 | OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF "GREEN" FRUIT SELLING IN THE
STREETS.
The fruit selling of the streets of London is
of a distinct character from that of vegetable or
fish selling, inasmuch as fruit is for the most
part a luxury, and the others are principally
necessaries.
There is no doubt that the consumption of
fruit supplies a fair criterion of the condition
of the working classes, but the costermongers, as
a body of traders, are little observant, so that it
is not easy to derive from them much informa-
tion respecting the classes who are their cus-
tomers, or as to how their custom is influenced
by the circumstances of the times. One man,
however, told me that during the last panic he
sold hardly anything beyond mere necessaries.
Other street-sellers to whom I spoke could not
comprehend what a panic meant.
The most intelligent costers whom I con-
versed with agreed that they now sold less
fruit than ever to working people, but perhaps
more than ever to the dwellers in the smaller
houses in the suburbs, and to shopkeepers who
were not in a large way of business. One man
sold baking apples, but not above a peck on an
average weekly, to women whom he knew to be
the wives of working men, for he had heard them
say, "Dear me, I didn't think it had been so late,
there's hardly time to get the dumplings baked
before my husband leaves work for his dinner."
The course of my inquiries has shown me — and
many employers whom I have conversed with
are of a similar opinion — that the well-conducted
and skilful artisan, who, in spite of slop com-
petition, continues to enjoy a fair rate of wages,
usually makes a prudent choice of a wife, who
perhaps has been a servant in a respectable
family. Such a wife is probably "used to
cooking," and will oft enough make a pie or
pudding to eke out the cold meat of the Mon-
day's dinner, or "for a treat for the children."
With the mass of the working people, however,
it is otherwise. The wife perhaps has been
reared to incessant toil with her needle, and
does not know how to make even a dumpling.
Even if she possess as much knowledge, she
may have to labour as well as her husband, and
if their joint earnings enable them to have "the
added pudding," there is still the trouble of
making it; and, after a weary week's work, rest
is often a greater enjoyment than a gratifica-
tion of the palate. Thus something easily
prepared, and carried off to the oven, is pre-
ferred. The slop-workers of all trades never,
I believe, taste either fruit pie or pudding, un-
less a penny one be bought at a shop or in the
street; and even among mechanics who are used
to better diet, the pies and puddings, when wages
are reduced, or work grows slack, are the first
things that are dispensed with. "When the
money doesn't come in, sir," one working-man
said to me, "we mustn't think of puddings, but
of bread."
A costermonger, more observant than the
rest, told me that there were some classes to
whom he had rarely sold fruit, and whom he had
seldom seen buy any. Among these he mentioned
sweeps, scavengers, dustmen, nightmen, gas-
pipe-layers, and sewer-men, who preferred
to any fruit, "something to bite in the mouth,
such as a penn'orth of gin." My informant
believed that this abstinence from fruit was
common to all persons engaged in such offen-
sive trades as fiddle-string making, gut-dress-
ing for whip-makers or sausage-makers, knack-
ers, &c. He was confident of it, as far as his
own experience extended. It is, moreover, less
common for the women of the town, of the poorer
sort, to expend pence in fruit than in such things
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gin. Persons, whose stomachs may be one week
jaded to excess, and the next be deprived of a
sufficiency of proper food, seek for stimulants,
or, as they term it, "relishes."
The fruit-sellers, meaning thereby those who
deal principally in fruit in the season, are the
more intelligent costermongers. The calcula-
tion as to what a bushel of apples, for instance,
will make in half or quarter pecks, puzzles the
more ignorant, and they buy "second-hand," or
of a middle-man, and consequently dearer. The
Irish street-sellers do not meddle much with
fruit, excepting a few of the very best class
of them, and they "do well in it," I was
told, "they have such tongue."
The improvement in the quality of the fruit
and vegetables now in our markets, and conse-
quently in the necessaries and luxuries of the
poorer classes, is very great. Prizes and medals
have been deservedly awarded to the skilled and
persevering gardeners who have increased the
size and heightened the flavour of the pine-apple
or the strawberry — who have given a thinner
rind to the peach, or a fuller gush of juice to
the apricot, — or who have enhanced alike the
bloom, the weight, and the size of the fruit of
the vine, whether as regards the classic "bunch,"
or the individual grape. Still these are benefits
confined mainly to the rich. But there is another
class of growers who have rendered greater ser-
vices and whose services have been compara-
tively unnoticed. I allude to those gardeners
who have improved or introduced our every
day vegetables or fruit, such as now form the
cheapest and most grateful and healthy enjoy-
ments of the humbler portion of the community.
I may instance the introduction of rhubarb,
which was comparatively unknown until Mr.
Myatt, now of Deptford, cultivated it thirty
years ago. He then, for the first time, carried
seven bundles of rhubarb into the Borough
market. Of these he could sell only three,
and he took four back with him. Mr. Myatt
could not recollect the price he received for
the first rhubarb he ever sold in public, but he
told me that the stalks were only about half the
substance of those he now produces. People
laughed at him for offering "physic pies," but
he persevered, and I have shown what the sale
of rhubarb now is.
Moreover, the importation of foreign "pines"
may be cited as another instance of the increased
luxuries of the poor. The trade in this com-
modity was unknown until the year 1842. At
that period Mr. James Wood and Messrs. Clay-
pole and Son, of Liverpool, imported them
from the Bahamas, a portion being conveyed
to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, of London. Since
that period the trade has gradually increased
until, instead of 1000 pines being sent to Liver-
pool, and a portion of them conveyed to Lon-
don, as at first, 200,000 pines are now imported
to London alone. The fruit is brought over in
"trees," stowed in numbers from ten to thirty
thousand, in galleries constructed fore and aft in
the vessel, which is so extravagantly fragrant,
that it has to be ventilated to abate the odour.
But for this importation, and but for the trade
having become a part of the costermonger's
avocation, hundreds and thousands in London
would never have tasted a pine-apple. The
quality of the fruit has, I am informed, been
greatly improved since its first introduction;
the best description of "pines" which Covent-
garden can supply having been sent out to graft,
to increase the size and flavour of the Bahaman
products, and this chiefly for the regalement of
the palates of the humbler classes of London.
The supply from the Bahamas is considered in-
exhaustible.
Pine-apples, when they were first introduced,
were a rich harvest to the costermonger. They
made more money "working" these than any
other article. The pines cost them about 4d.
each, one with the other, good and bad together,
and were sold by the costermonger at from 1s.
to 1s. 6d. The public were not aware then that
the pines they sold were "salt-water touched,"
and the people bought them as fast as they
could be sold, not only by the whole one, but
at 1d. a slice, — for those who could not afford
to give 1s. for the novelty, had a slice as a
taste for 1d. The costermongers used then
to have flags flying at the head of their bar-
rows, and gentlefolk would stop them in the
streets; indeed, the sale for pines was chiefly
among "the gentry." The poorer people —
sweeps, dustmen, cabmen — occasionally had
pennyworths, "just for the fun of the thing;"
but gentlepeople, I was told, used to buy a whole
one to take home, so that all the family might
have a taste. One costermonger assured me
that he had taken 22s. a day during the rage for
pines, when they first came up.
I have before stated that when the season is
in its height the costermonger prefers the vend-
ing of fruit to the traffic in either fish or vege-
tables; those, however, who have regular rounds
and "a connection," must supply their customers
with vegetables, if not fish, as well as fruit, but
the costers prefer to devote themselves princi-
pally to fruit. I am unable, therefore, to draw
a comparison between what a coster realises in
fruit, and what in fish, as the two seasons are
not contemporary. The fruit sale is, however,
as I have shown in p. 54, the costermonger's
harvest.
All the costermongers with whom I conversed
represented that the greater cheapness and
abundance of fruit had been anything but a
benefit to them, nor did the majority seem to
know whether fruit was scarcer or more plenti-
ful one year than another, unless in remarkable
instances. Of the way in which the introduction
of foreign fruit had influenced their trade, they
knew nothing. If questioned on the subject, the
usual reply was, that things got worse, and
people didn't buy so much fruit as they did
half-a-dozen years back, and so less was sold.
That these men hold such opinions must be
accounted for mainly by the increase in their
[Description: 915EAF. Page 085.]
from their general ignorance.
The fruit of which there is the readiest sale
in the streets is one usually considered among
the least useful — cherries. Probably, the greater
eagerness on the part of the poorer classes to
purchase this fruit arises from its being the first
of the fresh "green" kind which our gardens
supply for street-sale after the winter and the
early spring. An intelligent costermonger sug-
gested other reasons. "Poor people," he said,
"like a quantity of any fruit, and no fruit is
cheaper than cherries at 1d. a pound, at which I
have sold some hundreds of pounds' weight.
I'm satisfied, sir, that if a cherry could be grown
that weighed a pound, and was of a finer flavour
than ever was known before, poor people would
rather have a number of little ones, even if they
was less weight and inferior quality. Then boys
buy, I think, more cherries than other fruit;
because, after they have eaten 'em, they can
play at cherry-stones.' "
From all I can learn, the halfpenny-worth
of fruit purchased most eagerly by a poor man,
or by a child to whom the possession of a
halfpenny is a rarity, is cherries. I asked a
man "with a good connection," according to
his own account, as to who were his customers
for cherries. He enumerated ladies and gen-
tlemen; working-people; wagoners and carters
(who "slipped them quietly into their pockets,"
he said); parlour-livers (so he called the occu-
pants of parlours); maid-servants; and sol-
diers. "Soldiers." I was told, "are very fond
of something for a change from their feed, which
is about as regular as a prison's."
The currant, and the fruit of the same useful
genus, the gooseberry, are sold largely by the
costermongers. The price of the currants is 1d.
or 2d. the half-pint, 1d. being the more usual
charge. Of red currants there is the greatest
supply, but the black "go off better." The
humbler classes buy a half-pint of the latter for a
dumpling, and "they're reckoned," said my in-
formant, "capital for a sore throat, either in jam
or a pudding." Gooseberries are also retailed
by the half-pint, and are cheaper than currants
— perhaps ½d. the half-pint is the average
street-price. The working-classes do not use
ripe gooseberries, as they do ripe currants, for
dumplings, but they are sold in greater quanti-
ties and may be said to constitute, when first
introduced, as other productions do afterwards,
the working-people's Sunday dessert. "Only
you go on board a cheap steamer to Greenwich,
on a fine summer Sunday," observed a street-
seller to me, "and you'll see lots of young
women with gooseberries in their handkerchiefs
in their laps. Servant-maids is very good cus-
tomers for such things as gooseberries, for they
always has a penny to spare." The costers sell
green gooseberries for dumplings, and some-
times to the extent of a fourth of the ripe fruit.
The price of green gooseberries is generally ½d.
a pint dearer than the ripe.
When strawberries descend to such a price
as places them at the costermonger's command,
the whole fraternity is busily at work, and as
the sale can easily be carried on by women and
children, the coster's family take part in the
sale, offering at the corners of streets the fra-
grant pottle, with the crimson fruit just showing
beneath the green leaves at the top. Of all
cries, too, perhaps that of "hoboys" is the
most agreeable. Strawberries, however, accord-
ing to all accounts, are consumed least of all
fruits by the poor. "They like something more
solid," I was told, "something to bite at, and
a penny pottle of strawberries is only like a
taste; what's more, too, the really good fruit
never finds its way into penny pottles." The
coster's best customers are dwellers in the
suburbs, who purchase strawberries on a Sun-
day especially, for dessert, for they think that
they get them fresher in that way than by
reserving them from the Saturday night, and
many are tempted by seeing or hearing them
cried in the streets. There is also a good Sun-
day sale about the steam-wharfs, to people
going "on the river," especially when young
women and children are members of a party,
and likewise in the "clerk districts," as Cam-
den-town and Camberwell. Very few pottles,
comparatively, are sold in public-houses; "they
don't go well down with the beer at all," I was
told. The city people are good customers for
street strawberries, conveying them home. Good
strawberries are 2d. a pottle in the streets when
the season is at its height. Inferior are 1d.
