Part 19

The dealing in “dry” or salt fish is never carried on as a totally distinct trade in the streets, but some make it a principal part of their business; and many wet fish-dealers whose “wet fish” is disposed of by noon, sell dry fish in the afternoon. The dry fish, proper, consists of dried mackerel, salt cod--dried or barrelled--smoked or dried haddocks (often called “finnie haddies”), dried or pickled salmon (but salmon is only salted or pickled for the streets when it can be sold cheap), and salt herrings.

A keen-looking, tidily-dressed man, who was at one time a dry fish-seller principally, gave me the following account. For the last two months he has confined himself to another branch of the business, and seemed to feel a sort of pleasure in telling of the “dodges” he once resorted to:

“There’s Scotch haddies that never knew anything about Scotland,” he said, “for I’ve made lots of them myself by Tower-street, just a jump or two from the Lambeth station-house. I used to make them on Sundays. I was a wet fish-seller then, and when I couldn’t get through my haddocks or my whitings of a Saturday night, I wasn’t a-going to give them away to folks that wouldn’t take the trouble to lift me out of a gutter if I fell there, so I presarved them. I’ve made haddies of whitings, and good ones too, and Joe made them of codlings besides. I had a bit of a back-yard to two rooms, one over the other, that I had then, and on a Sunday I set some wet wood a fire, and put it under a great tub. My children used to gut and wash the fish, and I hung them on hooks all round the sides of the tub, and made a bit of a chimney in a corner of the top of the tub, and that way I gave them a jolly good smoking. My wife had a dry fish-stall and sold them, and used to sing out ‘Real Scotch haddies,’ and tell people how they was from Aberdeen; I’ve often been fit to laugh, she did it so clever. I had a way of giving them a yellow colour like the real Scotch, but that’s a secret. After they was well smoked they was hung up to dry all round the rooms we lived in, and we often had stunning fires that answered as well to boil crabs and lobsters when they was cheap enough for the streets. I’ve boiled a mate’s crabs and lobsters for 2-1/2_d._; it was two boilings and more, and 2-1/2_d._ was reckoned the price of half a quarter of a hundred of coals and the use of the pan. There’s more ways than one of making 6_d._, if a man has eyes in his head and keeps them open. Haddocks that wouldn’t fetch 1_d._ a piece, nor any money at all of a Saturday night, I’ve sold--at least she has” (indicating his wife by a motion of his thumb)--“at 2_d._, and 3_d._, and 4_d._ I’ve bought fish of costers that was over on a Saturday night, to make Scotch haddies of them. I’ve tried experience” (experiments) “too. Ivy, burnt under them, gave them, I thought, a nice sort of flavour, rather peppery, for I used always to taste them; but I hate living on fish. Ivy with brown berries on it, as it has about this time o’ year, I liked best. Holly wasn’t no good. A black-currant bush was, but it’s too dear; and indeed it couldn’t be had. I mostly spread wetted fire-wood, as green as could be got, or damp sticks of any kind, over shavings, and kept feeding the fire. Sometimes I burnt sawdust. Somehow, the dry fish trade fell off. People does get so prying and so knowing, there’s no doing nothing now for no time, so I dropped the dry fish trade. There’s few up to smoking them proper; they smoke ’em black, as if they was hung up in a chimbley.”

Another costermonger gave me the following account:

“I’ve salted herrings, but the commonest way of salting is by the Jews about Whitechapel. They make real Yarmouth bloaters and all sorts of fish. When I salted herrings, I bought them out of the boats at Billingsgate by the hundred, which is 120 fish. We give them a bit of a clean--hardly anything--then chuck them into a tub of salt, and keep scattering salt over them, and let them lie a few minutes, or sometimes half an hour, and then hang them up to dry. They eat well enough, if they’re eaten in time, for they won’t keep. I’ve known three day’s old herrings salted, just because there was no sale for them. One Jew sends out six boys crying ‘real Yarmouth bloaters.’ People buy them in preference, they look so nice and clean and fresh-coloured. It’s quite a new trade among the Jews. They didn’t do much that way until two years back. I sometimes wish I was a Jew, because they help one another, and start one another with money, and so they thrive where Christians are ruined. I smoked mackerel, too, by thousands; that’s a new trade, and is done the same way as haddocks. Mackerel that won’t bring 1_d._ a piece fresh, bring 2_d._ smoked; they are very nice indeed. I make about 10_s._ or 11_s._ a week by dry fish in the winter months, and about as much by wet,--but I have a tidy connection. Perhaps I make 17_s._ or 18_s._ a week all the year round.”

