Street-Seller of Nutmeg-Graters

This engraving was published in Henry Mayhew's study of 'London Labour and the London Poor: The condition of those that will work, cannot work, and will not work', first published in 1851, with an additional volume in 1861. This print may have been printed in Mayhew's revised publication of 1865. Mayhew commissioned the photographer Richard Beard to make daguerreotype portraits of some of the 'street folk' he interviewed. These were copied to make engravings to accompany the text of the publication.

The street seller of nutmeg-graters, disabled from birth, aroused great compassion in Mayhew who marvelled 'not only at the fortitude which could sustain him under all his heavy afflictions, but at the resignation (not to say philosophy) with which he bears them every one. His struggles to earn his own living (notwithstanding his physical incapacity even to put the victuals to his mouth after he has earned them), are instances of a nobility of pride that are I believe without a parallel. The poor creature’s legs and arms are completely withered; indeed he is scarcely more than head and trunk. His thigh is hardly thicker than a child’s wrist. His hands are bent inward from contraction of the sinews, the fingers being curled up and almost as thin as the claws of a bird’s foot. He is unable even to stand, and cannot move from place to place but on his knees, which are shod with leather caps, like the heels of a clog, strapped round the joint; the soles of his boots are on the upper leathers, that being the part always turned towards the ground while he is crawling along. His countenance is rather handsome than otherwise; the intelligence indicated by his ample forehead is fully borne out by the testimony as to his sagacity in his business, and the mild expression of his eye by the statements as to his feeling for all others in affliction. When interviewed by Mayhew the man described how his Mother had been a a cook in a nobleman's house when she became pregnant and stated 'They say as I was a love-child. I was not brought up by mother, but by one of her fellow-servants. After I were born, mother married a farmer in middling circumstances', Visited by his Mother about once a year she also provided financially for him and insured he went to school where he learned to read and write. His Mother and the woman who brought him up had now died and, over the last few years he had faced various challenges in his attempts to support himself. Initially successful in opening his own shop selling general goods including tinware, bad investments resulted in him losing the business and resorting to street selling. Following a spell in the workhouse he was taken in by the tinman who supplied his goods to sell and concluded 'the Almighty has made me a cripple. I can, indeed, solemnly say, that there is nothing else against me, and that I strive hard and crawl about till my limbs ache enough to drive me mad, to get an honest livelihood'.
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