equally curious. The 1,500,000_l._ spent yearly in fish, and the
comparatively small amount expended on vegetables, viz., 290,000_l._,
is a circumstance which seems to show that the labouring population of
London have a greater relish for animal than vegetable diet. “It is
quite certain,” says Dr. Carpenter, “that the most perfect physical
development and the greatest intellectual vigour are to be found
among those races in which a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food
is the prevalent habit.” And yet, in apparent contradiction to the
proposition asserted with so much confidence by Dr. Carpenter, we have
the following curious fact cited by Mr. Jacob Bentley:--
“It is, indeed, a fact worthy of remark, and one that seems never to
have been noticed, that throughout the whole animal creation, in every
country and clime of the earth the most useful animals cost nature the
least waste to sustain them with food. For instance, all animals that
work, live on vegetable or fruit food; and no animal that eats flesh,
works. The all-powerful elephant, and the patient, untiring camel in
the torrid zone; the horse, the ox, or the donkey in the temperate,
and the rein-deer in the frigid zone; obtain all their muscular
power for enduring labour, from Nature’s simplest productions,--the
vegetable kingdom.
“But all the flesh-eating animals, keep the rest of the animated
creation in constant dread of them. They seldom eat vegetable food
till some other animal has eaten it first, and made it into flesh.
Their only use seems to be, to destroy life; their own flesh is unfit
for other animals to eat, having been itself made out of flesh,
and is most foul and offensive. Great strength, fleetness of foot,
usefulness, cleanliness and docility, are then always characteristic
of vegetable-eating animals, while all the world dreads flesh-eaters.”
Of vegetables we have seen that the greatest quantity consumed by the
poor consists of potatoes, of which 60,500,000 lbs. are annually sold
in the streets; but ten pounds of potatoes are only equal in nutritive
power to one pound of butcher’s meat, which contains one-fifth more
solid food than fish,--so that a pound of fish may be said to equal
eight pounds of potatoes, and thus the 60,000,000 lbs. of vegetable
is dietetically equivalent to nearly 7,000,000 lbs. of fish diet.
The cost of the potatoes, at five pounds for 2_d._, is, as we have
seen, 100,000_l._; whereas the cost of the same amount of nutritive
matter in the form of fish, at 1_d._ per pound, would have been only
30,000_l._, or upwards of two-thirds less. The vegetable of which there
is the next greatest street sale is onions, upon which 90,000_l._ are
annually expended. This has been before accounted for, by saying, that
a piece of bread and an onion are to the English labourer what bread
and grapes are to the Frenchman--oftentimes a meal. The relish for
onions by the poorer classes is not difficult to explain. Onions are
strongly stimulating substances, and they owe their peculiar odour and
flavour, as well as their pungent and stimulating qualities, to an
acrid volatile oil which contains sulphur. This oil becomes absorbed,
quickens the circulation, and occasions thirst. The same result takes
place with the oil of fish. It not only proves a stimulant to the
general system, but we are told that the thirst and uneasy feeling
at the stomach, frequently experienced after the use of the richer
species of fish, have led to the employment of spirit to this kind of
food. Hence, says Dr. Pereira, the vulgar proverb, “Brandy is Latin
for Fish.” Moreover, the two classes of food are similar in their
comparative indigestibility, for the uneducated palates of the poor not
only require a more pungent kind of diet, but their stronger stomachs
need something that will resist the action of the gastric juice for a
considerable time. Hence their love of shell-fish.
The small quantity of fruit, too, sold to the poor is a further
proof of what is here stated. The amount of the street sale of this
luxury is no criterion as to the quantity purchased by the London
labourers; for according to all accounts the fruit-buyers in the
streets consist mostly of clerks, shopmen, small tradesmen, and the
children of mechanics or the lower grade of middle class people.
Those who may be said strictly to belong to the poor,--viz. those
whose incomes are barely sufficient for their support--seldom purchase
fruit. In the first place they have no money to spend on such a mere
toothsome extravagance; and, secondly, they require a stronger and
more stimulating, and “_staying_” kind of food. The delights of the
palate, we should remember, are studied only when the cravings of the
stomach are satisfied, so that those who have strong stomachs have
necessarily dull palates, and, therefore, prefer something that “bites
in the mouth,”--to use the words of one of my informants--like gin,
onions, sprats, or pickled whelks. What the poor term “relishes” are
very different things from what the rich style the “delicacies of the
season.”
