the ground, is known as “green.” A subdivision of this green fruit is
into “fresh” or “tender” fruit, which includes currants, gooseberries,
strawberries, and, indeed, all fruits that demand immediate
consumption, in contradistinction to such productions as nuts which
may be kept without injury for a season. All fruit which is “cured”
is known as “dry” fruit. In summer the costers vend “green fruit,”
and in the winter months, or in the early spring, when the dearness
or insufficiency of the supply of green fruit renders it unsuited for
their traffic, they resort, but not extensively, to “dry fruit.” It is
principally, however, when an abundant season, or the impossibility of
keeping the dry fruit much longer, has tended to reduce the price of
it, that the costlier articles are to be found on the costermonger’s
barrow.
Fruit is, for the most part, displayed on barrows, by the
street-dealers in it. Some who supply the better sort of houses--more
especially those in the suburbs--carry such things as apples and plums,
in clean round wicker-baskets, holding pecks or half-pecks.
The commoner “green” fruits of home produce are bought by the
costermonger in the markets. The foreign green fruit, as pine-apples,
melons, grapes, chestnuts, coker-nuts, Brazil-nuts, hazel-nuts, and
oranges, are purchased by them at the public sales of the brokers, and
of the Jews in Duke’s-place. The more intelligent and thrifty of the
costers buy at the public sales on the principle of association, as I
have elsewhere described. Some costermongers expend as much as 20_l._
at a time in such green fruit, or dry fruit, as is not immediately
perishable, at a public sale, or at a fruit-warehouse, and supply the
other costers.
The regular costermongers seldom deal in oranges and chestnuts. If
they sell walnuts, they reserve these, they say, for their Sunday
afternoon’s pastime. The people who carry oranges, chestnuts, or
walnuts, or Spanish nuts about the town, are not considered as
costermongers, but are generally, though not always, classed, by
the regular men, with the watercress-women, the sprat-women, the
winkle-dealers, and such others, whom they consider beneath them. The
orange season is called by the costermonger the “Irishman’s harvest.”
Indeed, the street trade in oranges and nuts is almost entirely in
the hands of the Irish and their children; and of the children of
costermongers. The costers themselves would rather starve--and do
starve now and then--than condescend to it. The trade in coker-nuts is
carried on greatly by the Jews on Sundays, and by young men and boys
who are not on other days employed as street-sellers.
The usual kinds of fruit the regular costers deal in are strawberries,
raspberries (plain and stalked), cherries, apricots, plums,
green-gages, currants, apples, pears, damsons, green and ripe
gooseberries, and pine-apples. They also deal in vegetables, such
as turnips, greens, brocoli, carrots, onions, celery, rhubarb, new
potatoes, peas, beans (French and scarlet, broad and Windsor),
asparagus, vegetable marrow, seakale, spinach, lettuces, small
salads, radishes, etc. Their fruit and vegetables they usually buy at
Covent-garden, Spitalfields, or the Borough markets. Occasionally they
buy some at Farringdon, but this they reckon to be very little better
than a “haggler’s market,”--a “haggler” being, as I before explained,
the middle-man who attends in the fruit and vegetable-markets, and buys
of the salesman to sell again to the retail dealer or costermonger.
Concerning the quantity of fruit and vegetables sold in the streets,
by the London costermongers. This, as I said, when treating of the
street-trade in fish, can only be arrived at by ascertaining the entire
quantity sold wholesale at the London markets, and then learning
from the best authorities the proportion retailed in the public
thoroughfares. Fully to elucidate this matter, both as to the extent of
the metropolitan supply of vegetables and fruit, (“foreign” as well as
“home-grown,” and “green” as well as “dry”) and the relative quantity
of each, vended through the agency of the costermongers, I caused
inquiries to be instituted at all the principal markets and brokers
(for not even the vaguest return on the subject had, till then, been
prepared), and received from all the gentlemen connected therewith,
every assistance and information, as I have here great pleasure in
acknowledging.
To carry out my present inquiry, I need not give returns of the
articles _not_ sold by the costermongers, nor is it necessary for me to
cite any but those dealt in by them generally. Their exceptional sales,
such as of mushrooms, cucumbers, &c., are not included here.
The following Table shows the ordinary annual supply of _home grown
fruit_ (nearly all produced within a radius of twelve miles from the
Bank) to each of the London “green” markets.
A TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OR MEASURE OF THE UNDERMENTIONED
HOME-GROWN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES SOLD THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, WHOLESALE,
IN THE METROPOLITAN “GREEN” MARKETS, WITH THE PROPORTION SOLD RETAIL
IN THE STREETS.
Description of
Fruits and Vegetables. Covent Garden. Borough. Spitalfields.
GREEN FRUIT.
Apples 360,000 bushels 25,000 250,000
Pears 230,000 „ 10,000 83,000
Cherries 90,000 doz. lbs. 45,000 15,000
Plums[3] 93,000 bushels 15,500 45,000
Green Gages[3] 2,000 „ 333 1,500
Damsons[3] 19,800 „ 3,150 4,500
Bullace 1,800 „ 1,620 400
Gooseberries 140,000 „ 26,200 91,500
Currants (Red)[3] 70,000 sieves 15,000 75,000
Ditto (Black) 45,000 „ 12,000 45,000
Ditto (White) 3,800 „ 3,000 15,000
Strawberries[4] 638,000 pottles 330,000 396,000
Raspberries 22,500 „ 3,750 2,500
Mulberries 17,496 „ 57,600 7,064
Hazel Nuts 2,700 bushels 1,000 648
Filberts 221,400 lbs. 72,000 43,200
Proportion sold by
Farringdon. Portman. Total. Costermongers.
35,000 16,000 686,000 One-half.
20,000 10,000 353,000 One-half.
12,000 11,200 173,200 One-half.
3,000 20,000 176,500 One-fifteenth.
1,000 500 5,333 One-fiftieth.
9,000 1,200 37,650 One-thirtieth.
540 540 4,900 One-half.
12,000 7,000 276,700 Three-fourths.
6,000 9,000 175,000 One-half.
6,000 4,000 112,000 One-eighth.
3,000 2,000 26,800 One-eighth.
15,000 148,500 1,527,500 One-half.
3,500 3,000 35,250 One-twentieth.
17,281 22,500 121,940 One-fourth.
5,400 270 9,018 Two-thirds.
144,000 37,800 518,400 One-thirtieth.
VEGETABLES.
Potatoes 161,280,000 lbs. 48,384,000 64,512,000
Cabbages[5] 33,600,000 plants 19,200,000 12,000,000
Brocoli and }
Cauliflowers } 1,800,000 heads 3,780,000 2,880,000
Turnips 18,800,000 roots 4,800,000 4,800,000
Turnip Tops 300,000 junks 500,000 600,000
Carrots 12,000,000 roots 1,571,000 2,400,000
Peas 270,000 bushels 50,000 100,000
Beans 100,000 „ 20,000 10,000
French Beans 140,000 „ 9,600 12,000
Vegetab. Marrows 10,800 dozen 3,240 3,600
Asparagus 12,000 dz. bun. 3,600 1,080
Celery 15,000 „ 4,800 6,000
Rhubarb 7,200 „ 48,000 28,800
Lettuces 734,400 plants 1,080,000 2,073,600
Radishes 6,912 dz. hands 43,200 36,000
Onions 500,000 bushels 398,000 400,000
Ditto (Spring) 36,000 dz. bun. 10,800 21,600
Cucumbers 2,160 bushels 10,800 24,000
Herbs 7,200 dz. bun. 9,600 9,400
24,192,000 12,096,000 310,464,000 One-fifteenth.
8,400,000 16,472,000 89,672,000 One-third.
5,320,000 546,000 14,326,000 One-twentieth.
3,500,000 748,000 32,648,000 One-tenth.
250,000 200,000 1,850,000 One-third.
1,500,000 546,000 18,017,000 One-thirtieth.
14,000 4,000 438,000 One-half.
2,400 1,000 133,400 One-fifteenth.
50,000 9,600 221,200 One-tenth.
432 1,800 19,872 One-third.
1,440 1,440 19,560 One-fortieth.
3,000 6,000 34,800 One-eighth.
2,400 4,800 91,200 One-tenth.
129,600 475,200 4,492,800 One-eighth.
18,000 28,800 132,912 One-tenth.
9,600 182,000 1,489,600 One-third.
21,600 14,400 104,400 One-fourth.
12,000 38,400 87,360 One-eighth.
7,800 3,900 37,900 One-tenth.
[3] The above fruits are not all home grown. The currants, I am
informed, are one-fifteenth foreign. The foreign “tender” fruit being
sent to the markets, it is impossible to obtain separate returns.
[4] A common sale of strawberries in the markets is “rounds.” I have,
however, given the quantity thus sold less technically, and in the
measures most familiar to the general public.
[5] The cabbages, turnips, &c. are brought in loads to the great
wholesale markets, a load varying from 150 to 200 dozen, but being
more frequently nearer 200, and not unfrequently to fully that amount.
Not to perplex my reader with too great a multiplicity of figures
in a tabular arrangement, I have given the quantity of individual
articles in a load, without specifying it. In the smaller market (for
vegetables) of Portman, the cabbages, &c., are not conveyed in waggons,
as to the other markets, but in carts containing generally sixty
dozens.
The various proportions of the several kinds of fruit and vegetables
sold by the costermongers are here calculated for _all_ the markets,
from returns which have been obtained from each market separately.
To avoid unnecessary detail, however, these several items are lumped
together, and the aggregate proportion above given.
The foregoing Table, however, relates chiefly to “home grown” supplies.
Concerning the quantity of foreign fruit and vegetables imported into
this country, the proportion consumed in London, and the relative
amount sold by the costers, I have obtained the following returns:--
TABLE, SHOWING THE QUANTITY OR MEASURE OF THE UNDERMENTIONED FOREIGN
GREEN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES SOLD WHOLESALE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR IN
LONDON, WITH THE PROPORTION SOLD RETAIL IN THE STREETS.
---------------+----------------+-----------------
| Quantity sold | Proportion sold
Description. | wholesale in | retail in
| London. | the streets.
---------------+----------------+-----------------
FRUIT. | |
Apples | 39,561 bush. | seven-eighths.
Pears | 19,742 „ | seven-eighths.
Cherries | 264,240 lbs. | two-thirds.
Grapes | 1,328,190 „ | one-fiftieth.
Pine-apples | 200,000 fruit | one-tenth.
Oranges | 61,635,146 „ | one-fourth.
Lemons | 15,408,789 „ | one-hundredth.
| |
NUTS. | |
Spanish Nuts } | 72,509 bush. | one-third.
Barcelona „ } | |
Brazil „ | 11,700 „ | one-fourth.
Chestnuts | 26,250 „ | one-fourth.
Walnuts | 36,088 „ | two-thirds.
“Coker”-nuts | 1,255,000 nuts | one-third.
| |
VEGETABLES. | |
Potatoes | 79,654,400 lbs.| one-half.
---------------+----------------+-----------------
Here, then, we have the entire metropolitan supply of the principal
vegetables and green fruit (both home grown and foreign), as well
as the relative quantity “distributed” throughout London by the
costermongers; it now but remains for me, in order to complete the
account, to do the same for “the dry fruit.”
TABLE, SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF “DRY” FRUIT SOLD WHOLESALE IN LONDON
THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, WITH THE PROPORTION SOLD RETAIL IN THE STREETS.
---------------+----------------+-----------------------
| Quantity sold | Proportion sold retail
Description. | wholesale | in the streets.
| in London. |
---------------+----------------+-----------------------
Shell Almonds | 12,500 cwt. | half per cent.
Raisins | 135,000 „ | quarter per cent.
Currants | 250,000 „ | none.
Figs | 21,700 „ | one per cent.
Prunes | 15,000 „ | quarter per cent.
---------------+----------------+-----------------------
OF THE FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SEASON OF THE COSTERMONGERS.
The strawberry season begins about June, and continues till about the
middle of July. From the middle to the end of July the costers “work”
raspberries. During July cherries are “in” as well as raspberries; but
many costers prefer working raspberries, because “they’re a quicker
sixpence.” After the cherries, they go to work upon plums, which they
have about the end of August. Apples and pears come in after the plums
in the month of September, and the apples last them all through the
winter till the month of May. The pears last only till Christmas.
Currants they work about the latter end of July, or beginning of August.
Concerning the costermonger’s vegetable season, it may be said that
he “works” greens during the winter months, up to about March; from
that time they are getting “leathery,” the leaves become foxy, I was
told, and they eat tough when boiled. The costers generally do not like
dealing either in greens or turnips, “they are such heavy luggage,”
they say. They would sooner “work” green peas and new potatoes.
The costermonger, however, does the best at fruit; but this he cannot
work--with the exception of apples--for more than four months in the
year. They lose but little from the fruit spoiling. “If it doesn’t
fetch a good price, it must fetch a bad one,” they say; but they are
never at a great loss by it. They find the “ladies” their hardest
or “scaliest” customers. Whatever price they ask, they declare the
“ladies” will try to save the market or “gin” penny out of it, so that
they may have “a glass of something short” before they go home.
OF COVENT GARDEN MARKET.
On a Saturday--the coster’s business day--it is computed that as many
as 2,000 donkey-barrows, and upwards of 3,000 women with shallows and
head-baskets visit this market during the forenoon. About six o’clock
in the morning is the best time for viewing the wonderful restlessness
of the place, for then not only is the “Garden” itself all bustle and
activity, but the buyers and sellers stream to and from it in all
directions, filling every street in the vicinity. From Long Acre to
the Strand on the one side, and from Bow-street to Bedford-street on
the other, the ground has been seized upon by the market-goers. As you
glance down any one of the neighbouring streets, the long rows of carts
and donkey-barrows seem interminable in the distance. They are of all
kinds, from the greengrocer’s taxed cart to the coster’s barrow--from
the showy excursion-van to the rude square donkey-cart and bricklayer’s
truck. In every street they are ranged down the middle and by the
kerb-stones. Along each approach to the market, too, nothing is to be
seen, on all sides, but vegetables; the pavement is covered with heaps
of them waiting to be carted; the flagstones are stained green with
the leaves trodden under foot; sieves and sacks full of apples and
potatoes, and bundles of brocoli and rhubarb, are left unwatched upon
almost every door-step; the steps of Covent Garden Theatre are covered
with fruit and vegetables; the road is blocked up with mountains of
cabbages and turnips; and men and women push past with their arms bowed
out by the cauliflowers under them, or the red tips of carrots pointing
from their crammed aprons, or else their faces are red with the weight
of the loaded head-basket.
The donkey-barrows, from their number and singularity, force you to
stop and notice them. Every kind of ingenuity has been exercised to
construct harness for the costers’ steeds; where a buckle is wanting,
tape or string make the fastening secure; traces are made of rope and
old chain, and an old sack or cotton handkerchief is folded up as a
saddle-pad. Some few of the barrows make a magnificent exception,
and are gay with bright brass; while one of the donkeys may be seen
dressed in a suit of old plated carriage-harness, decorated with
coronets in all directions. At some one of the coster conveyances
stands the proprietor, arranging his goods, the dozing animal starting
up from its sleep each time a heavy basket is hoisted on the tray.
Others, with their green and white and red load neatly arranged, are
ready for starting, but the coster is finishing his breakfast at the
coffee-stall. On one barrow there may occasionally be seen a solitary
sieve of apples, with the horse of some neighbouring cart helping
himself to the pippins while the owner is away. The men that take
charge of the trucks, whilst the costers visit the market, walk about,
with their arms full of whips and sticks. At one corner a donkey has
slipped down, and lies on the stones covered with the cabbages and
apples that have fallen from the cart.
The market itself presents a beautiful scene. In the clear morning air
of an autumn day the whole of the vast square is distinctly seen from
one end to the other. The sky is red and golden with the newly-risen
sun, and the rays falling on the fresh and vivid colours of the fruit
and vegetables, brightens up the picture as with a coat of varnish.
There is no shouting, as at other markets, but a low murmuring hum
is heard, like the sound of the sea at a distance, and through each
entrance to the market the crowd sweeps by. Under the dark Piazza
little bright dots of gas-lights are seen burning in the shops; and
in the paved square the people pass and cross each other in all
directions, hampers clash together, and excepting the carters from the
country, every one is on the move. Sometimes a huge column of baskets
is seen in the air, and walks away in a marvellously steady manner,
or a monster railway van, laden with sieves of fruit, and with the
driver perched up on his high seat, jolts heavily over the stones.
Cabbages are piled up into stacks as it were. Carts are heaped high
with turnips, and bunches of carrots like huge red fingers, are seen in
all directions. Flower-girls, with large bundles of violets under their
arms, run past, leaving a trail of perfume behind them. Wagons, with
their shafts sticking up in the air, are ranged before the salesmen’s
shops, the high green load railed in with hurdles, and every here and
there bunches of turnips are seen flying in the air over the heads of
the people. Groups of apple-women, with straw pads on their crushed
bonnets, and coarse shawls crossing their bosoms, sit on their porter’s
knots, chatting in Irish, and smoking short pipes; every passer-by
is hailed with the cry of, “Want a baskit, yer honor?” The porter,
trembling under the piled-up hamper, trots along the street, with his
teeth clenched and shirt wet with the weight, and staggering at every
step he takes.
Inside, the market all is bustle and confusion. The people walk along
with their eyes fixed on the goods, and frowning with thought. Men in
all costumes, from the coster in his corduroy suit to the greengrocer
in his blue apron, sweep past. A countryman, in an old straw hat and
dusty boots, occasionally draws down the anger of a woman for walking
about with his hands in the pockets of his smock-frock, and is asked,
“if that is the way to behave on a market-day?” Even the granite
pillars cannot stop the crowd, for it separates and rushes past them,
like the tide by a bridge pier. At every turn there is a fresh odour to
sniff at; either the bitter aromatic perfume of the herbalists’ shops
breaks upon you, or the scent of oranges, then of apples, and then of
onions is caught for an instant as you move along. The brocoli tied up
in square packets, the white heads tinged slightly red, as it were,
with the sunshine,--the sieves of crimson love-apples, polished like
china,--the bundles of white glossy leeks, their roots dangling like
fringe,--the celery, with its pinky stalks and bright green tops,--the
dark purple pickling-cabbages,--the scarlet carrots,--the white knobs
of turnips,--the bright yellow balls of oranges, and the rich brown
coats of the chesnuts--attract the eye on every side. Then there are
the apple-merchants, with their fruit of all colours, from the pale
yellow green to the bright crimson, and the baskets ranged in rows on
the pavement before the little shops. Round these the customers stand
examining the stock, then whispering together over their bargain, and
counting their money. “Give you four shillings for this here lot,
master,” says a coster, speaking for his three companions. “Four and
six is my price,” answers the salesman. “Say four, and it’s a bargain,”
continues the man. “I said my price,” returns the dealer; “go and look
round, and see if you can get ’em cheaper; if not, come back. I only
wants what’s fair.” The men, taking the salesman’s advice, move on.
The walnut merchant, with the group of women before his shop, peeling
the fruit, their fingers stained deep brown, is busy with the Irish
purchasers. The onion stores, too, are surrounded by Hibernians,
feeling and pressing the gold-coloured roots, whose dry skins crackle
as they are handled. Cases of lemons in their white paper jackets, and
blue grapes, just seen above the sawdust are ranged about, and in some
places the ground is slippery as ice from the refuse leaves and walnut
husks scattered over the pavement.
Against the railings of St. Paul’s Church are hung baskets and slippers
for sale, and near the public-house is a party of countrymen preparing
their bunches of pretty coloured grass--brown and glittering, as if it
had been bronzed. Between the spikes of the railing are piled up square
cakes of green turf for larks; and at the pump, boys, who probably
have passed the previous night in the baskets about the market, are
washing, and the water dripping from their hair that hangs in points
over the face. The kerb-stone is blocked up by a crowd of admiring
lads, gathered round the bird-catcher’s green stand, and gazing at
the larks beating their breasts against their cages. The owner, whose
boots are red with the soil of the brick-field, shouts, as he looks
carelessly around, “A cock linnet for tuppence,” and then hits at the
youths who are poking through the bars at the fluttering birds.
Under the Piazza the costers purchase their flowers (in pots) which
they exchange in the streets for old clothes. Here is ranged a small
garden of flower-pots, the musk and mignonette smelling sweetly, and
the scarlet geraniums, with a perfect glow of coloured air about the
flowers, standing out in rich contrast with the dark green leaves of
the evergreens behind them. “There’s myrtles, and larels, and boxes,”
says one of the men selling them, “and there’s a harbora witus, and
lauristiners, and that bushy shrub with pink spots is heath.” Men and
women, selling different articles, walk about under the cover of the
colonnade. One has seed-cake, another small-tooth and other combs,
others old caps, or pig’s feet, and one hawker of knives, razors, and
short hatchets, may occasionally be seen driving a bargain with a
countryman, who stands passing his thumb over the blade to test its
keenness. Between the pillars are the coffee-stalls, with their large
tin cans and piles of bread and butter, and protected from the wind
by paper screens and sheets thrown over clothes-horses; inside these
little parlours, as it were, sit the coffee-drinkers on chairs and
benches, some with a bunch of cabbages on their laps, blowing the steam
from their saucers, others, with their mouths full, munching away at
their slices, as if not a moment could be lost. One or two porters are
there besides, seated on their baskets, breakfasting with their knots
on their heads.
As you walk away from this busy scene, you meet in every street barrows
and costers hurrying home. The pump in the market is now surrounded by
a cluster of chattering wenches quarrelling over whose turn it is to
water their drooping violets, and on the steps of Covent Garden Theatre
are seated the shoeless girls, tying up the halfpenny and penny bundles.
OF “GREEN” FRUIT SELLING IN THE STREETS.
The fruit selling of the streets of London is of a distinct character
from that of vegetable or fish selling, inasmuch as fruit is for the
most part a luxury, and the others are principally necessaries.
There is no doubt that the consumption of fruit supplies a fair
criterion of the condition of the working classes, but the
costermongers, as a body of traders, are little observant, so that it
is not easy to derive from them much information respecting the classes
who are their customers, or as to how their custom is influenced by
the circumstances of the times. One man, however, told me that during
the last panic he sold hardly anything beyond mere necessaries. Other
street-sellers to whom I spoke could not comprehend what a panic meant.