University of Virginia Library

Of THE STREET-SALE OF VEGETABLES.

The seller of fruit in the streets confines his
traffic far more closely to fruit, than does the
vegetable-dealer to vegetables. Within these
three or four years many street-traders sell only
fruit the year through; but the purveyor of
vegetables now usually sells fish with his cab-
bages, turnips, cauliflowers, or other garden
stuff. The fish that he carries out on his round
generally consists of soles, mackerel, or fresh
or salt herrings. This combination of the street-
green-grocer and street-fishmonger is called a
general dealer."

The general dealers are usually accompanied
by boys (as I have elsewhere shown), and some-
times by their wives. If a woman be a general
dealer, she is mostly to be found at a stall or
standing, and not "going a round."

The general dealer "works" everything
through the season. He generally begins the
year with sprats or plaice: then he deals in
soles until the month of May. After this he
takes to mackerel, haddocks, or red herrings.
Next he trades in strawberries or raspberries.
From these he will turn to green and ripe goose-
berries; thence he will go to cherries; from
cherries he will change to red or white cur-
rants; from them to plums or green-gages, and
from them again to apples and pears, and dam-
sons. After these he mostly "works" a few
vegetables, and continues with them until the
fish season begins again. Some general dealers
occasionally trade in sweetmeats, but this is not
usual, and is looked down upon by the "trade."

"I am a general dealer," said one of the
better class; "my missis is in the same line as
myself, and sells everything that I do (barring
green stuff.) She follows me always in what
I sell. She has a stall, and sits at the corner of
the street. I have got three children. The
eldest is ten, and goes out with me to call my
goods for me. I have had inflammation in the
lungs, and when I call my goods for a little
while my voice leaves me. My missis is lame.
She fell down a cellar, when a child, and injured
her hip. Last October twelvemonth I was laid
up with cold, which settled on my lungs, and
laid me in my bed for a month. My missis kept
me all that time. She was `working' fresh
herrings; and if it hadn't been for her we must
all have gone into the workhouse. We are doing
very badly now. I have no work to do. I have
no stock-money to work with, and I object to
pay 1s. 6d. a week for the loan of 10s. Once
I gave a man 1s. 6d. a week for ten months for
the loan of 10s., and that nearly did me up. I

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have had 8s. of the same party since, and paid
1s. a week for eight weeks for the loan of it.
I consider it most extortionate to have to pay
2d. a day for the loan of 8s., and won't do it.
When the season gets a bit better I shall borrow
a shilling of one friend and a shilling of another,
and then muddle on with as much stock-money
as I can scrape together. My missis is at home
now doing nothing. Last week it's impossible
to say what she took, for we're obliged to buy
victuals and firing with it as we take it. She
can't go out charing on account of her hip.
When she is out, and I am out, the children
play about in the streets. Only last Saturday
week she was obligated to take the shoes off her
feet to get the children some victuals. We owe
two week's rent, and the landlord, though I've
lived in the house five years, is as sharp as if
I was a stranger."

"Why, sir," said another vegetable-dealer, who
was a robust-looking young man, very clean in his
person, and dressed in costermonger corduroy,
"I can hardly say what my business is worth to
me, for I'm no scholard. I was brought up to
the business by my mother. I've a middling
connection, and perhaps clear 3s. a day, every
fine day, or 15s. or 16s. a week; but out of that
there's my donkey to keep, which I suppose costs
6d. a day, that's seven sixpences off. Wet or
fine, she must be fed, in coorse. So must I;
but I've only myself to keep at present, and I
hire a lad when I want one. I work my own
trap. Then things is so uncertain. Why, now,
look here, sir. Last Friday, I think it was —
but that don't matter, for it often happens — fresh
herrings was 4s. the 500 in the morning, and
1s. 6d. at night, so many had come in. I buy
at Billingsgate-market, and sometimes of a
large shopkeeper, and at Covent-garden and the
Borough. If I lay out 7s. in a nice lot of cab-
bages, I may sell them for 10s. 6d., or if it isn't
a lucky day with me for 8s., or less. Sometimes
people won't buy, as if the cholera was in the
cabbages. Then turnips isn't such good sale yet,
but they may be soon, for winter's best for them.
There's more bilings then than there's roastings,
I think. People like broth in cold weather. I
buy turnips by the `tally.' A tally's five dozen
bunches. There's no confinement of the number
to a bunch; it's by their size; I've known
twelve, and I've known twice that. I sell three
parts of the turnips at 1d. a bunch, and the other
part at 1½d. If I get them at 3s. 6d. the tally I
do well on turnips. I go the same rounds pretty
regularly every day, or almost every day. I don't
object to wet weather so much, because women
don't like to stir out then, and so they'll buy of
me as I pass. Carrots I do little in; they're dear,
but they'll be cheaper in a month or two. They
always are. I don't work on Sundays. If I
did, I'd get a jacketing. Our chaps would say:
`Well, you are a scurf. You have a round; give
another man a Sunday chance.' A gentleman
once said to me, when I was obligated to work on
a Sunday: `Why don't you leave it off, when
you know it ain't right?' `Well, sir,' said I,
and he spoke very kind to me, `well, sir, I'm
working for my dinner, and if you'll give me 4s. or 3s. 6d., I'll tumble to your notion and drop it,
and I'll give you these here cowcumbers,' (I was
working cowcumbers at that time) `to do what
you like with, and they cost me half-a-crown.'
In potatoes I don't do a great deal, and it's no
great trade. If I did, I should buy at the
warehouses in Tooley-street, where they are
sold in sacks of 1 cwt.; 150 lbs. and 200 lbs.,
at 2s. 9d. and 3s. the cwt. I sell mine, tidy
good, at 3 pound 2d., and a halfpenny a pound,
but as I don't do much, not a bushel a day, I buy
at market by the bushel at from 1s. 6d. to 2s. I
never uses slangs. I sold three times as many
potatoes as I do now four years back. I don't
know why, 'cept it be that the rot set people again
them, and their taste's gone another way. I sell
a few more greens than I did, but not many.
Spinach I don't do only a little in it. Celery
I'm seldom able to get rid on. It's more women's
work. Ing-uns the same."

I may add that I found the class, who con-
fined their business principally to the sale of
vegetables, the dullest of all the costermongers.
Any man may labour to make 1s. 6d. of cab-
bages or turnips, which cost him 1s., when the
calculation as to the relative proportion of mea-
sures, &c. is beyond his comprehension.

Pursuing the same mode of calculation as has
been heretofore adopted, we find that the abso-
lute quantity of vegetables sold in the London
streets by the costers is as follows:

                                       

20,700,000	lbs. of potatoes (home grown)
39,800,000	" (foreign)
23,760,133	cabbages,
3,264,800	turnips,
616,666	junks of turnip tops,
601,000	carrots,
567,300	brocoli and cauliflowers,
219,000	bushels of peas,
8,893	" beans,
22,110	" french beans,
25,608	dozens of vegetable marrows,
489	dozen bundles of asparagus,
9,120	" rhubarb,
4,350	" celery,
561,600	lettuces,
13,291	dozen hands of radishes,
499,533	bushels of onions,
23,600	dozen bunches of spring onions,
10,920	bushels of cucumbers,
3,290	dozen bunches of herbs.