of literature,
or “paper-workers,” of the “pattering” class. In addition to them
there are many others vending “papers” in the public thoroughfares,
who are mere traders resorting to no other acts for the disposal of
their goods than a simple cry or exposition of them; and many of
these are but poor, humble, struggling, and inoffensive dealers. They
do not puff or represent what they have to sell as what it is not—
(allowing them a fair commercial latitude). They are not of the
“enterprising” class of street tradesmen. Among these are the street-
sellers of stationery—such as note-paper, envelopes, pens, ink,
pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers. Belonging to the same class, too,
are the street-vendors of almanacs, pocket-books, memorandum and
account-books. Then there are the sellers of odd numbers of
periodicals and broadsheets, and those who vend either playing
cards, conversation cards, stenographic cards, and (at Epsom, Ascot,
&c.) racing cards. Besides these, again, there are the vendors of
illustrated cards, such as those embellished with engravings of the
Crystal Palace, Views of the Houses of Parliament, as well as the
gelatine poetry cards—all of whom, with the exception of the racing-
card sellers (who belong generally to the pattering tribe), partake of
the usual characteristics of the street-selling class.
After these may be enumerated the vendors of old engravings out of
inverted umbrellas, and the hawkers of coloured pictures in frames.
Then there are the old book-stalls and barrows, and “the pinners-
up,” as they are termed, or sellers of old songs pinned against the
wall, as well as the vendors of manuscript music. Moreover,
appertaining to the same class, there are the vendors of playbills
and “books of the performance” outside the theatre; and lastly, the
pretended sellers of tracts—such as the Lascars and others, who use
this kind of street traffic as a cloak for the more profitable trade of
begging. The street-sellers of images, although strictly comprised
within those who vend fine art productions in the public
thoroughfares will be treated of under the head of The Street Italians,
to which class they mostly belong.

Of the former and present Street-patterers.

