MUSCID^ — FLIES. 297 



A big lad with a dirty face, and hair like hemp, was tlie 

 first of the *'catch-'era-alive"boys vvlio gave hiin liis account 

 of his trade. lie was a swarthy featured boy, with a broad 

 nose like a negro's, and on his temple was a big half healed 

 scar, which he accounted for by saying that " he had been 

 runned over" by a cab, though, judging from the blackness 

 of one eye, it seemed to Mr. Mayhew to have been the re- 

 sult of some street fight. He said: 



" I'm an Irish boy, and nearly turned sixteen, and I've 

 been silling fly-papers for between eight and nine year. I 

 must have begun to sill them when they first come out. 

 Another boy first tould me of them, and he'd been silling 

 them about three weeks before me. He used to buy them 

 of a party as lives in a back-room near Drury-lane, what 

 buys paper and makes the catch 'em alive for himself. 

 When they first come out they used to charge sixpence a 

 dozen for 'em, but now they've got 'em to twopence ha'penny. 

 When I first took to silling 'em, there was a tidy lot of boys 

 at the business, but not so many as now, for all the boys 

 seem at it. In our court alone I should think there was 

 about twenty boys silling the things. 



"At first, when there was a good time, we used to buy 

 three or four gross together, but now we don't no more than 

 half a gross. As we go along the streets we call out dif- 

 ferent cries. Some of us says, 'Fly-papers, fly-papers, 

 ketch 'em all alive.' Others make a kind of song of it, 

 singing out, 'Fly-paper, ketch 'em all alive, the nasty flies, 

 tormenting the baby's eyes. Who'd be fly-blow'd, by all the 

 nasty blue-bottles, beetles, and flies V People likes to buy 

 of a boy as sings out well, 'cos it makes 'em laugh. 



"I don't think I sell so many in town as I do in the bor- 

 ders of the country, about Highbury, Croydon, and Brent- 

 ford. I've got some regular customers in town about the 

 City-prison and the Caledonian-road; and after I've served 

 them and the town custom begins to fall off", then I goes to 

 the country. We goes two of us together, and we takes 

 about three gross. We keep on silling before us all the 

 way, and we comes back the same road. Last year we 

 sould very well in Croydon, and it was the best place for 

 gitting the best price for them; they'd give a penny a piece 

 for 'em there, for they didn't know nothing about them, I 

 went off one day at ten o'clock and didn't come home till 



26* 



