indigenous to this country--Wordsworth mentions one which must have
been 800 years old--is carried on by the coster boys (principally), but
only in a desultory way. The chief supply is brought to London in the
carts or barrows of the costers returning from a country expedition.
If the costermonger be accompanied by a lad--as he always is if the
expedition be of any length--the lad will say to his master, “Bill,
let’s have some May to take back.” The man will almost always consent,
and often assist in procuring the thickly green branches with their
white or rose-tinted, and _freshly_-smelling flowers. The odour of the
hawthorn blossom is peculiar, and some eminent botanist--Dr. Withering
if I remember rightly--says it may be best described as “fresh.” No
flower, perhaps, is blended with more poetical, antiquarian, and
beautiful associations than the ever-welcome blossom of the may-tree.
One gardener told me that as the hawthorn was in perfection in June
instead of May, the name was not proper. But it must be remembered that
the name of the flower was given during the old style, which carried
our present month of May twelve days into June, and the name would then
be more appropriate.
The May is obtained by the costermongers in the same way as the holly,
by cutting it from the trees in the hedges. It has sometimes to be cut
or broken off stealthily, for persons may no more like their hawthorns
to be stripped than their hollies, and an ingenuous lad--as will have
been observed--told me of “people’s” objections to the unauthorized
stripping of their holly-bushes. But there is not a quarter of the
difficulty in procuring May that there is in procuring holly at
Christmas.
The costermonger, if he has “done tidy” in the country will very
probably leave the May at the disposal of his boy; but a few men,
though perhaps little more than twenty, I was told, bring it on their
own account. The lads then carry the branches about for sale; or if a
considerable quantity has been brought, dispose of it to other boys or
girls, or entrust them with the sale of it, at “half-profits,” or any
terms agreed upon. Costermongers have been known to bring home “a load
of May,” and this not unfrequently, at the request, and for the benefit
of a “cracked-up” brother-trader, to whom it has been at once delivered
gratuitously.
A lad, whom I met with as he was selling holly, told me that he had
brought may from the country when he had been there with a coster. He
had also gone out of town a few miles to gather it on his own account.
“But it ain’t no good;” he said; “you must often go a good way--I never
knows anything about how many miles--and if it’s very ripe (the word he
used) it’s soon shaken. There’s no sure price. You may get 4_d._ for a
big branch or you must take 1_d._ I may have made 1_s._ on a round but
hardly ever more. It can’t be got near hand. There’s some stunning fine
trees at the top of the park there (the Regent’s Park) the t’other side
of the ’logical Gardens, but there’s always a cove looking after them,
they say, and both night and day.”
Palm, the flower of any of the numerous species of the willow, is sold
only on Palm Sunday, and the Saturday preceding. The trade is about
equally in the hands of the English and Irish lads, but the English
lads have a commercial advantage on the morning of Palm Sunday, when
so many of the Irish lads are at chapel. The palm is all gathered by
the street-vendors. One costermonger told me that when he was a lad, he
had sold palm to a man who had managed to get half-drunk on a Sunday
morning, and who told him that he wanted it to show his wife, who very
seldom stirred out, that he’d been taking a healthful walk into the
country!
Lilac in flower is sold (and procured) in the same way as May, but in
small quantities. Very rarely indeed, laburnum; which is too fragile;
or syringa, which, I am told, is hardly saleable in the streets. One
informant remembered that forty years ago, when he was a boy, branches
of elder-berry flowers were sold in the streets, but the trade has
disappeared.
It is very difficult to form a calculation as to the extent of this
trade. The best informed give me reason to believe that the sale
of all these branches (apart from Christmas) ranges, according to
circumstances, from 30_l._ to 50_l._, the cost being the labour of
gathering, and the subsistence of the labourer while at the work. This
is independent of what the costers buy in the markets.
