blue coat with gilt buttons, buff waistcoat, and stiff broad white neckcloth or stock, a gold-headed cane always in hand.  By way of contrast to these worthies, at about the same period (1828-30) was one “Muddlepate Ward,” the head of a family who had located themselves in a gravel pit at the Lozells, and who used to drive about the town with an old carriage drawn by pairs of donkeys and ponies, the harness being composed of odd pieces of old rope, and the whip a hedgestake with a bit of string, the whole turnout being as remarkable for dirt as the first-named “dandies” were for cleanliness.—­“Billy Button” was another well-known but most inoffensive character, who died here May 3, 1838.  His real name was never published, but he belonged to a good family, and early in life he had been an officer in the Navy (some of his biographers say “a commander"), but lost his senses when returning from a long voyage, on hearing of the sudden death of a young lady to whom he was to have been married, and he always answered to her name, Jessie.  He went about singing, and the refrain of one of his favourite songs—­

  “Oysters, sir!  Oysters, sir! 
     Oysters, sir, I cry;
  They are the finest oysters, sir,
     That ever you could buy.”

was for years after “Billy Button’s” death the nightly “cry” of more than one peripatetic shellfishmonger.  The peculiarity that obtained for the poor fellow his soubriquet of “Billy Button” arose from the habit he had of sticking every button he could get on to his coat, which at his death, was covered so thickly (and many buttons were of rare patterns), that it is said to have weighed over 30lbs.—­“Jemmy the Rockman,” who died here in September, 1866, in his 85th year, was another well-known figure in our streets for many years.  His real name was James Guidney, and in the course of a soldier’s life, he had seen strange countries, and possibly the climates had not in every case agreed with him, for, according to his own account, he had been favoured with a celestial vision, and had received angelic orders no longer to shave, &c.  He obtained his living during the latter portion of his existence by retailing a medicinal sweet, which he averred was good for all sorts of coughs and colds.—­Robert Sleath, in 1788, was collector at a turnpike gate near Worcester, and, ’tis said, made George III. and all his retinue pay toll.  He died here in November, 1804, when the following appeared in print:—­

  “On Wednesday last, old Robert Sleath
  Passed thro’ the turnpike gate of Death,
  To him Death would no toll abate
  Who stopped the King at Wor’ster-gate.”