University of Virginia Library

3. OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES.

OF THE KINDS AND QUANTITY OF FRUIT
AND VEGETABLES SOLD IN THE STREETS.

There are two kinds of fruit sold in the streets
— "green fruit" and "dry fruit."

In commerce, all fruit which is edible as it is
taken from the tree or the ground, is known
as "green." A subdivision of this green fruit
is into "fresh" or "tender" fruit, which in-
cludes currants, gooseberries, strawberries, and,
indeed, all fruits that demand immediate con-
sumption, in contradistinction to such produc-
tions as nuts which may be kept without injury
for a season. All fruit which is "cured" is
known as "dry" fruit. In summer the costers
vend "green fruit," and in the winter months, or
in the early spring, when the dearness or insuffi-
ciency of the supply of green fruit renders it
unsuited for their traffic, they resort, but not
extensively, to "dry fruit." It is principally,
however, when an abundant season, or the im-
possibility of keeping the dry fruit much longer,
has tended to reduce the price of it, that the
costlier articles are to be found on the coster-
monger's barrow.

Fruit is, for the most part, displayed on bar-
rows, by the street-dealers in it. Some who
supply the better sort of houses — more espe-
cially those in the suburbs — carry such things
as apples and plums, in elean round wicker-
baskets, holding pecks or half-pecks.

The commoner "green" fruits of home pro-
duce are bought by the costermonger in the mar-
kets. The foreign green fruit, as pine-apples,
melons, grapes, chestnuts, coker-nuts, Brazil-
nuts, hazel-nuts, and oranges, are purchased by
them at the public sales of the brokers, and of
the Jews in Duke's-place. The more intelligent
and thrifty of the costers buy at the public sales
on the principle of association, as I have elsewhere
described. Some costermongers expend as much
as 20l. at a time in such green fruit, or dry fruit,
as is not immediately perishable, at a public sale,
or at a fruit-warehouse, and supply the other
costers.

The regular costermongers seldom deal in
oranges and chestnuts. If they sell walnuts, they
reserve these, they say, for their Sunday after-
noon's pastime. The people who carry oranges,
chestnuts, or walnuts, or Spanish nuts about the
town, are not considered as costermongers, but
are generally, though not always, classed, by
the regular men, with the watercress-women,
the sprat-women, the winkle-dealers, and such
others, whom they consider beneath them. The
orange season is called by the costermonger the
"Irishman's harvest." Indeed, the street trade
in oranges and nuts is almost entirely in the
hands of the Irish and their children; and of
the children of costermongers. The costers
themselves would rather starve — and do starve
now and then — than condescend to it. The
trade in coker-nuts is carried on greatly by
the Jews on Sundays, and by young men
and boys who are not on other days employed
as street-sellers.

The usual kinds of fruit the regular costers
deal in are strawberries, raspberries (plain and
stalked), cherries, apricots, plums, green-gages,
currants, apples, pears, damsons, green and ripe
gooseberries, and pine-apples. They also deal
in vegetables, such as turnips, greens, brocoli,
carrots, onions, celery, rhubarb, new potatoes,
peas, beans (French and scarlet, broad and Wind-
sor), asparagus, vegetable marrow, seakale, spi-
nach, lettuces, small salads, radishes, etc. Their
fruit and vegetables they usually buy at Covent-
garden, Spitalfields, or the Borough markets.
Occasionally they buy some at Farringdon, but
this they reckon to be very little better than a
"haggler's market," — a "haggler" being, as I
before explained, the middle-man who attends
in the fruit and vegetable-markets, and buys of
the salesman to sell again to the retail dealer or
costermonger.

Concerning the quantity of fruit and vege-
tables sold in the streets, by the London cos-
termongers. This, as I said, when treat-
ing of the street-trade in fish, can only be
arrived at by ascertaining the entire quantity
sold wholesale at the London markets, and then
learning from the best authorities the propor-
tion retailed in the public thoroughfares, Fully
to elucidate this matter, both as to the extent of
the metropolitan supply of vegetables and fruit,
("foreign" as well as "home-grown," and
"green" as well as "dry") and the relative
quantity of each, vended through the agency of
the costermongers, I caused inquiries to be
instituted at all the principal markets and
brokers (for not even the vaguest return on the
subject had, till then, been prepared), and
received from all the gentlemen connected
therewith, every assistance and information, as
I have here great pleasure in acknowledging.

To carry out my present inquiry, I need not
give returns of the articles not sold by the cos-
termongers, nor is it necessary for me to cite
any but those dealt in by them generally. Their
exceptional sales, such as of mushrooms, cu-
cumbers, &c., are not included here.

The following Table shows the ordinary
annual supply of home grown fruit (nearly all
produced within a radius of twelve miles from
the Bank) to each of the London "green"
markets.

The various proportions of the several kinds
of fruit and vegetables sold by the costermongers
are here calculated for all the markets, from
returns which have been obtained from each
market separately. To avoid unnecessary detail,
however, these several items are lumped toge-
ther, and the aggregate proportion above given.

The foregoing Table, however, relates chiefly
to "home grown" supplies. Concerning the
quantity of foreign fruit and vegetables im-
ported into this country, the proportion con-
sumed in London, and the relative amount sold
by the costers, I have obtained the following
returns: —

Table, showing the Quantity or Measure
of the undermentioned Foreign Green
Fruits and Vegetables sold Wholesale
throughout the Year in London, with
the Proportion sold Retail in the
Streets.

                                   

Description.	Quantity sold wholesale in London.	Proportion sold retail in the the streets.
FRUIT
Apples	39,561 bush.	seven-eighths.
Pears	19,742	seven-eignths.
Cherries	264,240 lbs. two-thirds.	Grapes #1,328,190 " #one-fiftieth.
Pne-apples	200,000 fruit	one-tenth.
Oranges	61,635,146 "	one-fourth.
Lemons	15,408,789 "	one-hundredth.
NUTS.
Spanish Nuts
	72,509 bush.	one-third.
Barcelona "
Brazil "	11,700 "	one-fourth.
Chestnuts	26,250 "	one-fourth.
Walnuts	36,088 "	two-thirds.
"Coker"-nuts.	1,255,000 nuts	one-third.
VEGETABLES.
Potatoes	79,654,400lbs.	one-half.

Here, then, we have the entire metropolitan
supply of the principal vegetables and green
fruit (both home grown and foreign), as well as
the relative quantity "distributed" throughout
London by the costermongers; it now but
remains for me, in order to complete the ac-
count, to do the same for "the dry fruit."

Table, showing the Quantity of "Dry"
Fruit sold wholesale in London
throughout the Year, with the pro-
portion Sold retail in the Streets.

             

Description.	Quantity sold wholesale in London.	Proportion sold re- tail in the streets.
Shell Al-
monds	12,500 cwt.	half per cent.
Raisins	135,000 "	quarter per cent.
Currants	250,000 "	none.
Figs	21,700 "	one per cent.
Prunes	15,000 "	quarter per cent.

OF THE FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SEASON OF
THE COSTERMONGERS.

The strawberry season begins about June,
and continues till about the middle of July.
From the middle to the end of July the costers
"work" raspberries. During July cherries are
"in" as well as raspberries; but many costers
prefer working raspberries, because "they're a
quicker sixpence." After the cherries, they go
to work upon plums, which they have about the
end of August. Apples and pears come in after
the plums in the month of September, and the
apples last them all through the winter till the
month of May. The pears last only till Christ-
mas. Currants they work about the latter end
of July, or beginning of August.

Concerning the costermonger's vegetable sea-
son, it may be said that he "works" greens
during the winter months, up to about March;
from that time they are getting "leathery," the
leaves become foxy, I was told, and they eat
tough when boiled. The costers generally do not
like dealing either in greens or turnips, "they
are such heavy luggage," they say. They would
sooner "work" green peas and new potatoes.

The costermonger, however, does the best at
fruit; but this he cannot work — with the ex-
ception of apples — for more than four months
in the year. They lose but little from the fruit
spoiling. "If it doesn't fetch a good price, it
must fetch a bad one," they say; but they are
never at a great loss by it. They find the "ladies"
their hardest or "scaliest" customers. Whatever
price they ask, they declare the "ladies" will
try to save the market or "gin" penny out of
it, so that they may have "a glass of something
short" before they go home.

OF COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

On a Saturday — the coster's business day — it is
computed that as many as 2,000 donkey-barrows,
and upwards of 3,000 women with shallows and
head-baskets visit this market during the fore-
noon. About six o'clock in the morning is the
best time for viewing the wonderful restlessness
of the place, for then not only is the "Garden"
itself all bustle and activity, but the buyers and
sellers stream to and from it in all directions,
filling every street in the vicinity. From Long
Acre to the Strand on the one side, and from
Bow-street to Bedford-street on the other, the
ground has been seized upon by the market-goers.
As you glance down any one of the neighbour-
ing streets, the long rows of carts and donkey-
barrows seem interminable in the distance.
They are of all kinds, from the greengrocer's
taxed cart to the coster's barrow — from the
showy excursion-van to the rude square donkey-
cart and bricklayer's truck. In every street
they are ranged down the middle and by the
kerb-stones. Along each approach to the
market, too, nothing is to be seen, on all sides,
but vegetables; the pavement is covered with
heaps of them waiting to be carted; the flag-
stones are stained green with the leaves trodden
under foot; sieves and sacks full of apples and
potatoes, and bandles of brocoli and rhubarb,
are left unwatched upon almost every door-
step; the steps of Covent Garden Theatre are
covered with fruit and vegetables; the road is
blocked up with mountains of cabbages and
turnips; and men and women push past with
their arms bowed out by the cauliflowers under
them, or the red tips of carrots pointing from
their crammed aprons, or else their faces are red
with the weight of the loaded head-basket.

The donkey-barrows, from their number and
singularity, force you to stop and notice them.
Every kind of ingenuity has been exercised to

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construet harness for the costers' steeds; where
a buckle is wanting, tape or string make the
fastening secure; traces are made of rope and
old chain, and an old sack or cotton handker-
chief is folded up as a saddle-pad. Some few
of the barrows make a magnificent exception,
and are gay with bright brass; while one of the
donkeys may be seen dressed in a suit of old
plated carriage-harness, decorated with coronets
in all directions. At some one of the coster con-
veyances stands the proprietor, arranging his
goods, the dozing animal starting up from its
sleep each time a heavy basket is hoisted on the
tray. Others, with their green and white and red
load neatly arranged, are ready for starting, but
the coster is finishing his breakfast at the coffee-
stall. On one barrow there may occasionally be
seen a solitary sieve of apples, with the horse of
some neighbouring cart helping himself to the
pippins while the owner is away. The men that
take charge of the trucks, whilst the costers visit
the market, walk about, with their arms full of
whips and sticks. At one corner a donkey has
slipped down, and lies on the stones covered
with the cabbages and apples that have fallen
from the cart.

The market itself presents a beautiful scene.
In the clear morning air of an autumn day the
whole of the vast square is distinctly seen from
one end to the other. The sky is red and golden
with the newly-risen sun, and the rays falling
on the fresh and vivid colours of the fruit and
vegetables, brightens up the picture as with a
coat of varnish. There is no shouting, as at
other markets, but a low murmuring hum is
heard, like the sound of the sea at a distance,
and through each entrance to the market the
crowd sweeps by. Under the dark Piazza little
bright dots of gas-lights are seen burning in
the shops; and in the paved square the people
pass and cross each other in all directions, ham-
pers clash together, and excepting the carters
from the country, every one is on the move.
Sometimes a huge column of baskets is seen in
the air, and walks away in a marvellously steady
manner, or a monster railway van, laden with
sieves of fruit, and with the driver perched up
on his high seat, jolts heavily over the stones.
Cabbages are piled up into stacks as it were.
Carts are heaped high with turnips, and bunches
of carrots like huge red fingers, are seen in all
directions. Flower-girls, with large bundles of
violets under their arms, run past, leaving a
trail of perfume behind them. Wagons, with
their shafts sticking up in the air, are ranged
before the salesmen's shops, the high green load
railed in with hurdles, and every here and there
bunches of turnips are seen flying in the air
over the heads of the people. Groups of apple-
women, with straw pads on their crushed bon-
nets, and coarse shawls crossing their bosoms,
sit on their porter's knots, chatting in Irish, and
smoking short pipes; every passer-by is hailed
with the cry of, "Want a baskit, yer honor?"
The porter, trembling under the piled-up
hamper, trots along the street, with his teeth
clenched and shirt wet with the weight, and
staggering at every step he takes.

Inside, the market all is bustle and confusion.
The people walk along with their eyes fixed on
the goods, and frowning with thought. Men in
all costumes, from the coster in his corduroy suit
to the greengrocer in his blue apron, sweep past.
A countryman, in an old straw hat and dusty
boots, occasionally draws down the anger of a
woman for walking about with his hands in
the pockets of his smock-frock, and is asked,
"if that is the way to behave on a market-
day?" Even the granite pillars cannot stop
the crowd, for it separates and rushes past them,
like the tide by a bridge pier. At every turn
there is a fresh odour to sniff at; either the
bitter aromatic perfume of the herbalists' shops
breaks upon you, or the scent of oranges, then
of apples, and then of onions is caught for an
instant as you move along. The brocoli tied
up in square packets, the white heads tinged
slightly red, as it were, with the sunshine,
— the sieves of crimson love-apples, polished
like china, — the bundles of white glossy leeks,
their roots dangling like fringe, — the celery,
with its pinky stalks and bright green tops, —
the dark purple pickling-cabbages, — the scarlet
carrots, — the white knobs of turnips, — the bright
yellow balls of oranges, and the rich brown
coats of the chesnuts — attract the eye on every
side. Then there are the apple-merchants, with
their fruit of all colours, from the pale yellow
green to the bright crimson, and the baskets
ranged in rows on the pavement before the
little shops. Round these the customers stand
examining the stock, then whispering together
over their bargain, and counting their money.
"Give you four shillings for this here lot,
master," says a coster, speaking for his three
companions. "Four and six is my price,"
answers the salesman. "Say four, and it's a
bargain," continues the man. "I said my price,"
returns the dealer; "go and look round, and
see if you can get 'em cheaper; if not, come back.
I only wants what's fair." The men, taking the
salesman's advice, move on. The walnut mer-
chant, with the group of women before his shop,
peeling the fruit, their fingers stained deep brown,
is busy with the Irish purchasers. The onion
stores, too, are surrounded by Hibernians, feel-
ing and pressing the gold-coloured roots, whose
dry skins crackle as they are handled. Cases of
lemons in their white paper jackets, and blue
grapes, just seen above the sawdust are ranged
about, and in some places the ground is slip-
pery as ice from the refuse leaves and walnut
husks scattered over the pavement.