The aggregate quantity of dry fish sold by the London costermongers throughout the year is as follows--the results being deduced from the table before given:

Wet salt cod 93,750 Dry do. 1,000,000 Smoked Haddocks 4,875,000 Bloaters 36,750,000 Red-herrings 25,000,000

GROSS VALUE OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF FISH ANNUALLY SOLD IN THE STREETS OF LONDON.

It now but remains for me, in order to complete this account of the “street-sellers of fish,” to form an estimate of the amount of money annually expended by the labourers and the poorer classes of London upon the different kinds of wet, dry, and shell-fish. This, according to the best authorities, is as follows:

_Wet Fish._ £ 175,000 lbs. of salmon, at 6_d._ per lb. 4,000 1,000,000 lbs. of live cod, at 1-1/2_d._ per lb. 5,000 3,250,000 pairs of soles, at 1-1/2_d._ per pair 20,000 4,400,000 whiting, at 1/2_d._ each 9,000 29,400,000 plaice, at 3/4_d._ 90,000 15,700,000 mackarel, at 6 for 1_s._ 130,000 875,000,000 herrings, at 16 a groat 900,000 3,000,000 lbs. of sprats, at 1_d._ per lb. 12,000 400,000 lbs. of eels, at 3 lb. for 1_s._ 6,000 260,000 flounders, at 1_d._ per dozen 100 270,000 dabs, at 1_d._ per dozen 100 --------- Sum total expended yearly in wet fish 1,177,000

_Dry Fish._ 525,000 lbs. barrelled cod, at 1-1/2_d._ 3,000 500,000 lbs. dried salt cod, at 2_d._ 4,000 4,875,000 smoked haddock, at 1_d._ 20,000 36,750,000 bloaters, at 2 for 1_d._ 75,000 25,000,000 red herrings, at 4 for 1_d._ 25,000 ------- Sum total expended yearly in dry fish 127,000

_Shell Fish._ 124,000,000 oysters, at 4 a penny 125,000 60,000 lobsters, at 3_d._ 750 50,000 crabs, at 2_d._ 400 770,000 pints of shrimps, at 2_d._ 6,000 1,000,000 quarts of mussels, at 1_d._ 4,000 750,000 quarts of cockles, at 1_d._ 3,000 4,950,000 whelks, at 8 for 1_d._ 2,500 3,600,000 pints of periwinkles, at 1_d._ 15,000 ------- Sum total expended yearly in shell-fish 156,650

Adding together the above totals, we have the following result as to the gross money value of the fish purchased yearly in the London streets:

£ Wet fish 1,177,200 Dry fish 127,000 Shell fish 156,650 --------- Total £1,460,850

Hence we find that there is nearly a million and a half of money annually spent by the poorer classes of the metropolis in fish; a sum so prodigious as almost to discredit every statement of want, even if the amount said to be so expended be believed. The returns from which the above account is made out have been obtained, however, from such unquestionable sources--not from one salesman alone, but checked and corrected by many gentlemen who can have no conceivable motive for exaggeration either one way or the other--that, sceptical as our utter ignorance of the subject must necessarily make us, still if we will but examine for ourselves, we shall find there is no gainsaying the facts.

Moreover as to the enormity of the amount dispelling all ideas of privation among the industrious portion of the community, we shall also find on examination that assuming the working-men of the metropolis to be 500,000 in number (the Occupation Abstract of 1841, gives 773,560 individuals following _some_ employment in London, but these include merchants, employers, shopkeepers, Government-officers and others), and that they, with their wives and children, make up one million individuals, it follows that the sum per head, expended in fish by the poorer classes every week, is a fraction more than 6-3/4_d._, or, in other words not quite one penny a day.

