Of the Street-sellers of Plum “Duff” or Dough

Plum dough is one of the street-eatables—though perhaps it is rather a violence to class it with the street-pastry—which is usually made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest description. It is sometimes made in the rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more frequently in the “roly-poly” style. Hot pudding used to be of much more extensive sale in the streets. One informant told me that twenty or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire, pudding, “with plums in it,” was a popular street business. The “plums,” as in the orthodox plum-puddings, are raisins. The street-vendors of plum “duff” are now very few, only six as an average, and generally women, or if a man be the salesman he is the woman’s husband. The sale is for the most part an evening sale, and some vend the plum dough only on a Saturday night. A woman in Leather-lane, whose trade is a Saturday night trade, is accounted “one of the best plum duffs” in London, as regards the quality of the comestible, but her trade is not considerable.

The vendors of plum dough are the street-sellers who live by vending other articles, and resort to plum dough, as well as to other things, “as a help.” This dough is sold out of baskets in which it is kept hot by being covered with cloths, sometimes two and even three, thick; and the smoke issuing out of the basket, and the cry of the street-seller, “Hot plum duff, hot plum,” invite custom. A quartern of flour, 5d.; ½ lb. Valentia raisins, 2d.; dripping and suet in equal proportions, 2½d.; treacle, ½d.; and allspice, ½d.—in all 10½d.; supply a roly-poly of twenty pennyworths. The treacle, however, is only introduced “to make the dough look rich and spicy,” and must be used sparingly.

The plum dough is sold in slices at ½d. or 1d. each, and the purchasers are almost exclusively boys and girls—boys being at least three-fourths of the revellers in this street luxury. I have ascertained—as far as the information of the street-sellers enables me to ascertain—that take the year through, six “plum duffers” take 1s. a day each, for four winter months, including Sundays, when the trade is likewise prosecuted. Some will take from 4s. to 10s. (but rarely 10s.) on a Saturday night, and nothing on other nights, and some do a little in the summer. The vendors, who are all stationary, stand chiefly in the street-markets and reside near their stands, so that they can get relays of hot dough.

If we calculate then 42s. a week as the takings of six persons, for five months, so including the summer trade, we find that upwards of 200l. is expended in the street purchase of plum dough, nearly half of which is profit. The trade, however, is reckoned among those which will disappear altogether from the streets.

The capital required to start is: basket, 1s. 9d.; cloths, 6d.; pan for boiling, 2s.; knife, 2d.; stock-money, 2s.; in all about, 7s. 6d.