Clement Humphrey, a 23 year old Trinidadian, described as “a black man” was charged with stealing a servant girl’s watch and ring, and the trial, at Clerkenwell Sessions in London was reported in the Liverpool Weekly Courier on Christmas Eve, 1904 (24 December 1904, page 7). He had one previous conviction, “gambling by fraud at Epsom racecourse” for which he had been imprisoned for 21 days. This time he was found guilty and sent to prison for six months.

Within the newspaper’s report were details of his current commercial venture – he “employed about a dozen negroes and negresses to stand at street corners ‘telling the tale'” to sell tooth powder. A dozen of them lived in one room near King’s-cross. Other reports of street traders offering tooth powders were quite common in Edwardian newspapers, but the scale of Humphrey’s operation was unusual.

Details – some mentioning the dozen associated – were published in at least six London newspapers and in the Daily Telegraph of Jamaica on 9 January 1905, which was copied by the Mirror of Trinidad on 14 January 1905 (page 12).