If the diet of a people be a criterion, as has been asserted, of their character, it may be feared that the present extensive fish-diet of the working-people of London, is as indicative of degeneracy of character, as Cobbett insisted must result from the consumption of tea, and “the cursed root,” the potato. “The flesh of fish,” says Pereira on Diet, “is less satisfying than the flesh of either quadrupeds or birds. As it contains a larger proportion of water (about 80 per cent.), it is obviously less nourishing.” Haller tells us he found himself weakened by a fish-diet; and he states that Roman Catholics are generally debilitated during Lent. Pechlin also affirms that a mechanic, nourished merely by fish, has less muscular power than one who lives on the flesh of warm-blooded animals. Jockeys, who _waste themselves_ in order to reduce their weight, live principally on fish.

The classes of fish above given, are, when considered in a “dietetical point of view,” of two distinct kinds; viz., those which form the staple commodity of the dinners and suppers of the poor, and those which are mere relishes or stimuli to failing, rather than stays to, eager appetites. Under the former head, I include red-herrings, bloaters, and smoked haddocks; such things are not merely provocatives to eat, among the poor, as they are at the breakfast-table of many an over-fed or intemperate man. With the less affluent these salted fish are not a “relish,” but a meal.

The shell-fish, however, can only be considered as luxuries. The 150,000_l._ thus annually expended in the streets, represents the sum laid out in mere relishes or stimuli to sluggish appetites. A very large proportion of this amount, I am inclined to believe, is spent by persons whose stomachs have been disordered by drink. A considerable part of the trade in the minor articles, as winks, shrimps, &c., is carried on in public-houses, while a favourite pitch for an oyster-stall is outside a tavern-door. If, then, so large an amount is laid out in an endeavour to restore the appetite after drinking, how much money must be squandered in destroying it by the same means?

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 includes currants, gooseberries, strawberries, and, indeed, all fruits that demand immediate consumption, in contradistinction to such productions 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 insufficiency 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 impossibility 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 costermonger’s barrow.

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

The commoner “green” fruits of home produce are bought by the costermonger in the markets. 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 20_l._ 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 afternoon’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 Windsor), asparagus, vegetable marrow, seakale, spinach, 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 vegetables sold in the streets, by the London costermongers. This, as I said, when treating 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 proportion 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 costermongers, nor is it necessary for me to cite any but those dealt in by them generally. Their exceptional sales, such as of mushrooms, cucumbers, &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.

A TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OR MEASURE OF THE UNDERMENTIONED HOME-GROWN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES SOLD THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, WHOLESALE, IN THE METROPOLITAN “GREEN” MARKETS, WITH THE PROPORTION SOLD RETAIL IN THE STREETS.

Description of Fruits and Vegetables. Covent Garden. Borough. Spitalfields.

GREEN FRUIT. Apples 360,000 bushels 25,000 250,000 Pears 230,000 „ 10,000 83,000 Cherries 90,000 doz. lbs. 45,000 15,000 Plums[3] 93,000 bushels 15,500 45,000 Green Gages[3] 2,000 „ 333 1,500 Damsons[3] 19,800 „ 3,150 4,500 Bullace 1,800 „ 1,620 400 Gooseberries 140,000 „ 26,200 91,500 Currants (Red)[3] 70,000 sieves 15,000 75,000 Ditto (Black) 45,000 „ 12,000 45,000 Ditto (White) 3,800 „ 3,000 15,000 Strawberries[4] 638,000 pottles 330,000 396,000 Raspberries 22,500 „ 3,750 2,500 Mulberries 17,496 „ 57,600 7,064 Hazel Nuts 2,700 bushels 1,000 648 Filberts 221,400 lbs. 72,000 43,200

Proportion sold by Farringdon. Portman. Total. Costermongers. 35,000 16,000 686,000 One-half. 20,000 10,000 353,000 One-half. 12,000 11,200 173,200 One-half. 3,000 20,000 176,500 One-fifteenth. 1,000 500 5,333 One-fiftieth. 9,000 1,200 37,650 One-thirtieth. 540 540 4,900 One-half. 12,000 7,000 276,700 Three-fourths. 6,000 9,000 175,000 One-half. 6,000 4,000 112,000 One-eighth. 3,000 2,000 26,800 One-eighth. 15,000 148,500 1,527,500 One-half. 3,500 3,000 35,250 One-twentieth. 17,281 22,500 121,940 One-fourth. 5,400 270 9,018 Two-thirds. 144,000 37,800 518,400 One-thirtieth.

