_coster-monger times_, that true valour is turned bear-herd.”
Costermonger times are as old as any trading times of which our
history tells; indeed, the stationary costermonger of our own day is
a legitimate descendant of the tradesmen of the olden time, who stood
by their shops with their open casements, loudly inviting buyers by
praises of their wares, and by direct questions of “What d’ye buy? What
d’ye lack?”
Ben Jonson makes his _Morose_, who hated all noises, and sought for
a silent wife, enter “upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and
orange-women,” to moderate their clamour; but _Morose_, above all other
noisy people, “cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear
one.”
In Ford’s “Sun’s Darling” I find the following: “Upon my life he means
to turn costermonger, and is projecting how to forestall the market. I
shall cry pippins rarely.”
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Scornful Lady” is the following:
“Pray, sister, do not laugh; you’ll anger him,
And then he’ll rail like a rude costermonger.”
Dr. Johnson, gives the derivation of costard-monger (the orthography he
uses), as derived from the sale of apples or costards, “round and bulky
like the head;” and he cites Burton as an authority: “Many country
vicars,” writes Burton, “are driven to shifts, and if our great patrons
hold us to such conditions, they will make us _costard-mongers_,
graziers, or sell ale.”
“The costard-monger,” says Mr. Charles Knight, in his “London,” “was
originally an apple-seller, whence his name, and, from the mention
of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an
Irishman.”
In Ireland the word “costermonger” is almost unknown.
OF THE OBSOLETE CRIES OF THE COSTERMONGERS.
A brief account of the cries once prevalent among the street-sellers
will show somewhat significantly the change in the diet or regalements
of those who purchase their food in the street. Some of the articles
are not vended in the public thoroughfares now, while others are still
sold, but in different forms.
“Hot sheep’s feet,” for instance, were cried in the streets in the
time of Henry V.; they are now sold _cold_, at the doors of the
lower-priced theatres, and at the larger public-houses. Among the
street cries, the following were common prior to the wars of the Roses:
“Ribs of beef,”--“Hot peascod,”--and “Pepper and saffron.” These
certainly indicate a different street diet from that of the present
time.
The following are more modern, running from Elizabeth’s days down to
our own. “Pippins,” and, in the times of Charles II., and subsequently,
oranges were sometimes cried as “Orange pips,”--“Fair lemons and
oranges; oranges and citrons,”--“New Wall-fleet oysters,” [“_fresh_”
fish was formerly cried as “new,”]--“New-river water,” [I may here
mention that water-carriers still ply their trade in parts of
Hampstead,]--“Rosemary and lavender,”--“Small coals,” [a cry rendered
almost poetical by the character, career, and pitiful end, through a
practical joke, of Tom Britton, the “small-coal man,”]--“Pretty pins,
pretty women,”--“Lilly-white vinegar,”--“Hot wardens” (pears)--“Hot
codlings,”--and lastly the greasy-looking beverage which Charles
Lamb’s experience of London at early morning satisfied him was of all
preparations the most grateful to the stomach of the then existing
climbing-boys--viz., “Sa-loop.” I may state, for the information of
my younger readers, that saloop (spelt also “salep” and “salop”) was
prepared, as a powder, from the root of the _Orchis mascula_, or
Red-handed Orchis, a plant which grows luxuriantly in our meadows and
pastures, flowering in the spring, though never cultivated to any
extent in this country; that required for the purposes of commerce was
imported from India. The saloop-stalls were superseded by the modern
coffee-stalls.
There were many other cries, now obsolete, but what I have cited were
the most common.
OF THE COSTERMONGERS “ECONOMICALLY” CONSIDERED.
Political economy teaches us that, between the two great classes of
producers and consumers, stand the distributors--or dealers--saving
time, trouble, and inconvenience to, the one in disposing of, and to
the other in purchasing, their commodities.
But the distributor was not always a part and parcel of the economical
arrangements of the State. In olden times, the producer and consumer
were brought into immediate contact, at markets and fairs, holden
at certain intervals. The inconvenience of this mode of operation,
however, was soon felt; and the pedlar, or wandering distributor,
sprang up as a means of carrying the commodities to those who were
unable to attend the public markets at the appointed time. Still the
pedlar or wandering distributor was not without _his_ disadvantages.
He only came at certain periods, and commodities were occasionally
required in the interim. Hence the shopkeeper, or stationary
distributor, was called into existence, so that the consumer might
obtain any commodity of the producer at any time he pleased. Hence we
see that the pedlar is the primitive tradesman, and that the one is
contradistinguished from the other by the fact, that the pedlar carries
the goods to the consumer, whereas, in the case of the shopkeeper,
the consumer goes after the goods. In country districts, remote from
towns and villages, the pedlar is not yet wholly superseded; “but a
dealer who has a fixed abode, and fixed customers, is so much more
to be depended on,” says Mr. Stewart Mill, “that consumers prefer
resorting to him if he is conveniently accessible, and dealers,
therefore, find their advantage in establishing themselves in every
locality where there are sufficient customers near at hand to afford
them a remuneration.” Hence the pedlar is now chiefly confined to the
poorer districts, and is consequently distinguished from the stationary
tradesman by the character and means of his customers, as well as
by the amount of capital and extent of his dealings. The shopkeeper
supplies principally the noblemen and gentry with the necessaries and
luxuries of life, but the pedlar or hawker is the purveyor in general
to the poor. He brings the greengrocery, the fruit, the fish, the
water-cresses, the shrimps, the pies and puddings, the sweetmeats, the
pine-apples, the stationery, the linendrapery, and the jewellery, such
as it is, to the very door of the working classes; indeed, the poor
man’s food and clothing are mainly supplied to him in this manner.
Hence the class of travelling tradesmen are important, not only as
forming a large portion of the poor themselves, but as being the
persons through whom the working people obtain a considerable part of
their provisions and raiment.
But the itinerant tradesman or street-seller is still further
distinguished from the regular fixed dealer--the _stall_keeper from the
_shop_keeper--the _street_-wareman from the ware_house_man, by the arts
they respectively employ to attract custom. The street-seller cries
his goods aloud at the head of his barrow; the enterprising tradesman
distributes bills at the door of his shop. The one appeals to the ear,
the other to the eye. The cutting costermonger has a drum and two boys
to excite attention to his stock; the spirited shopkeeper has a column
of advertisements in the morning newspapers. They are but different
means of attaining the same end.
THE LONDON STREET MARKETS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT.
The street sellers are to be seen in the greatest numbers at the
London street markets on a Saturday night. Here, and in the shops
immediately adjoining, the working-classes generally purchase their
Sunday’s dinner; and after pay-time on Saturday night, or early on
Sunday morning, the crowd in the New-cut, and the Brill in particular,
is almost impassable. Indeed, the scene in these parts has more of
the character of a fair than a market. There are hundreds of stalls,
and every stall has its one or two lights; either it is illuminated
by the intense white light of the new self-generating gas-lamp, or
else it is brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-fashioned
grease lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddock with a candle stuck
in a bundle of firewood; his neighbour makes a candlestick of a huge
turnip, and the tallow gutters over its sides; whilst the boy shouting
“Eight a penny, stunning pears!” has rolled his dip in a thick coat of
brown paper, that flares away with the candle. Some stalls are crimson
with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chestnut
stove; others have handsome octohedral lamps, while a few have a candle
shining through a sieve: these, with the sparkling ground-glass globes
of the tea-dealers’ shops, and the butchers’ gaslights streaming and
fluttering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour forth such a flood of
light, that at a distance the atmosphere immediately above the spot is
as lurid as if the street were on fire.
The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and
street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the
market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at
the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys,
holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people,
wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in
whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand
different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their
voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. “So-old
again,” roars one. “Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score,” bawls another.