Of the street-patterers the running (or flying) trader announces the
contents of the paper he is offering for sale, as he proceeds on his
mission. It is usually the detail of some “barbarious and horrible
murder,” or of some extraordinary occurrence—such as the attack on
Marshal Haynau—which has roused public attention; or the paper
announced as descriptive of a murder, or of some exciting event,
may in reality be some odd number of a defunct periodical. “It’s
astonishing,” said one patterer to me, “how few people ever
complain of having been took in. It hurts their feelings to lose a
halfpenny, but it hurts their pride too much, when they’re had, to
grumble in public about it.” On this head, then, I need give no
further general explanation.
In times of excitement the running patterer (or “stationer,” as he was
and is sometimes called) has reaped the best harvest. When the
Popish plot agitated England in the reign of Charles II. the
“Narratives” of the design of a handful of men to assassinate a
whole nation, were eagerly purchased in the streets and taverns.
And this has been the case during the progress of any absorbing
event subsequently. I was told by a very old gentleman, who had
heard it from his grandfather, that in some of the quiet towns of the
north of England, in Durham and Yorkshire, there was the greatest
eagerness to purchase from the street-sellers any paper relative to
the progress of the forces under Charles Edward Stuart, in 1745.
This was especially the case when it became known that the “rebels”
had gained possession of Carlisle, and it was uncertain what might
be their route southward. About the period of the “affair of the ’45,”
and in the autumn following the decisive battle of Culloden (in April,
1746), the “Northern Lights” were more than usually brilliant, or
more than usually remarked, and a meteor or two had been seen.
The street-sellers were then to be found in fairs and markets,
vending wonderful accounts of these wonderful phenomena.
I have already alluded to the character of the old mountebank, and
to his “pompous orations,” having “as little regard to truth as to
propriety.” There certainly is little pompousness in the
announcements of the patterers, though in their general disregard of
truth they resemble those of the mountebank. The mountebank,
however, addressed his audience from a stage, and made his
address attractive by mixing up with it music, dancing, and tumbling;
sometimes, also, equestrianism on the green of a village; and by
having always the services of a merry-andrew, or clown. The
nostrums of these quacks were all as unequalled for cheapness as
for infallibility, and their impudence and coolness ensured success.
Their practices are as well exposed in some of the Spectators of
1711-12 as the puppet-playing of Powel was good-humouredly
ridiculed. One especial instance is cited, where a mountebank,
announcing himself a native of Hammersmith, where he was holding
forth, offered to make a present of 5s. to every brother native of
Hammersmith among his audience. The mountebank then drew from
a long bag a handful of little packets, each of which, he informed the
spectators, was constantly sold for 5s. 6d., but that out of love to his
native hamlet he would bate the odd 5s. to every inhabitant of the
place. The whole assembly immediately closed with his generous
offer.
There is a scene in Moncrieff’s popular farce of “Rochester,” where
the hero personates a mountebank, which may be here cited as
affording a good idea of the “pompous orations” indulged in by the
street orators in days of yore:
“Silence there, and hear me, for my words are more
precious than gold; I am the renowned and far-famed
Doctor Paracelsus Bombastes Esculapus Galen dam