These are the most frequent prices. In rasp-
berries the coster does little, selling them only
to such customers as use them for the sake of
jam or for pastry. The price is from 6d. to
1s. 6d. the pottle, 9d. being the average.
The great staple of the street trade in green
fruit is apples. These are first sold by the
travelling costers, by the measure, for pies, &c.,
and to the classes I have described as the
makers of pies. The apples, however, are soon
vended in penny or halfpenny-worths, and then
they are bought by the poor who have a spare
penny for the regalement of their children or
themselves, and they are eaten without any
preparation. Pears are sold to the same classes
as are apples. The average price of apples, as
sold by the costermonger, is 4s. a bushel, and
six a penny. The sale in halfpenny and penny-
worths is very great. Indeed the costermongers
sell about half the apples brought to the mar-
kets, and I was told that for one pennyworth of
apples bought in a shop forty were bought in
the street. Pears are 9d. a bushel, generally,
dearer than apples, but, numerically, they run
more to the bushel.
The costers purchase the French apples at
the wharf, close to London-bridge, on the
Southwark side. They give 10s., 12s., 18s.,
or 20s. for a case containing four bushels.
They generally get from 9d. to 1s. profit on a
bushel of English, but on the French apples
they make a clear profit of from 1s. 3d. to 2s. a
bushel, and would make more, but the fruit some-
[Description: 915EAF. Page 086.]
owing to the French giving better measure, their
four bushels being about five market bushels, as
there is much straw packed up with the English
apples, and none with the French.
Plums and damsons are less purchased by the
humbler classes than apples, or than any other
larger sized fruit which is supplied abundantly.
"If I've worked plums or damsons," said an
experienced costermonger, "and have told any
woman pricing them: `They don't look so ripe,
but they're all the better for a pie,' she's an-
swered, `O, a plum pie's too fine for us, and
what's more, it takes too much sugar.' " They
are sold principally for desserts, and in penny-
worths, at 1d. the half-pint for good, and ½d.
for inferior. Green-gages are 50 per cent.
higher. Some costers sell a cheap lot of plums
to the eating-house keepers, and sell them
more readily than they sell apples to the same
parties.
West Indian pine-apples are, as regards the
street sale, disposed of more in the city than
elsewhere. They are bought by clerks and
warehousemen, who carry them to their sub-
urban homes. The slices at ½d. and 1d. are
bought principally by boys. The average price
of a "good street pine" is 9d.
Peaches are an occasional sale with the cos-
termongers', and are disposed of to the same
classes as purchase strawberries and pines.
The street sale of peaches is not practicable if
the price exceed 1d. a piece.
Of other fruits, vended largely in the streets,
I have spoken under their respective heads.
The returns before cited as to the quantity of
home-grown and foreign green fruit sold in
London, and the proportion disposed of by the
costermongers give the following results (in
round numbers), as to the absolute quantity of
the several kinds of green fruit (oranges and
nuts excepted) "distributed" throughout the
metropolis by the stree-sellers.
| 343,000 | bushels of apples, (home-grown) |
| 34,560 | " apples, (foreign) |
| 176,500 | " pears, (home-grown) |
| 17,235 | " pears, (foreign) |
| 1,039,200 | lbs. of cherries, (home-grown) |
| 176,160 | " cherries, (foreign) |
| 11,766 | bushels of plums, |
| 100 | " greengages, |
| 548 | " damsons, |
| 2,450 | " bullaces, |
| 207,525 | " gooseberries, |
| 85,500 | sieves of red currants, |
| 13,500 | " black currants, |
| 3,000 | " white currants, |
| 763,750 | pottles of strawberries, |
| 1,762 | " raspberries, |
| 30,485 | " mulberries, |
| 6,012 | bushels of hazel nuts, |
| 17,280 | lbs. of filberts, |
| 26,563 | " grapes, |
| 20,000 | pines. |
| OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |