A big lad with a dirty face, and hair like hemp, was the first of the "catch-'em-alive" boys who gave him his account of his trade. He 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 result of some street fight. He said:
"I'm an Irish boy, and nearly turned sixteen, and I've been selling fly-papers for between eight and nine year. I must have begun to sell them when they first come out. Another boy first tould me of them, and he'd been selling 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 selling '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 selling 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 different 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?' 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 borders of the country, about Highbury, Croydon, and Brentford. 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 selling before us all the way, and we comes back the same road. Last year we sold 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 two in the morning. I sold eighteen dozen out in that d'rection the other day, and got rid of them before I had got half-way. But flies are very scarce at Croydon this year, and we haven't done so well. There ain't half as many flies this summer as last.
"Some people says the papers draws more flies than they ketches, and that when one gets in, there's twenty others will come to see him. It's according to the weather as the flies is about. If we have a fine day it fetches them out, but a cold day kills more than our papers.
"We sell the most papers to little cook-shops and sweetmeat shops. We don't sell so many at private houses. The public-houses is pretty good customers, 'cos the beer draws the flies. I sold nine dozen at one house — a school — at Highgate, the other day. I sold 'em two for three-ha' pence. That was a good hit, but then t'other days we loses. If we can make a ha'penny each we thinks we does well.
"Those that sell their papers at three a-penny buys them at St. Giles's, and pays only three ha'pence a dozen for them, but they ain't half as big and good as those we pays tuppence-ha'penny a dozen for.
"Barnet is a good place for fly-papers; there's a good lot of flies down there. There used to be a man at Barnet as made 'em, but I can't say if he do now. There's another at Brentford, so it ain't much good going that way.
"In cold weather the papers keep pretty well, and will last for months with just a little warming at the fire; for they tears on opening when they are dry. You see we always carry them with the sticky sides doubled up together like a sheet of writing-paper. In hot weather, if you keep them folded up, they lasts very well; but if you opens them, they dry up. It's easy opening them in hot weather, for they comes apart as easy as peeling a horrange. We generally carries the papers in a bundle on our arm, and we ties a paper as is loaded with flies round our cap, just to show the people the way to ketch 'em. We get a loaded paper given to us at a shop.
"When the papers come out first, we use to do very well with fly-papers; but now it's hard work to make our own money for 'em. Some days we used to make six shillings a day regular. But then we usen't to go out every day, but take a rest at home. If we do well one day, then we might stop idle another day, resting. You see, we had to do our twenty or thirty miles selling them to get that money, and then the next day we was tired.
"The selling of papers is gradual falling off. I could go out and sell twenty dozen once where I couldn't sell one now. I think I does a very grand day's work if I earns a shilling. Perhaps some days I may lose by them. You see, if it's a very hot day, the papers gets dusty; and besides, the stuff gets melted and oozes out; though that don't do much harm, 'cos we gets a bit of whitening and rubs 'em over. Four years ago we might make ten shillings a day at the papers, but now, taking from one end of the fly-season to the other, which is about three months, I think we makes about one shilling a day out of papers, though even that ain't quite certain. I never goes out without getting rid of mine, somehow or another, but then I am obleeged to walk quick and look about me.
"When it's a bad time for selling the papers, such as a wet, cold day, then most of the fly-paper boys goes out with brushes, cleaning boots. Most of the boys is now out hopping. They goes reg'lar every year after the season is give over for flies.
"The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and turpentine and resin. It's seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes after it gets on the paper, and then it's as dead as a house. The blue-bottles is tougher, but they don't last long, though they keeps on fizzing as if they was trying to make a hole in the paper. The stuff is only poisonous for flies, though I never heard of anybody as ever eat a fly-paper."
A second lad, in conclusion, said: "There's lots of boys going selling 'ketch-'em-alive oh's' from Golden-lane, and Whitechapel and the Borough. There's lots, too, comes out of Gray's-inn-lane and St. Giles's. Near every boy who has nothing to do goes out with fly-papers. Perhaps it ain't that the flies is failed off that we don't sell so many papers now, but because there's so many boys at it."
A third, of the lot the most intelligent and gentle in his demeanor, though the smallest in stature, said:
"I've been longer at it than the last boy, though I'm only getting on for thirteen, and he's older than I'm; 'cos I'm little and he's big, getting a man. But I can sell them quite as well as he can, and sometimes better, for I can holler out just as loud, and I've got reg'lar places to go to. I was a very little fellow when I first went out with them, but I could sell them pretty well then, sometimes three or four dozen a day. I've got one place, in a stable, where I can sell a dozen at a time to country people.
"I calls out in the streets, and I goes into the shops, too, and calls out, * Ketch 'em alive, ketch 'em alive; ketch all the nasty black-beetles, blue-bottles, and flies; ketch 'em from teasing the baby's eyes.' That's what most of us boys cries out. Some boys who is stupid only says, 'Ketch 'em alive,' but people don't buy so well from them.
"Up in St. Giles's there is a lot of fly-boys, but they're a bad set, and will fling mud at gentlemen, and some prigs the gentlemen's pockets. Sometimes, if I sell more than a big boy, he'll get mad and hit me. He'll tell me to give him a halfpenny and he won't touch me, and that if I don't he'll kill me. Some of the boys takes an open fly-paper, and makes me look another way, and then they sticks the ketch-'em-alive on my face. The stuff won't come off without soap and hot water, and it goes black, and looks like mud. One day a boy had a broken fly-paper, and I was taking a drink of water, and he come behind me and slapped it up in my face. A gentleman as saw him give him a crack with a stick and me twopence. It takes your breath away, until a man comes and takes it off. It all sticked to my hair, and I couldn't rack (comb) right for some time ....
"I don't like going along with other boys, they take your customers away; for perhaps they'll sell 'em at three a penny to 'em, and spoil the customers for you. I won't go with the big boy you saw, 'cos he's such a blackguard; when he's in the country he'll go up to a lady and say, 'Want a fly-paper, ma'am?' and if she says 'No,' he'll perhaps job his head in her face — butt at her like.
"When there's no flies, and the ketch-'em-alive is out, then I goes tumbling. I can turn a catherine-wheel over on one hand. I'm going to-morrow to the country, harvesting and hopping — for, as we says, 'Go out hopping, come in jumping.' We start at three o'clock to-morrow, and we shall get about twelve o'clock at night at Dead Man's Barn. It was left for poor people to sleep in, and a man was buried there in a corner. The man had got six farms of hops; and if his son hadn't buried him there, he wouldn't have had none of the riches.
"The greatest number of fly-papers I've sold in a day is about eight dozen. I never sells no more than that; I wish I could. People won't buy 'em now. When I'm at it I makes, taking one day with another, about ten shillings a week. You see, if I sold eight dozen, I'd make four shillings. I sell 'em at a penny each, at two for three-ha'pence, and three for twopence. When they gets stale I sells 'em for three a penny. I always begin by asking a penny each, and perhaps they'll say, 'Give me two for three ha'pence?' I'll say, * Can't, ma'am,' and then they pulls out a purse full of money and gives a penny.