University of Virginia Library

OF SHRIMP SELLING IN THE STREETS.

Shrimp selling, as I have stated, is one of the
trades to which the street-dealer often con
fines himself throughout the year. The sale is
about equally divided between the two sexes,
but the men do the most business, walking
some of them fifteen to twenty miles a day
in a "round" of "ten miles there and ten
back."

The shrimps vended in the streets are the
Yarmouth prawn shrimps, sold at Billingsgate
at from 6d. to 10d. a gallon, while the best
shrimps (chiefly from Lee, in Essex,) vary in
price from 10d. to 2s. 6d. a gallon; 2s. being
a common price. The shrimps are usually
mixed by the street-dealers, and they are cried,
from stalls or on rounds, "a penny half-pint, fine
fresh s'rimps." (I heard them called nothing but
"s'rimps" by the street-dealers.) The half-pint,
however, is in reality but half that quantity.
"It's the same measure as it was thirty years
back," I was told, in a tone as if its anti-
quity removed all imputation of unfair deal-
ing. Some young men "do well on s'rimps,"
sometimes taking 5s. in an hour on a Saturday
evening, "when people get their money, and
wants a relish." The females in the shrimp
line are the wives, widows, or daughters of
costermongers. They are computed to average
1s. 6d. a day profit in fine, and from 9d. to 1s. in bad weather; and, in snowy, or very severe
weather, sometimes nothing at all.

One shrimp -seller, a middle -aged woman,
wrapped up in a hybrid sort of cloak, that
was half a man's and half a woman's gar-
ment, gave me the following account. There
was little vulgarity in either her language or
manner.

"I was in the s'rimp trade since I was a girl.
I don't know how long. I don't know how old
I am. I never knew; but I've two children,
one's six and t'other's near eight, both girls;
I've kept count of that as well as I can. My
husband sells fish in the street; so did father,
but he's dead. We buried him without the help
of the parish, as many gets — that's something
to say. I've known the trade every way. It
never was any good in public-houses. They
want such great ha'p'orths there. They'll put
up with what isn't very fresh, to be sure, some-
times; and good enough for them too, I say,
as spoils their taste with drink." [This was
said very bitterly.] "If it wasn't for my hus-
band's drinking for a day together now and then
we'd do better. He's neither to have nor to hold
when he's the worse for liquor; and it's the
worse with him, for he's a quiet man when he's
his own man. Perhaps I make 9d. a day, per-
haps 1s. or more. Sometimes my husband takes
my stand, and I go a round. Sometimes, if he
gets through his fish, he goes my round. I give
good measure, and my pint's the regular s'rimp
pint." [It was the half-pint I have described.]
"The trade's not so good as it was. People hasn't
the money, they tells me so. It's bread before
s'rimps, says they. I've heard them say it very
cross, if I've wanted hard to sell. Some days
I can sell nothing. My children stays with my
sister, when me and my old man's out. They
don't go to school, but Jane (the sister) learns
them to sew. She makes drawers for the slop-
sellers, but has very little work, and gets very
little for the little she does; she would learn
them to read if she knew how. She's married
to a pavior, that's away all day. It's a hard life
mine, sir. The winter's a coming, and I'm now
sometimes numbed with sitting at my stall in
the cold. My feet feels like lumps of ice in
the winter; and they're beginning now, as if
they weren't my own. Standing's far harder
work than going a round. I sell the best s'rimps.
My customers is judges. If I've any s'rimps
over on a night, as I often have one or two
nights a week, I sells them for half-price to
an Irishwoman, and she takes them to the
beer-shops, and the coffee-shops. She washes
them. to look fresh. I don't mind telling that,
because people should buy of regular people.
It's very few people know how to pick a s'rimp
properly. You should take it by the head and
the tail and jam them up, and then the shell
separates, and the s'rimp comes out beautifully.
That's the proper way."

Sometimes the sale on the rounds may be the
same as that at the stalls, or 10 or 20 per cent.
more or less, according to the weather, as shrimps
can be sold by the itinerant dealers better than
by the stall-keepers in wet weather, when people
prefer buying at their doors. But in hot
weather the stall trade is the best, "for people
often fancy that the s'rimps is sent out to sell
'cause they'll not keep no longer. It's only
among customers as knows you, you can do
any good on a round then."

The costermongers sell annually, it ap-
pears, about 770,000 pints of shrimps. At
2d. a pint (a very low calculation) the street
sale of shrimps amount to upwards of 6,400l. yearly.