* * * * *
I now show the quantity of branches forming the street trade:--
Holly 59,040 bunches
Mistletoe 56,160 „
Ivy and Laurel 26,640 „
Lilac 5,400 „
Palm 1,008 „
May 2,520 „
-------
Total number of bunches }
sold in the streets from } 150,768
market-sale }
Add to quantity from }
other sources } 75,000
-------
225,768
The quantity of branches “from other sources” is that gathered by the
costers in the way I have described; but it is impossible to obtain
a return of it with proper precision: to state it as half of that
purchased in the markets is a low average.
I now give the amount paid by street-buyers who indulge in the
healthful and innocent tastes of which I have been treating--the
fondness for the beautiful and the natural.
CUT FLOWERS.
Bunches of per bunch
65,280 Violets at 1/2_d._ £136
115,200 Wallflowers „ 1/2_d._ 240
86,400 Mignonette „ 1_d._ 360
1,632 Lilies of the Valley „ 1/2_d._ 3
20,448 Stocks „ 1/2_d._ 42
316,800 Pinks and Carnations „ 1/2_d._ each 660
864,000 Moss Roses „ 1/2_d._ „ 1,800
864,000 China ditto „ 1/2_d._ „ 1,800
296,640 Lavender „ 1_d._ 1,236
------
Total annually £6,277
FLOWER ROOTS.
per root
24,000 Primroses at 1/2_d._ £60
34,560 Polyanthuses „ 1_d._ 144
28,800 Cowslips „ 1/2_d._ 50
33,600 Daisies „ 1_d._ 140
46,080 Wallflowers „ 1_d._ 192
28,800 Candy-tufts „ 1_d._ 120
28,800 Daffodils „ 1/2_d._ 60
38,400 Violets „ 1/2_d._ 80
30,380 Mignonette „ 1/2_d._ 63
23,040 Stocks „ 1_d._ 96
19,200 Pinks and Carnations „ 2_d._ 160
3,456 Lilies of the Valley „ 1_d._ 14
12,960 Pansies „ 1_d._ 54
660 Lilies „ 2_d._ 5
850 Tulips „ 2_d._ 7
7,704 Balsams „ 2_d._ 64
3,180 Calceolarias „ 2_d._ 26
253,440 Musk Plants „ 1_d._ 1,056
11,520 London Pride „ 1_d._ 48
25,595 Lupins „ 1_d._ 106
9,156 China-asters „ 1_d._ 38
63,360 Marigolds „ 1/2_d._ 132
852 Dahlias „ 6_d._ 21
13,356 Heliotropes „ 2_d._ 111
1,920 Poppies „ 2_d._ 16
6,912 Michaelmas Daisies „ 1/2_d._ 14
------
Total annually £2,877
BRANCHES.
Bunches of per bunch
59,040 Holly at 3_d._ £738
56,160 Mistletoe „ 3_d._ 702
26,640 Ivy and Laurel „ 3_d._ 333
5,400 Lilac „ 3_d._ 67
1,008 Palm „ 3_d._ 12
2,520 May „ 3_d._ 31
------
Total annually from Markets £1,883
Add one-half as shown 591
------
£2,474
TREES AND SHRUBS.
each root
9,576 Firs (roots) at 3_d._ £119
1,152 Laurels „ 3_d._ 14
23,040 Myrtles „ 4_d._ 384
2,160 Rhododendrons „ 9_d._ 81
2,304 Lilacs „ 4_d._ 38
2,880 Box „ 2_d._ 24
21,888 Heaths „ 4_d._ 364
2,880 Broom „ 1_d._ 12
6,912 Furze „ 1_d._ 28
6,480 Laurustinus „ 8_d._ 216
25,920 Southernwood „ 1_d._ 108
------
Total annually spent £1,388
FLOWERS IN POTS.
per pot
38,880 Moss Roses at 4_d._ £648
38,880 China ditto „ 2_d._ 324
38,800 Fuschias „ 3_d._ 485
12,850 Geraniums and Pelargoniums
(of all kinds) „ 3_d._ 160
------
Total annually £1,617
The returns give the following aggregate amount of street expenditure:--
£
Trees and shrubs 1,388
Cut Flowers 6,277
Flowers in pots 1,667
Flower roots 2,867
Branches 2,774
Seeds 200
-------
£15,173
From the returns we find that of “cut flowers” the roses retain their
old English favouritism, no fewer than 1,628,000 being annually sold in
the streets; but locality affects the sale, as some dealers dispose of
more violets than roses, because violets are accounted less fragile.