Humbug von Quack, member of all the colleges under the
Moon: M.D., L.M.D., F.R.S., L.L.D., A.S.S.—and all the rest
of the letters in the alphabet: I am the seventh son of a
seventh son—kill or cure is my motto—and I always do it;
I cured the great Emperor of Nova Scotia, of a polypus,
after he had been given over by all the faculty—he lay to
all appearance dead; the first pill he took, he opened his
eyes; the second, he raised his head; and the third, he
jumped up and danced a hornpipe. I don’t want to sound
my own praise—blow the trumpet, Balaam (Balaam blows
trumpet); but I tapped the great Cham of Tartary at a
sitting, of a terrible dropsy, so that I didn’t leave a drop in
him! I cure the palsy, the dropsy, the lunacy, and all the
sighs, without costing anybody a sigh; vertigo, pertigo,
lumbago, and all the other go’s are sure to go, whenever I
come.”
In his unscrupulousness and boldness in street announcements, and
sometimes in his humour and satire, we find the patterer of the
present day to be the mountebank of old descended from his
platform into the streets—but without his music, his clown, or his
dress.
There was formerly, also, another class, differing little from the
habits of that variety of patterers of the present day who “busk” it,
or “work the public-houses.”
“The jestours,” says Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes
of the People of England,” “or, as the word is often written
in the old English dialect, ‘gesters,’ were the relaters of the
gestes, that is, the actions of famous persons, whether
fabulous or real; and these stories were of two kinds, the
one to excite pity, and the other to move laughter, as we
learn from Chaucer:

‘And jestours that tellen tales,

Both of wepying and of game.’

The tales of ‘game,’ as the poet expresses himself were

short jocular stories calculated to promote merriment, in
which the reciters paid little respect to the claims of
propriety or even of common decency. The tales of ‘game,’
however, were much more popular than those of weeping,
and probably for the very reason that ought to have
operated the most powerfully for their suppression. The
gestours, whose powers were chiefly employed in the
hours of conviviality, finding by experience that lessons of
instruction were much less seasonable at such times, than
idle tales productive of mirth and laughter, accommodated
their narrations to the general taste of the times,
regardless of the mischiefs they occasioned by vitiating
the morals of their hearers. Hence it is that the author of
the ‘Vision of Pierce the Ploughman’ calls them
contemptibly ‘japers and juglers, and janglers of gests.’ He
 describes them as haunters of taverns and common ale-
houses, amusing the lower classes of the people with
‘myrth of minstrelsy and losels’ tales,’ (loose vulgar tales,)
and calls them tale-tellers and ‘tutelers in ydell,’ (tutors of
idleness,) occasioning their auditory, ‘for love of tales, in
tavernes to drink,’ where they learned from them to jangle
and to jape, instead of attending to their more serious
duties.
“The japers, I apprehend, were the same as the
bourdours, or rybauders, an inferior class of minstrels, and
properly called jesters in the modern acceptation of the
word; whose wit, like that of the merry-andrews of the
present day (1800) consisted in low obscenity
accompanied with ludicrous gesticulation. They
sometimes, however, found admission into the houses of
the opulent. Knighton, indeed, mentions one of these
japers who was a favourite in the English court, and could
obtain any grant from the king ‘a burdando,’ that is, by
jesting. They are well described by the poet:

‘As japers and janglers, Judas’ chyldren,

Fayneth them fantasies, and fooles them maketh.’