Against the railings of St. Paul's Church are
hung baskets and slippers for sale, and near
the public-house is a party of countrymen pre-
paring their bunches of pretty coloured grass —
brown and glittering, as if it had been bronzed.
Between the spikes of the railing are piled up
square cakes of green turf for larks; and at the
pump, boys, who probably have passed the pre-
vious night in the baskets about the market, are

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washing, and the water dripping from their hair
that hangs in points over the face. The kerb-
stone is blocked up by a crowd of admiring
lads, gathered round the bird-catcher's green
stand, and gazing at the larks beating their
breasts against their cages. The owner, whose
boots are red with the soil of the brick-field,
shouts, as he looks carelessly around, "A cock
linnet for tuppence," and then hits at the youths
who are poking through the bars at the flutter-
ing birds.

Under the Piazza the costers purchase their
flowers (in pots) which they exchange in the
streets for old clothes. Here is ranged a small
garden of flower-pots, the musk and mignonette
smelling sweetly, and the scarlet geraniums,
with a perfect glow of coloured air about the
flowers, standing out in rich contrast with the
dark green leaves of the evergreens behind them.
"There's myrtles, and larels, and boxes," says
one of the men selling them, "and there's a
harbora witus, and lauristiners, and that bushy
shrub with pink spots is health." Men and
women, selling different articles, walk about
under the cover of the colonnade. One has seed-
cake, another small-tooth and other combs,
others old caps, or pig's feet, and one hawker
of knives, razors, and short hatchets, may occa-
sionally be seen driving a bargain with a country-
man, who stands passing his thumb over the
blade to test its keenness. Between the pillars
are the coffee-stalls, with their large tin cans
and piles of bread and butter, and protected
from the wind by paper screens and sheets
thrown over clothes-horses; inside these little
parlours, as it were, sit the coffee-drinkers
on chairs and benches, some with a bunch of
cabbages on their laps, blowing the steam from
their saucers, others, with their mouths full,
munching away at their slices, as if not a
moment could be lost. One or two porters are
there besides, seated on their baskets, breakfast-
ing with their knots on their heads.

As you walk away from this busy scene, you
meet in every street barrows and costers hurry-
ing home. The pump in the market is now
surrounded by a cluster of chattering wenches
quarrelling over whose turn it is to water their
drooping violets, and on the steps of Covent
Garden Theatre are seated the shoeless girls,
tying up the halfpenny and penny bundles.

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

[Description: 915EAF. Page 084.]

as whelks, shrimps, or winks, to say nothing of
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.]

numbers, of which I have before spoken, and
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.]

times "turns out damaged." This extra profit is
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 ORANGE AND NUT MARKET.

In Houndsditch there is a market supported
principally by costermongers, who there pur-
chase their oranges, lemons, and nuts. This
market is entirely in the hands of the Jews; and
although a few tradesmen may attend it to
buy grapes, still it derives its chief custom from
the street-dealers who say they can make far
better bargains with the Israelites, (as they never
refuse an offer,) than they can with the Covent-
garden salesmen, who generally cling to their
prices. This market is known by the name of
"Duke's-place," although its proper title is
St. James's-place. The nearest road to it is
through Duke's-street, and the two titles have
been so confounded that at length the mistake
has grown into a custom.

Duke's-place — as the costers call it — is a
large square yard, with the iron gates of a
synagogue in one corner, a dead wall forming
one entire side of the court, and a gas-lamp on
a circular pavement in the centre. The place
looks as if it were devoted to money-making —
for it is quiet and dirty. Not a gilt letter is to
be seen over a doorway; there is no display of
gaudy colour, or sheets of plate-glass, such as
we see in a crowded thoroughfare when a cus-
tomer is to be caught by show. As if the
merchants knew their trade was certain, they
are content to let the London smoke do their
painter's work. On looking at the shops
in this quarter, the idea forces itself upon one
that they are in the last stage of dilapidation.
Never did property in Chancery look more
ruinous. Each dwelling seems as though a fire
had raged in it, for not a shop in the market
has a window to it; and, beyond the few sacks
of nuts exposed for sale, they are empty, the
walls within being blackened with dirt, and the
paint without blistered in the sun, while the
door-posts are worn round with the shoulders
of the customers, and black as if charred. A
few sickly hens wander about, turning over the
heaps of dried leaves that the oranges have
been sent over in, or roost the time away on the
shafts and wheels of the nearest truck. Ex-
cepting on certain days, there is little or no
business stirring, so that many of the shops
have one or two shutters up, as if a death had
taken place, and the yard is quiet as an inn of
court. At a little distance the warehouses,
with their low ceilings, open fronts, and black
sides, seem like dark holes or coal-stores; and,
but for the mahogany backs of chairs showing
at the first floors, you would scarcely believe
the houses to be inhabited, much more to be
elegantly furnished as they are. One of the
drawing-rooms that I entered here was warm
and red with morocco leather, Spanish maho-
gany, and curtains and Turkey carpets; while
the ormolu chandelier and the gilt frames of the
looking-glass and pictures twinkled at every
point in the fire-light.

The householders in Duke's-place are all of
the Jewish persuasion, and among the costers a

[Description: 915EAF. Page 087.]

saying has sprung up about it. When a man
has been out of work for some time, he is said to
be "Cursed, like a pig in Duke's-place."

Almost every shop has a Scripture name over
it, and even the public-houses are of the Hebrew
faith, their signs appealing to the followers of
those trades which most abound with Jews.
There is the "Jeweller's Arms," patronised
greatly of a Sunday morning, when the Israelite
jewellers attend to exchange their trinkets and
barter amongst themselves. Very often the
counter before "the bar" here may be seen cov-
ered with golden ornaments, and sparkling with
precious stones, amounting in value to thousands
of pounds. The landlord of this house of call
is licensed to manufacture tobacco and cigars.
There is also the "Fishmongers' Arms," the
resort of the vendors of fried soles; here, in the
evening, a concert takes place, the performers
and audience being Jews. The landlord of this
house too is licensed to manufacture tobacco
and cigars. Entering one of these houses I
found a bill announcing a "Bible to be raffled
for, the property of — ." And, lastly, there
is "Benjamin's Coffee-house," open to old
clothesmen; and here, again, the proprietor is
a licensed tobacco-manufacturer. These facts
are mentioned to show the untiring energy of
the Jew when anything is to be gained, and to
give an instance of the curious manner in which
this people support each other.

Some of the nut and orange shops in
Duke's-place it would be impossible to de-
scribe. At one sat an old woman, with jet-
black hair and a wrinkled face, nursing an
infant, and watching over a few matted baskets
of nuts ranged on a kind of carpenter's bench
placed upon the pavement. The interior of the
house was as empty as if it had been to let,
excepting a few bits of harness hanging against
the wall, and an old salt-box nailed near the
gas-lamp, in which sat a hen, "hatching," as I
was told. At another was an excessively stout
Israelite mother, with crisp negro's hair and
long gold earrings, rolling her child on the
table used for sorting the nuts. Here the black
walls had been chalked over with scores, and
every corner was filled up with sacks and orange-
cases. Before one warehouse a family of six,
from the father to the infant, were busy washing
walnuts in a huge tub with a trap in the side,
and around them were ranged measures of the
wet fruit. The Jewish women are known to
make the fondest parents; and in Duke's-place
there certainly was no lack of fondlings. Inside
almost every parlour a child was either being
nursed or romped with, and some little things
were being tossed nearly to the ceiling, and
caught, screaming with enjoyment, in the jewel-
led hands of the delighted mother. At other
shops might be seen a circle of three or four
women — some old as if grandmothers, grouped
admiringly round a hook-nosed infant, tickling
it and poking their fingers at it in a frenzy of
affection.

