I wish I could find more pictures of them, but here’s one belonging to a rat catcher at a Renaissance Fair. It’s a simple device: a rack on a pole to which are tired the peddler’s wares, which might be anything from candles to hats to socks to [anything you can put on a string]. I’ve mainly seen them in street scenes in movies set from the medieval through Victorian eras where peddlers still walked up and down streets hawking their wares.
Anyone know if there’s a more precise name?
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As far as I can tell, peddlers either carried their wares on their backs, or on carts; hand or horse drawn.
Maybe the ones you see in films are just Hollywood.
In current language, that’s a rat pole. The cage at the top is specific to a rat catcher. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it as a peddlers pole.
PS: In English , a pole used to carry things are called a yoke. or a carrying pole
used as a portable display stand, the taller the better and they put the valuable goods up where they are touched less… (less damage and theft). Also if the shop sells that they probably have a range of things, such as bread and ready to go morsels.
This particular one has a cage on top. It doubles as a cage and basket as well as 360 degree display .
Its a stand and he can walk the streets with it too.
Not worthy of getting its own name, its a tall peddlers pole.
(peddlers might have a short pole, eg for hanging a swag off the back, or a shoulder pole, for carrying equal weights front to back or side to side.)
Display pole …
I’ve seen them being used to sell cotton candy at ballgames, street fairs, and night markets – something like this but scaled up in size and held vertically by the vendor.
Good way to put the goods on display. I’ve no idea what they’re called.
I’ve never seen one in any pre-20th century image.
I think they are fairly modern, but they have become a ‘thing’ in Hollywood historical movies. Like leather wrist bands in Roman movies, or horns on Viking helmets.
The ones related to occupations displayed at static stores & workshops are guildsigns. It’s almost certain ratcatchers would have had a guild, it wasn’t considered a pariah profession at the time, so this was just a free-standing variant of a guild sign.
Guild signs, shop signs, and inn signs are very different - fixed signs attached to a wall, usually with a horizontal bar.
There was a rat catcher’s guild in one of Terry Pratchett’s fantasy novels, and I assume that’s the main reason why there are people dressed as rat catchers at Renaissance fairs. But that was a joke.
In real life, guilds were formed by prosperous, skilled craftsmen and merchants, who were always upper-middle class respectable citizens. Rat catchers were badly paid and badly thought-of menials, barely one step up from beggars, and below even the servant class. People of that class did not have guilds.
However, before modern times, you could usually tell the profession of any worker from his clothes and the tools he carried. Most people who were not wealthy could afford only one set of clothes for daily use, and perhaps something better for special occasions, so people wore work clothing related to their jobs almost all the time. So you could probably tell that someone was a rat catcher fairly easily.
He wore a flat cap; but, more importantly, he tied up his trouser legs with string.
He would also have a small dog on a string.
A yoke is not a pole. A yoke (for humans) was used horizontally and shaped to fit the shoulders of a man. Chains at either end hung down with the load held low down. My Uncle used one to fetch water in two buckets from the village well.
There’s a picture of a guy selling rabbits from a pole in this description of the book “The Cryes of the City of London Drawn after the Life” written and drawn in 1687.
Hopefully not the same string.
I had never seen (that I can remember) a rat-catcher’s pole before, so I did some googling last night, and while I didn’t find an answer to the OP, I did find more images, such as this, this, and this, and this history of signs that doesn’t mention vendors carrying them around, which you would suspect they would mention if it were once common.
This is not a pole, but a carrying stick. It’s not for holding his wares up high to display them, but to carry them conveniently over his shoulder.
Sticks were often used to carry any kind of heavy or unwieldy bundle or burden. Like the proverbial bundle carried by tramps or kids running away from home.
Just to nitpick, but the proverbial bundle is a bindle.
