The Wager

Newspaper advertisement in the form of a ballad entitled 'The Wager'. Although the ballad appears to refer to a cock fight it is actually an advertisement for blacking produced by Robert Warren's factory at 30 the Strand. At the top is an engraving of a cock pecking a long boot. Blacking was used for polishing shoes and doorsteps and Robert Warren's was the most famous and successful blacking factory in London. As noted on the advertisement the firm sold blacking liquid in bottles and blacking paste in pots of three different sizes, priced 6d, 12d and 18d each 'in every town in the KIngdon'. Many firms were set up as rivals to Warren's, attempting to cash in on the success and emulate the 'secret' recipe of the firm.

In 1823, Charles Dickens was sent, at the age of 11, to work in a blacking factory run by William Edward Woodd and George Lamerte a cousin by marriage to the Dickens family. Dickens never recovered from the humiliation of having been sent to work in the factory due to his Father's financial problems. He described his work as 'to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string’ and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary’s shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots’.