sandwichmen

For the business world the Christmas season has ended. For the faithful, it begins. But for all and sundry it offers a few hours’ respite and rest, and for us pipe-smokers hopefully time as well for a reflective pipe. So happy holidays to you—and, in whatever fashion you celebrate the day, I wish you a very Merry Christmas! The cruel paradox of the season has been with us as long as the season itself, poignantly seen in the illustration above from Reynold’s Newspaper, London, dated December 18, 1898. While the Peterson book is out of my hands and at the printer, my interest in Charles Peterson’s life continues, and one of the narrative threads that runs through the fabric of Kapp & Peterson’s history – if you watch for it – is Christmas. And so for Christmas this year, let me relate one of the little stories about the first Peterson Christmas pipes, one that didn’t find its way into the book, “Kapp & Peterson and the Sandwich Men of London.” Although they’d been around since the 1820s, it was Charles Dickens who first described the human billboard in Sketches by Boz (1836) as “an animated sandwich, composed of a boy between two boards.” In the US these days, most of them seem to be minimum-wage kids working on the curb for fast-food, car wash or insurance chains, usually in costumes rather than clapboards. But in London at the end of the nineteenth century, the sandwichmen had become a distinct class of the working poor, so much so that in 1895 the Reynold’s Newspaper began an annual Christmas dinner for them, where clothing and personal necessities were gifted out afterwards. Evidence suggests that Charles Peterson read a number of newspapers, some for politics and some for profit. And in this regard, he was probably not unlike many of his contemporaries. One of his regular reads seems to have been the London Sunday paper Reynold’s News, whose subtitle was “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.” It expressed, according to one authority, “a radical working class approach combined with sensationalism.” On the same page as the banner illustration, we read: ANOTHER GIFT OF PIPES.TO THE EDITOR OF REYNOLD'S NEWSPAPER.   Sir,—Being a reader for many years of the valuable Reynold’s Newspaper and seeing that you take a deep interest in entertaining the poor—especially the deserving cause of entertaining the poor sandwich men—I shall be willing, on behalf of my company, Kapp & Peterson, Limited, to forward three or four gross pipes for distribution on Christmas Day to the sandwich board men.1   The celebrated Irish match manufacturers, Messrs. Paterson and Co., Limited, of Dublin and Belfast, are also willing to present five gross of their large boxes of matches to be distributed with the pipes. Wishing you and your undertaking every success, with the best wishes for a happy Christmas and prosperous New Year,—I beg to remain, yours truly,                                                                                                                            Charles Peterson                                                                                                                           55, Grafton-street, Dublin Paterson matches are…