or another, appertain to Jewish customs. A woman, with a heavy gold
chain round her neck, went past, carrying an old green velvet bonnet
covered with feathers, and a fur tippet, that she had either recently
purchased or was about to sell. Another woman, whose features showed
her to be a Gentile, was hurrying toward the slop-shop in the Minories
with a richly quilted satin-lined coat done up in her shawl, and the
market-basket by her side, as if the money due for the work were to be
spent directly for housekeeping.
At the corner of Duke’s-street was a stall kept by a Jew, who sold
things that are eaten only by the Hebrews. Here in a yellow pie-dish
were pieces of stewed apples floating in a thick puce-coloured sauce.
One man that I spoke to told me that he considered his Sunday morning’s
work a very bad one if he did not sell his five or six hundred bushels
of nuts of different kinds. He had taken 150_l._ that day of the
street-sellers, and usually sold his 100_l._ worth of goods in a
morning. Many others did the same as himself. Here I met with every
attention, and was furnished with some valuable statistical information
concerning the street-trade.
OF ORANGE AND LEMON SELLING IN THE STREETS.
Of foreign fruits, the oranges and nuts supply by far the greater
staple for the street trade, and, therefore, demand a brief, but still
a fuller, notice than other articles.
Oranges were first sold in the streets at the close of Elizabeth’s
reign. So rapidly had the trade increased, that four years after her
death, or in 1607, Ben Jonson classes “orange-wives,” for noisiness,
with “fish-wives.” These women at first carried the oranges in baskets
on their heads; barrows were afterwards used; and now trays are usually
slung to the shoulders.
Oranges are brought to this country in cases or boxes, containing from
500 to 900 oranges. From official tables, it appears that between
250,000,000 and 300,000,000 of oranges and lemons are now yearly
shipped to England. They are sold wholesale, principally at public
sales, in lots of eight boxes, the price at such sales varying greatly,
according to the supply and the quality. The supply continues to arrive
from October to August.
Oranges are bought by the retailers in Duke’s-place and in
Covent-Garden; but the costermongers nearly all resort to Duke’s-place,
and the shopkeepers to Covent-Garden. They are sold in baskets of 200
or 300; they are also disposed of by the hundred, a half-hundred being
the smallest quantity sold in Duke’s-place. These hundreds, however,
number 110, containing 10 double “hands,” a single hand being 5
oranges. The price in December was 2_s._ 6_d._, 3_s._ 6_d._, and 4_s._
the hundred. They are rarely lower than 4_s._ about Christmas, as there
is then a better demand for them. The damaged oranges are known as
“specks,” and the purchaser runs the risk of specks forming a portion
of the contents of a basket, as he is not allowed to empty it for the
examination of the fruit: but some salesmen agree to change the specks.
A month after Christmas, oranges are generally cheaper, and become
dearer again about May, when there is a great demand for the supply of
the fairs and races.
Oranges are sold by all classes connected with the fruit, flower, or
vegetable trade of the streets. The majority of the street-sellers are,
however, women and children, and the great part of these are Irish. It
has been computed that, when oranges are “at their best” (generally
about Easter), there are 4,000 persons, including stall-keepers,
selling oranges in the metropolis and its suburbs; while there are
generally 3,000 out of this number “working” oranges--that is, hawking
them from street to street: of these, 300 attend at the doors of the
theatres, saloons, &c. Many of those “working” the theatres confine
their trade to oranges, while the other dealers rarely do so, but
unite with them the sale of nuts of some kind. Those who sell only
oranges, or only nuts, are mostly children, and of the poorest class.
The smallness of the sum required to provide a stock of oranges (a
half-hundred being 15_d._ or 18_d._), enables the poor, who cannot
raise “stock-money” sufficient to purchase anything else, to trade upon
a few oranges.