The cheapness and hardihood of the musk-plant and marigold, to say
nothing of their peculiar odour, has made them the most popular of
the “roots,” while the myrtle is the favourite among the “trees and
shrubs.” The heaths, moreover, command an extensive sale,--a sale, I am
told, which was unknown, until eight or ten years ago, another instance
of the “fashion in flowers,” of which an informant has spoken.
STREET-SELLERS OF GREEN STUFF.
Under this head I class the street-purveyors of water-cresses, and of
the chickweed, groundsel, plantain, and turf required for cage-birds.
These purveyors seem to be on the outskirts, as it were, of the
costermonger class, and, indeed, the regular costers look down upon
them as an inferior caste. The green-stuff trade is carried on by
very poor persons, and, generally, by children or old people, some of
the old people being lame, or suffering from some infirmity, which,
however, does not prevent their walking about with their commodities.
To the children and infirm class, however, the turf-cutters supply an
exception. The costermongers, as I have intimated, do not resort, and
do not let their children resort, to this traffic. If reduced to the
last shift, they will sell nuts or oranges in preference. The “old
hands” have been “reduced,” as a general rule, from other avocations.
Their homes are in the localities I have specified as inhabited by the
poor.
I was informed by a seller of birds, that he thought fewer birds
were kept by poor working-people, and even by working-people who had
regular, though, perhaps, diminished earnings, than was the case six
or eight years ago. At one time, it was not uncommon for a young man
to present his betrothed with a pair of singing-birds in a neat cage;
now such a present, as far as my informant’s knowledge extended--and
he was a sharp intelligent man--was but rarely made. One reason this
man had often heard advanced for poor persons not renewing their
birds, when lost or dead, is pitiful in its plainness--“they eat too
much.” I do not know, that, in such a gift as I have mentioned, there
was any intention on the part of the lover to typify the beauty of
cheerfulness, even in a very close confinement to home. “I can’t tell,
sir,” was said to me, “how it may have been originally, but I never
heard such a thing said much about, though there’s been joking about
the matter, as when would the birds have young ones, and such like. No,
sir; I think it was just a fashion.” Contrary to the custom in more
prosperous establishments, I am satisfied, that, among the labouring
classes, birds are more frequently the pets of the men than of the
women. My bird-dealing informant cited merely his own experience, but
there is no doubt that cage-birds are more extensively kept than ever
in London; consequently there is a greater demand for the “green stuff”
the birds require.
OF WATERCRESS-SELLING, IN FARRINGDON-MARKET.
The first coster-cry heard of a morning in the London streets is
that of “Fresh wo-orter-creases.” Those that sell them have to be on
their rounds in time for the mechanics’ breakfast, or the day’s gains
are lost. As the stock-money for this calling need only consist of
a few halfpence, it is followed by the very poorest of the poor;
such as young children, who have been deserted by their parents,
and whose strength is not equal to any very great labour, or by old
men and women, crippled by disease or accident, who in their dread
of a workhouse life, linger on with the few pence they earn by
street-selling.