“An ’aypenny a skin, blacking,” squeaks a boy. “Buy, buy, buy, buy,
buy--bu-u-uy!” cries the butcher. “Half-quire of paper for a penny,”
bellows the street stationer. “An ’aypenny a lot ing-uns.” “Twopence a
pound grapes.” “Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters.” “Who’ll buy a bonnet
for fourpence?” “Pick ’em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny,
bootlaces.” “Now’s your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.” “Here’s
ha’p’orths,” shouts the perambulating confectioner. “Come and look at
’em! here’s toasters!” bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a
toasting-fork. “Penny a lot, fine russets,” calls the apple woman: and
so the Babel goes on.
One man stands with his red-edged mats hanging over his back and chest,
like a herald’s coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts lifts
her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as she screams, “Fine warnuts!
sixteen a penny, fine war-r-nuts.” A bootmaker, to “ensure custom,”
has illuminated his shop-front with a line of gas, and in its full
glare stands a blind beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show only “the
whites,” and mumbling some begging rhymes, that are drowned in the
shrill notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him. The boy’s sharp
cry, the woman’s cracked voice, the gruff, hoarse shout of the man, are
all mingled together. Sometimes an Irishman is heard with his “fine
ating apples;” or else the jingling music of an unseen organ breaks
out, as the trio of street singers rest between the verses.
Then the sights, as you elbow your way through the crowd, are equally
multifarious. Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there
another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling
with white glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along
the pavement; now to a stand of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with
red handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts, fluttering backwards and
forwards, and a counter built up outside on the kerb, behind which are
boys beseeching custom. At the door of a tea-shop, with its hundred
white globes of light, stands a man delivering bills, thanking the
public for past favours, and “defying competition.” Here, alongside
the road, are some half-dozen headless tailors’ dummies, dressed in
Chesterfields and fustian jackets, each labelled, “Look at the prices,”
or “Observe the quality.” After this is a butcher’s shop, crimson
and white with meat piled up to the first-floor, in front of which
the butcher himself, in his blue coat, walks up and down, sharpening
his knife on the steel that hangs to his waist. A little further on
stands the clean family, begging; the father with his head down as if
in shame, and a box of lucifers held forth in his hand--the boys in
newly-washed pinafores, and the tidily got-up mother with a child at
her breast. This stall is green and white with bunches of turnips--that
red with apples, the next yellow with onions, and another purple with
pickling cabbages. One minute you pass a man with an umbrella turned
inside up and full of prints; the next, you hear one with a peepshow
of Mazeppa, and Paul Jones the pirate, describing the pictures to
the boys looking in at the little round windows. Then is heard the
sharp snap of the percussion-cap from the crowd of lads firing at the
target for nuts; and the moment afterwards, you see either a black
man half-clad in white, and shivering in the cold with tracts in his
hand, or else you hear the sounds of music from “Frazier’s Circus,” on
the other side of the road, and the man outside the door of the penny
concert, beseeching you to “Be in time--be in time!” as Mr. Somebody
is just about to sing his favourite song of the “Knife Grinder.” Such,
indeed, is the riot, the struggle, and the scramble for a living,
that the confusion and uproar of the New-cut on Saturday night have a
bewildering and saddening effect upon the thoughtful mind.
Each salesman tries his utmost to sell his wares, tempting the
passers-by with his bargains. The boy with his stock of herbs offers
“a double ’andful of fine parsley for a penny;” the man with the
donkey-cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him
to their utmost, with their “Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of
this here? A penny a bunch--hurrah for free trade! _Here’s_ your
turnips!” Until it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the
scramble that is going on throughout London for a living. The same
scene takes place at the Brill--the same in Leather-lane--the same in
Tottenham-court-road--the same in Whitecross-street; go to whatever
corner of the metropolis you please, either on a Saturday night or a
Sunday morning, and there is the same shouting and the same struggling
to get the penny profit out of the poor man’s Sunday’s dinner.
Since the above description was written, the New Cut has lost much
of its noisy and brilliant glory. In consequence of a New Police
regulation, “stands” or “pitches” have been forbidden, and each coster,
on a market night, is now obliged, under pain of the lock-up house, to
carry his tray, or keep moving with his barrow. The gay stalls have
been replaced by deal boards, some sodden with wet fish, others stained
purple with blackberries, or brown with walnut-peel; and the bright
lamps are almost totally superseded by the dim, guttering candle. Even
if the pole under the tray or “shallow” is seen resting on the ground,
the policeman on duty is obliged to interfere.
The mob of purchasers has diminished one-half; and instead of the road
being filled with customers and trucks, the pavement and kerb-stones
are scarcely crowded.
THE SUNDAY MORNING MARKETS.
Nearly every poor man’s market does its Sunday trade. For a few hours
on the Sabbath morning, the noise, bustle, and scramble of the Saturday
night are repeated, and but for this opportunity many a poor family
would pass a dinnerless Sunday. The system of paying the mechanic late
on the Saturday night--and more particularly of paying a man his wages
in a public-house--when he is tired with his day’s work, lures him to
the tavern, and there the hours fly quickly enough beside the warm
tap-room fire, so that by the time the wife comes for her husband’s
wages, she finds a large portion of them gone in drink, and the streets
half cleared, so that the Sunday market is the only chance of getting
the Sunday’s dinner.
Of all these Sunday-morning markets, the Brill, perhaps, furnishes the
busiest scene; so that it may be taken as a type of the whole.
The streets in the neighbourhood are quiet and empty. The shops are
closed with their different-coloured shutters, and the people round
about are dressed in the shiney cloth of the holiday suit. There are no
“cabs,” and but few omnibuses to disturb the rest, and men walk in the
road as safely as on the footpath.
As you enter the Brill the market sounds are scarcely heard. But at
each step the low hum grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until
at last the different cries become distinct, and the hubbub, din, and
confusion of a thousand voices bellowing at once again fill the air.
The road and footpath are crowded, as on the over-night; the men are
standing in groups, smoking and talking; whilst the women run to and
fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled
aprons, others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat
dangling from their hands. Only a few of the shops are closed, but the
butcher’s and the coal-shed are filled with customers, and from the
door of the shut-up baker’s, the women come streaming forth with bags
of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber’s
smoothing their clean-shaved chins. Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions,
braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and corn-plaster, are all
bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn
and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with
their pet terriers under their arms. The pavement is green with the
refuse leaves of vegetables, and round a cabbage-barrow the women stand
turning over the bunches, as the man shouts, “Where you like, only a
penny.” Boys are running home with the breakfast herring held in a
piece of paper, and the side-pocket of the apple-man’s stuff coat hangs
down with the weight of the halfpence stored within it. Presently the
tolling of the neighbouring church bells breaks forth. Then the bustle
doubles itself, the cries grow louder, the confusion greater. Women run
about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers,
for in half an hour the market will close. In a little time the butcher
puts up his shutters, and leaves the door still open; the policemen in
their clean gloves come round and drive the street-sellers before them,
and as the clock strikes eleven the market finishes, and the Sunday’s
rest begins.
The following is a list of the street-markets, and the number of
costers usually attending:--
MARKETS ON THE SURREY SIDE.
New-cut, Lambeth 300
Lambeth-walk 104
Walworth-road 22
Camberwell 15
Newington 45
Kent-street, Borough 38
Bermondsey 107
Union-street, Borough 29
Great Suffolk-street 46
Blackfriars-road 58
----
764
MARKETS ON THE MIDDLESEX SIDE.
Brill and Chapel-st., Somers’ Town 300
Camden Town 50
Hampstead-rd. and Tottenham-ct.-rd. 333
St. George’s Market, Oxford-street 177
Marylebone 37
Edgeware-road 78
Crawford-street 145
Knightsbridge 46
Pimlico 32
Tothill-st. & Broadway, Westminster 119
Drury-lane 22
Clare-street 139
Exmouth-street and Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell 142
Leather-lane 150
St. John’s-street 47
Old-street (St. Luke’s) 46
Whitecross-street, Cripplegate 150
Islington 79
City-road 49
Shoreditch 100
Bethnal-green 100
Whitechapel 258
Mile End 105
Commercial-rd. (East) 114
Limehouse 88
Ratcliffe Highway 122
Rosemary-lane 119
----
3147
----
We find, from the foregoing list of markets, held in the various
thoroughfares of the metropolis, that there are 10 on the Surrey
side and 27 on the Middlesex side of the Thames. The total number of
hucksters attending these markets is 3,911, giving an average of 105
to each market.
