Dicky Lumskull’s Ramble Through London
March 4, 2025
Courtesy of Mike Henbrey, it is my pleasure to publish this three-hundred-year-old ballad of the London streets and the trades you might expect to find in each of them, as printed and published by J. Pitts, Wholesale Toy & Marble Warehouse, 6 Great St Andrew Street, Seven Dials
Copyright © Mike Henbrey Collection
GLOSSARY
by Spitalfields Life Contributing Slang Lexicographer Jonathon Green
Bellman – one who rings a bell and makes announcements, a town crier
Clogger – a clogmaker
Cropper – one who operates a shearing machine, either for metal or cloth
Currier – one whose trade is the dressing and colouring of leather after it is tanned
Edger – is presumably Edgeware
Fingersmith – a pickpocket
Gauger – an exciseman, especially who who checks measurements of liquor
Lumper – a labourer, especially on the docks
Shees (Wentworth St) – a misprint for shoes [nothing in OED]
Tow hackler (or Heckler) – one who dresses tow, i.e. unworked flax, with a heckle, a form of comb, splitting and straightening the fibres
Triangles – my sense is that these are triangular, filled pastries [again, nothing in OED]
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NOTE – Lumskull is not in my Green’s Dictionary of Slang nor indeed the OED where one might have expected it as an alternative spelling of num(b)scull/num(b)skull. Seems to combine that word and lummocks/lummox.
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Can place most locations but I’m baffled by Birmingham. Can’t think of a street name and while I can accept Edgeware and Watford being included in London at a big stretch really can’t believe it means the town in Warwickshire
To Penny’s comment, I was puzzled about the reference to Birmingham (my home City) but he also mentions Wolverhampton so he must definitely mean the West Midlands!
Interesting that he was familiar with the places.
A bit reminiscent of the albeit much shorter litanies of street names and trades in the song “Jack of All Trades”. There are several versions. The Dublin version as per the Chieftains contains the following lines and similar.
In Golden Lane I sold old shoes
In Meath Street was a grinder
In Barrack Street I lost me wife
And I’m glad I ne’er did find her
In Mary’s Lane I dyed old clothes
Of which I’ve often boasted
And later in Exchequer Street
Sold mutton, ready roasted
There was a branch of the BoE in Birmingham:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/museum/online-collections/blog/the-birmingham-special
But then there was another BoE Branch in Fleet Street until 1975.