I have no means of ascertaining the average number of ounces of solid
food consumed by the poorer class of the metropolis. The _whole_ of the
fish, fruit, and vegetables, sold to the London costermongers, is not
disposed of in the London streets--many of the street-sellers going,
as we have seen, country excursions with their goods. According to
the result of the Government Commissioners of Inquiry, the labourers
in the country are unable to procure for themselves and families an
average allowance of more than 122 ounces of solid food--principally
bread--every week; hence it has been justly said we may infer that the
man consumes, as his share, 140 ounces (134 bread and 6 meat). The gaol
dietaries allow 254 ounces, or nearly twice as much to all prisoners,
who undergo continuous hard labour. In the construction of these
dietaries Sir James Graham--the then Secretary of State--says, in his
“Letter to the Chairman of Quarter Sessions” (January 27th, 1843), “I
have consulted not only the Prison Inspectors, but medical men of the
greatest eminence possessing the advantage of long experience.” They
are proposed, he adds, “as the _minimum_ amount which can be safely
afforded to prisoners without the risk of inflicting a punishment
not contemplated by law and which it is unjust and cruel to inflict;
namely, loss of health and strength through the inadequacy of the food
supplied.” Hence it appears not that the thief gets too much, but the
honest working man too little--or, in other words, that the labourer
of this country is able to procure, by his industry, only half the
quantity of food that is considered by “medical men of the greatest
eminence” to be “the _minimum_ amount” that can be _safely_ afforded
for the support of the criminals--a fact which it would be out of place
to comment upon here.
One word concerning the incomes of the London costermongers, and I have
done. It has been before shown that the gross sum of money _taken_
yearly, in the streets, by the sale of fish, fruit, and vegetables,
amounts, in round numbers, to two million pounds--a million and a
half being expended in fish, and a quarter of a million upon fruit
and vegetables respectively. In estimating the yearly receipts of
the costermongers, from their average gains, the gross “takings” of
the entire body were concluded to be between a million and a quarter
and a million and a half sterling--that is to say, each one of the
10,000 street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables, was supposed to
clear ten shillings a week all the year through, and to _take_ fifty
shillings. But, according to the returns furnished me by the salesmen,
at the several metropolitan markets, the weekly “_takings_” of the
ten thousand men and their families--for often both wife and children
sell--cannot be less than four pounds per week all the year round, out
of which it would seem that the clear weekly _gains_ are about fifteen
shillings. (Some costers we have seen take pounds in a day, others--as
the nut and orange-women and children--only a few shillings a week;
some, again, make cent. per cent. profit, whilst others are obliged
to sell at a loss.) This, from all I can gather, as well as from a
comparison of the coster’s style of living with other classes whose
weekly income is nearly the same, appears to be very close upon the
truth.
We may then, I think, safely assert, that the gross yearly receipts of
the London costermongers are two millions of money; that their clear
annual gain, or income, is 425,000_l._; and that the capital invested
in their business, in the form of donkey-carts, barrows, baskets,
weights, and stock-money, is 25,000_l._;--half of this being borrowed,
for which they pay upwards of 20,000_l._ interest per annum.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GAME, POULTRY (LIVE AND DEAD), RABBITS,
BUTTER, CHEESE, AND EGGS.
The class who sell game and poultry in the public thoroughfares of the
metropolis are styled hawkers, both in Leadenhall and Newgate-market.
The number of these dealers in London is computed at between 200
and 300. Of course, legally to sell game, a license, which costs
2_l._ 2_s._ yearly, is required; but the street-seller laughs at the
notion of being subjected to a direct tax; which, indeed, it might be
impossible to levy on so “slippery” a class.
The sale of game, even with a license, was not legalised until 1831;
and, prior to that year, the mere killing of game by an “unqualified”
person was an offence entailing heavy penalties. The “qualification”
consisted of the possession of a freehold estate of 100_l._ a year, or
a leasehold for ninety-nine years of 150_l._ a year! By an Act, passed
in the 25th year of George III., it was provided that a certificate
(costing 3_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._) must be taken out by all qualified
persons killing game. Since 1831 (1 & 2 William IV., c. 32,) a
certificate, without any qualification, is all that is required from
the game-killer.
Both sexes carry on the trade in game-hawking, but there are more
than thrice as many men as women engaged in the business, the weight
occasionally carried being beyond a woman’s strength. The most
customary dress of the game or poultry-hawker is a clean smock-frock
covering the whole of his other attire, except the ends of his
trousers and his thick boots or shoes. Indeed he often, but less
frequently than was the case five years ago, assumes the dress of a
country labourer, although he may have been for years a resident in
London. About forty years ago, I am informed, it was the custom for
countrymen, residing at no great distance, to purchase a stock of
chickens or ducks; and, taking their places in a wagon, to bring their
birds to London, and hawk them from door to door. Some of these men’s
smock-frocks were a convenient garb, for they covered the ample pockets
of the coat beneath, in which were often a store of partridges, or an
occasional pheasant or hare. This game, illegally killed--for it was
all poached--was illegally sold by the hawker, and illegally bought
by the hotel-keepers and the richer tradesmen. One informant (an old
man) was of opinion that the game was rarely offered for sale by these
countrymen at the West-end mansions of the aristocracy. “In fact,” he
said, “I knew one country fellow--though he was sharp enough in his
trade of game and poultry-selling--who seemed to think that every fine
house, without a shop, and where there were livery servants, must needs
be inhabited by a magistrate! But, as the great props of poaching were
the rich--for, of course, the poor couldn’t buy game--there was, no
doubt, a West-end as well as a City trade in it. I have bought game of
a country poultry-hawker,” continued my informant, “when I lived in the
City at the beginning of this century, and generally gave 3_s._ 6_d._
a brace for partridges. I have bid it, and the man has left, refusing
to take it; and has told me afterwards, and, I dare say, he spoke the
truth, that he had sold his partridges at 5_s._ or 6_s._ or more. I
believe 5_s._ a brace was no uncommon price in the City. I have given
as much as 10_s._ for a pheasant for a Christmas supper. The hawker,
before offering the birds for sale, used to peer about him, though we
were alone in my counting-house, and then pull his partridges out of
his pockets, and say, ‘Sir, do you want any very young chickens?’--for
so he called them. Hares he called ‘lions;’ and they cost often,
enough, 5_s._ each of the hawker. The trade had all the charms and
recommendations of a mystery and a risk about it, just like smuggling.”
The sale of game in London, however, was not confined to the
street-hawkers, who generally derived their stock-in-trade immediately
from the poacher. Before the legalisation of the sale, the trade was
carried on, under the rose, by the salesmen in Leadenhall-market,
and that to an extent of not less than a fifteenth of the sale now
accomplished there. The purveyors for the London game-market--I learned
from leading salesmen in Leadenhall--were not then, as now, noble
lords and honourable gentlemen, but peasant or farmer poachers, who
carried on the business systematically. The guards and coachmen of the
stage-coaches were the media of communication, and had charge of the
supply to the London market. The purchasers of the game thus supplied
to a market, which is mostly the property of the municipality of the
City of London, were not only hotel-keepers, who required it for public
dinners presided over by princes, peers, and legislators, but the
purveyors for the civic banquets--such as the Lord Mayor’s ninth of
November dinner, at which the Ministers of State always attended.
This street-hawking of _poached_ game, as far as I could ascertain
from the best-informed quarters, hardly survived the first year of the
legalised sale.
The female hawkers of game are almost all the wives of the men so
engaged, or are women living with them as their wives. The trade is
better, as regards profit, than the costermonger’s ordinary pursuits,
but only when the season is favourable; it is, however, more uncertain.
There is very rarely a distinction between the hawkers of game and of
poultry. A man will carry both, or have game one day and poultry the
next, as suits his means, or as the market avails. The street-sellers
of cheese are generally costers, while the vendors of butter and eggs
are almost extinct.
Game, I may mention, consists of grouse (including black-cocks, and all
the varieties of heath or moor-game), partridges, pheasants, bustards,
and hares. Snipe, woodcocks, plovers, teal, widgeons, wild ducks, and
rabbits are not game, but can only be taken or killed by certificated
persons, who are owners or occupiers of the property on which they are
found, or who have the necessary permission from such persons as are
duly authorised to accord it. Poultry consists of chickens, geese,
ducks, and turkeys, while some persons class pigeons as poultry.
Birds are dietetically divided into three classes: (1) the
white-fleshed, as the common fowl and the turkey; (2) the dark-fleshed
game, as the grouse and the black-cock; and (3) the aquatic (including
swimmers and waders), as the goose and the duck; the flesh of the
latter is penetrated with fat, and difficult of digestion.
OF THE QUANTITY OF GAME, RABBITS, AND POULTRY, SOLD IN THE STREETS.
It appears from inquiries that I instituted, and from authentic returns
which I procured on the subject, that the following is the quantity
of game and poultry sold yearly, as an average, in the markets of the
metropolis. I give it exclusive of such birds as wild-ducks, woodcocks,
&c., the supply of which depends upon the severity of the winter. I
include all wild birds or animals, whether considered game or not, and
I use round numbers, but as closely as possible.
During the past Christmas, however, I may observe, that the supply of
poultry to the markets has been greater than on any previous occasion.
The immensity of the supply was favourable to the hawker’s profit, as
the glut enabled him to purchase both cheaply and largely. One young
poultry-hawker told me that he had cleared 3_l._ in the Christmas
week, and had spent it all in four days--except 5_s._ reserved for
stock-money. It was not spent _entirely_ in drunkenness, a large
portion of it being expended in treats and amusements. So great,
indeed, has been the supply of game and poultry this year, that a
stranger, unused to the grand scale on which provisions are displayed
in the great metropolitan marts, on visiting Leadenhall, a week before
or after Christmas, might have imagined that the staple food of the
London population consisted of turkeys, geese, and chickens. I give,
however, an _average_ yearly supply:
-------------------+-----------+----------+----------+--------------
| | | | Proportion
Description. |Leadenhall.| Newgate. | Total. | sold in
| | | | the Streets.
-------------------+-----------+----------+----------+--------------
GAME, &C. | | | |
Grouse | 45,000 | 12,000 | 57,000 |One-eleventh.
Partridges | 85,000 | 60,000 | 145,000 |One-seventh.
Pheasants | 44,000 | 20,000 | 64,000 |One-fifth.
Snipes | 60,000 | 47,000 | 107,000 |One-twentieth.
Wild Birds | 40,000 | 20,000 | 60,000 |None.
Plovers | 28,000 | 18,000 | 46,000 |None.
Larks | 213,000 | 100,000 | 313,000 |None.
Teals | 10,000 | 5,000 | 15,000 |None.
Widgeons | 30,000 | 8,000 | 38,000 |None.
Hares | 48,000 | 55,000 | 102,000 |One-fifth.
Rabbits | 680,000 | 180,000 | 860,000 |Three-fourths.
+-----------+----------+----------+
|1,283,000 | 525,000 |1,807,000 |
POULTRY. | | | |
Domestic Fowls |1,266,000 | 490,000 |1,756,000 |One-third.
---- ---- (alive) | 45,000 | 15,000 | 60,000 |One-tenth.
Geese | 888,000 | 114,000 |1,002,000 |One-fifth.
Ducks | 235,000 | 148,000 | 383,000 |One-fourth.
---- (alive) | 20,000 | 20,000 | 40,000 |One-tenth.
Turkeys | 69,000 | 55,000 | 124,000 |One-fourth.
Pigeons | 285,000 | 98,000 | 383,000 |None.
+-----------+----------+----------+
|2,808,000 | 940,000 |3,748,000 |
Game, &c. |1,283,000 | 525,000 |1,807,000 |
+-----------+----------+----------+
|4,091,000 | 1,465,000|5,555,000 |
-------------------+-----------+----------+----------+--------------
In the above return wild ducks and woodcocks are not included, because
the quantity sent to London is dependent entirely upon the severity
of the winter. With the costers wild ducks are a favourite article of
trade, and in what those street tradesmen would pronounce a favourable
season for wild ducks, which means a very hard winter, the number
sold in London will, I am told, equal that of pheasants (64,000). The
great stock of wild ducks for the London tables is from Holland, where
the duck decoys are objects of great care. Less than a fifth of the
importation from Holland is from Lincolnshire. These birds, and even
the finest and largest, have been sold during a glut at 1_s._ each.
Woodcocks, under similar circumstances, number with plovers (45,000),
nearly all of which are “golden plovers;” but of woodcocks the
costermongers buy very few: “They’re only a mouthful and a half,” said
one of them, “and don’t suit our customers.” In severe weather a few
ptarmigan are sent to London from Scotland, and in 1841-2 great numbers
were sent to the London markets from Norway. One salesman received
nearly 10,000 ptarmigan in one day. A portion of these were disposed
of to the costers, but the sale was not such as to encourage further
importations.
The returns I give show, that, at the two great game and
poultry-markets, 5,500,000 birds and animals, wild and tame, are yearly
sent to London. To this must be added all that may be consigned direct
to metropolitan game-dealers and poulterers, besides what may be sent
as presents from the country, &c., so that the London supply may be
safely estimated, I am assured, at 6,000,000.
It is difficult to arrive at any very precise computation of the
quantity of game and poultry sold by the costers, or rather at the
money value (or price) of what they sell. The most experienced
salesmen agree, that, as to _quantity_, including everything popularly
considered game (and I have so given it in the return), they sell
one-third. As regards _value_, however, their purchases fall very short
of a third. Of the best qualities of game, and even more especially
of poultry, a third of the hawkers may buy a fifteenth, compared with
their purchases in the lower-priced kinds. The others buy none of the
best qualities. The more “aristocratic” of the poultry-hawkers will,
as a rule, only buy, “when they have an order” or a sure sale, the
best quality of English turkey-cocks; which cannot be wondered at,
seeing that the average price of the English turkey-cock is 12_s._ One
salesman this year sold (at Leadenhall) several turkey-cocks at 30_s._
each, and one at 3_l._ The average price of an English turkey-hen
is 4_s._ 6_d._, and of these the costers buy a few: but their chief
trade is in foreign turkey-hens; of which the average price (when of
good quality and in good condition) is 3_s._ The foreign turkey-cocks
average half the price of the English (or 6_s._). Of Dorking fat
chickens, which average 6_s._ the couple, the hawkers buy none (save as
in the case of the turkey-cocks); but of the Irish fowls, which, this
season, have averaged 2_s._ 6_d._ the couple, they buy largely. On the
other hand they buy nearly all the rabbits sent from Scotland, and half
of those sent from Ostend, while they “clear the market”--no matter of
what the glut may consist--when there _is_ a glut. There is another
distinction of which the hawker avails himself. The average price of
young plump partridges is 2_s._ 6_d._ the brace, of old partridges,
2_s._; accordingly, the coster buys the old. It is the same with
pheasants, the young averaging 7_s._ the brace, the old 6_s._: “And I
can sell them best,” said one man; “for my customers say they’re more
tastier-like. I’ve sold game for twelve years, or more, but I never
tasted any of any kind, so I can’t say who’s right and who’s wrong.”
The hawkers buy, also, game and poultry which will not “keep” another
day. Sometimes they puff out the breast of a chicken with fresh pork
fat, which melts as the bird roasts. “It freshens the fowl, I’ve been
told, and improves it,” said one man; “and the shopkeepers now and
then, does the same. It’s a improvement, sir.”
In the present season the costers have bought of wild ducks,
comparatively, none, and of teal, widgeons, wild birds, and larks, none
at all; or so sparely, as to require no notice.
OF THE STREET-PURCHASERS OF GAME AND POULTRY.
As the purchasers of game and poultry are of a different class to
the costermongers’ ordinary customers, I may devote a few words to
them. From all the information that I could acquire, they appear to
consist, principally, of those who reside at a distance from any cheap
market, and buy a cheap luxury when it is brought to their doors,
as well as of those who are “always on the look-out for something
toothy, such as the shabby genteels, as they’re called, who never
gives nothing but a scaly price. They’ve bargained with me till I was
hard held from pitching into them, and over and over again I should,
only it would have been fourteen days anyhow. They’ll tell me my birds
stinks, when they’re as sweet as flowers. They’d go to the devil to
save three farthings on a partridge.” Other buyers are old gourmands,
living perhaps on small incomes, or if possessed of ample incomes,
but confining themselves to a small expenditure; others, again, are
men who like a cheap dinner, and seldom enjoy it, at their own cost,
unless it be cheap, and who best of all like “such a thing as a moor
bird (grouse),” said one hawker, “which can be eat up to a man’s own
cheek.” This was also the opinion of a poulterer and game-dealer, who
sometimes sold “goods” to the hawkers. Of this class of “patrons” many
shopkeepers, in all branches of business, have a perfect horror, as
they will care nothing for having occupied the tradesmen’s time to no
purpose.