with that of the street-sellers was explained to me in this way by a
tradesman perfectly familiar with the subject. “The poorer women, the
wives of mechanics or small tradesmen, who have to prepare dinners
for their husbands, like, as they call it, ‘to make one errand do.’
If the wife buys fish or vegetables in the street, as is generally
done, she will, at the same time, buy her piece of bacon or cheese
at the cheesemonger’s, her small quantity of tea and sugar at the
grocer’s, her fire-wood at the oilman’s, or her pound of beef or liver
at the butcher’s. In all the street-markets there are plenty of such
tradesmen, supplying necessaries not vended in the streets, and so
one errand is sufficient to provide for the wants of the family. Such
customers--that is, such as have been used to buy in the streets--will
_not_ be driven to buy at the shops. They can’t be persuaded that
they can buy as cheap at the shops; and besides they are apt to think
shopkeepers are rich and street-sellers poor, and that they may as
well encourage the poor. So if one street-market is abolished, they’ll
go to another, or buy of the itinerant costermongers, and they’ll get
their bits of groceries and the like at the shops in the neighbourhood
of the other street-market, even if they have a walk for it; and thus
everybody’s injured by removing markets, except a few, and they are
those at the nearest markets that’s not disturbed.”
In Leather-lane the shopkeepers speedily retrieved what many soon
came to consider the false step (as regards their interests) which
they had taken, and in a fortnight or so, they managed, by further
representations to the police authorities, and by agreement with the
street-sellers, that the street-market people should return. In little
more than a fortnight from that time, Leather-lane, Holborn, resumed
its wonted busy aspect.
In Lambeth the case at present is different. The men, women, and
children, between two and three months back, were all driven by the
police from their standings. These removals were made, I am assured,
in consequence of representations to the police from the parishioners,
not of Lambeth, but of the adjoining parish of Christchurch,
Blackfriars-road, who described the market as an injury and a hindrance
to their business. The costermongers, etc., were consequently driven
from the spot.
A highly respectable tradesman in “the Cut” told me, that he and
all his brother shopkeepers had found their receipts diminished a
quarter, or an eighth at least, by the removal; and as in all populous
neighbourhoods profits were small, this falling off was a very serious
matter to them.
In “the Cut” and its immediate neighbourhood, are tradesmen who
supply street-dealers with the articles they trade in,--such as cheap
stationery, laces, children’s shoes, braces, and toys. They, of course,
have been seriously affected by the removal; but the pinch has fallen
sorest upon the street-sellers themselves. These people depend a good
deal one upon another, as they make mutual purchases; now, as they have
neither stalls nor means, such a source of profit is abolished.
“It is hard on such as me,” said a fruit-seller to me, “to be driven
away, for nothing that I’ve done wrong as I knows of, and not let me
make a living, as I’ve been brought up to. I can’t get no work at any
of the markets. I’ve tried Billingsgate and the Borough hard, but
there is so many poor men trying for a crust, they’re fit to knock a
new-comer’s head off, though if they did, it wouldn’t be much matter.
I had 9_s._ 6_d._ stock-money, and I sold the apples and a few pears I
had for 3_s._ 9_d._, and that 13_s._ 3_d._ I’ve been spinning out since
I lost my pitch. But it’s done now, and I haven’t had two meals a day
for a week and more--and them not to call meals--only bread and coffee,
or bread and a drink of beer. I tried to get a round of customers, but
all the rounds was full, and I’m a very bad walker, and a weak man
too. My wife’s gone to try the country--I don’t know where she is now.
I suppose I shall lose my lodging this week, and then I must see what
‘the great house’ will say to me. Perhaps they’ll give me nothing, but
take me in, and that’s hard on a man as don’t want to be a pauper.”
Another man told me that he now paid 3_s._ a week for privilege to
stand with two stalls on a space opposite the entrance into the
National Baths, New Cut; and that he and his wife, who had stood for
eleven years in the neighbourhood, without a complaint against them,
could hardly get a crust.
One man, with a fruit-stall, assured me that nine months ago he
would not have taken 20_l._ for his pitch, and now he was a “regular
bankrupt.” I asked a girl, who stood beside the kerb with her load in
front strapped round her loins, whether her tray was heavy to carry.
“After eight hours at it,” she answered, “it swaggers me, like drink.”
The person whom I was with brought to me two girls, who, he informed
me, had been forced to go upon the streets to gain a living. Their
stall on the Saturday night used to have 4_l._ worth of stock; but
trade had grown so bad since the New Police order, that after living on
their wares, they had taken to prostitution for a living, rather than
go to the “house.” The ground in front of the shops has been bought
up by the costermongers at any price. Many now give the tradesmen six
shillings a week for a stand, and one man pays as much as eight for the
right of pitching in front.