HABITS AND AMUSEMENTS OF COSTERMONGERS.
I find it impossible to separate these two headings; for the habits
of the costermonger are not domestic. His busy life is past in the
markets or the streets, and as his leisure is devoted to the beer-shop,
the dancing-room, or the theatre, we must look for his habits to his
demeanour at those places. Home has few attractions to a man whose
life is a street-life. Even those who are influenced by family ties
and affections, prefer to “home”--indeed that word is rarely mentioned
among them--the conversation, warmth, and merriment of the beer-shop,
where they can take their ease among their “mates.” Excitement or
amusement are indispensable to uneducated men. Of beer-shops resorted
to by costermongers, and principally supported by them, it is computed
that there are 400 in London.
Those who meet first in the beer-shop talk over the state of trade and
of the markets, while the later comers enter at once into what may be
styled the serious business of the evening--amusement.
Business topics are discussed in a most peculiar style. One man takes
the pipe from his mouth and says, “Bill made a doogheno hit this
morning.” “Jem,” says another, to a man just entering, “you’ll stand
a top o’ reeb?” “On,” answers Jem, “I’ve had a trosseno tol, and
have been doing dab.” For an explanation of what may be obscure in
this dialogue, I must refer my readers to my remarks concerning the
language of the class. If any strangers are present, the conversation
is still further clothed in slang, so as to be unintelligible even to
the partially initiated. The evident puzzlement of any listener is of
course gratifying to the costermonger’s vanity, for he feels that he
possesses a knowledge peculiarly his own.
Among the in-door amusements of the costermonger is card-playing,
at which many of them are adepts. The usual games are all-fours,
all-fives, cribbage, and put. Whist is known to a few, but is never
played, being considered dull and slow. Of short whist they have not
heard; “but,” said one, whom I questioned on the subject, “if it’s come
into fashion, it’ll soon be among us.” The play is usually for beer,
but the game is rendered exciting by bets both among the players and
the lookers-on. “I’ll back Jem for a yanepatine,” says one. “Jack for a
gen,” cries another. A penny is the lowest sum laid, and five shillings
generally the highest, but a shilling is not often exceeded. “We play
fair among ourselves,” said a costermonger to me--“aye, fairer than
the aristocrats--but we’ll take in anybody else.” Where it is known
that the landlord will not supply cards, “a sporting coster” carries a
pack or two with him. The cards played with have rarely been stamped;
they are generally dirty, and sometimes almost illegible, from long
handling and spilled beer. Some men will sit patiently for hours at
these games, and they watch the dealing round of the dingy cards
intently, and without the attempt--common among politer gamesters--to
appear indifferent, though they bear their losses well. In a full room
of card-players, the groups are all shrouded in tobacco-smoke, and from
them are heard constant sounds--according to the games they are engaged
in--of “I’m low, and Ped’s high.” “Tip and me’s game.” “Fifteen four
and a flush of five.” I may remark it is curious that costermongers,
who can neither read nor write, and who have no knowledge of the
multiplication table, are skilful in all the intricacies and
calculations of cribbage. There is not much quarrelling over the cards,
unless strangers play with them, and then the costermongers all take
part one with another, fairly or unfairly.
It has been said that there is a close resemblance between many of the
characteristics of a very high class, socially, and a very low class.
Those who remember the disclosures on a trial a few years back, as to
how men of rank and wealth passed their leisure in card-playing--many
of their lives being one continued leisure--can judge how far the
analogy holds when the card-passion of the costermongers is described.