“It was a very common and a very favourite amusement,

so late as the 16th century, to hear the recital of verses
and moral speeches, learned for that purpose by a set of
men who obtained their livelihood thereby, and who,
without ceremony, intruded themselves, not only into
taverns and other places of public resort, but also into the
houses of the nobility.”
The resemblance of the modern patterer to the classes above
mentioned will be seen when I describe the public-house actor and
reciter of the present day, as well as the standing patterer, who does
not differ so much from the running patterer in the quality of his
announcements, as in his requiring more time to make an
impression, and being indeed a sort of lecturer needing an audience;
also of the present reciters “of verses and moral speeches.” But of
these curious classes I shall proceed to treat separately.

Of the Habits, Opinions, Morals, and Religion of

Patterers generally.
In order that I might omit nothing which will give the student of that
curious phase of London life in London streets—the condition of the
patterers—a clear understanding of the subject, I procured the
following account from an educated gentleman (who has been
before alluded to in this work), and as he had been driven to live
among the class he describes, and to support himself by street-
selling, his remarks have of course all the weight due to personal
experience, as well as to close observation:—
“If there is any truth in phrenology,” writes the gentleman in
question, “the patterers—to a man—are very large in the organ of
‘self-esteem,’ from which suggestion an enquiry arises, viz., whether
they possess that of which they may justly pique themselves. To
arrive at truth about the patterers is very difficult, and indeed the
persons with whom they live are often quite in the dark about the
history, or in some cases the pursuits of their lodgers.
“I think that the patterers may be divided into three classes. First,—
those who were well born and brought up. Secondly,—those whose
parents have been dissipated and gave them little education. Thirdly,
—those who—whatever their early history—will not be or do
anything but what is of an itinerant character. I shall take a glance at
the first of these classes, presupposing that they were cradled in the
lap of indulgence, and trained to science and virtue.
“If these people take to the streets, they become, with here and
there an exception, the most reprobate and the least reclaimable. I
was once the inmate of a lodging-house, in which there were at one
time five University-men, three surgeons, and several sorts of
broken-down clerks, or of other professional men. Their general
habits were demoralised to the last degree—their oaths more horrid,
extravagant, and far-fetched than anything I ever heard: they were
stupid in logic, but very original in obscenity. Most of them scoffed at
the Bible, or perverted its passages to extenuate fraud, to justify
violence, or construct for themselves excuses for incontinence and
imposition. It will appear strange that these educated persons, when
they turn out upon the street, generally sell articles which have no
connection with literature, and very little with art. The two brothers,
who sell that wonder-working paste which removes grease from the
outside of your collar by driving it further in, were both scholars of
Christ’s Hospital. They were second Grecians, and might have gone
to college; but several visits to suburban fairs, and their
accompanying scenes of debauch, gave them a penchant for a
vagabond life, and they will probably never relinquish it. The very
tall man—there are several others—who sells razors and paste on a
red pagoda-looking stall, was apprenticed to a surgeon in Colchester,
with a premium of 300 guineas; and the little dark-visaged man,
who sells children’s money-boxes and traps to catch vermin, is the
son of a late upholsterer in Bath, who was also a magistrate of that
city. The poor man alluded to was a law-student, and kept two terms
in Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Many similar cases might be mentioned—
cases founded on real observation and experience. Some light may
be thrown upon this subject by pointing out the modus operandi by
which a friend of mine got initiated into the ‘art and mystery of
patterism.’ ‘I had lived,’ he said, ‘more than a year among the
tradesmen and tramps, who herd promiscuously together in low
lodging-houses. One afternoon I was taking tea at the same table
with a brace of patterers. They eyed me with suspicion; but,
determined to know their proceedings, I launched out the only cant
word I had then learned. They spoke of going to Chatham. Of
course, I knew the place, and asked them, “Where do you stall to in
the huey?” which, fairly translated, means, “Where do you lodge in
the town?” Convinced that I was “fly,” one of them said, “We drop
the main toper (go off the main road) and slink into the crib (house)
in the back drum (street).” After some altercation with the “mot” of
the “ken” (mistress of the lodging-house) about the cleanliness of a
knife or fork, my new acquaintance began to arrange “ground,” &c.,
for the night’s work. I got into their confidence by degrees; and I
give below a vocabulary of their talk to each other:’