The counters of these shops are generally
placed in the open streets like stalls, and the
shop itself is used as a store to keep the stock in.
On these counters are ranged the large matting
baskets, some piled up with dark-brown polished
chestnuts — shining like a racer's neck — others
filled with wedge-shaped Brazil-nuts, and rough
hairy cocoa-nuts. There are heaps, too, of
newly-washed walnuts, a few showing their
white crumpled kernels as a sample of their
excellence. Before every doorway are long pot-
bellied boxes of oranges, with the yellow fruit
just peeping between the laths on top, and
lemons — yet green — are ranged about in their
paper jackets to ripen in the air.

In front of one store the paving-stones were
soft with the sawdust emptied from the grape-
cases, and the floor of the shop itself was
whitened with the dry powder. Here stood a
man in a long tasselled smoking-cap, puffing
with his bellows at the blue bunches on a tray,
and about him were the boxes with the paper
lids thrown back, and the round sea-green
berries just rising above the sawdust as if
floating in it. Close by, was a group of dark-
eyed women bending over an orange-case, pick-
ing out the rotten from the good fruit, while a
sallow-complexioned girl was busy with her
knife scooping out the damaged parts, until,
what with sawdust and orange-peel, the air
smelt like the pit of a circus.

Nothing could be seen in this strange place
that did not, in some way or another, appertain
to Jewish customs. A woman, with a heavy
gold chain round her neck, went past, carrying
an old green velvet bonnet covered with feathers,
and a fur tippet, that she had either recently
purchased or was about to sell. Another woman,
whose features showed her to be a Gentile, was
hurrying toward the slop-shop in the Minories
with a richly quilted satin-lined coat done up in
her shawl, and the market-basket by her side,
as if the money due for the work were to be
spent directly for housekeeping.

At the corner of Duke's-street was a stall
kept by a Jew, who sold things that are eaten
only by the Hebrews. Here in a yellow pie-
dish were pieces of stewed apples floating in a
thick puce-coloured sauce.

One man that I spoke to told me that he
considered his Sunday morning's work a very
bad one if he did not sell his five or six hundred
bushels of nuts of different kinds. He had
taken 150l. that day of the street-sellers, and
usually sold his 100l. worth of goods in a morn-
ing. Many others did the same as himself. Here
I met with every attention, and was furnished
with some valuable statistical information con-
cerning the street-trade.

OF ORANGE AND LEMON SELLING IN THE
STREETS.

Of foreign fruits, the oranges and nuts supply
by far the greater staple for the street trade,
and, therefore, demand a brief, but still a fuller,
notice than other articles.

Oranges were first sold in the streets at the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 088.]

close of Elizabeth's reign. So rapidly had the
trade increased, that four years after her death,
or in 1607, Ben Jonson classes "orange-wives,"
for noisiness, with "fish-wives." These women
at first carried the oranges in baskets on their
heads; barrows were afterwards used; and now
trays are usually slung to the shoulders.

Oranges are brought to this country in cases
or boxes, containing from 500 to 900 oranges.
From official tables, it appears that between
250,000,000 and 300,000,000 of oranges and
lemons are now yearly shipped to England.
They are sold wholesale, principally at public
sales, in lots of eight boxes, the price at such
sales varying greatly, according to the supply
and the quality. The supply continues to arrive
from October to August.

Oranges are bought by the retailers in Duke's-
place and in Covent-Garden; but the coster-
mongers nearly all resort to Duke's-place, and
the shopkeepers to Covent-Garden. They are
sold in baskets of 200 or 300; they are also dis-
posed of by the hundred, a half-hundred being
the smallest quantity sold in Duke's-place.
These hundreds, however, number 110, contain-
ing 10 double "hands," a single hand being 5
oranges. The price in December was 2s. 6d., 3s. 6d., and 4s. the hundred. They are rarely
lower than 4s. about Christmas, as there is then
a better demand for them. The damaged oranges
are known as "specks," and the purchaser runs
the risk of specks forming a portion of the con-
tents of a basket, as he is not allowed to empty
it for the examination of the fruit: but some
salesmen agree to change the specks. A month
after Christmas, oranges are generally cheaper,
and become dearer again about May, when there
is a great demand for the supply of the fairs and
races.

Oranges are sold by all classes connected with
the fruit, flower, or vegetable trade of the streets.
The majority of the street-sellers are, however,
women and children, and the great part of these
are Irish. It has been computed that, when
oranges are "at their best" (generally about
Easter), there are 4,000 persons, including stall-
keepers, selling oranges in the metropolis and
its suburbs; while there are generally 3,000 out
of this number "working" oranges — that is,
hawking them from street to street: of these, 300
attend at the doors of the theatres, saloons, &c.
Many of those "working" the theatres confine
their trade to oranges, while the other dealers
rarely do so, but unite with them the sale of nuts
of some kind. Those who sell only oranges, or
only nuts, are mostly children, and of the poor-
est class. The smallness of the sum required
to provide a stock of oranges (a half-hundred
being 15d. or 18d.), enables the poor, who cannot
raise "stock-money" sufficient to purchase any-
thing else, to trade upon a few oranges.

The regular costers rarely buy oranges until
the spring, except, perhaps, for Sunday after-
noon sale — though this, as I said before, they
mostly object to. In the spring, however, they
stock their barrows with oranges. One man told
me that, four or five years back, he had sold in a
day 2,000 oranges that he picked up as a bargain.
They did not cost him half a farthing each; he
said he "cleared 2l. by the spec." At the same
period he could earn 5s. or 6s. on a Sunday
afternoon by the sale of oranges in the street;
but now he could not earn 2s.

A poor Irishwoman, neither squalid in ap-
pearance nor ragged in dress, though looking
pinched and wretched, gave me the subjoined
account; when I saw her, resting with her
basket of oranges near Coldbath-fields prison,
she told me she almost wished she was inside
of it, but for the "childer." Her history was
one common to her class —

"I was brought over here, sir, when I was a
girl, but my father and mother died two or three
years after. I was in service then, and very
good service I continued in as a maid-of-all-
work, and very kind people I met; yes, indeed,
though I was Irish and a Catholic, and they was
English Protistants. I saved a little money
there, and got married. My husband's a la-
bourer; and when he's in full worruk he can
earn 12s. or 14s. a week, for he's a good hand
and a harrud-worruking man, and we do mid-
dlin' thin. He's out of worruk now, and I'm
forced to thry and sill a few oranges to keep a
bit of life in us, and my husband minds the
childer. Bad as I do, I can do 1d. or 2d. a day
profit betther than him, poor man! for he's tall
and big, and people thinks, if he goes round
with a few oranges, it's just from idleniss; and
the Lorrud above knows he'll always worruk
whin he can. He goes sometimes whin I'm
harrud tired. One of us must stay with the
childer, for the youngist is not three and the
ildest not five. We don't live, we starruve. We
git a few 'taties, and sometimes a plaice. To-
day I've not taken 3d. as yit, sir, and it's past
three. Oh, no, indeed and indeed, thin, I dont
make 9d. a day. We live accordingly, for there's
1s. 3d. a week for rint. I have very little harrut
to go into the public-houses to sill oranges, for
they begins flying out about the Pope and Car-
dinal Wiseman, as if I had anything to do with
it. And that's another reason why I like my
husband to stay at home, and me to go out, be-
cause he's a hasty man, and might get into
throuble. I don't know what will become of us,
if times don't turn."

On calling upon this poor woman on the fol-
lowing day, I found her and her children absent.
The husband had got employment at some dis-
tance, and she had gone to see if she could not
obtain a room 3d. a week cheaper, and lodge
near the place of work.

According to the Board of Trade returns,
there are nearly two hundred millions of
oranges annually imported into this country.
About one-third of these are sold wholesale in
London, and one-fourth of the latter quantity dis-
posed of retail in the streets. The returns I have
procured, touching the London sale, prove that
no less than 15,500,000 are sold yearly by the
street-sellers. The retail price of these may be

[Description: 915EAF. Page 089.]

said to be, upon an average, 5s. per 110, and
this would give us about 35,000l. for the gross
sum of money laid out every year, in the streets,
in the matter of oranges alone.

The street lemon-trade is now insignificant,
lemons having become a more important article
of commerce since the law required foreign-
bound ships to be provided with lemon-juice.
The street-sale is chiefly in the hands of
the Jews and the Irish. It does not, however.
call for special notice here.

OF NUT SELLING IN THE STREETS.

The sellers of foreign hazel nuts are principally
women and children, but the stall-keepers, and
oftentimes the costermongers, sell them with
other "goods." The consumption of them is
immense, the annual export from Tarragona
being little short of 8,000 tons. They are to be
found in every poor shop in London, as well as
in the large towns; they are generally to be
seen on every street-stall, in every country vil-
lage, at every fair, and on every race-ground.
The supply is from Gijon and Tarragona. The
Gijon nuts are the "Spanish," or "fresh" nuts.
They are sold at public sales, in barrels of three
bushels each, the price being from 35s. to 40s.
The nuts from Tarragona, whence comes the
great supply, are known as "Barcelonas," and
they are kiln-dried before they are shipped.
Hence the Barcelonas will "keep," and the
Spanish will not. The Spanish are coloured
with the fumes of sulphur, by the Jews in
Duke's-place.

It is somewhat remarkable that nuts supply
employment to a number of girls in Spain, and
then yield the means of a scanty subsistence to
a number of girls (with or without parents) in
England.

The prattle and the laughter (according to
Inglis) of the Spanish girls who sort, find no
parallel however among the London girls who
sell the nuts. The appearance of the latter is
often wretched. In the winter months they may
be seen as if stupified with cold, and with the
listlessness, not to say apathy, of those whose
diet is poor in quantity and insufficient in
amount.

Very few costermongers buy nuts (as hazel
nuts are always called) at the public sales — only
those whose dealings are of a wholesale charac-
ter, and they are anything but regular attendants
at the sales. The street-sellers derive nearly
the whole of their supply from Duke's-place.
The principal times of business are Friday
afternoons and Sunday mornings. Those who
have "capital" buy on the Friday, when they
say they can make 10s. go as far as 12s. on the
Sunday. The "Barcelonas" are from 4½d. to
6d. a quart to the street-sellers. The cob-nuts,
which are the large size, used by the pastry-
cooks for mottos, &c., are 2d. and 2½d. the quart,
but they are generally destitute of a kernel.
A quart contains from 100 to 180 nuts, ac-
cording to the size. The costermongers buy
somewhat largely when nuts are 3d. the quart;
they then, and not unfrequently, stock their
barrows with nuts entirely, but 2s. a day is
reckoned excellent earnings at this trade. "It's
the worst living of all, sir," I was told, "on
nuts." The sale in the streets is at the fruit-
stalls, in the public-houses, on board the
steamers, and at the theatre doors. They are
sold by the same class as the oranges, and a
stock may be procured for a smaller sum even
than is required for oranges. By the outlay of
1s. many an Irishwoman can send out her two
or three children with nuts, reserving some for
herself. Seven-eighths of the nuts imported
are sold, I am assured, in the open air.

Some of the costermongers who are to be
found in Battersea-fields, and who attend the
fairs and races, get through 5s. worth of nuts in
a day, but only exceptionally. These men have
a sort of portable shooting-gallery. The cus-
tomer fires a kind of rifle, loaded with a dart,
and according to the number marked on the
centre, or on the encircling rings of a board
which forms the head of the stall, and which
may be struck by the dart, is the number of
nuts payable by the stall-keeper for the half-
penny "fire."

The Brazil nuts, which are now sold largely
in the streets at twelve to sixteen a penny, were
not known in this country as an article of com-
merce before 1824. They are sold by the peck
— 2s. being the ordinary price — in Duke's-place.

Coker-nuts — as they are now generally called,
and indeed "entered" as such at the Custom-
house, and so written by Mr. Mc Culloch, to
distinguish them from cocoa, or the berries
of the cacâo, used for chocolate, etc. — are
brought from the West Indies, both British
and Spanish, and Brazil. They are used as
dunnage in the sugar ships, being interposed
between the hogsheads, to steady them and
prevent their being flung about. The coker-
nut was introduced into England in 1690. They
are sold at public sales and otherwise, and bring
from 10s. to 14s. per 100. Coker-nuts are now
used at fairs to "top" the sticks.

The costermongers rarely speculate in coker-
nuts now, as the boys will not buy them unless
cut, and it is almost impossible to tell how the
coker-nut will "open." The interior is sold in
halfpenny-worths and penny-worths. These
nuts are often "worked with a drum." There
may be now forty coker-nut men in the street
trade, but not one in ten confines himself to the
article.

A large proportion of the dry or ripe walnuts
sold in the streets is from Bordeaux. They are
sold at public sales, in barrels of three bushels
each, realising 21s. to 25s. a barrel. They are
retailed at from eight to twenty a penny, and
are sold by all classes of street-traders.

A little girl, who looked stunted and wretched,
and who did not know her age (which might be
eleven), told me she was sent out by her mother
with six halfpenny-worth of nuts, and she must
carry back 6d. or she would be beat. She
had no father, and could neither read nor write.

[Description: 915EAF. Page 090.]

Her mother was an Englishwoman, she believed, and sold oranges. She had heard of God; he
was "Our Father who art in heaven." She'd
heard that said. She did not know the Lord's
Prayer; had never heard of it; did not know
who the Lord was; perhaps the Lord Mayor,
but she had never been before him. She went
into public-houses with her nuts, but did not
know whether she was ever insulted or not; she
did not know what insulted was, but she was
never badly used. She often went into tap-
rooms with her nuts, just to warm herself. A
man once gave her some hot beer, which made
her ill. Her mother was kind enough to her,
and never beat her but for not taking home 6d.
She had a younger brother that did as she did.
She had bread and potatoes to eat, and some-
times tea, and sometimes herrings. Her mother
didn't get tipsy (at first she did not know what
was meant by tipsy) above once a week.

OF ROASTED CHESTNUTS AND APPLES.

How long the street-trade in roasted chestnuts
has been carried on I find no means of ascer-
taining precisely, but it is unquestionably one
of the oldest of the public traffics. Before
potato-cans were introduced, the sale of roasted
chestnuts was far greater than it is now.

It is difficult to compute the number of
roasted chestnut-sellers at present in the streets.
It is probable that they outnumber 1,000, for
I noticed that on a cold day almost every street
fruit-seller, man or woman, had roasted chest-
nuts for sale.

Sometimes the chestnuts are roasted in the
streets, in a huge iron apparatus, made ex-
presly for the purpose, and capable of cooking
perhaps a bushel at a time — but these are to be
found solely at the street-markets.

The ordinary street apparatus for roasting
chestnuts is simple. A round pan, with a few
holes punched in it, costing 3d. or 4d. in a
marine-store shop, has burning charcoal within
it, and is surmounted by a second pan, or kind
of lid, containing chestnuts, which are thus kept
hot. During my inquiry, chestnuts were dear.
"People don't care," I was told, "whether
chestnuts is three and six, as they are now, or
one and six a peck, as I hope they will be
afore long; they wants the same pennyworths."

Chestnuts are generally bought wholesale in
Duke's-place, on the Sunday mornings, for
street sale; but some street-dealers buy them of
those costermongers, whose means enable them
"to lay in" a quantity. The retail customers
are, for the most part, boys and girls, or a few
labourers or street people. The usual price is
sixteen a penny.

Roasted apples used to be vended in the
streets, and often along with roasted chestnuts,
but it is a trade which has now almost entirely
disappeared, and its disappearance is attributed
to the prevalence of potato cans.

I had the following account from a woman,
apparently between sixty and seventy, though
she said she was only about fifty. What she
was in her youth, she said, she neither knew
nor cared. At any rate she was unwilling to
converse about it. I found her statement as to
chestnuts corroborated: —

"The trade's nothing to what it was, sir," she
said. "Why when the hackney coaches was in
the streets, I've often sold 2s. worth of a night
at a time, for a relish, to the hackneymen that
was waiting their turn over their beer. Six and
eight a penny was enough then; now people
must have sixteen; though I pays 3s. a peck,
and to get them at that's a favour. I could
make my good 12s. a week on roasted chestnuts
and apples, and as much on other things in
them days, but I'm half-starved now. There'll
never be such times again. People didn't want
to cut one another's throats in the street busi-
ness then. O, I don't know anything about how
long ago, or what year — years is nothing to me
— but I only know that it was so. I got a
penny a piece then for my roasted apples, and
a halfpenny for sugar to them. I could live
then. Roasted apples was reckoned good for
the tooth-ache in them days, but, people
change so, they aren't now. I don't know
what I make now in chestnuts and apples,
which is all I sells — perhaps 5s. a week. My
rent's 1s. 3d. a week. I lives on a bit of fish,
or whatever I can get, and that's all about it."

The absolute quantity of oranges, lemons, and
nuts sold annually in the London streets is as
follows:

             

Oranges	15,400,000
Lemons	154,000
Spanish and Barcelona nuts	24,000 bushels
Brazil do	3,000 "
Chestnuts	6,500 "
Walnuts	24,000 "
Coker-nuts	400,000 nuts

OF "DRY" FRUIT SELLING IN THE STREETS

The sellers of "dry fruit" cannot be described
as a class, for, with the exception of one old
couple, none that I know of confine themselves
to its sale, but resort to it merely when the
season prevents their dealing in "green fruit"
or vegetables. I have already specified what in
commerce is distinguished as "dry fruit," but
its classification among the costers is somewhat
narrowed.

The dry-fruit sellers derive their supplies
partly from Duke's-place, partly from Pudding-
lane, but perhaps principally from the costers
concerning whom I have spoken, who buy whole-
sale at the markets and elsewhere, and who will
"clear out a grocer," or buy such figs, &c. as a
leading tradesman will not allow to be sent, or
offered, to his regular customers, although, per-
haps, some of the articles are tolerably good. Or
else the dry-fruit men buy a damaged lot of a
broker or grocer, and pick out all that is eatable,
or rather saleable.

The sale of dry fruit is unpopular among the
costermongers. Despite their utmost pains, they
cannot give to figs, or raisins, or currants, which
may be old and stale, anything of the bloom and

[Description: 915EAF. Page 091.]

plumpness of good fruit, and the price of good
fruit is too high for them. Moreover, if the
fruit be a "damaged lot," it is almost always
discoloured, and the blemish cannot be re-
moved.

It is impossible to give the average price of
dry fruit to the costermonger. The quality
and the "harvest" affect the price materially
in the regular trade.

The rule which I am informed the coster-
monger, who sometimes "works" a barrow of
dried fruit, observes, is this: he will aim at cent.
per cent., and, to accomplish it, "slang" weights
are not unfrequently used. The stale fruit is
sold by the grocers, and the damaged fruit by
the warehouses to the costers, at from a half, but
much more frequently a fourth to a twentieth of
its prime cost. The principal street-purchasers
are boys.

A dry-fruit seller gave me the following
account: — By "half profits" he meant cent. per
cent., or, in other words, that the money he re-
ceived for his stock was half of it cost price and
half profit.

"I sell dry fruit, sir, in February and
March, because I must be doing something,
and green fruit's not my money then. It's
a poor trade. I've sold figs at 1d. a pound,
— no, sir, not slang the time I mean — and I
could hardly make 1s. a day at it, though
it was half profits. Our customers look at
them quite particler. `Let's see the other
side of them figs,' the boys'll say, and then
they'll out with — `I say, master, d'you see any
green about me?' Dates I can hardly get off
at all, no! — not if they was as cheap as potatoes,
or cheaper. I've been asked by women if dates
was good in dumplings? I've sometimes said
`yes,' though I knew nothing at all about them.
They're foreign. I can't say where they're
grown. Almonds and raisins goes off best with
us. I don't sell them by weight, but makes
them up in ha'penny or penny lots. There's
two things, you see, and one helps off the other.
Raisins is dry grapes, I've heard. I've sold
grapes before they was dried, at 1d. and 2d. the
pound. I didn't do no good in any of 'em;
1s. a day on 'em was the topper, for all the half
profits. I'll not touch 'em again if I aint
forced."

There are a few costers who sell tolerable
dry fruit, but not to any extent.

The old couple I have alluded to stand all
the year round at the corner of a street running
into a great city thoroughfare. They are sup-
plied with their fruit, I am told, through the
friendliness of a grocer who charges no profit,
and sometimes makes a sacrifice for their benefit.
As I was told that this old couple would not
like inquiries to be made of them, I at once
desisted.

There are sometimes twenty costermongers
selling nothing but dry fruit, but more fre-
quently only ten, and sometimes only five;
while, perhaps, from 300 to 400 sell a few
figs, &c., with other things, such as late apples,
the dry fruit being then used "just as a fill
up."

According to the returns before given, the
gross quantity of dry fruit disposed of yearly in
the streets of London may be stated as follows:

• 7,000 lbs. of shell almonds,

• 37,800 " raisins,

• 24,300 " figs,

• 4,200 " prunes.

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

[Description: 915EAF. Page 092.]

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.

OF THE "ARISTOCRATIC" VEGETABLE-SALE.

In designating these dealers I use a word not
uncommon among the costermongers. These
aristocratic sellers, who are not one in twenty,
or perhaps in twenty-five, of the whole body of
costermongers, are generally men of superior
manners and better dressed than their brethren.
The following narrative, given to me by one of
the body, shows the nature of the trade: —

"It depends a good deal upon the season and
the price, as to what I begin with in the `haris-
tocratic' way. My rounds are always in the

[Description: 915EAF. Page 093.]

suburbs. I sell neither in the streets, nor squares
in town. I like it best where there are detached
villas, and best of all where there are kept mis-
tresses. They are the best of all customers to men
like me. We talk our customers over among
ourselves, and generally know who's who. One
way by which we know the kept ladies is, they
never sell cast-off clothes, as some ladies do, for
new potatoes or early peas. Now, my worst
customers, as to price, are the ladies — or gentle-
men — they're both of a kidney — what keeps
fashionable schools. They are the people to
drive a bargain, but then they buy largely.
Some buy entirely of costermongers. There's
one gent. of a school-keeper buys so much and
knows so well what o'clock it is, that I'm satis-
fied he saves many a pound a year by buying of
us 'stead of the greengrocers.

"Perhaps I begin the season in the haristo-
cratic way, with early lettuces for salads. I
carry my goods in handsome baskets, and some-
times with a boy, or a boy and a girl, to help
me. I buy my lettuces by the score (of heads)
when first in, at 1s. 6d., and sell them at 1½d. each, which is 1s. profit on a score. I have sold
twenty, and I once sold thirty score, that way
in a day. The profit on the thirty was 2l. 5s., but out of that I had to pay three boys, for I
took three with me, and our expenses was 7s. But you must consider, sir, that this is a pre-
carious trade. Such goods are delicate, and
spoil if they don't go off. I give credit some-
times, if anybody I know says he has no change.
I never lost nothing

"Then there's grass (asparagus), and that's
often good money. I buy all mine at Covent-
garden, where it's sold in bundles, according to
the earliness of the season, at from 5s. to 1s., containing from six to ten dozen squibs (heads).
These you have to take home, untie, cut off the
scraggy ends, trim, and scrape, and make them
level. Children help me to do this in the court
where I live. I give them a few ha'pence,
though they're eager enough to do it for nothing
but the fun. I've had 10s. worth made ready
in half an hour.