As winter draws near, the Farringdon cress-market begins long before
daylight. On your way to the City to see this strange sight, the
streets are deserted; in the squares the blinds are drawn down before
the windows, and the shutters closed, so that the very houses seem
asleep. All is so silent that you can hear the rattle of the milkmaids’
cans in the neighbouring streets, or the noisy song of three or four
drunken voices breaks suddenly upon you, as if the singers had turned a
corner, and then dies away in the distance. On the cab-stands, but one
or two crazy cabs are left, the horses dozing with their heads down to
their knees, and the drawn-up windows covered with the breath of the
driver sleeping inside. At the corners of the streets, the bright fires
of the coffee-stalls sparkle in the darkness, and as you walk along,
the policeman, leaning against some gas-lamp, turns his lantern full
upon you, as if in suspicion that one who walks abroad so early could
mean no good to householders. At one house there stands a man, with
dirty boots and loose hair, as if he had just left some saloon, giving
sharp single knocks, and then going into the road and looking up at the
bed-rooms, to see if a light appeared in them. As you near the City,
you meet, if it be a Monday or Friday morning, droves of sheep and
bullocks, tramping quietly along to Smithfield, and carrying a fog of
steam with them, while behind, with his hands in his pockets, and his
dog panting at his heels, walks the sheep-drover.
At the principal entrance to Farringdon-market there is an open space,
running the entire length of the railings in front, and extending from
the iron gates at the entrance to the sheds down the centre of the
large paved court before the shops. In this open space the cresses are
sold, by the salesmen or saleswomen to whom they are consigned, in the
hampers they are brought in from the country.
The shops in the market are shut, the gaslights over the iron gates
burn brightly, and every now and then you hear the half-smothered
crowing of a cock, shut up in some shed or bird-fancier’s shop.
Presently a man comes hurrying along, with a can of hot coffee in
each hand, and his stall on his head, and when he has arranged his
stand by the gates, and placed his white mugs between the railings
on the stone wall, he blows at his charcoal fire, making the bright
sparks fly about at every puff he gives. By degrees the customers are
creeping up, dressed in every style of rags; they shuffle up and down
before the gates, stamping to warm their feet, and rubbing their hands
together till they grate like sandpaper. Some of the boys have brought
large hand-baskets, and carry them with the handles round their necks,
covering the head entirely with the wicker-work as with a hood; others
have their shallows fastened to their backs with a strap, and one
little girl, with the bottom of her gown tattered into a fringe like
a blacksmith’s apron, stands shivering in a large pair of worn-out
Vestris boots, holding in her blue hands a bent and rusty tea-tray.
A few poor creatures have made friends with the coffee-man, and are
allowed to warm their fingers at the fire under the cans, and as the
heat strikes into them, they grow sleepy and yawn.
The market--by the time we reach it--has just begun; one dealer has
taken his seat, and sits motionless with cold--for it wants but a month
to Christmas--with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his gray
driving coat. Before him is an opened hamper, with a candle fixed in
the centre of the bright green cresses, and as it shines through the
wicker sides of the basket, it casts curious patterns on the ground--as
a night shade does. Two or three customers, with their “shallows” slung
over their backs, and their hands poked into the bosoms of their gowns,
are bending over the hamper, the light from which tinges their swarthy
features, and they rattle their halfpence and speak coaxingly to the
dealer, to hurry him in their bargains.
Just as the church clocks are striking five, a stout saleswoman enters
the gates, and instantly a country-looking fellow, in a wagoner’s cap
and smock-frock, arranges the baskets he has brought up to London.
The other ladies are soon at their posts, well wrapped up in warm
cloaks, over their thick shawls, and sit with their hands under their
aprons, talking to the loungers, whom they call by their names. Now
the business commences; the customers come in by twos and threes, and
walk about, looking at the cresses, and listening to the prices asked.
