OF THE MARKETS AND TRADE RIGHTS OF
THE COSTERMONGERS, AND OF THE LAWS
AFFECTING THEM.
The next point of consideration is what are the
legal regulations under which the several de-
scriptions of hawkers and pedlars are allowed to
pursue their occupations.
The laws concerning hawkers and pedlars,
(50 Geo. III., c. 41, and 6 Geo. IV., c. 80,)
treat of them as identical callings. The
"hawker," however, is, strictly speaking, one
who sells wares by crying them in the streets
of towns, while the pedlar travels on foot through
the country with his wares, not publicly pro-
claiming them, but visiting the houses on his
way to solicit private custom. Until the com-
mencement of the present century — before the
increased facilities for conveyance — the pedlars
were a numerous body in the country. The
majority of them were Scotchmen and some
amassed considerable wealth. Railways, how-
ever, have now reduced the numbers to insig-
nificance.
Hawkers and pedlars are required to pay 4l.
yearly for a license, and an additional 4l. for
every horse or ass employed in the conveyance
of wares. The hawking or exposing for sale of
fish, fruit, or victuals, does not require a license;
and further, it is lawful for any one "being the
maker of any home manufacture," to expose
it for sale in any fair or market, without a
warrant. Neither does anything in either of
the two acts in question prohibit "any tinker,
cooper, glazier, plumber, harness-mender, or
other person, from going about and carrying the
materials proper to their business."
The right of the costermongers, then, to
"hawk" their wares through the streets is
plainly inferred by the above acts; that is to
say, nothing in them extends to prohibit persons
"going about," unlicensed, and at their own
discretion, and selling fish, vegetables, fruit, or
provisions generally.
The law acknowledges none of the street
"markets." These congregatings are, indeed,
in antagonism to the municipal laws of London,
which provide that no market, or public place
where provisions are sold, shall be held within
seven miles of the city. The law, though it
permits butchers and other provisionmongers to
hire stalls and standings in the flesh and other
markets, recognised by custom or usage, gives
no such permission as to street-trading.
The right to sell provisions from stands in the
streets of the metropolis, it appears, is merely
permissive. The regulation observed is this:
where the costermongers or other street-dealers
have been in the habit of standing to sell their
goods, they are not to be disturbed by the police
unless on complaint of an adjacent shopkeeper
or other inhabitant. If such a person shows that
the costermonger, whose stand is near his pre-
mises, is by his improper conduct a nuisance,
or that, by his clamour or any peculiarity in his
mode of business, he causes a crowd to gather
and obstruct the thoroughfare, the policeman's
duty is to remove him. If the complaint from
the inhabitants against the street-sellers be at
all general the policemen of the beat report it
to the authorities, taking no steps until they
receive instructions.
It is somewhat anomalous, however, that the
law now recognises — inferentially it is true —
the right of costermongers to carry about their
goods for sale. Formerly the stands were some-
times tolerated, but not the itinerancy.
The enactments of the Common-council from
the time of Elizabeth are stringent against
itinerant traders of all descriptions, but stringent
to no purpose of prevention. In 1607, a Com-
mon-council enactment sets forth, that "many
People of badd and lewde Condicon daylie
resorte from the most Parte of this Realme to the
said Cyttie, Suburbes, and Places adjoininge, pro-
curinge themselves small Habytacons, namely,
one Chamber-Roome for a poore Forreynor and
his Familye, in a small Cottage with some other
as poore as himself in the Cyttie, Suburbes, or
Places adjacente, to the great Increase and
Pestringe of this Cyttie with poore People;
many of them proovinge Shifters, lyvinge by
Cozeninge, Stealinge, and Imbeazellinge of
Mens Gooddes as Opportunitye may serve them,
remoovinge from Place to Place accordinglye;
many Tymes runninge away, forsakinge their
Wives and Children, leavinge them to the
Charge of the said Cyttie, and the Hospitalles
of the same."
It was towards this class of men who, by
their resort to the capital, recruited the numbers
of the street-sellers and public porters and
others that the jealousy of the Corporation
was directed. The city shop-keepers, three cen-
turies ago, complained vehemently and continu-
ously of the injuries inflicted on their trade by
itinerant dealers, complaints which led to boot-
less enactments. In Elizabeth's reign the Court
of Common Council declared that the streets of
the city should be used, as in ancient times, for
the common highway, and not for the traffic of
hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers. But this
traffic increased, and in 1632 another enactment
was accounted necessary. Oyster-wives, herb-
wives, tripe-wives, and all such "unruly peo-
ple," were threatened with the full pains and
penalties of the outraged law if they persevered
in the prosecution of their callings, which are
stigmatised as "a way whereby to live a more
easie life than by labour." In 1694 the street-
sellers were menaced with the punishments then
deemed suitable for arrant rogues and sturdy
beggars — whipping; and that remedy to be ap-
plied alike to males and females!
The tenor of these Vagrant Laws not being
generally known, I here transcribe them, as
another proof of the "wisdom" and mercy of
our "ancestors" in "the good old times!"
In the year 1530 the English Parliament
enacted, that, while the impotent poor should
receive licenses from the justices of the peace
to beg within certain limits, all men and women,
"being whole and mighty in body, and able to
labour," if found vagrant and unable to give an
account as to how they obtained their living,
should be apprehended by the constables, tied
to the tail of a cart naked, and beaten with whips
through the nearest market-town, or hamlet,
"till their bodies be bloody by reason of such
whipping!" Five years afterwards it was added,
that, if the individual had been once already
whipped, he or she should not only be whipped
again, but "also shall have the upper part of
the gristle of his ear clean cut off, so as it may
appear for a perpetual token hereafter that he
hath been a contemner of the good order of the
commonwealth." And finally, in 1562, it was
directed that any beggar convicted of being a
vagabond should, after being grievously whipped,
be burnt through the gristle of the right ear
"with a hot iron of the compass of an inch
about," unless some person should agree to
take him as a servant — of course without wages
— for a year; then, that if he twice ran away
from such master, he should be adjudged a
felon; and that if he ran away a third time, he
should "suffer pains of death and loss of land
and goods as a felon, without benefit of clergy
or sanctuary."
The only acts now in force which regulate
the government of the streets, so to speak, are
those best known as Michael Angelo Taylor's
Act, and the 2 & 3 Vic., best known as the
Police Act.
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