University of Virginia Library

OF THE HOMES OF THE COSTERMONGERS.

The costermongers usually reside in the courts
and alleys in the neighbourhood of the different
street-markets. They themselves designate the
locality where, so to speak, a colony of their
people has been established, a "coster district,"
and the entire metropolis is thus parcelled out,
almost as systematically as if for the purposes
of registration. These costermonger districts
are as follows, and are here placed in the order
of the numerical importance of the residents:

• The New Cut (Lambeth).

• Whitecross-street.

• Leather-lane.

• The Brill, Somers' Town.

• Whitechapel.

• Camberwell.

• Walworth.

• Peckham.

• Bermondsey.

• The Broadway, West-
  minster.

• Shoreditch.

• Paddington and Edge-
  ware Road.

• Tottenham-court Road.

• Drury-lane.

• Old-street Road.

• Clare Market.

• Ratcliffe Highway.

• Lisson-grove.

• Petticoat and Rosemary-
  lane.

• Marylebone-lane.

• Oxford-street.

• Rotherhithe.

• Deptford.

• Dockhead.

• Greenwich.

• Commercial-road (East).

• Poplar.

• Limehouse.

• Bethnal-green.

• Hackney-road.

• Kingsland.

• Camden Town.

The homes of the costermongers in these
places, may be divided into three classes; firstly,
those who, by having a regular trade or by pru-
dent economy, are enabled to live in compara-
tive ease and plenty; secondly, those who, from
having a large family or by imprudent expendi-
ture, are, as it were, struggling with the world;
and thirdly, those who for want of stock-money,
or ill success in trade are nearly destitute.

The first home I visited was that of an old
woman, who with the assistance of her son and
girls, contrived to live in a most praiseworthy
and comfortable manner. She and all her
family were teetotallers, and may be taken as a
fair type of the thriving costermonger.

As I ascended a dark flight of stairs, a savory
smell of stew grew stronger at each step I
mounted. The woman lived in a large airy
room on the first floor ("the drawing-room")
as she told me laughing at her own joke), well
lighted by a clean window, and I found her
laying out the savory smelling dinner looking
most temptingly clean. The floor was as white
as if it had been newly planed, the coke fire
was bright and warm, making the lid of the
tin saucepan on it rattle up and down as the
steam rushed out. The wall over the fire-place
was patched up to the ceiling with little square
pictures of saints, and on the mantel-piece,
between a row of bright tumblers and wine
glasses filled with odds and ends, stood glazed
crockeryware images of Prince Albert and M.
Jullien. Against the walls, which were papered
with "hangings" of four different patterns and
colours, were hung several warm shawls, and in
the band-box, which stood on the stained chest
of drawers, you could tell that the Sunday
bonnet was stowed safely away from the dust.
A turn-up bedstead thrown back, and covered
with a many-coloured patch-work quilt, stood
opposite to a long dresser with its mugs and
cups dangling from the hooks, and the clean
blue plates and dishes ranged in order at the
back. There were a few bushel baskets piled
up in one corner, "but the apples smelt so," she
said, "they left them in a stable at night."

By the fire sat the woman's daughter, a
pretty meek-faced gray-eyed girl of sixteen,
who "was home nursing" for a cold. "Steve"
(her boy) I was informed, was out working.
With his help, the woman assured me, she could
live very comfortably — "God be praised!" and
when he got the barrow he was promised, she
gave me to understand, that their riches were to
increase past reckoning. Her girl too was to be
off at work as soon as sprats came in. "Its on
Lord Mayor's-day they comes in," said a neigh-
bour who had rushed up to see the strange
gentleman, "they says he has 'em on his table,
but I never seed 'em. They never gives us the
pieces, no not even the heads," and every one
laughed to their utmost. The good old dame
was in high spirits, her dark eyes sparkling as
she spoke about her "Steve." The daughter in
a little time lost her bashfulness, and informed
me "that one of the Polish refugees was
a-courting Mrs. M — , who had given him a
pair of black eyes."

On taking my leave I was told by the mother
that their silver gilt Dutch clock — with its glass
face and blackleaded weights — "was the best
one in London, and might be relied on with the
greatest safety."

As a specimen of the dwellings of the strug-
gling costers, the following may be cited:

The man, a tall, thick-built, almost good-
looking fellow, with a large fur cap on his head,
lived with his family in a front kitchen, and
as there were, with his mother-in-law, five
persons, and only one bed, I was somewhat
puzzled to know where they could all sleep.
The barrow standing on the railings over the
window, half shut out the light, and when any
one passed there was a momentary shadow
thrown over the room, and a loud rattling of the

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iron gratings above that completely prevented
all conversation. When I entered, the mother-
in-law was reading aloud one of the threepenny
papers to her son, who lolled on the bed, that
with its curtains nearly filled the room. There
was the usual attempt to make the fireside com-
fortable. The stone sides had been well whitened,
and the mantel-piece decorated with its small
tin trays, tumblers, and a piece of looking-glass.
A cat with a kitten were seated on the hearth-
rug in front. "They keeps the varmint away,"
said the woman, stroking the "puss," "and
gives a look of home." By the drawers were
piled up four bushel baskets, and in a dark
corner near the bed stood a tall measure full of
apples that scented the room. Over the head,
on a string that stretched from wall to wall,
dangled a couple of newly-washed shirts, and by
the window were two stone barrels, for lemonade,
when the coster visited the fairs and races.

