l > > My Dad was a salesman in London all his working life. This term was originally applied to the a 'market salesman', usually of meat. Many in London were employed at Smithfield. Only gradually did it become applied to a commercial rep who travelled. . Even of those there were two kinds by the C20. First, the man employed by one firm to travel around with samples of its products, collecting orders for that one firm, to be delivered by carrier if they were bulky; he was paid a regular wage and was generally safe in his employment (as long as he was mobile). Then there was the more precarious kind, which became prevalent after WW1, who went round advertising various products, from any firm, or a collection of firms of a similar type, or just any product whose manufacturer would supply him at wholesale rate . His 'wage' depended on his success, and was mainly commission based. I once tried to trace a commercial traveller of this type who suddenly vanished in the early 1930s, leaving his children, abandoned by their mother on the ordwers of her family, to be placed in an orphanage. In the course of the search, I read through a number of newspapers, looking for a death report in the area where he was last seen. There were ten suicides or 'accidental;' deaths of commer4cialxs in a period of one year, three unidentified because of the circumstances (involving railway bridges and passing trains). So, a very hard life by then, and quite different from the Victorian scener. EVE Author of The McLaughlin Guides for Family Historians Secretary, Bucks Genealogical Society