Part 22

Very few costermongers buy nuts (as hazel nuts are always called) at the public sales--only those whose dealings are of a wholesale character, 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 10_s._ go as far as 12_s._ on the Sunday. The “Barcelonas” are from 4-1/2_d._ to 6_d._ a quart to the street-sellers. The cob-nuts, which are the large size, used by the pastry-cooks for mottos, &c., are 2_d._ and 2-1/2_d._ the quart, but they are generally destitute of a kernel. A quart contains from 100 to 180 nuts, according to the size. The costermongers buy somewhat largely when nuts are 3_d._ the quart; they then, and not unfrequently, stock their barrows with nuts entirely, but 2_s._ 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 1_s._ 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 5_s._ worth of nuts in a day, but only exceptionally. These men have a sort of portable shooting-gallery. The customer 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 halfpenny “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 commerce before 1824. They are sold by the peck--2_s._ 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 10_s._ to 14_s._ 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 21_s._ to 25_s._ 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 6_d._ or she would be beat. She had no father, and could neither read nor write. 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 6_d._ She had a younger brother that did as she did. She had bread and potatoes to eat, and sometimes 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 ascertaining 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 chestnuts for sale.

Sometimes the chestnuts are roasted in the streets, in a huge iron apparatus, made expressly 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 3_d._ or 4_d._ 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 2_s._ 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 3_s._ a peck, and to get them at that’s a favour. I could make my good 12_s._ 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 business 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 5_s._ a week. My rent’s 1_s._ 3_d._ 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 wholesale 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, perhaps, 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 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 removed.

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 costermonger, 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 received 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 1_d._ a pound,--no, sir, not slang the time I mean--and I could hardly make 1_s._ 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 1_d._ and 2_d._ the pound. I didn’t do no good in any of ’em; 1_s._ 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 supplied 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 frequently 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 cabbages, 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 sometimes 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 gooseberries; thence he will go to cherries; from cherries he will change to red or white currants; from them to plums or green-gages, and from them again to apples and pears, and damsons. 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 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for the loan of 10_s._ Once I gave a man 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for ten months for the loan of 10_s._, and that nearly did me up. I have had 8_s._ of the same party since, and paid 1_s._ a week for eight weeks for the loan of it. I consider it most extortionate to have to pay 2_d._ a day for the loan of 8_s._, 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 weeks’ 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 3_s._ a day, every fine day, or 15_s._ or 16_s._ a week; but out of that there’s my donkey to keep, which I suppose costs 6_d._ 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 4_s._ the 500 in the morning, and 1_s._ 6_d._ 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 7_s._ in a nice lot of cabbages, I may sell them for 10_s._ 6_d._, or if it isn’t a lucky day with me for 8_s._, 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 1_d._ a bunch, and the other part at 1-1/2_d._ If I get them at 3_s._ 6_d._ 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 4_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._, 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 2_s._ 9_d._ and 3_s._ the cwt. I sell mine, tidy good, at 3 pound 2_d._, 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 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 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 confined their business principally to the sale of vegetables, the dullest of all the costermongers. Any man may labour to make 1_s._ 6_d._ of cabbages or turnips, which cost him 1_s._, when the calculation as to the relative proportion of measures, &c. is beyond his comprehension.

Pursuing the same mode of calculation as has been heretofore adopted, we find that the absolute 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 ‘haristocratic’ way. My rounds are always in the 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 mistresses. 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 gentlemen--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 satisfied he saves many a pound a year by buying of us ’stead of the greengrocers.