Whilst we were talking, the man's little
girl came home. For a poor man's child she
was dressed to perfection; her pinafore was
clean, her face shone with soap, and her tidy
cotton print gown had clearly been newly put on
that morning. She brought news that "Janey"
was coming home from auntey's, and instantly
a pink cotton dress was placed by the mother-
in-law before the fire to air. (It appeared that
Janey was out at service, and came home once
a week to see her parents and take back a clean
frock.) Although these people were living,
so to speak, in a cellar, still every endeavour
had been made to give the home a look of
comfort. The window, with its paper-patched
panes, had a clean calico blind. The side-table
was dressed up with yellow jugs and cups and
saucers, and the band-boxes had been stowed
away on the flat top of the bedstead. All the
chairs, which were old fashioned mahogany ones,
had sound backs and bottoms.

Of the third class, or the very poor, I chose
the following "type" out of the many others
that presented themselves. The family here
lived in a small slanting-roofed house, partly
stripped of its tiles. More than one half of the
small leaden squares of the first-floor window
were covered with brown paper, puffing out and
crackling in the wind, while through the greater
part of the others were thrust out ball-shaped
bundles of rags, to keep out the breeze. The
panes that did remain were of all shapes and
sizes, and at a distance had the appearance of
yellow glass, they were so stained with dirt. I
opened a door with a number chalked on it, and
groped my way up a broken tottering staircase.

It took me some time after I had entered the
apartment before I could get accustomed to the
smoke, that came pouring into the room from
the chimney. The place was filled with it,
curling in the light, and making every thing so
indistinct that I could with difficulty see the
white mugs ranged in the corner-cupboard, not
three yards from me. When the wind was in
the north, or when it rained, it was always that
way, I was told, "but otherwise," said an old
dame about sixty, with long grisly hair spread-
ing over her black shawl, "it is pretty good for
that."

On a mattrass, on the floor, lay a pale-faced
girl — "eighteen years old last twelfth-cake day"
— her drawn-up form showing in the patch-work
counterpane that covered her. She had just
been confined, and the child had died! A little
straw, stuffed into an old tick, was all she
had to lie upon, and even that had been given
up to her by the mother until she was well
enough to work again. To shield her from the
light of the window, a cloak had been fastened
up slantingly across the panes; and on a string
that ran along the wall was tied, amongst the
bonnets, a clean nightcap — "against the doctor
came," as the mother, curtsying, informed me.
By the side of the bed, almost hidden in the dark
shade, was a pile of sieve baskets, crowned by
the flat shallow that the mother "worked" with.

The room was about nine feet square, and
furnished a home for three women. The ceiling
slanted like that of a garret, and was the colour
of old leather, excepting a few rough white
patches, where the tenants had rudely mended
it. The white light was easily seen through the
laths, and in one corner a large patch of the
paper looped down from the wall. One night
the family had been startled from their sleep by
a large mass of mortar — just where the roof
bulged in — falling into the room. "We never
want rain water," the woman told me, "for we
can catch plenty just over the chimney-place."

They had made a carpet out of three or four
old mats. They were "obligated to it, for fear
of dropping anything through the boards into
the donkey stables in the parlour underneath.
But we only pay ninepence a week rent," said
the old woman, "and mustn't grumble."

The only ornament in the place was on the
mantel-piece — an old earthenware sugar-basin,
well silvered over, that had been given by the
eldest girl when she died, as a remembrance to
her mother. Two cracked tea-cups, on their
inverted saucers, stood on each side, and dressed
up the fire-side into something like tidiness.
The chair I sat on was by far the best out of
the three in the room, and that had no back,
and only half its quantity of straw.

The parish, the old woman told me, allowed
her 1s. a week and two loaves. But the doctor
ordered her girl to take sago and milk, and she
was many a time sorely puzzled to get it. The
neighbours helped her a good deal, and often
sent her part of their unsold greens; — even if
it was only the outer leaves of the cabbages, she
was thankful for them. Her other girl — a big-
boned wench, with a red shawl crossed over her
bosom, and her black hair parted on one side —
did all she could, and so they lived on. "As
long as they kept out of the `big house' (the
workhouse) she would not complain."

I never yet beheld so much destitution
borne with so much content. Verily the acted
philosophy of the poor is a thing to make those
who write and preach about it hide their heads.