Every hamper is surrounded by a black crowd, bending over till their
heads nearly meet, their foreheads and cheeks lighted up by the candle
in the centre. The saleswomen’s voices are heard above the noise of the
mob, sharply answering all objections that may be made to the quality
of their goods. “They’re rather spotty, mum,” says an Irishman, as
he examines one of the leaves. “No more spots than a newborn babe,
Dennis,” answers the lady tartly, and then turns to a new comer. At
one basket, a street-seller in an old green cloak, has spread out a
rusty shawl to receive her bunches, and by her stands her daughter, in
a thin cotton dress, patched like a quilt. “Ah! Mrs. Dolland,” cried
the saleswoman in a gracious tone, “can you keep yourself warm? it
bites the fingers like biling water, it do.” At another basket, an old
man, with long gray hair streaming over a kind of policeman’s cape,
is bitterly complaining of the way he has been treated by another
saleswoman. “He bought a lot of her, the other morning, and by daylight
they were quite white; for he only made threepence on his best day.”
“Well, Joe,” returns the lady, “you should come to them as knows you,
and allers treats you well.”
These saleswomen often call to each other from one end of the market
to the other. If any quarrel take place at one of the hampers, as
frequently it does, the next neighbour is sure to say something. “Pinch
him well, Sally,” cried one saleswoman to another; “pinch him well; _I_
do when I’ve a chance.” “It’s no use,” was the answer; “I might as well
try to pinch a elephant.”
One old wrinkled woman, carrying a basket with an oilcloth bottom, was
asked by a buxom rosy dealer, “Now, Nancy, what’s for you?” But the
old dame was surly with the cold, and sneering at the beauty of the
saleswoman, answered, “Why don’t you go and get a sweetheart; sich as
you aint fit for sich as we.” This caused angry words, and Nancy was
solemnly requested “to draw it mild, like a good soul.”
As the morning twilight came on, the paved court was crowded with
purchasers. The sheds and shops at the end of the market grew every
moment more distinct, and a railway-van, laden with carrots, came
rumbling into the yard. The pigeons, too, began to fly on to the sheds,
or walk about the paving-stones, and the gas-man came round with his
ladder to turn out the lamps. Then every one was pushing about; the
children crying, as their naked feet were trodden upon, and the women
hurrying off, with their baskets or shawls filled with cresses, and
the bunch of rushes in their hands. In one corner of the market,
busily tying up their bunches, were three or four girls seated on the
stones, with their legs curled up under them, and the ground near them
was green with the leaves they had thrown away. A saleswoman, seeing
me looking at the group, said to me, “Ah! you should come here of a
summer’s morning, and then you’d see ’em, sitting tying up, young and
old, upwards of a hundred poor things as thick as crows in a ploughed
field.”
[Illustration: THE GROUNDSEL MAN
“Chick-weed and Grun-sell!”
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
As it grew late, and the crowd had thinned; none but the very poorest
of the cress-sellers were left. Many of these had come without money,
others had their halfpence tied up carefully in their shawl-ends, as
though they dreaded the loss. A sickly-looking boy, of about five,
whose head just reached above the hampers, now crept forward, treading
with his blue naked feet over the cold stones as a cat does over wet
ground. At his elbows and knees, his skin showed in gashes through
the rents in his clothes, and he looked so frozen, that the buxom
saleswoman called to him, asking if his mother had gone home. The
boy knew her well, for without answering her question, he went up to
her, and, as he stood shivering on one foot, said, “Give us a few old
cresses, Jinney,” and in a few minutes was running off with a green
bundle under his arm. All of the saleswomen seemed to be of kindly
natures, for at another stall an old dame, whose rags seemed to be
beyond credit, was paying for some cresses she had long since been
trusted with, and excusing herself for the time that had passed since
the transaction. As I felt curious on the point of the honesty of the
poor, I asked the saleswoman when she was alone, whether they lost much
by giving credit. “It couldn’t be much,” she answered, “if they all of
them decamped.” But they were generally honest, and paid back, often
reminding her of credit given that she herself had forgotten. Whenever
she lost anything, it was by the very very poor ones; “though it aint
their fault, poor things,” she added in a kindly tone, “for when they
keeps away from here, it’s either the workhouse or the churchyard as
stops them.”
