The owner of a distressed chair

This chair went out into the garden

to make up numbers one summer evening

and was never brought back in.

It has already had one new lease of life -

I found it in a junk shop,

and re-caned the seat myself,

but I think it's too far gone now.

What a pity we don't have chair menders anymore.

The Chair Mender by Myles Birket Foster c. 1862

I wonder where the last one was seen.

Chair menders were classed as pedlars.

Section 3 of The Pedlar's Act 1871 defines them thus:

'any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals,

mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse,

or other beast of bearing or drawing burden,

travels and trades on foot

and goes from town to town or to other men's house,

carrying or selling or exposing for sale any goods,

wares, merchandise immediately to be delivered,

or selling or offering his skill in handicraft.'

In The Law of Street trading including Markets and Fairs 
by Barry Hough

is this observation by J Hutchinson,

'If the distinction is to be encapsulated in an aphorism,

one might say that a pedlar is one who trades as he travels 

as distinct from one who merely travels to trade.

I do not mean that he must not stop...

the chair mender stops in order to mend chairs:

but the feature which makes him a pedlar 

is that he goes from place to place,

mending a chair here and a chair there:

He comes to the owners of distressed chairs, 

rather than setting up his pitch

and allowing them to come to him.'

And if you think that this fine distinction is of little relevance today

I discovered all this information on a local authority website

where it had been invoked to deal with

prohibited street trading in a shopping centre.

Next week:

How to be a costermonger.

You will need a large neckerchief.