"Well, now, sir, about grass, there's not a
coster in London, I'm sure, ever tasted it; and
how it's eaten puzzles us." [I explained the
manner in which asparagus was brought to
table.] "That's the ticket, is it, sir? Well, I
was once at the Surrey, and there was some
macaroni eaten on the stage, and I thought
grass was eaten in the same way, perhaps;
swallowed like one o'clock," [rather a favourite
comparison among the costers.]

"I have the grass — it's always called, when
cried in the streets, `Spar-row gra-ass' — tied up
in bundles of a dozen, twelve to a dozen, or one
over, and for these I never expect less than 6d. For a three or four dozen lot, in a neat sieve, I
ask 2s. 6d., and never take less than 1s. 3d. I
once walked thirty-five miles with grass, and
have oft enough been thirty miles. I made 7s. or 8s. a day by it, and next day or two perhaps
nothing, or may-be had but one customer. I've
sold half-crown lots, on a Saturday night, for a
sixpence; and it was sold some time back at
2d. a bundle, in the New Cut, to poor people.
I dare say some as bought it had been maid-
servants and understood it. I've raffled 5s. worth of grass in the parlour of a respectable
country inn of an evening.

"The costers generally buy new potatoes at
4s. to 5s. the bushel, and cry them at `three-
pound-tuppence;' but I've given 7s. a bushel,
for choice and early, and sold them at 2d. a
pound. It's no great trade, for the bushel may
weigh only 50 lb., and at 2d. a pound that's
only 8s. 4d. The schools don't buy at all until
they're 1d. the pound, and don't buy in any
quantity until they're 1s. 6d. the 25 lb. One
day a school 'stonished me by giving me 2s. 6d. for 25 lb., which is the general weight of the
half bushel. Perhaps the master had taken a
drop of something short that morning. The
schools are dreadful screws, to be sure.

"Green peas, early ones, I don't buy when
they first come in, for then they're very dear, but
when they're 4s. or 3s. 6d. a bushel, and that's
pretty soon. I can make five pecks of a bushel.
Schools don't touch peas `till they're 2s. a bushel.

"Cowcumbers were an aristocratic sale. Four
or five years ago they were looked upon, when
first in, and with a beautiful bloom upon them,
as the finest possible relish. But the cholera
came in 1849, and everybody — 'specially the
women — thought the cholera was in cowcumbers,
and I've known cases, foreign and English, sent
from the Borough Market for manure.

"I sell a good many mushrooms. I some-
times can pick up a cheap lot at Covent Garden.
I make them up in neat sieves of three dozen to
eight dozen according to size, and I have sold
them at 4s. the sieve, and made half that on
each sieve I sold. They are down to 1s. or 1s. 6d. a sieve very soon.

"Green walnuts for pickling I sell a quantity
of. One day I sold 20s. worth — half profit — I
got them so cheap, but that was an exception.
I sold them cheap too. One lady has bought a
bushel and a half at a time. For walnut
catsup the refuse of the walnut is used; it's
picked up in the court, where I've got children
or poor fellows for a few ha'pence or a pint of
beer to help me to peel the walnuts."

OF ONION SELLING IN THE STREETS.

The sale of onions in the streets is immense.
They are now sold at the markets at an average
of 2s. a bushel. Two years ago they were 1s., and they have been 4s. and up to 7s. the bushel.
They are now twisted into "ropes" for street sale.
The ropes are of straw, into which the roots are
platted, and secured firmly enough, so that the
ropes can be hung up; these have superseded
the netted onions, formerly sold by the Jew boys.
The plaiting, or twisting, is done rapidly by the
women, and a straw-bonnet-maker described it
to me as somewhat after the mode of her trade,
only that the top, or projecting portion of the
stem of the onion, was twisted within the straw,

[Description: 915EAF. Page 094.]

instead of its being plaited close and flat toge-
ther. The trade in rope onions is almost entirely
in the hands of the Irish women and girls.
There are now, it is said, from 800 to 1000 per-
sons engaged in it. Onion selling can be started
on a small amount of capital, from 6d. to 1s., which is no doubt one inducement for those poor
persons to resort to it. The sixpenny ropes,
bunches, or strings (I heard each word applied),
contain from three to four dozen; the penny
bunches, from six to twenty roots, according to
size; and the intermediate and higher priced
bunches in proportion. Before Christmas, a good
many shilling lots are sold. Among the coster-
mongers I heard this useful root — which the
learned in such matters have pronounced to be,
along with the mushroom, the foundation of every
sauce, ancient or modern — called ing-guns, ing-
ans, injens, injyens, inions, innons, almost every-
thing but onions.

An Irishwoman, apparently of thirty-five, but
in all probability younger — she did not know
her age — gave me the following account. Her
face, with its strongly-marked Irish features, was
almost purpled from constant exposure to the
weather. She was a teetotaller. She was com-
municative and garrulous, even beyond the
average of her countrywomen. She was decently
clad, had been in London fifteen years (she
thought) having been brought from Ireland, viâ Bristol, by her parents (both dead). She herself
was a widow, her husband, "a bricklayer" she
called him (probably a bricklayer's labourer),
having died of the cholera in 1849. I take up
her statement from that period:

"Yes, indeed, sir, he died — the heavins be his
bed! — and he was prepared by Father M — .
We had our thrials togither, but sore's been the
cross and heavy the burthin since it plased God
to call him. Thin, there's the two childer,
Biddy and Ned. They'll be tin and they'll be
eight come their next burreth-days, 'plase the
Lorrud. They can hilp me now, they can. They
sells ing-uns as well. I ropes 'em for 'em. How
is ing-uns roped? Shure, thin — but it's not
mocking me your 'onnur is — shure, thin, a gin-
tleman like you, that can write like a horrus a-
galloping, and perhaps is as larned as a praste,
glory be to God! must know how to rope ing-uns!
Poor people can do it. Some say it's a sacrit,
but that's all a say, or there couldn't be so many
ropes a-silling. I buy the sthraw at a sthraw-
daler's; twopinn'orth at a time; that'll make
six or twilve ropes, according to what they are,
sixpinny or what. It's as sthraight as it can be
grown, the sthraw, that it is indeed. Och, sir,
we've had many's the black day, me and the
childer, poor things; it's thim I care about, but
— God's name be praised! — we've got on some-
how. Another poor woman — she's a widdur too,
hilp her! — and me has a 2s. room for the two of
us. We've our siprate furnithur. She has only
hersilf, but is fond of the childer, as you or your
ady — bliss her! if you've got one — might be, if
you was with them. I can read a little mysilf,
at laste I could oncte, and I gits them a bit o'
schoolin' now and thin, whin I can, of an evenin
mostly. I can't write a letther; I wish I could.
Shure, thin, sir, I'll tell you the thruth — we does
best on ing-uns. Oranges is nixt, and nuts isn't
near so good. The three of us now makes 1s. and sometimes 1s. 6d. a day, and that's grand
doin's. We may sill bechuxt us from two to
three dozin ropes a day. I'm quick at roping
the ing-uns. I never noted how many ropes an
hour. I buy them of a thradesman, an honist
gintleman, I know, and I see him at mass ivery
Sunday, and he gives me as many as he can for
1s. or what it is. We has 1d., plase God, on ivery
6d.; yis, sir, perhaps more sometimes. I'll not
tell your 'onnur a bit of a lie. And so we now
get a nice bit o' fish, with a bit of liver on a
Sunday. I sell to the thradesmen, and the lodgers
of them, about here (Tottenham-court-road), and
in many other parruts, for we thravels a dale.
The childer always goes the same round. We
follows one another. I've sould in the sthreets
ever since I've been in this counthry."

The greatest sum of money expended by the
poor upon any vegetable (after potatoes) is spent
upon onions — 99,900l. being annually devoted
to the purchase of that article. To those who
know the habits of the poor, this will appear in
no way singular — a piece of bread and an onion
being to the English labourer what bread and
an apple or a bunch of grapes is to the French
peasant — often his dinner.

OF POT-HERBS AND CELERY.

I use the old phrase, pot-herbs, for such pro-
ductions as sage, thyme, mint, parsley, sweet
marjoram, fennel, (though the last is rarely sold
by the street-people), &c.; but "herbs" is the
usual term. More herbs, such as agrimony,
balm (balsam), wormwood, tansy, &c., used to
be sold in the streets. These were often used for
"teas," medicinally perhaps, except tansy, which,
being a strong aromatic, was used to flavour
puddings. Wormwood, too, was often bought to
throw amongst woollen fabrics, as a protective
against the attack of moths.

The street herb-trade is now almost entirely
in the hands of Irishwomen, and is generally
carried on during the autumn and winter at
stalls. With it, is most commonly united the
sale of celery. The herbs are sold at the several
markets, usually in shilling lots, but a quarter
of a shilling lot may be purchased. The Irish-
woman pursues a simple method of business.
What has cost her 1s. she divides into 24 lots,
each of 1d., or she will sell half of a lot for a
halfpenny. An Irishwoman said to me:

"Thrade isn't good, sir; it falls and it falls.
I don't sell so many herrubs or so much ciliry
as I did whin mate was higher. Poor people thin,
I've often been said it, used to buy bones and
bile them for broth with ciliry and the beautiful
herrubs. Now they buys a bit of mate and ates
it without brothing. It's good one way and it's
bad another. Only last Saturday night my hus-
band — and a good husband he's to me, though
he is a London man, for he knows how to make

[Description: 915EAF. Page 095.]

a bargain — he bought a bit of mutton, afore the
stroke of twilve, in Newgit-markit, at 2½d. the pound. I don't know what parrut it was. I
don't understand that, but he does, and tills me
how to cook it. He has worruk at the docks, but
not very rigular. I think I sill most parrusley.
Whin frish herrings is chape, some biles them
with parrusley, and some fries them with ing-uns.
No, sir; I don't make sixpence a day; not half-
a-crown a week, I'm shure. Whin herrubs isn't
in — and they're autumn and winther things, and
so is ciliry — I sills anything; gooseberries and
currints, or anything. If I'd had a family, I
couldn't have had a shoe to my futt."

GROSS VALUE OF THE FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
SOLD ANNUALLY IN THE LONDON
STREETS.

To complete the present account of the coster-
monger's trade, we must now estimate the money
value of the fruit and vegetables disposed of by
them throughout the year. The money annually
spent in fish by the humbler portion of the me-
tropolitan population comes to, as we have seen,
very nearly one million five hundred thousand
pounds sterling — the sum laid out in fruit and
vegetables we shall find is but little more than a
third of this amount.

Green Fruit.

                                                   

377,500 bushels of apples, at six a penny or 4s. per bush. (288 to the bushel)	\cp\75,500
193,700 bushels of pears, at 5s. per bushel	48,400
1,215,360 lbs. of cherries, at 2d. per lb.	10,000
11,700 bushels of plums, at 1d. per half pint	6,270
100 bushels of greengages, at 1½d. per half pint	80
548 bushels of damsons, at 1½d. per half pint	430
2,450 bushels of bullace, at 1½d. per half pint	1,960
207,500 bushels of gooseberries, at 3d. per quart	83,000
85,500 sieves of red currants, at 1d. per pint (three half- sieves to the bushel)	15,300
13,500 sieves of black currants, at 1d. per pint (three half- sieves to the bushel)	2,400
3,000 sieves of white currants, at 1d. per pint (three half- sieves to the bushel)	530
763,750 pottles of strawberries, at 2d. per pottle	6,360
1,760 pottles of raspberries, at 6d. per pottle	40
30,485 pottles of mulberries, at 6d. per pottle	760
6,000 bushels of hazel nuts, at ¾d. per half pint	2,400
17,280 lbs. of filberts, at 3d. per lb.	200
26,563 lbs. of grapes, at 4d. per lb.	440
20,000 pine apples, at 6d. each	500
col	15,400,000 oranges, at two for 1d. #32,000
154,000 lemons, at two for 1d.	320
24,000 bushels of Spanish and Barcelona nuts, at 6d. per quart	19,200
3,000 bushels of Brazil nuts (1500 to the bushel), at fifteen for 1d.	\cp\1,250
6,500 bushels of chestnuts (1500 to the bushel), at fifteen for 1d.	2,700
24,000 bushels of walnuts (1750 to the bushel), at ten for 1d.	17,500
400,000 coker-nuts, at 3d. each	5,000
Total expended yearly in green fruit	\cp\333,420

Dry Fruit.

         

7,000 lbs. of shell almonds, at 20 a penny (320 to the lb.)	\cp\460
37,800 lbs. of raisins, at 2d. per lb.	300
24,300 lbs. of figs, at 2d. per lb.	200
4,800 lbs. of prunes, at 2d. per lb.	40
Total expended yearly on dry fruit	\cp\1,000

Vegetables.

                                     

60,500,000 lbs. of potatoes, at 5lbs. for 2d.	\cp\100,800
23,760,000 cabbages, at ½d. each	49,500
3,264,800 turnips, at 1½d. per doz.	1,700
601,000 carrots, at 2½d. per doz.	520
567,300 brocoli and cauliflowers, at 1d. per head	2,360
616,666 junks of turnip tops, at 4d. per junk	10,270
219,000 bushels of peas, at 1s. 6d. per bushel	16,420
8,890 bushels of beans, at 1s. 6d. per bushel	660
22,110 bushels of French beans, at 6d. per peck, or 2s. per bushel	2,210
25,608 vegetable marrows, at ½d. each	50
489 dozen bundles of aspara- gus, at 2s. 6d. per bundle (4d. or 6d. a doz. heads)	730
9,120 dozen bundles of rhubarb, at 2s. 6d. per doz	1,140
4,350 dozen bundles of celery, at 3d. per bundle	650
561,602 lettuces, at 3 a penny	780
13,291 dozen hands of radishes, at 3 bunches for 1d., and 6 bunches to the hand	1,330
499,530 bushels of onions, at 4s. per bushel	99,900
10,920 bushels of cucumbers, at 1d. each (60 to the bush.)	2,730
3,290 dozen bundles of herbs, at 3d. a bundle	490
Total expended yearly in vegetables	\cp\292,240

Putting the above sums together we have the
following aggregate result: —

       

Expended yearly in green fruit	\cp\333,420
Expended yearly in dry fruit	1,000
Expended yearly in vegetables	292,000
Gross sum taken annually by the Lodon costermongers for fruit and vegetables	\cp\626,420

Then adding the above to the gross amount
received by the street-sellers of fish, which
we have before seen comes to as much as
£1,460,850, we have for the annual income of
the London costermongers no less a sum than
£2,087,270.