Part 21
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 fragrant 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, according 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 Sunday 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 Sunday 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 Camden-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 2_d._ a pottle in the streets when the season is at its height. Inferior are 1_d._ These are the most frequent prices. In raspberries 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 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ the pottle, 9_d._ 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 4_s._ a bushel, and six a penny. The sale in halfpenny and pennyworths is very great. Indeed the costermongers sell about half the apples brought to the markets, and I was told that for one pennyworth of apples bought in a shop forty were bought in the street. Pears are 9_d._ 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 10_s._, 12_s._, 18_s._, or 20_s._ for a case containing four bushels. They generally get from 9_d._ to 1_s._ profit on a bushel of English, but on the French apples they make a clear profit of from 1_s._ 3_d._ to 2_s._ a bushel, and would make more, but the fruit sometimes “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 answered, ‘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 1_d._ the half-pint for good, and 1/2 _d._ 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 suburban homes. The slices at 1/2_d._ and 1_d._ are bought principally by boys. The average price of a “good street pine” is 9_d._
Peaches are an occasional sale with the costermongers’, 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 1_d._ 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 street-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 purchase 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 customer 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. Excepting 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 mahogany, 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 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 covered 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 describe. 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 jewelled 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, picking 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 150_l._ that day of the street-sellers, and usually sold his 100_l._ worth of goods in a morning. Many others did the same as himself. Here I met with every attention, and was furnished with some valuable statistical information concerning 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 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 costermongers 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 disposed of by the hundred, a half-hundred being the smallest quantity sold in Duke’s-place. These hundreds, however, number 110, containing 10 double “hands,” a single hand being 5 oranges. The price in December was 2_s._ 6_d._, 3_s._ 6_d._, and 4_s._ the hundred. They are rarely lower than 4_s._ 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 contents 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 poorest class. The smallness of the sum required to provide a stock of oranges (a half-hundred being 15_d._ or 18_d._), enables the poor, who cannot raise “stock-money” sufficient to purchase anything else, to trade upon a few oranges.
The regular costers rarely buy oranges until the spring, except, perhaps, for Sunday afternoon 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 2_l._ by the spec.” At the same period he could earn 5_s._ or 6_s._ on a Sunday afternoon by the sale of oranges in the street; but now he could not earn 2_s._
A poor Irishwoman, neither squalid in appearance 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 labourer; and when he’s in full worruk he can earn 12_s._ or 14_s._ a week, for he’s a good hand and a harrud-worruking man, and we do middlin’ 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 1_d._ or 2_d._ 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 3_d._ as yit, sir, and it’s past three. Oh, no, indeed and indeed, thin, I dont make 9_d._ a day. We live accordingly, for there’s 1_s._ 3_d._ 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 Cardinal 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, because 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 following day, I found her and her children absent. The husband had got employment at some distance, and she had gone to see if she could not obtain a room 3_d._ 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 disposed 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 said to be, upon an average, 5_s._ per 110, and this would give us about 35,000_l._ 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 village, 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 35_s._ to 40_s._ 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.