Word. Meaning.
Crabshells Shoes.
Kite Paper.
Nests Varieties.
Sticky Wax.
Toff Gentleman.
Burerk Lady.
Camister Minister.
Crocus Doctor.
Bluff An excuse.
Balmy Insane.
Mill Tag A shirt.
Smeesh A shift.
Hay-bag A woman.
Doxy A wife.
Flam A lie.
Teviss A shilling.
Bull A crown.
Flag An apron.
“The cant or slang of the patterer is not the cant of the
costermonger, but a system of their own. As in the case of the
costers, it is so interlarded with their general remarks, while their
ordinary language is so smothered and subdued, that unless when
they are professionally engaged and talking of their wares, they
might almost pass for foreigners.
“There can be no doubt,” continues my informant, “that the second
class of street-patterers, to whom nature, or parents, or
circumstances have been unpropitious, are the most moral, and have
a greater sense of right and wrong, with a quicksightedness about
humane and generous things, to which the ‘aristocratic’ patterer is a
stranger. Of the dealers in useful or harmless wares—although, of
course, they use allowable exaggeration as to the goodness of the
article—many are devout communicants at church, or members of
dissenting bodies; while others are as careless about religion, and
are still to be found once or twice a week in the lecture-rooms of the
Mechanics’ Institute nearest to their residence. Orchard-street,
Westminster, is a great locality for this sort of patterers. Three well-
known characters,—Bristol George, Corporal Casey, and Jemmy the
Rake, with a very respectable and highly-informed man called
‘Grocer,’ from his having been apprenticed to that business,—have
maintained a character for great integrity among the neighbours for
many years.
“I come now to the third class of patterers,—those who, whatever
their early pursuits and pleasures, have manifested a predilection for
vagrancy, and neither can nor will settle to any ordinary calling.
There is now on the streets a man scarcely thirty years old,
conspicuous by the misfortune of a sabre-wound on the cheek. He is
a native of the Isle of Man. His father was a captain in the Buffs, and
himself a commissioned officer at seventeen. He left the army,
designing to marry and open a boarding-school. The young lady to
whom he was betrothed died, and that event might affect his mind;
at any rate, he has had 38 situations in a dozen years, and will not
keep one a week. He has a mortal antipathy to good clothes, and
will not keep them one hour. He sells anything—chiefly needle-cases.
He ‘patters’ very little in a main drag (public street); but in the little
private streets he preaches an outline of his life, and makes no
secret of his wandering propensity. His aged mother, who still lives,
pays his lodgings in Old Pye-street.
“From the hasty glance I have taken at the patterers, any well-
constructed mind may deduce the following inference: although a
great amount of intelligence sometimes consists with a great want of
principle, that an utter want of education, or mis-education, leaves
man, like a reed floating on the stream of time, to follow every
direction which the current of affairs may give him.
“There is yet another and a larger class, who are wanderers from
choice,—who would rather be street-orators, and quacks, and
performers, than anything else in the world. In nine cases out of ten,
the street-patterers are persons of intemperate habits, no veracity,
and destitute of any desire to improve their condition, even where
they have the chance. One of this crew was lately engaged at a
bazaar; he had 18s. a week, and his only work was to walk up and
down and extol the articles exhibited. This was too monotonous a
life; I happened to pass him by as he was taking his wages for the
week, and heard him say, ‘I shall cut this b—y work; I can earn more
on the streets, and be my own master.’”
It would be a mistake to suppose that the patterers, although a
vagrant, are a disorganized class. There is a telegraphic dispatch
between them, through the length and breadth of the land. If two
patterers (previously unacquainted) meet in the provinces, the
following, or something like it, will be their conversation:—“Can you
‘voker romeny’ (can you speak cant)? What is your ‘monekeer’
(name)?”—Perhaps it turns out that one is “White-headed Bob,” and
the other “Plymouth Ned.” They have a “shant of gatter” (pot of
beer) at the nearest “boozing ken” (ale-house), and swear eternal
friendship to each other. The old saying, that “When the liquor is in,
the wit is out,” is remarkably fulfilled on these occasions, for they
betray to the “flatties” (natives) all their profits and proceedings.
It is to be supposed that, in country districts, where there are no
streets, the patterer is obliged to call at the houses. As they are
mostly without the hawker’s licence, and sometimes find wet linen
before it is lost, the rural districts are not fond of their visits; and
there are generally two or three persons in a village reported to be
“gammy,” that is (unfavourable). If a patterer has been “crabbed,”
that is (offended) at any of the “cribbs” (houses), he mostly chalks a
signal on or near the door. I give one or two instances:
“Bone,” meaning good.
 “Cooper’d,” spoiled by the imprudence of some other patterer.
“Gammy,” likely to have you taken up.
“Flummuxed,” sure of a month in quod.
In most lodging-houses there is an old man who is the guide to
every “walk” in the vicinity, and who can tell every house, on every
round, that is “good for a cold ’tater.” In many cases there is over
the kitchen mantle-piece a map of the district, dotted here and there
with memorandums of failure or success.
Patterers are fond of carving their names and avocations about the
houses they visit. The old jail at Dartford has been some years a
“padding-ken.” In one of the rooms appears the following
autographs:
“Jemmy, the Rake, bound to Bristol; bad beds, but no bugs. Thank
God for all things.”
“Razor George and his moll slept here the day afore Christmas; just
out of ‘stir’ (jail), for ‘muzzling a peeler.’”
“Scotch Mary, with ‘driz’ (lace), bound to Dover and back, please
God.”
Sometimes these inscriptions are coarse and obscene; sometimes
very well written and orderly. Nor do they want illustrations.
At the old factory, Lincoln, is a portrait of the town beadle, formerly
a soldier; it is drawn with different-coloured chalks, and ends with
the following couplet:

“You are a B for false swearing,

In hell they’ll roast you like a herring.”

Concubinage is very common among patterers, especially on their

travels; they have their regular rounds, and call the peregrination
“going on circuit.” For the most part they are early risers; this gives
them a facility for meeting poor girls who have had a night’s shelter
in the union workhouses. They offer such girls some refreshment,—
swear they are single men,—and promise comforts certainly superior
to the immediate position of their victims. Consent is generally
obtained; perhaps a girl of 14 or 15, previously virtuous, is induced
to believe in a promise of constant protection, but finds herself, the
next morning, ruined and deserted; nor is it unlikely that, within a
month or two, she will see her seducer in the company of a dozen
incidental wives. A gray-headed miscreant called “Cutler Tom” boasts
of 500 such exploits; and there is too great reason to believe that
the picture of his own drawing is not greatly overcharged.
Some of the patterers are married men, but of this class very few
are faithful to the solemn obligation. I have heard of a renowned
patterer of this class who was married to four women, and had lived
in criminal intercourse with his own sister, and his own daughter by
one of the wives. This sad rule has, however, I am happy to state,
some splendid exceptions. There is a man called “Andy”—well known
as the companion of “Hopping Ned;” this “Andy” has a wife of great
personal attractions, a splendid figure, and teeth without a parallel.
She is a strictly-virtuous woman, a most devoted wife, and tender
mother; very charitable to any one in want of a meal, and very
constant (she is a Catholic) in her religious duties. Another man of
the same school, whose name has escaped me, is, with his wife, an
exception to the stigma on almost the whole class; the couple in
question have no children. The wife, whose name is Maria, has been
in every hospital for some complaint in her knees, probably white
swelling: her beauty is the theme of applause, and whenever she
opens her mouth silence pervades the “paddin’ ken.” Her common
conversation is music and mathematics combined, her reading has
been masculine and extensive, and the whisper of calumny has
never yet attacked her own demeanour or her husband’s.
Of patterers who have children, many are very exemplary; sending
them to Day and Sunday-schools, causing them to say grace before
and after meals, to attend public worship, and always to speak the
truth: these, instances, however, stand in fearful contrast with the
conduct of other parents.
“I have seen,” proceeds my reverend informant, “fathers and
mothers place their boys and girls in positions of incipient enormity,
and command them to use language and gestures to each other,
which would make an harlot blush, and almost a heathen tremble. I
have hitherto viewed the patterer as a salesman,—having something
in his hand, on whose merits, real or pretended, he talks people out
of their money. By slow degrees prosperity rises, but rapid is the
advance of evil. The patterer sometimes gets ‘out of stock,’ and is
obliged, at no great sacrifice of conscience, to ‘patter’ in another
strain. In every large town sham official documents, with crests,
seals, and signatures, can be got for half-a-crown. Armed with
these, the patterer becomes a ‘lurker,’—that is, an impostor; his
papers certify any and every ‘ill that flesh is heir to.’ Shipwreck is
called a ‘shake lurk;’ loss by fire is a ‘glim.’ Sometimes the petitioner
has had a horse, which has dropped dead with the mad staggers; or
has a wife ill or dying, and six or seven children at once sickening of
the small-pox. Children are borrowed to support the appearance; the
case is certified by the minister and churchwardens of a parish which
exists only in imagination; and as many people dislike the trouble of
investigation, the patterer gets enough to raise a stock in trade, and
divides the spoil between the swag-shop and the gin-palace.
Sometimes they are detected, and get a ‘drag’ (three months in
prison). They have many narrow escapes: one occurs to me, of a
somewhat ludicrous character. A patterer and lurker (now dead)
known by the name of ‘Captain Moody,’ unable to get a ‘fakement’
written or printed, was standing almost naked in the streets of a
neighbouring town. A gentleman stood still and heard his piteous
tale, but having been ‘done’ more than once, he resolved to examine
the affair, and begged the petitioner to conduct him to his wife and
children, who were in a garret on a bed of languishing, with neither
clothes, food, nor fire, but, it appeared, with faith enough to expect
a supply from ‘Him who feedeth the ravens,’ and in whose sacred
name even a cold ’tater was implored. The patterer, or half-patterer
and half-beggar, took the gentleman (who promised a sovereign if
every thing was square) through innumerable and intricate windings,
till he came to an outhouse or sort of stable. He saw the key outside
the door, and begged the gentleman to enter and wait till he
borrowed a light of a neighbour, to show him up-stairs. The
illumination never arrived, and the poor charitable man found that
the miscreant had locked him into the stable. The patterer went to
the padding-ken,—told the story with great glee, and left that
locality within an hour of the occurrence.”
[Concerning the mendicancy and vagrancy of patterers, I shall have
more to say when I speak of vagrancy in general, and when I
describe the general state and characteristics of the low lodging-
houses in London, and those in the country, which are in intimate
connection with the metropolitan abodes of the vagrant. My present
theme is the London patterer, who is also a street-seller.]

Of the Publishers and Authors of Street-Literature.