The applications for parochial relief, in consequence of these
removals, have been fewer than was anticipated. In Lambeth parish,
however, about thirty families have been relieved, at a cost of 50_l._
Strange to say, a quarter, or rather more, of the very applicants for
relief had been furnished by the parish with money to start the trade,
their expulsion from which had driven them to pauperism.
It consequently becomes a question for serious consideration, whether
any particular body of householders should, for their own interest,
convenience, or pleasure, have it in their power to deprive so many
poor people of their only means of livelihood, and so either force
the rate-payers to keep them as paupers, or else drive the women, who
object to the imprisonment of the Union, to prostitution, and the
men to theft--especially when the very occupation which they are not
allowed to pursue, not only does no injury to the neighbourhood, but
is, on the contrary, the means of attracting considerable custom to the
shops in the locality, and has, moreover, been provided for them by
the parish authorities as a means of enabling them to get a living for
themselves.
OF THE TRICKS OF COSTERMONGERS.
I shall now treat of the tricks of trade practised by the London
costermongers. Of these the costers speak with as little reserve and
as little shame as a fine gentleman of his peccadilloes. “I’ve boiled
lots of oranges,” chuckled one man, “and sold them to Irish hawkers,
as wasn’t wide awake, for stunning big uns. The boiling swells the
oranges and so makes ’em look finer ones, but it spoils them, for it
takes out the juice. People can’t find that out though until it’s too
late. I boiled the oranges only a few minutes, and three or four dozen
at a time.” Oranges thus prepared will not keep, and any unfortunate
Irishwoman, tricked as were my informant’s customers, is astonished
to find her stock of oranges turn dark-coloured and worthless in
forty-eight hours. The fruit is “cooked” in this way for Saturday night
and Sunday sale--times at which the demand is the briskest. Some prick
the oranges and express the juice, which they sell to the British
wine-makers.
Apples cannot be dealt with like oranges, but they are mixed. A cheap
red-skinned fruit, known to costers as “gawfs,” is rubbed hard, to
look bright and feel soft, and is mixed with apples of a superior
description. “Gawfs are sweet and sour at once,” I was told, “and fit
for nothing but mixing.” Some foreign apples, from Holland and Belgium,
were bought very cheap last March, at no more than 16_d._ a bushel, and
on a fine morning as many as fifty boys might be seen rubbing these
apples, in Hooper-street, Lambeth. “I’ve made a crown out of a bushel
of ’em on a fine day,” said one sharp youth. The larger apples are
rubbed sometimes with a piece of woollen cloth, or on the coat skirt,
if that appendage form part of the dress of the person applying the
friction, but most frequently they are rolled in the palms of the
hand. The smaller apples are thrown to and fro in a sack, a lad holding
each end. “I wish I knew how the shopkeepers manages _their_ fruit,”
said one youth to me; “I should like to be up to some of their moves;
they do manage their things so plummy.”
Cherries are capital for mixing, I was assured by practical men. They
purchase three sieves of indifferent Dutch, and one sieve of good
English cherries, spread the English fruit over the inferior quality,
and sell them as the best. Strawberry pottles are often half cabbage
leaves, a few tempting strawberries being displayed on the top of the
pottle. “Topping up,” said a fruit dealer to me, “is the principal
thing, and we are perfectly justified in it. You ask any coster that
knows the world, and he’ll tell you that all the salesmen in the
markets tops up. It’s only making the best of it.” Filberts they bake
to make them look brown and ripe. Prunes they boil to give them a
plumper and finer appearance. The latter trick, however, is not unusual
in the shops.
The more honest costermongers will throw away fish when it is unfit
for consumption, less scrupulous dealers, however, only throw away
what is utterly unsaleable; but none of them fling away the dead eels,
though their prejudice against such dead fish prevents their indulging
in eel-pies. The dead eels are mixed with the living, often in the
proportion of 20 lb. dead to 5 lb. alive, equal quantities of each
being accounted very fair dealing. “And after all,” said a street fish
dealer to me, “I don’t know why dead eels should be objected to; the
aristocrats don’t object to them. Nearly all fish is dead before it’s
cooked, and why not eels? Why not eat them when they’re sweet, if
they’re ever so dead, just as you eat fresh herrings? I believe it’s
only among the poor and among our chaps, that there’s this prejudice.
Eels die quickly if they’re exposed to the sun.”
Herrings are made to look fresh and bright by candle-light, by the
lights being so disposed “as to give them,” I was told, “a good
reflection. Why I can make them look splendid; quite a pictur. I can do
the same with mackerel, but not so prime as herrings.”
There are many other tricks of a similar kind detailed in the course of
my narrative. We should remember, however, that _shopkeepers_ are not
immaculate in this respect.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FISH.
OF THE KIND AND QUANTITIES OF FISH SOLD BY THE LONDON COSTERMONGERS.
Having now given the reader a general view of the numbers, characters,
habits, tastes, amusements, language, opinions, earnings, and
vicissitudes of the London costermongers,--having described their usual
style of dress, diet, homes, conveyances, and street-markets,--having
explained where their donkeys are bought, or the terms on which they
borrow them, their barrows, their stock-money, and occasionally
their stock itself,--having shown their ordinary mode of dealing,
either in person or by deputy, either at half-profits or by means
of boys,--where they go and how they manage on their rounds in town
and in the country,--what are the laws affecting them, as well as
the operation of those laws upon the rest of the community,--having
done all this by way of giving the reader a general knowledge of the
street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables,--I now proceed to treat
more particularly of each of these classes _seriatim_. Beginning
with the street-fishmongers, I shall describe, in due order, the
season when, the market where, and the classes of people by whom, the
wet-fish, the dry-fish, and the shell-fish are severally sold and
purchased in the London streets, together with all other concomitant
circumstances.
The facilities of railway conveyance, by means of which fish can be
sent from the coast to the capital with much greater rapidity, and
therefore be received much fresher than was formerly the case, have
brought large supplies to London from places that before contributed
no quantity to the market, and so induced, as I heard in all quarters
at Billingsgate, an extraordinary lowness of price in this species of
diet. This cheap food, through the agency of the costermongers, is
conveyed to every poor man’s door, both in the thickly-crowded streets
where the poor reside--a family at least in a room--in the vicinity of
Drury-lane and of Whitechapel, in Westminster, Bethnal-green, and St.
Giles’s, and through the long miles of the suburbs. For all low-priced
fish the poor are the costermongers’ best customers, and a fish diet
seems becoming almost as common among the ill-paid classes of London,
as is a potato diet among the peasants of Ireland. Indeed, now, the
fish season of the poor never, or rarely, knows an interruption. If
fresh herrings are not in the market, there are sprats; and if not
sprats, there are soles, or whitings, or mackarel, or plaice.
The rooms of the very neediest of our needy metropolitan population,
always smell of fish; most frequently of herrings. So much so, indeed,
that to those who, like myself, have been in the habit of visiting
their dwellings, the smell of herrings, even in comfortable homes,
savours from association, so strongly of squalor and wretchedness, as
to be often most oppressive. The volatile oil of the fish seems to
hang about the walls and beams of the rooms for ever. Those who have
experienced the smell of fish only in a well-ordered kitchen, can
form no adequate notion of this stench, in perhaps a dilapidated and
ill-drained house, and in a rarely-cleaned room; and I have many a time
heard both husband and wife--one couple especially, who were “sweating”
for a gorgeous clothes’ emporium--say that they had not time to be
clean.
The costermonger supplies the poor with every kind of fish, for he
deals, usually, in every kind when it is cheap. Some confine their
dealings to such things as shrimps, or periwinkles, but the adhering
to one particular article is the exception and not the rule; while
shrimps, lobsters, &c., are rarely bought by the very poor. Of the
entire quantity of fish sent to Billingsgate-market, the costermongers,
stationary and itinerant, may be said to sell one-third, taking one
kind with another.
The fish sent to London is known to Billingsgate salesmen as “red”
and “white” fish. The red fish is, as regards the metropolitan mart,
confined to the salmon. The other descriptions are known as “white.”
The costermongers classify the fish they vend as “wet” and “dry.”
All fresh fish is “wet;” all cured or salted fish, “dry.” The fish
which is sold “pickled,” is known by that appellation, but its street
sale is insignificant. The principal fish-staple, so to speak of the
street-fishmonger, is soles, which are in supply all, or nearly all,
the year. The next are herrings, mackarel, whitings, Dutch eels, and
plaice. The trade in plaice and sprats is almost entirely in the hands
of the costermongers; their sale of shrimps is nearer a half than a
third of the entire quantity sent to Billingsgate; but their purchase
of cod, or of the best lobsters, or crabs, is far below a third. The
costermonger rarely buys turbot, or brill, or even salmon, unless he
can retail it at 6_d._ the pound. When it is at that price, a street
salmon-seller told me that the eagerness to buy it was extreme. He had
known persons, who appeared to him to be very poor, buy a pound of
salmon, “just for a treat once in a way.” His best, or rather readiest
customers--for at 6_d._ a pound all classes of the community may be
said to be his purchasers--were the shopkeepers of the busier parts,
and the occupants of the smaller private houses of the suburbs. During
the past year salmon was scarce and dear, and the costermongers bought,
comparatively, none of it. In a tolerably cheap season they do not sell
more than from a fifteenth to a twentieth of the quantity received at
Billingsgate.
In order to be able to arrive at the quantity or weight of the
several kinds of fish sold by the costermongers in the streets of
London, it is necessary that we should know the entire amount sent
to Billingsgate-market, for it is only by estimating the proportion
which the street-sale bears to the whole, that we can attain even an
approximation to the truth. The following Table gives the results of
certain information collected by myself for the first time, I believe,
in this country. The facts, as well as the estimated proportions of
each kind of fish sold by the costermongers, have been furnished me
by the most eminent of the Billingsgate salesmen--gentlemen to whom
I am under many obligations for their kindness, consideration, and
assistance, at all times and seasons.
TABLE, SHOWING THE QUANTITY, WEIGHT, OR MEASURE OF THE FOLLOWING KINDS
OF FISH SOLD IN BILLINGSGATE MARKET IN THE COURSE OF THE YEAR:
--------------------------+-------------+------------------+---------------
| Number | Weight or | Proportion
Description of Fish. | of | Measure of | sold by
| Fish. | Fish. | Costermongers.
--------------------------+-------------+------------------+---------------
WET FISH. | | lbs. |
Salmon and Salmon Trout | | |
(29,000 boxes, 14 fish | | |
per box) | 406,000| 3,480,000|One-twentieth.
Live Cod (averaging 10 | | |
lbs. each) | 400,000| 4,000,000|One-fourth.
Soles (averaging | | |
1/4 lb. each) | 97,520,000| 26,880,000|One-fifteenth.
Whiting (averaging | | |
6 oz. each) | 17,920,000| 6,720,000|One-fourth.
Haddock (averaging | | |
2 lbs. each) | 2,470,000| 4,940,000|One-tenth.
Plaice (averaging | | |
1 lb. each) | 33,600,000| 33,600,000|Seven-eighths.
Mackarel (averaging
1 lb. each) | 23,520,000| 23,520,000|Two-thirds.
Fresh Herrings | | |
(250,000 bars., | | |
700 fish per bar.) | 175,000,000| 42,000,000|One-half.
„ (in bulk) |1,050,000,000| 252,000,000|Three-fourths.
Sprats | | 4,000,000|Three-fourths.
Eels from Holland } | | { 1,505,280|One-fourth.
„ England and Ireland } | 9,797,760| { 127,680|One-fourth.
(6 fish per 1 lb.) | | |
Flounders (7,200 | | |
quarterns, | | |
36 fish per quartern) | 259,200| 43,200|All.
Dabs (7,500 quarterns, | | |
36 fish per quartern) | 270,000| 48,750|All.
| | |
DRY FISH. | | |
Barrelled Cod | | |
(15,000 barrels, | | |
50 fish per barrel) | 750,000| 4,200,000|One-eighth.
Dried Salt Cod | | |
(5 lbs. each) | 1,600,000| 8,000,000|One-tenth.
Smoked Haddock (65,000 | | |
bars., 300 fish | | |
per bar.) | 19,500,000| 10,920,000|One-eighth.
Bloaters (265,000 | | |
baskets, 150 fish | | |
per basket) | 49,750,000| 10,600,000|One-fourth.
Red Herrings (100,000 | | |
bars., 500 fish | | |
per bar.) | 50,000,000| 14,000,000|One-half.
Dried Sprats (9,600 | | |
large bundles, 30 fish | | |
per bundle)[1] | 288,000| 96,000|None.
| | |
SHELL FISH. | | |
Oysters (309,935 bars., | | |
1,600 fish per bar.) | 495,896,000| |One-fourth.
Lobsters (averaging 1 lb. | | |
each fish) | 1,200,000| 1,200,000|One-twentieth.
Crabs (averaging 1 lb. | | |
each fish) | 600,000| 600,000|One-twelfth.
Shrimps (324 to the pint) | 498,428,648| 192,295 gals.|One-half.
Whelks (224 to the | | |
1/2 bus.) | 4,943,200|22,067 1/2 bus.[2]|All.
Mussels (1000 to the | | |
1/2 bus.) | 50,400,000|50,400 „ |Two-thirds.
Cockles (2,000 to the | | |
1/2 bus.) | 67,392,000|33,696 „ |Three-fourths.
Periwinkles (4,000 to | | |
the 1/2 bus.) | 304,000,000|76,000 „ |Three-fourths.
--------------------------+-------------+------------------+---------------
[1] Costermongers dry their own sprats.
[2] The half-bushel measure at Billingsgate is double quantity--or,
more correctly, a bushel.
OF THE COSTERMONGERS’ FISH SEASON.
The season for the street-fishmongers begins about October and ends in
May.
In October, or a month or two earlier, may-be, they generally deal
in fresh herrings, the supply of which lasts up to about the middle
or end of November. This is about the best season. The herrings are
sold to the poor, upon an average, at twelve a groat, or from 3_s._
to 4_s._ the hundred. After or during November, the sprat and plaice
season begins. The regular street-fishmonger, however, seldom deals
in sprats. He “works” these only when there is no other fish to be
got. He generally considers this trade beneath him, and more fit for
women than men. Those costers who do sell them dispose of them now by
weight at the rate of 1_d._ to 2_d._ the pound--a bushel averaging from
40 to 50 pounds. The plaice season continues to the first or second
week in May. During May the casualty season is on, and there is little
fish certain from that time till salmon comes in, and this is about
the end of the month. The salmon season lasts till about the middle
of July. The selling of salmon is a bad trade in the poor districts,
but a very good one in the better streets or the suburbs. At this work
the street-fishmonger will sometimes earn on a fine day from 5_s._
to 12_s._ The losses, however, are very great in this article if the
weather prove bad. If kept at all “over” it loses its colour, and
turns to a pale red, which is seen immediately the knife goes into the
fish. While I was obtaining this information some months back, a man
went past the window of the house in which I was seated, with a barrow
drawn by a donkey. He was crying, “Fresh cod, oh! 1-1/2_d._ a pound,
cod alive, oh!” My informant called me to the window, saying, “Now,
here is what we call rough cod.” He told me it was three days old. He
thought it was eatable _then_, he said. The eyes were dull and heavy
and sunken, and the limp tails of the fish dangled over the ends of
the barrow. He said it was a hanging market that day--that is to say,
things had been dear, and the costers couldn’t pay the price for them.
He should fancy, he told me, the man had paid for the fish from 9_d._
to 1_s._ each, which was at the rate of 1_d._ per pound. He was calling
them at 1-1/2_d._ He would not take less than this until he had “got
his own money in;” and then, probably, if he had one or two of the fish
left, he would put up with 1_d._ per pound. The weight he was “working”
was 12 oz. to the pound. My informant assured me he knew this, because
he had borrowed _his_ 12 oz. pound weight that morning. This, with
the draught of 2 oz. in the weighing-machine, and the ounce gained by
placing the fish at the end of the pan, would bring the actual weight
given to 9 oz. per pound, and probably, he said the man had even a
lighter pound weight in his barrow ready for a “scaly” customer.
After the street-fishmonger has done his morning’s work, he sometimes
goes out with his tub of pickled salmon on a barrow or stall, and
sells it in saucers at 1_d._ each, or by the piece. This he calls as
“fine Newcastle salmon.” There is generally a great sale for this at
the races; and if country-people begin with a pennyworth they end with
a shillingsworth--a pennyworth, the costers say, makes a fool of the
mouth. If they have any on hand, and a little stale, at the end of
the week, they sell it at the public-houses to the “Lushingtons,” and
to them, with plenty of vinegar, it goes down sweet. It is generally
bought for 7_s._ a kit, a little bit “pricked;” but, if good, the price
is from 12_s._ to 18_s._ “We’re in no ways particular to that,” said
one candid coster to me. “We don’t have the eating on it ourselves, and
people a’n’t always got their taste, especially when they have been
drinking, and we sell a great deal to parties in that way. We think it
no sin to cheat ’em of 1_d._ while the publicans takes 1_s._”
Towards the middle of June the street-fishmonger looks for mackerel,
and he is generally employed in selling this fish up to the end of
July. After July the Billingsgate season is said to be finished.
From this time to the middle of October, when the herrings return,
he is mostly engaged selling dried haddocks and red herrings,
and other “cas’alty fish that may come across him.” Many of the
street-fishmongers object to deal in periwinkles, or stewed mussels,
or boiled whelks, because, being accustomed to take their money
in sixpences at a time, they do not like, they say, to traffic in
halfpennyworths. The dealers in these articles are generally looked
upon as an inferior class.