 | OF THE STATIONARY STREET-SELLERS OF FISH, FRUIT,
AND VEGETABLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF FRUIT-STALL KEEPERS.
I had the following statement from a woman
who has "kept a stall" in Marylebone, at the
corner of a street, which she calls "my corner,"
for 38 years. I was referred to her as a curious
type of the class of stall-keepers, and on my
visit, found her daughter at the "pitch." This
daughter had all the eloquence which is attrac-
tive in a street-seller, and so, I found, had her
mother when she joined us. They are profuse
in blessings; and on a bystander observing,
when he heard the name of these street-sellers,
that a jockey of that name had won the Derby
lately, the daughter exclaimed, "To be sure he
did; he's my own uncle's relation, and what a
lot of money came into the family! Bless God
for all things, and bless every body! Walnuts,
sir, walnuts, a penny a dozen! Wouldn't give
you a bad one for the world, which is a great
thing for a poor 'oman for to offer to do." The
daughter was dressed in a drab great-coat, which
covered her whole person. When I saw the
mother, she carried a similar great-coat, as she
was on her way to the stall; and she used it as
ladies do their muffs, burying her hands in it.
The mother's dark-coloured old clothes seemed,
to borrow a description from Sir Walter Scott,
flung on with a pitchfork. These two women
were at first very suspicious, and could not be
made to understand my object in questioning
[Description: 915EAF. Page 100.]
came not only communicative, but garrulous,
conversing — with no small impatience at any
interruption — of the doings of the people in her
neighbourhood. I was accompanied by an in-
telligent costermonger, who assured me of his
certitude that the old woman's statement was
perfectly correct, and I found moreover from
other inquiries that it was so.
"Well, sir," she began, "what is it that you
want of me? Do I owe you anything? There's
half-pay officers about here for no good; what is
it you want? Hold your tongue, you young fool,"
(to her daughter, who was beginning to speak;)
"what do you know about it?" [On my satis-
fying her that I had no desire to injure her, she
continued, to say after spitting, a common prac-
tice with her class, on a piece of money, "for
luck,"] "Certainly, sir, that's very proper and
good. Aye, I've seen the world — the town
world and the country. I don't know where I
was born; never mind about that — it's nothing
to nobody. I don't know nothing about my
father and mother; but I know that afore I
was eleven I went through the country with
my missis. She was a smuggler. I didn't
know then what smuggling was — bless you, sir,
I didn't; I knew no more nor I know who
made that lamp-post. I didn't know the
taste of the stuff we smuggled for two years —
didn't know it from small beer; I've known
it well enough since, God knows. My missis
made a deal of money that time at Dept-
ford Dockyard. The men wasn't paid and let
out till twelve of a night — I hardly mind what
night it was, days was so alike then — and they
was our customers till one, two, or three in
the morning — Sunday morning, for anything I
know. I don't know what my missis gained;
something jolly, there's not a fear of it. She
was kind enough to me. I don't know how long
I was with missis. After that I was a hopping,
and made my 15s. regular at it, and a haymak-
ing; but I've had a pitch at my corner for thirty-
eight year — aye! turned thirty-eight. It's no
use asking me what I made at first — I can't tell;
but I'm sure I made more than twice as much
as my daughter and me makes now, the two of us.
I wish people that thinks we're idle now were
with me for a day. I'd teach them. I don't —
that's the two of us don't — make 15s. a week now,
nor the half of it, when all's paid. D — d if I do.
The d — d boys take care of that." [Here I
had a statement of the boy's tradings, similar to
what I have given.] "There's `Canterbury' has
lots of boys, and they bother me. I can tell,
and always could, how it is with working men.
When mechanics is in good work, their children
has halfpennies to spend with me. If they're
hard up, there's no halfpennies. The pennies
go to a loaf or to buy a candle. I might have
saved money once, but had a misfortunate family.