The regular costers rarely buy oranges until the spring, except,
perhaps, for Sunday afternoon sale--though this, as I said before, they
mostly object to. In the spring, however, they stock their barrows with
oranges. One man told me that, four or five years back, he had sold in
a day 2,000 oranges that he picked up as a bargain. They did not cost
him half a farthing each; he said he “cleared 2_l._ by the spec.” At
the same period he could earn 5_s._ or 6_s._ on a Sunday afternoon by
the sale of oranges in the street; but now he could not earn 2_s._
A poor Irishwoman, neither squalid in appearance nor ragged in dress,
though looking pinched and wretched, gave me the subjoined account;
when I saw her, resting with her basket of oranges near Coldbath-fields
prison, she told me she almost wished she was inside of it, but for the
“childer.” Her history was one common to her class--
“I was brought over here, sir, when I was a girl, but my father and
mother died two or three years after. I was in service then, and very
good service I continued in as a maid-of-all-work, and very kind people
I met; yes, indeed, though I was Irish and a Catholic, and they was
English Protistants. I saved a little money there, and got married. My
husband’s a labourer; and when he’s in full worruk he can earn 12_s._
or 14_s._ a week, for he’s a good hand and a harrud-worruking man, and
we do middlin’ thin. He’s out of worruk now, and I’m forced to thry and
sill a few oranges to keep a bit of life in us, and my husband minds
the childer. Bad as I do, I can do 1_d._ or 2_d._ a day profit betther
than him, poor man! for he’s tall and big, and people thinks, if he
goes round with a few oranges, it’s just from idleniss; and the Lorrud
above knows he’ll always worruk whin he can. He goes sometimes whin I’m
harrud tired. One of us must stay with the childer, for the youngist
is not three and the ildest not five. We don’t live, we starruve. We
git a few ’taties, and sometimes a plaice. To-day I’ve not taken 3_d._
as yit, sir, and it’s past three. Oh, no, indeed and indeed, thin, I
dont make 9_d._ a day. We live accordingly, for there’s 1_s._ 3_d._ a
week for rint. I have very little harrut to go into the public-houses
to sill oranges, for they begins flying out about the Pope and Cardinal
Wiseman, as if I had anything to do with it. And that’s another reason
why I like my husband to stay at home, and me to go out, because he’s a
hasty man, and might get into throuble. I don’t know what will become
of us, if times don’t turn.”
On calling upon this poor woman on the following day, I found her and
her children absent. The husband had got employment at some distance,
and she had gone to see if she could not obtain a room 3_d._ a week
cheaper, and lodge near the place of work.
According to the Board of Trade returns, there are nearly two hundred
millions of oranges annually imported into this country. About
one-third of these are sold wholesale in London, and one-fourth of the
latter quantity disposed of retail in the streets. The returns I have
procured, touching the London sale, prove that no less than 15,500,000
are sold yearly by the street-sellers. The retail price of these may
be said to be, upon an average, 5_s._ per 110, and this would give us
about 35,000_l._ for the gross sum of money laid out every year, in the
streets, in the matter of oranges alone.
The street lemon-trade is now insignificant, lemons having become a
more important article of commerce since the law required foreign-bound
ships to be provided with lemon-juice. The street-sale is chiefly in
the hands of the Jews and the Irish. It does not, however, call for
special notice here.
OF NUT SELLING IN THE STREETS.
The sellers of foreign hazel nuts are principally women and children,
but the stall-keepers, and oftentimes the costermongers, sell them with
other “goods.” The consumption of them is immense, the annual export
from Tarragona being little short of 8,000 tons. They are to be found
in every poor shop in London, as well as in the large towns; they are
generally to be seen on every street-stall, in every country village,
at every fair, and on every race-ground. The supply is from Gijon and
Tarragona. The Gijon nuts are the “Spanish,” or “fresh” nuts. They are
sold at public sales, in barrels of three bushels each, the price being
from 35_s._ to 40_s._ The nuts from Tarragona, whence comes the great
supply, are known as “Barcelonas,” and they are kiln-dried before they
are shipped. Hence the Barcelonas will “keep,” and the Spanish will
not. The Spanish are coloured with the fumes of sulphur, by the Jews in
Duke’s-place.
It is somewhat remarkable that nuts supply employment to a number of
girls in Spain, and then yield the means of a scanty subsistence to a
number of girls (with or without parents) in England.
The prattle and the laughter (according to Inglis) of the Spanish
girls who sort, find no parallel however among the London girls who
sell the nuts. The appearance of the latter is often wretched. In the
winter months they may be seen as if stupified with cold, and with
the listlessness, not to say apathy, of those whose diet is poor in
quantity and insufficient in amount.
Very few costermongers buy nuts (as hazel nuts are always called)
at the public sales--only those whose dealings are of a wholesale
character, and they are anything but regular attendants at the sales.
The street-sellers derive nearly the whole of their supply from
Duke’s-place. The principal times of business are Friday afternoons
and Sunday mornings. Those who have “capital” buy on the Friday, when
they say they can make 10_s._ go as far as 12_s._ on the Sunday. The
“Barcelonas” are from 4-1/2_d._ to 6_d._ a quart to the street-sellers.
The cob-nuts, which are the large size, used by the pastry-cooks for
mottos, &c., are 2_d._ and 2-1/2_d._ the quart, but they are generally
destitute of a kernel. A quart contains from 100 to 180 nuts, according
to the size. The costermongers buy somewhat largely when nuts are 3_d._
the quart; they then, and not unfrequently, stock their barrows with
nuts entirely, but 2_s._ a day is reckoned excellent earnings at this
trade. “It’s the worst living of all, sir,” I was told, “on nuts.”
The sale in the streets is at the fruit-stalls, in the public-houses,
on board the steamers, and at the theatre doors. They are sold by the
same class as the oranges, and a stock may be procured for a smaller
sum even than is required for oranges. By the outlay of 1_s._ many an
Irishwoman can send out her two or three children with nuts, reserving
some for herself. Seven-eighths of the nuts imported are sold, I am
assured, in the open air.
Some of the costermongers who are to be found in Battersea-fields,
and who attend the fairs and races, get through 5_s._ worth of nuts
in a day, but only exceptionally. These men have a sort of portable
shooting-gallery. The customer fires a kind of rifle, loaded with a
dart, and according to the number marked on the centre, or on the
encircling rings of a board which forms the head of the stall, and
which may be struck by the dart, is the number of nuts payable by the
stall-keeper for the halfpenny “fire.”
The Brazil nuts, which are now sold largely in the streets at twelve
to sixteen a penny, were not known in this country as an article of
commerce before 1824. They are sold by the peck--2_s._ being the
ordinary price--in Duke’s-place.
Coker-nuts--as they are now generally called, and indeed “entered”
as such at the Custom-house, and so written by Mr. Mc Culloch, to
distinguish them from cocoa, or the berries of the cacâo, used for
chocolate, etc.--are brought from the West Indies, both British and
Spanish, and Brazil. They are used as dunnage in the sugar ships, being
interposed between the hogsheads, to steady them and prevent their
being flung about. The coker-nut was introduced into England in 1690.
They are sold at public sales and otherwise, and bring from 10_s._ to
14_s._ per 100. Coker-nuts are now used at fairs to “top” the sticks.
The costermongers rarely speculate in coker-nuts now, as the boys will
not buy them unless cut, and it is almost impossible to tell how the
coker-nut will “open.” The interior is sold in halfpenny-worths and
penny-worths. These nuts are often “worked with a drum.” There may
be now forty coker-nut men in the street trade, but not one in ten
confines himself to the article.
A large proportion of the dry or ripe walnuts sold in the streets is
from Bordeaux. They are sold at public sales, in barrels of three
bushels each, realising 21_s._ to 25_s._ a barrel. They are retailed
at from eight to twenty a penny, and are sold by all classes of
street-traders.
A little girl, who looked stunted and wretched, and who did not know
her age (which might be eleven), told me she was sent out by her mother
with six halfpenny-worth of nuts, and she must carry back 6_d._ or she
would be beat. She had no father, and could neither read nor write.
Her mother was an Englishwoman, _she believed_, and sold oranges. She
had heard of God; he was “Our Father who art in heaven.” She’d heard
that said. She did not know the Lord’s Prayer; had never heard of it;
did not know who the Lord was; perhaps the Lord Mayor, but she had
never been before him. She went into public-houses with her nuts, but
did not know whether she was ever insulted or not; she did not know
what insulted was, but she was never badly used. She often went into
tap-rooms with her nuts, just to warm herself. A man once gave her some
hot beer, which made her ill. Her mother was kind enough to her, and
never beat her but for not taking home 6_d._ She had a younger brother
that did as she did. She had bread and potatoes to eat, and sometimes
tea, and sometimes herrings. Her mother didn’t get tipsy (at first she
did not know what was meant by tipsy) _above_ once a week.