VEGETABLES. Potatoes 161,280,000 lbs. 48,384,000 64,512,000 Cabbages[5] 33,600,000 plants 19,200,000 12,000,000 Brocoli and } Cauliflowers } 1,800,000 heads 3,780,000 2,880,000 Turnips 18,800,000 roots 4,800,000 4,800,000 Turnip Tops 300,000 junks 500,000 600,000 Carrots 12,000,000 roots 1,571,000 2,400,000 Peas 270,000 bushels 50,000 100,000 Beans 100,000 „ 20,000 10,000 French Beans 140,000 „ 9,600 12,000 Vegetab. Marrows 10,800 dozen 3,240 3,600 Asparagus 12,000 dz. bun. 3,600 1,080 Celery 15,000 „ 4,800 6,000 Rhubarb 7,200 „ 48,000 28,800 Lettuces 734,400 plants 1,080,000 2,073,600 Radishes 6,912 dz. hands 43,200 36,000 Onions 500,000 bushels 398,000 400,000 Ditto (Spring) 36,000 dz. bun. 10,800 21,600 Cucumbers 2,160 bushels 10,800 24,000 Herbs 7,200 dz. bun. 9,600 9,400

24,192,000 12,096,000 310,464,000 One-fifteenth. 8,400,000 16,472,000 89,672,000 One-third. 5,320,000 546,000 14,326,000 One-twentieth. 3,500,000 748,000 32,648,000 One-tenth. 250,000 200,000 1,850,000 One-third. 1,500,000 546,000 18,017,000 One-thirtieth. 14,000 4,000 438,000 One-half. 2,400 1,000 133,400 One-fifteenth. 50,000 9,600 221,200 One-tenth. 432 1,800 19,872 One-third. 1,440 1,440 19,560 One-fortieth. 3,000 6,000 34,800 One-eighth. 2,400 4,800 91,200 One-tenth. 129,600 475,200 4,492,800 One-eighth. 18,000 28,800 132,912 One-tenth. 9,600 182,000 1,489,600 One-third. 21,600 14,400 104,400 One-fourth. 12,000 38,400 87,360 One-eighth. 7,800 3,900 37,900 One-tenth.

[3] The above fruits are not all home grown. The currants, I am informed, are one-fifteenth foreign. The foreign “tender” fruit being sent to the markets, it is impossible to obtain separate returns.

[4] A common sale of strawberries in the markets is “rounds.” I have, however, given the quantity thus sold less technically, and in the measures most familiar to the general public.

[5] The cabbages, turnips, &c. are brought in loads to the great wholesale markets, a load varying from 150 to 200 dozen, but being more frequently nearer 200, and not unfrequently to fully that amount. Not to perplex my reader with too great a multiplicity of figures in a tabular arrangement, I have given the quantity of individual articles in a load, without specifying it. In the smaller market (for vegetables) of Portman, the cabbages, &c., are not conveyed in waggons, as to the other markets, but in carts containing generally sixty dozens.

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 together, and the aggregate proportion above given.

The foregoing Table, however, relates chiefly to “home grown” supplies. Concerning the quantity of foreign fruit and vegetables imported into this country, the proportion consumed 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.

---------------+----------------+----------------- | Quantity sold | Proportion sold Description. | wholesale in | retail in | London. | the streets. ---------------+----------------+----------------- FRUIT. | | Apples | 39,561 bush. | seven-eighths. Pears | 19,742 „ | seven-eighths. Cherries | 264,240 lbs. | two-thirds. Grapes | 1,328,190 „ | one-fiftieth. Pine-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 | 79,654,400 lbs.| 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 account, to do the same for “the dry fruit.”

TABLE, SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF “DRY” FRUIT SOLD WHOLESALE IN LONDON THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, WITH THE PROPORTION SOLD RETAIL IN THE STREETS.

---------------+----------------+----------------------- | Quantity sold | Proportion sold retail Description. | wholesale | in the streets. | in London. | ---------------+----------------+----------------------- Shell Almonds | 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 Christmas. Currants they work about the latter end of July, or beginning of August.

Concerning the costermonger’s vegetable season, 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 exception 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 forenoon. 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