My husband? O, never mind about him. D — n
him. I've been a widow many years. My son
— it's nothing how many children I have — is
married; he had the care of an ingine. But
he lost it from ill health. It was in a feather-
house, and the flue got down his throat, and
coughed him; and so he went into the country,
108 miles off, to his wife's mother. But his
wife's mother got her living by wooding, and
other ways, and couldn't help him or his wife;
so he left, and he's with me now. He has a job
sometimes with a greengrocer. at 6d. a day and
a bit of grub; a little bit — very. I must shelter
him. I couldn't turn him out. If a Turk I
knew was in distress, and I had only half a loaf,
I'd give him half of that, if he was ever such
a Turk — I would, sir! Out of 6d. a day, my son
— poor fellow, he's only twenty-seven! — wants
a bit of 'baccy and a pint of beer. It 'ud be
unnatural to oppose that, wouldn't it, sir? He
frets about his wife, that's staying with her
mother, 108 miles off; and about his little girl;
but I tell him to wait, and he may have more
little girls. God knows, they come when they're
not wanted a bit. I joke and say all my old
sweethearts is dying away. Old Jemmy went off
sudden. He lent me money sometimes, but
I always paid him. He had a public once, and
had some money when he died. I saw him the
day afore he died. He was in bed, but wasn't
his own man quite; though he spoke sensible
enough to me. He said, said he, `Won't you
have half a quartern of rum, as we've often had
it?' `Certainly, Jemmy,' says I, `I came for
that very thing.' Poor fellow! his friends are
quarrelling now about what he left. It's 56l.
they say, and they'll go to law very likely, and
lose every thing. There'll be no such quarrel-
ling when I die, unless it is for the pawn-tickets.
I get a meal now, and got a meal afore; but it
was a better meal then, sir. Then look at my
expenses. I was a customer once. I used to
buy, and plenty such did, blue cloth aprons,
opposite Drury-lane theatre: the very shop's
there still, but I don't know what it is now;
I can't call to mind. I gave 2s. 6d. a yard,
from twenty to thirty years ago, for an apron,
and it took two yards, and I paid 4d. for making
it, and so an apron cost 5s. 4d. — that wasn't
much thought of in those times. I used to be
different off then. Lnever go to church; I used
to go when I was a little child at Sevenoaks.
I suppose I was born somewhere thereabouts.
I've forgot what the inside of a church is like.
There's no costermongers ever go to church,
except the rogues of them, that wants to appear
good. I buy my fruit at Covent-garden. Apples
is now 4s. 6d. a bushel there. I may make twice
that in selling them; but a bushel may last me
two, three, or four days."
As I have already, under the street-sale of
fish, given an account of the oyster stall-keeper,
as well as the stationary dealers in sprats, and the
principal varieties of wet fish, there is no neces-
sity for me to continue this part of my subject.
We have now, in a measure, finished with the
metropolitan costermongers. We have seen that
the street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables
[Description: 915EAF. Page 101.]
pulation; the men, women, and children num-
bering at the least 30,000, and taking as much
as 2,000,000l. per annum. We have seen, more-
over, that these are the principal purveyors of
food to the poor, and that consequently they
are as important a body of people as they are
numerous. Of all classes they should be the
most honest, since the poor, least of all, can
afford to be cheated; and yet it has been shown
that the consciences of the London costermon-
gers, generally speaking, are as little developed
as their intellects; indeed, the moral and reli-
gious state of these men is a foul disgrace to us,
laughing to scorn our zeal for the "propagation
of the gospel in foreign parts," and making our
many societies for the civilization of savages
on the other side of the globe appear like a
"delusion, a mockery, and a snare," when we
have so many people sunk in the lowest depths
of barbarism round about our very homes. It
is well to have Bishops of New Zealand when
we have Christianized all our own heathen; but
with 30,000 individuals, in merely one of our
cities, utterly creedless, mindless, and principle-
less, surely it would look more like earnestness
on our parts if we created Bishops of the New-
Cut, and sent "right reverend fathers" to watch
over the "cure of souls" in the Broadway and
the Brill. If our sense of duty will not rouse us
to do this, at least our regard for our own inte-
rests should teach us, that it is not safe to allow
this vast dungheap of ignorance and vice to
seethe and fester, breeding a social pestilence in
the very heart of our land. That the coster-
mongers belong essentially to the dangerous
classes none can doubt; and those who know a
coster's hatred of a "crusher," will not hesitate
to believe that they are, as they themselves con-
fess, one and all ready, upon the least disturb-
ance, to seize and disable their policeman.
