University of Virginia Library

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ropes can be hung up; these have superseded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.