The best known, and the most successful printer and publisher of all
who have directed their industry to supply the “paper” in demand for
street sale, and in every department of street literature, was the late
“Jemmy Catnach,” who is said to have amassed upwards of 10,000l.
in the business. He is reported to have made the greater part of this
sum during the trial of Queen Caroline, by the sale of whole-sheet
“papers,” descriptive of the trial, and embellished with “splendid
illustrations.” The next to Catnach stood the late “Tommy Pitt,” of the
noted toy and marble-warehouse. These two parties were the
Colburn and Bentley of the “paper” trade. Catnach retired from
business some years ago, and resided in a country-house at Barnet,
but he did not long survive his retirement. “He was an out and out
sort,” said one old paper-worker to me, “and if he knew you—and he
could judge according to the school you belonged to, if he hadn’t
known you long—he was friendly for a bob or two, and sometimes
for a glass. He knew the men that was stickers though, and there
was no glass for them. Why, some of his customers, sir, would have
stuck to him long enough, if there’d been a chance of another glass
—supposing they’d managed to get one—and then would have
asked him for a coach home! When I called on him, he used to say,
in his north country way—he wasn’t Scotch, but somewhere north of
England—and he was pleasant with it, ‘Well, d— you, how are you?’
He got the cream of the pail, sir.”
The present street literature printers and publishers are, Mrs. Ryle
(Catnach’s niece and successor), Mr. Birt, and Mr. Paul (formerly with
Catnach), all of the Seven Dials; Mr. Powell (formerly of Lloyd’s),
Brick-lane, Whitechapel; and Mr. Good, Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell.
Mr. Phairs, of Westminster; Mr. Taylor, of the Waterloo-road; and Mr.
Sharp, of Kent-street, Borough, have discontinued street printing.
One man greatly regretted Mr. Taylor’s discontinuing the business;
“he was so handy for the New-cut, when it was the New-cut.” Some
classes of patterers, I may here observe, work in “schools” or
“mobs” of two, three, or four, as I shall afterwards show.
The authors and poets who give its peculiar literature, alike in prose
or rhyme, to the streets, are now six in number. They are all in some
capacity or other connected with street-patter or song, and the way
in which a narrative or a “copy of werses” is prepared for press is
usually this:—The leading members of the “schools,” some of whom
refer regularly to the evening papers, when they hear of any out-of-
the-way occurrence, resort to the printer and desire its publication in
a style proper for the streets. This is usually done very speedily, the
school (or the majority of them) and the printer agreeing upon the
author. Sometimes an author will voluntarily prepare a piece of
street literature and submit it to a publisher, who, as in the case of
other publishers, accepts or declines, as he believes the production
will or will not prove remunerative. Sometimes the school carry the
manuscript with them to the printer, and undertake to buy a certain
quantity, to insure publication. The payment to the author is the
same in all cases—a shilling.
Concerning the history and character of our street and public-house
literature, I shall treat hereafter, when I can comprise the whole,
and after the descriptions of the several classes engaged in the trade
will have paved the way for the reader’s better appreciation of the
curious and important theme. I say, important; because the street-
ballad and the street-narrative, like all popular things, have their
influence on masses of the people. Specimens will be found
adduced, as I describe the several classes, or in the statements of
the patterers.
It must be borne in mind that the street author is closely restricted
in the quality of his effusion. It must be such as the patterers
approve, as the chaunters can chaunt, the ballad-singers sing, and—
above all—such as street-buyers will buy. One chaunter, who was a
great admirer of the “Song of the Shirt,” told me that if Hood himself
had written the “Pitiful Case of Georgy Sloan and his Wife,” it would
not have sold so well as a ballad he handed to me, from which I
extract a verse:

“Jane Willbred we did starve and beat her very hard

I confess we used her very cruel,
But now in a jail two long years we must bewail,
We don’t fancy mustard in the gruel.”

What I have said of the necessity which controls street authorship,

may also be said of the art which is sometimes called in to illustrate
it.
The paper now published for the streets is classed as quarter sheets,
which cost (wholesale) 1s. a gross; half sheets, which cost 2s.; and
whole or broad sheets (such as for executions), which cost 3s. 6d. a
gross the first day, and 3s. the next day or two, and afterwards, but
only if a ream be taken, 5s. 6d.; a ream contains forty dozen. When
“illustrated,” the charge is from 3d. to 1s. per ream extra. The books,
for such cases as the Sloanes, or the murder of Jael Denny, are
given in books—which are best adapted for the suburban and
country trade, when London is “worked” sufficiently—are the “whole
sheet” printed so as to fold into eight pages, each side of the paper
being then, of course, printed upon. A book is charged from 6d. to
1s. extra (to a whole sheet) per gross, and afterwards the same
extra per ream.
 Of Long Song-sellers.
I have this week given a daguerreotype of a well-known long-song
seller, and have preferred to give it as the trade, especially as
regards London, has all but disappeared, and it was curious enough.
“Long songs” first appeared between nine and ten years ago.
The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter—though some of
them pattered a little—to attract customers, but on the veritable
cheapness and novel form in which they vended popular songs,
printed on paper rather wider than this page, “three songs abreast,”
and the paper was about a yard long, which constituted the “three”
yards of song. Sometimes three slips were pasted together. The
vendors paraded the streets with their “three yards of new and
popular songs” for a penny. The songs are, or were, generally fixed
to the top of a long pole, and the vendor “cried” the different titles
as he went along. This branch of “the profession” is confined solely
to the summer; the hands in winter usually taking to the sale of
song-books, it being impossible to exhibit “the three yards” in wet or
foggy weather. The paper songs, as they fluttered from a pole,
looked at a little distance like huge much-soiled white ribbons, used
as streamers to celebrate some auspicious news. The cry of one
man, in a sort of recitative, or, as I heard it called by street-
patterers, “sing-song,” was, “Three yards a penny! Three yards a
penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! Three yards a
penny! Song, song, songs!” Others, however, were generally content
to announce merely “Three yards a penny!” One cried “Two under
fifty a fardy!” As if two hundred and fifty songs were to be sold for a
farthing. The whole number of songs was about 45. They were
afterwards sold at a halfpenny, but were shorter and fewer. It is
probable that at the best had the songs been subjected to the
admeasurement of a jury, the result might have been as little
satisfactory as to some tradesmen who, however, after having been
detected in attempts to cheat the poor in weights and scales, and to
cheat them hourly, are still “good men and true” enough to be
jurymen and parliamentary electors. The songs, I am informed, were
often about 2½ yards, (not as to paper but as to admeasurement of
type); 3 yards, occasionally, at first, and not often less than 2 yards.
The crying of the titles was not done with any other design than that
of expressing the great number of songs purchasable for “the small
charge of one penny.” Some of the patterers I conversed with would
have made it sufficiently droll. One man told me that he had cried
the following songs in his three yards, and he believed in something
like the following order, but he had cried penny song books, among
other things, lately, and might confound his more ancient and recent
cries:
“I sometimes began,” he said, “with singing, or trying to sing, for I’m
no vocalist, the first few words of any song, and them quite loud. I’d
begin

‘The Pope he leads a happy life,

He knows no care’——

‘Buffalo gals, come out to-night;’ ‘Death of Nelson;’ ‘The gay

cavalier;’ ‘Jim along Josey;’ ‘There’s a good time coming;’ ‘Drink to
me only;’ ‘Kate Kearney;’ ‘Chuckaroo-choo, choo-choo-choot-lah;’
‘Chockala-roony-ninkaping-nang;’ ‘Paga-daway-dusty-kanty-key;’
‘Hottypie-gunnypo-china-coo’ (that’s a Chinese song, sir); ‘I dreamed
that I dwelt in marble halls;’ ‘The standard bearer;’ ‘Just like love;’
‘Whistle o’er the lave o’t;’ ‘Widow Mackree;’ ‘I’ve been roaming;’ ‘Oh!
that kiss;’ ‘The old English gentleman,’ &c., &c. &c. I dares say they
was all in the three yards, or was once, and if they wasn’t there was
others as good.”
The chief purchasers of the “long songs” were boys and girls, but
mostly boys, who expended 1d. or ½d. for the curiosity and novelty
of the thing, as the songs were not in the most readable form. A few
working people bought them for their children, and some women of
the town, who often buy anything fantastic, were also customers.
When “the three yards was at their best,” the number selling them
was about 170; the wholesale charge is from 3d. to 5d. a dozen,
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

[Link]