It would be a marvel indeed if it were other-
wise. Denied the right of getting a living by
the street authorities, after having, perhaps, been
supplied with the means of so doing by the
parish authorities — the stock which the one had
provided seized and confiscated by the other —
law seems to them a mere farce, or at best, but
the exercise of an arbitrary and despotic power,
against which they consider themselves justi-
fied, whenever an opportunity presents itself, of
using the same physical force as it brings to
bear against them. That they are ignorant and
vicious as they are, surely is not their fault. If
we were all born with learning and virtue, then
might we, with some show of justice, blame the
costermongers for their want of both; but seeing
that even the most moral and intelligent of us
owe the greater part, if not the whole, of our
wisdom and goodness to the tuition of others,
we must not in the arrogance of our self-conceit
condemn these men because they are not like
ourselves, when it is evident that we should have
been as they are, had not some one done for us
what we refuse to do for them. We leave them
destitute of all pereeption of beauty, and there-
fore without any means of pleasure but through
their appetites, and then we are surprized to
find their evenings are passed either in brutal-
izing themselves with beer, or in gloating
over the mimic sensuality of the "penny gaff."
Without the least intellectual culture is it likely,
moreover, that they should have that perception
of antecedents and consequents which enables us
to see in the shadows of the past the types of
the future — or that power of projecting the
mind into the space, as it were, of time, which
we in Saxon-English call fore-sight, and in
Anglo-Latin pro-vidence — a power so godlike
that the latter term is often used by us to ex-
press the Godhead itself? Is it possible, then,
that men who are as much creatures of the
present as the beasts of the field — instinctless
animals — should have the least faculty of pre-
vision? or rather is it not natural that, following
the most precarious of all occupations — one in
which the subsistence depends upon the weather
of this the most variable climate of any — they
should fail to make the affluence of the fine
days mitigate the starvation of the rainy ones?
or that their appetites, made doubly eager by
the privations suffered in their adversity, should
be indulged in all kinds of excess in their
prosperity — their lives being thus, as it were,
a series of alternations between starvation and
surfeit?
The fate of children brought up amid the
influence of such scenes — with parents starving
one week and drunk all the next — turned loose
into the streets as soon as they are old enough
to run alone — sent out to sell in public-houses
almost before they know how to put two half-
pence together — their tastes trained to libidinism
long before puberty at the penny concert, and
their passions inflamed with the unrestrained
intercourse of the twopenny hops — the fate of
the young, I say, abandoned to the blight of such
associations as these, cannot well be otherwise
than it is. If the child be father to the man,
assuredly it does not require a great effort of
imagination to conceive the manhood that such
a childhood must necessarily engender.
Some months back Mr. Mayhew, with a view
to mitigate what appeared to him to be the
chief evils of a street-seller's life, founded "The
Friendly Association of London Costermongers,"
the objects of which were as follows:
1. To establish a Benefit and Provident Fund
for insuring to each Member a small weekly
allowance in Sickness or Old Age, as well as
a certain sum to his family at his death, so
that the Costermongers, when incapacitated
from labour, may not be forced to seek paro-
chial relief, nor, at their decease, be left to be
buried by the parish.2. To institute a Penny Savings' Bank and
Winter Fund, where the smallest deposits will
be received and bear interest, so that the Cos-
termongers may be encouraged to lay by even
the most trivial sums, not only as a provision
for future comfort, but as the means of assisting
their poorer brethren with future loans.1023. To form a Small Loan Fund for supply-
ing the more needy Costermongers with Stock-
Money, &c., at a fair and legitimate interest,
instead of the exorbitant rates that are now
charged.4. To promote the use of full weights and
measures by every Member of the Association,
as well as a rigid inspection of the scales, &c.,
of all other Costermongers, so that the honestly
disposed Street-sellers may be protected, and
the public secured against imposition.5. To protect the Costermongers from inter-
ference when lawfully pursuing their calling,
by placing it in their power to employ counsel
to defend them, if unjustly prosecuted.6. To provide harmless, if not rational,
amusements at the same cheap rate as the
pernicious entertainments now resorted to by
the Street-sellers.7. To adopt means for the gratuitous educa-
tion of the children of the Costermongers, in
the day time, and the men and women them-
selves in the evening.
This institution remains at present compara-
tively in abeyance, from the want of funds to
complete the preliminary arrangements. Those,
however, who may feel inclined to contribute
towards its establishment, will please to pay
their subscriptions into Messrs. Twinings' Bank,
Strand, to the account of Thomas Hughes, Esq.
(of 63, Upper Berkeley-street, Portman-square),
who has kindly consented to act as Treasurer to
the Association.
| OF THE STATIONARY STREET-SELLERS OF FISH, FRUIT,
AND VEGETABLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |