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| Billy Button (artist unknown), c. 1820-1830. Held at Birmingham Museums. |
A watercolour of "Billy Button" standing in front of the Town Hall. Billy was a local character known for his array of decorative buttons.
Walter Showell wrote of Billy that he was a:
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 to 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's] death the nightly "cry" of more than one peripatetic shellfishmonger. [...] at his death [Billy's coat] was covered so thickly (and many buttons were of rare patterns), that it is said to have weighed over 30lbs.*
'Billy Button alias Jessy.—This rather singular character, who, for many years past, has been known in Birmingham and various towns in this county under the above names, died on Wednesday, in a lodging-house, in Thomas-street'. Birmingham Journal, 5 May 1838.
Notes
* Walter Showell, Dictionary of Birmingham (Oldbury: Walter Showell and Sons, 1885), pp. 61-62.