University of Virginia Library

OF THE NUMBER OF STREET STALLS.

Thus far we have dealt only with the itinerant
dealers in fish, fruit, or vegetables; but there are
still a large class of street-sellers, who obtain a
living by the sale of the same articles at some
fixed locality in the public thoroughfares; and
as these differ from the others in certain points,
they demand a short special notice here. First,
as to the number of stalls in the streets of Lon-
don, I caused personal observations to be
made; and in a walk of 46 miles, 632 stalls
were counted, which is at the rate of very
nearly 14 to the mile. This, too, was in bad
weather, — was not on a Saturday night, — and
at a season when the fruit-sellers all declare
that "things is dull." The routes taken in
this inquiry were: — No. 1, from Vauxhall
to Hatton-garden; No. 2, from Baker-street
to Bermondsey; No. 3, from Blackwall to
Brompton; No. 4, from the Hackney-road
to the Edgeware-road. I give the results.

           

	F.	FR.	V.	M.	T.
No. 1	9	28	5	7	49
" 2	37	50	4	14	105
" 3	90	153	30	40	313
" 4	75	52	23	15	165
	211	283	62	76	632

F. denotes fish-stalls; Fr. fruit-stalls; V.
vegetable-stalls; M. miscellaneous; and T.
presents the total:

The miscellaneous stalls include peas-soup,
pickled whelks, sweetmeats, toys, tin-ware,
elder-wine, and jewellery stands. Of these, the
toy-stalls were found to be the most numerous;
sweetmeats the next; tin-ware the next; while
the elder-wine stalls were least numerous.

Some of the results indicate, curiously enough,
the character of the locality. Thus, in Fleet-
street there were 3, in the Haymarket 5, in
Regent-street 6, and in Piccadilly 14 fruit-
stalls, and no fish-stalls — these streets not
being resorted to by the poor, to whom fruit
is a luxury, but fish a necessity. In the
Strand were 17 fruit and 2 fish-stalls; and in
Drury-lane were 8 stalls of fish to 6 of fruit.
On the other hand, there were in Ratcliffe-high-
way, 38 fish and 23 fruit-stalls; in Rosemary-
lane, 13 fish and 8 fruit-stalls; in Shoreditch,
28 fish and 13 fruit-stalls; and in Bethnal-
green Road (the poorest district of all), 14 of
the fish, and but 3 of the fruit stalls. In some
places, the numbers were equal, or nearly so;
as in the Minories, for instance, the City-road,
the New-road, Goodge-street, Tottenham-court
Road, and the Camberwell-road; while in
Smithfield were 5, and in Cow-cross 2 fish-
stalls, and no fruit-stalls at all. In this enu-
meration the street-markets of Leather-lane,
the New Cut, the Brill, &c., are not included.

The result of this survey of the principal
London thoroughfares is that in the mid-route (viz., from Brompton, along Piccadilly, the
Strand, Fleet-street, and so viâ the Commercial-
road to Blackwall), there are twice as many
stalls as in the great northern thoroughfare (that
is to say, from the Edgeware-road, along the
New-road, to the Hackney-road); the latter
route, however, has more than one-third as many
stalls as route No. 2, and that again more than
double the number of route No. 1. Hence it
appears that the more frequented the thorough-
fare, the greater the quantity of street-stalls.

The number of miles of streets contained
within the inner police district of the metropolis,
are estimated by the authorities at 2,000 (in-
cluding the city), and assuming that there are on
an average only four stalls to the mile throughout
London, we have thus a grand total of 8,000 fish,
fruit, vegetable, and other stalls dispersed
throughout the capital.

Concerning the character of the stalls at the
street-markets, the following observations have
been made: — At the New-cut there were, be-
fore the removals, between the hours of eight
and ten on a Saturday evening, ranged along
the kerb-stone on the north side of the road,
beginning at Broad-wall to Marsh-gate (a dis-
tance of nearly half-a-mile), a dense line of
"pitches" — at 77 of which were vegetables for
sale, at 40 fruit, 25 fish, 22 boots and shoes, 14
eatables, consisting of cakes and pies, hot eels,
baked potatoes, and boiled whelks; 10 dealt in
nightcaps, lace, ladies' collars, artificial flowers,
silk and straw bonnets; 10 in tinware — such as
saucepans, tea-kettles, and Dutch-ovens; 9 in
crockery and glass, 7 in brooms and brushes, 5
in poultry and rabbits, 6 in paper, books, songs,
and almanacs; and about 60 in sundries.