As you walk home--although the apprentice is knocking at the master’s
door--the little water-cress girls are crying their goods in every
street. Some of them are gathered round the pumps, washing the leaves
and piling up the bunches in their baskets, that are tattered and
worn as their own clothing; in some of the shallows the holes at the
bottom have been laced up or darned together with rope and string, or
twigs and split laths have been fastened across; whilst others are
lined with oilcloth, or old pieces of sheet-tin. Even by the time the
cress-market is over, it is yet so early that the maids are beating
the mats in the road, and mechanics, with their tool-baskets swung
over their shoulders, are still hurrying to their work. To visit
Farringdon-market early on a Monday morning, is the only proper way to
judge of the fortitude and courage and perseverance of the poor. As
Douglas Jerrold has beautifully said, “there is goodness, like wild
honey, hived in strange nooks and corners of the earth.” These poor
cress-sellers belong to a class so poor that their extreme want alone
would almost be an excuse for theft, and they can be trusted paying
the few pence they owe even though they hunger for it. It must require
no little energy of conscience on the part of the lads to make them
resist the temptations around them, and refuse the luring advice of
the young thieves they meet at the low lodging-house. And yet they
prefer the early rising--the walk to market with naked feet along the
cold stones--the pinched meal--and the day’s hard labour to earn the
few halfpence--to the thief’s comparatively easy life. The heroism of
the unknown poor is a thing to set even the dullest marvelling, and in
no place in all London is the virtue of the humblest--both young and
old--so conspicuous as among the watercress-buyers at Farringdon-market.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WATER-CRESS.
The dealers in water-cresses are generally very old or very young
people, and it is a trade greatly in the hands of women. The cause
of this is, that the children are sent out by their parents “to
get a loaf of bread somehow” (to use the words of an old man in the
trade), and the very old take to it because they are unable to do
hard labour, and they strive to keep away from the workhouse--(“I’d
do anything before I’d go there--sweep the crossings, or anything:
but I should have had to have gone to the house before, if it hadn’t
been for my wife. I’m sixty-two,” said one who had been sixteen
years at the trade). The old people are both men and women. The men
have been sometimes one thing, and sometimes another. “I’ve been a
porter myself,” said one, “jobbing about in the markets, or wherever
I could get a job to do. Then there’s one old man goes about selling
water-cresses who’s been a seafaring man; he’s very old, he is--older
than what I am, sir. Many a one has been a good mechanic in his younger
days, only he’s got too old for labour. The old women have, many of
them, been laundresses, only they can’t now do the work, you see, and
so they’re glad to pick up a crust anyhow. Nelly, I know, has lost her
husband, and she hasn’t nothing else but her few creases to keep her.
She’s as good, honest, hard-working a creature as ever were, for what
she can do--poor old soul! The young people are, most of them, girls.
There are some boys, but girls are generally put to it by the poor
people. There’s Mary Macdonald, she’s about fourteen. Her father is a
bricklayer’s labourer. He’s an Englishman, and he sends little Mary out
to get a halfpenny or two. He gets sometimes a couple of days’ work in
the week. He don’t get more now, I’m sure, and he’s got three children
to keep out of that; so all on ’em that can work are obligated to do
something. The other two children are so small they can’t do nothing
yet. Then there’s Louisa; she’s about twelve, and she goes about with
creases like I do. I don’t think she’s got ne’er a father. I know she’s
a mother alive, and _she_ sells creases like her daughter. The mother’s
about fifty odd, I dare say. The sellers generally go about with an
arm-basket, like a greengrocer’s at their side, or a ‘shallow’ in front
of them; and plenty of them carry a small tin tray before them, slung
round their neck. Ah! it would make your heart ache if you was to go
to Farringdon-market early, this cold weather, and see the poor little
things there without shoes and stockings, and their feet quite blue
with the cold--oh, that they are, and many on ’em don’t know how to set
one foot before the t’other, poor things. You would say they wanted
something give to ’em.”