OF ROASTED CHESTNUTS AND APPLES.
How long the street-trade in roasted chestnuts has been carried on
I find no means of ascertaining precisely, but it is unquestionably
one of the oldest of the public traffics. Before potato-cans were
introduced, the sale of roasted chestnuts was far greater than it is
now.
It is difficult to compute the number of roasted chestnut-sellers at
present in the streets. It is probable that they outnumber 1,000, for
I noticed that on a cold day almost every street fruit-seller, man or
woman, had roasted chestnuts for sale.
Sometimes the chestnuts are roasted in the streets, in a huge iron
apparatus, made expressly for the purpose, and capable of cooking
perhaps a bushel at a time--but these are to be found solely at the
street-markets.
The ordinary street apparatus for roasting chestnuts is simple. A
round pan, with a few holes punched in it, costing 3_d._ or 4_d._ in a
marine-store shop, has burning charcoal within it, and is surmounted by
a second pan, or kind of lid, containing chestnuts, which are thus kept
hot. During my inquiry, chestnuts were dear. “People don’t care,” I
was told, “whether chestnuts is three and six, as they are now, or one
and six a peck, as I hope they will be afore long; they wants the same
pennyworths.”
Chestnuts are generally bought wholesale in Duke’s-place, on the
Sunday mornings, for street sale; but some street-dealers buy them of
those costermongers, whose means enable them “to lay in” a quantity.
The retail customers are, for the most part, boys and girls, or a few
labourers or street people. The usual price is sixteen a penny.
Roasted apples used to be vended in the streets, and often along with
roasted chestnuts, but it is a trade which has now almost entirely
disappeared, and its disappearance is attributed to the prevalence of
potato cans.
I had the following account from a woman, apparently between sixty and
seventy, though she said she was only about fifty. What she was in
her youth, she said, she neither knew nor cared. At any rate she was
unwilling to converse about it. I found her statement as to chestnuts
corroborated:--
“The trade’s nothing to what it was, sir,” she said. “Why when the
hackney coaches was in the streets, I’ve often sold 2_s._ worth of
a night at a time, for a relish, to the hackneymen that was waiting
their turn over their beer. Six and eight a penny was enough then;
now people must have sixteen; though I pays 3_s._ a peck, and to get
them at that’s a favour. I could make my good 12_s._ a week on roasted
chestnuts and apples, and as much on other things in them days, but I’m
half-starved now. There’ll never be such times again. People didn’t
want to cut one another’s throats in the street business then. O, I
don’t know anything about how long ago, or what year--years is nothing
to me--but I only know that it was so. I got a penny a piece then for
my roasted apples, and a halfpenny for sugar to them. I _could_ live
then. Roasted apples was reckoned good for the tooth-ache in them days,
but, people change so, they aren’t now. I don’t know what I make now in
chestnuts and apples, which is all I sells--perhaps 5_s._ a week. My
rent’s 1_s._ 3_d._ a week. I lives on a bit of fish, or whatever I can
get, and that’s all about it.”
The absolute quantity of oranges, lemons, and nuts sold annually in the
London streets is as follows:
Oranges 15,400,000
Lemons 154,000
Spanish and Barcelona nuts 24,000 bushels
Brazil do. 3,000 „
Chestnuts 6,500 „
Walnuts 24,000 „
Coker-nuts 400,000 nuts
OF “DRY” FRUIT SELLING IN THE STREETS.
The sellers of “dry fruit” cannot be described as a class, for, with
the exception of one old couple, none that I know of confine themselves
to its sale, but resort to it merely when the season prevents their
dealing in “green fruit” or vegetables. I have already specified what
in commerce is distinguished as “dry fruit,” but its classification
among the costers is somewhat narrowed.
The dry-fruit sellers derive their supplies partly from Duke’s-place,
partly from Pudding-lane, but perhaps principally from the costers
concerning whom I have spoken, who buy wholesale at the markets and
elsewhere, and who will “clear out a grocer,” or buy such figs, &c.
as a leading tradesman will not allow to be sent, or offered, to
his regular customers, although, perhaps, some of the articles are
tolerably good. Or else the dry-fruit men buy a damaged lot of a broker
or grocer, and pick out all that is eatable, or rather saleable.
The sale of dry fruit is unpopular among the costermongers. Despite
their utmost pains, they cannot give to figs, or raisins, or currants,
which may be old and stale, anything of the bloom and plumpness of
good fruit, and the price of good fruit is too high for them. Moreover,
if the fruit be a “damaged lot,” it is almost always discoloured, and
the blemish cannot be removed.
It is impossible to give the average price of dry fruit to the
costermonger. The quality and the “harvest” affect the price materially
in the regular trade.
The rule which I am informed the costermonger, who sometimes “works”
a barrow of dried fruit, observes, is this: he will aim at cent. per
cent., and, to accomplish it, “slang” weights are not unfrequently
used. The stale fruit is sold by the grocers, and the damaged fruit
by the warehouses to the costers, at from a half, but much more
frequently a fourth to a twentieth of its prime cost. The principal
street-purchasers are boys.
A dry-fruit seller gave me the following account:--By “half profits” he
meant cent. per cent., or, in other words, that the money he received
for his stock was half of it cost price and half profit.
“I sell dry fruit, sir, in February and March, because I must be doing
something, and green fruit’s not my money then. It’s a poor trade. I’ve
sold figs at 1_d._ a pound,--no, sir, not slang the time I mean--and
I could hardly make 1_s._ a day at it, though it was half profits.
Our customers look at them quite particler. ‘Let’s see the other side
of them figs,’ the boys’ll say, and then they’ll out with--‘I say,
master, d’you see any green about me?’ Dates I can hardly get off at
all, no!--not if they was as cheap as potatoes, or cheaper. I’ve been
asked by women if dates was good in dumplings? I’ve sometimes said
‘yes,’ though I knew nothing at all about them. They’re foreign. I
can’t say where they’re grown. Almonds and raisins goes off best with
us. I don’t sell them by weight, but makes them up in ha’penny or penny
lots. There’s two things, you see, and one helps off the other. Raisins
is dry grapes, I’ve heard. I’ve sold grapes before they was dried, at
1_d._ and 2_d._ the pound. I didn’t do no good in any of ’em; 1_s._ a
day on ’em was the topper, for all the half profits. I’ll not touch ’em
again if I aint forced.”
There are a few costers who sell tolerable dry fruit, but not to any
extent.
The old couple I have alluded to stand all the year round at the corner
of a street running into a great city thoroughfare. They are supplied
with their fruit, I am told, through the friendliness of a grocer who
charges no profit, and sometimes makes a sacrifice for their benefit.
As I was told that this old couple would not like inquiries to be made
of them, I at once desisted.
There are sometimes twenty costermongers selling nothing but dry fruit,
but more frequently only ten, and sometimes only five; while, perhaps,
from 300 to 400 sell a few figs, &c., with other things, such as late
apples, the dry fruit being then used “just as a fill up.”
According to the returns before given, the gross quantity of dry fruit
disposed of yearly in the streets of London may be stated as follows:
7,000 lbs. of shell almonds,
37,800 „ raisins,
24,300 „ figs,
4,200 „ prunes.
OF THE STREET-SALE OF VEGETABLES.
The seller of fruit in the streets confines his traffic far more
closely to fruit, than does the vegetable-dealer to vegetables. Within
these three or four years many street-traders sell only fruit the year
through; but the purveyor of vegetables now usually sells fish with his
cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, or other garden stuff. The fish that
he carries out on his round generally consists of soles, mackerel, or
fresh or salt herrings. This combination of the street-green-grocer and
street-fishmonger is called a “general dealer.”
The general dealers are usually accompanied by boys (as I have
elsewhere shown), and sometimes by their wives. If a woman be a general
dealer, she is mostly to be found at a stall or standing, and not
“going a round.”
The general dealer “works” everything through the season. He generally
begins the year with sprats or plaice: then he deals in soles until
the month of May. After this he takes to mackerel, haddocks, or red
herrings. Next he trades in strawberries or raspberries. From these
he will turn to green and ripe gooseberries; thence he will go to
cherries; from cherries he will change to red or white currants; from
them to plums or green-gages, and from them again to apples and pears,
and damsons. After these he mostly “works” a few vegetables, and
continues with them until the fish season begins again. Some general
dealers occasionally trade in sweetmeats, but this is not usual, and is
looked down upon by the “trade.”