THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO DOUGLAS JERROLD, WHOM, KNOWING
MOST INTIMATELY, THE AUTHOR HAS LEARNT TO LOVE AND HONOUR
MOST PROFOUNDLY.

THE STREET-FOLK.

page

   The present volume is the first of an intended series, which it is hoped will form,
when complete, a cyclopædia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great
Metropolis.

   It is believed that the book is curious for many reasons:

   It surely may be considered curious as being the first attempt to publish the
history of a people, from the lips of the people themselves -- giving a literal
description of their labour, their earnings, their trials, and their sufferings, in their
own "unvarnished" language; and to pourtray the condition of their homes and
their families by personal observation of the places, and direct communion with
the individuals.

   It may be considered curious also as being the first commission of inquiry into
the state of the people, undertaken by a private individual, and the first "blue
book" ever published in twopenny numbers.

   It is curious, moreover, as supplying information concerning a large body of
persons, of whom the public had less knowledge than of the most distant tribes of
the earth -- the government population returns not even numbering them among
the inhabitants of the kingdom; and as adducing facts so extraordinary, that the
traveller in the undiscovered country of the poor must, like Bruce, until his stories
are corroborated by after investigators, be content to lie under the imputation of
telling such tales, as travellers are generally supposed to delight in.

   Be the faults of the present volume what they may, assuredly they are rather
short-comings than exaggerations, for in every instance the author and his
coadjutors have sought to understate, and most assuredly never to exceed the
truth. For the omissions, the author would merely remind the reader of the
entire novelty of the task -- there being no other similar work in the language by
which to guide or check his inquiries. When the following leaves are turned over,
and the two or three pages of information derived from books contrasted with the
hundreds of pages of facts obtained by positive observation and investigation,
surely some allowance will be made for the details which may still be left for
others to supply. Within the last two years some thousands of the humbler classes
of society must have been seen and visited with the especial view of noticing their
condition and learning their histories; and it is but right that the truthfulness of
the poor generally should be made known; for though checks have been usually
adopted, the people have been mostly found to be astonishingly correct in their
statements, -- so much so indeed, that the attempts at deception are certainly the
exceptions rather than the rule. Those persons who, from an ignorance of the
simplicity of the honest poor, might be inclined to think otherwise, have, in order

   The larger statistics, such as those of the quantities of fish and fruit, &c., sold
in London, have been collected from tradesmen connected with the several
markets, or from the wholesale merchants belonging to the trade specified -- gentle-
men to whose courtesy and co-operation I am indebted for much valuable informa-
tion, and whose names, were I at liberty to publish them, would be an indisputable
guarantee for the facts advanced. The other statistics have been obtained in the
same manner -- the best authorities having been invariably consulted on the subject
treated of.

   It is right that I should make special mention of the assistance I have received
in the compilation of the present volume from Mr. Henry Wood and Mr. Richard
Knight (late of the City Mission), gentlemen who have been engaged with me
from nearly the commencement of my inquiries, and to whose hearty co-operation
both myself and the public are indebted for a large increase of knowledge. Mr.
Wood, indeed, has contributed so large a proportion of the contents of the present
volume that he may fairly be considered as one of its authors.

   The subject of the Street-Folk will still require another volume, in order to com-
plete it in that comprehensive manner in which I am desirous of executing the
modern history of this and every other portion of the people. There still remain
-- the Street-Buyers, the Street-Finders, the Street-Performers, the Street-Artizans, and the Street-Labourers, to be done, among the several classes of street-people;
and the Street Jews, the Street Italians and Foreigners, and the Street Mechanics, to be treated of as varieties of the order. The present volume refers more parti-
cularly to the Street-Sellers, and includes special accounts of the Costermongers and
the Patterers (the two broadly-marked varieties of street tradesmen), the Street
Irish, the Female Street-Sellers, and the Children Street-Sellers of the metropolis.

   My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate
knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of
the poor -- that it may teach those who are beyond temptation to look with charity on
the frailties of their less fortunate brethren -- and cause those who are in "high
places," and those of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve the
condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice, amidst all the
immense wealth and great knowledge of "the first city in the world," is, to say the
very least, a national disgrace to us.

    LONDON LABOUR
AND THE LONDON POOR

   Of the thousand millions of human beings
that are said to constitute the population
of the entire globe, there are -- socially,
morally, and perhaps even physically consi-
sidered -- but two distinct and broadly marked
races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers -- the
vagabond and the citizen -- the nomadic and the
civilized tribes. Between these two extremes,
however, ethnologists recognize a mediate va-
riety, partaking of the attributes of both. There
is not only the race of hunters and manufac-
turers -- those who live by shooting and fishing,
and those who live by producing -- but, say they,
there are also the herdsmen, or those who live
by tending and feeding, what they consume.

   Each of these classes has its peculiar and dis-
tinctive physical as well as moral characteristics.
"There are in mankind," says Dr. Pritchard,
"three principal varieties in the form of the
head and other physical characters. Among the
rudest tribes of men -- the hunters and savage
inhabitants of forests, dependent for their supply
of food on the accidental produce of the soil and
the chase -- a form of head is prevalent which is
mostly distinguished by the term "prognathous,"
indicating a prolongation or extension forward of
the jaws. A second shape of the head belongs
principally to such races as wander with their
herds and flocks over vast plains; these nations
have broad lozenge-shaped faces (owing to the
great development of the cheek bones), and
pyramidal skulls. The most civilized races, on
the other hand -- those who live by the arts of
cultivated life, -- have a shape of the head which
differs from both of those above mentioned. The
characteristic form of the skull among these
nations may be termed oval or elliptical."

   These three forms of head, however, clearly
admit of being reduced to two broadly-marked
varieties, according as the bones of the face or

Column 2

those of the skull are more highly developed.
A greater relative development of the jaws and
cheek bones, says the author of the "Natural
History of Man," indicates a more ample ex-
tension of the organs subservient to sensation
and the animal faculties. Such a configuration
is adapted to the wandering tribes; whereas, the
greater relative development of the bones of the
skull -- indicating as it does a greater expansion
of the brain, and consequently of the intellectual
faculties -- is especially adapted to the civilized
races or settlers, who depend mainly on their
knowledge of the powers and properties of things
for the necessaries and comforts of life.

   Moreover it would appear, that not only are
all races divisible into wanderers and settlers,
but that each civilized or settled tribe has gene-
rally some wandering horde intermingled with,
and in a measure preying upon, it.

   According to Dr. Andrew Smith, who has
recently made extensive observations in South
Africa, almost every tribe of people who have
submitted themselves to social laws, recognizing
the rights of property and reciprocal social
duties, and thus acquiring wealth and forming
themselves into a respectable caste, are sur-
rounded by hordes of vagabonds and outcasts
from their own community. Such are the Bush-
men and Sonquas of the Hottentot race-the term
"sonqua" meaning literally pauper. But a
similar condition in society produces similar
results in regard to other races; and the Kafirs
have their Bushmen as well as the Hottentots --
these are called Fingoes -- a word signifying
wanderers, beggars, or outcasts. The Lappes
seem to have borne a somewhat similar relation
to the Finns; that is to say, they appear to have
been a wild and predatory tribe who sought the
desert like the Arabian Bedouins, while the
Finns cultivated the soil like the industrious
Fellahs.

   But a phenomenon still more deserving of

   Here, then, we have a series of facts of the
utmost social importance. (1) There are two
distinct races of men, viz.: -- the wandering
and the civilized tribes; (2) to each of these
tribes a different form of head is peculiar, the
wandering races being remarkable for the deve-
lopment of the bones of the face, as the
jaws, cheek-bones, &c., and the civilized for
the development of those of the head; (3) to each
civilized tribe there is generally a wandering
horde attached; (4) such wandering hordes
have frequently a different language from the
more civilized portion of the community, and
that adopted with the intent of concealing their
designs and exploits from them.

   It is curious that no one has as yet applied
the above facts to the explanation of certain
anomalies in the present state of society among
ourselves. That we, like the Kafirs, Fellahs,
and Finns, are surrounded by wandering hordes
-- the "Sonquas" and the "Fingoes" of this
country -- paupers, beggars, and outcasts, pos-
sessing nothing but what they acquire by depre-
dation from the industrious, provident, and civil-
ized portion of the community; -- that the heads
of these nomades are remarkable for the greater
development of the jaws and cheekbones rather
than those of the head; -- and that they have
a secret language of their own -- an English
"cuze-cat" or "slang" as it is called -- for the
concealment of their designs: these are points
of coincidence so striking that, when placed be-
fore the mind, make us marvel that the analogy
should have remained thus long unnoticed.

   The resemblance once discovered, however,
becomes of great service in enabling us to use
the moral characteristics of the nomade races
of other countries, as a means of comprehending
the more readily those of the vagabonds and
outcasts of our own. Let us therefore, before
entering upon the subject in hand, briefly run
over the distinctive, moral, and intellectual fea-
tures of the wandering tribes in general.

   The nomad then is distinguished from the
civilized man by his repugnance to regular
and continuous labour -- by his want of provi-
dence in laying up a store for the future -- by
his inability to perceive consequences ever so
slightly removed from immediate apprehension
-- by his passion for stupefying herbs and roots,
and, when possible, for intoxicating fermented
liquors -- by his extraordinary powers of enduring
privation -- by his comparative insensibility to
pain -- by an immoderate love of gaming, fre-
quently risking his own personal liberty upon a
single cast -- by his love of libidinous dances --

Column 2

by the pleasure he experiences in witnessing the
suffering of sentient creatures -- by his delight in
warfare and all perilous sports -- by his desire
for vengeance -- by the looseness of his notions
as to property -- by the absence of chastity
among his women, and his disregard of female
honour -- and lastly, by his vague sense of reli-
gion -- his rude idea of a Creator, and utter
absence of all appreciation of the mercy of the
Divine Spirit.

   Srange to say, despite its privations, its dan-
gers, and its hardships, those who have once
adopted the savage and wandering mode of life,
rarely abandon it. There are countless exam-
ples of white men adopting all the usages of
the Indian hunter, but there is scarcely one
example of the Indian hunter or trapper adopt-
ing the steady and regular habits of civilized
life; indeed, the various missionaries who have
visited nomade races have found their labours
utterly unavailing, so long as a wandering life
continued, and have succeeded in bestowing
the elements of civilization, only on those
compelled by circumstances to adopt a settled
habitation.

   The nomadic races of England are of many
distinct kinds -- from the habitual vagrant --
half-beggar, half-thief -- sleeping in barns, tents,
and casual wards -- to the mechanic on tramp,
obtaining his bed and supper from the trade
societies in the different towns, on his way to
seek work. Between these two extremes there
are several mediate varieties -- consisting of
pedlars, showmen, harvest-men, and all that
large class who live by either selling, showing,
or doing something through the country.
These are, so to speak, the rural nomads -- not
confining their wanderings to any one parti-
cular locality, but ranging often from one end
of the land to the other. Besides these, there
are the urban and suburban wanderers, or
those who follow some itinerant occupation in
and round about the large towns. Such are,
in the metropolis more particularly, the pick-
pockets -- the beggars -- the prostitutes -- the
street-sellers -- the street-performers -- the cab-
men -- the coachmen -- the watermen -- the sailors
and such like. In each of these classes --
according as they partake more or less of the
purely vagabond, doing nothing whatsoever for
their living, but moving from place to place
preying upon the earnings of the more indus-
trious portion of the community, so will the
attributes of the nomade tribes be found to be
more or less marked in them. Whether it be
that in the mere act of wandering, there is a
greater determination of blood to the surface of
the body, and consequently a less quantity
sent to the brain, the muscles being thus
nourished at the expense of the mind, I leave
physiologists to say. But certainly be the phy-
sical cause what it may, we must all allow that
in each of the classes above-mentioned, there is

   Those who obtain their living in the streets of
the metropolis are a very large and varied class;
indeed, the means resorted to in order "to
pick up a crust," as the people call it, in the
public thoroughfares (and such in many instances
it literally is,) are so multifarious that the mind
is long baffled in its attempts to reduce them to
scientific order or classification.

   It would appear, however, that the street-
people may be all arranged under six distinct
genera or kinds.

   These are severally:

   The first of these divisions -- the Street-
Sellers -- includes many varieties; viz. --

   These, so far as my experience goes, exhaust
the whole class of street-sellers, and they appear
to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire
number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in
the streets of London.

   The next class are the Street-Buyers, under
which denomination come the purchasers of hare-
skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass,
broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.

   After these we have the Street-Finders, or
those who, as I said before, literally "pick up"
their living in the public thoroughfares. They are
the "pure" pickers, or those who live by gather-
ing dogs'-dung; the cigar-end finders, or " hard-
ups," as they are called, who collect the refuse
pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and
having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the
very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the
mud-larks, the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-
hunters.

   Under the fourth division, or that of the
Street-Performers, Artists, and Show-
men, are likewise many distinct callings.

   Then comes the Fifth Division of the Street-
Folk, viz., the Street-Artizans, or Working
Pedlars;

   These may be severally arranged into three
distinct groups -- (1) Those who make things in
the streets; (2) Those who mend things in the
streets; and (3) Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets.

   Of the last division, or Street-Labourers, there are four classes:

   The number of costermongers, -- that it is to
say, of those street-sellers attending the London
"green" and "fish markets," -- appears to be,
from the best data at my command, now 30,000
men, women, and children. The census of 1841
gives only 2,045 "hawkers, hucksters, and ped-
lars," in the metropolis, and no costermongers
or street-sellers, or street-performers at all. This
number is absurdly small, and its absurdity is
accounted for by the fact that not one in twenty
of the costermongers, or of the people with whom
they lodged, troubled themselves to fill up the
census returns -- the majority of them being un-
able to read and write, and others distrustful of
the purpose for which the returns were wanted.

   The costermongering class extends itself
yearly; and it is computed that for the last five
years it has increased considerably faster than
the general metropolitan population. This in-
crease is derived partly from all the children of
costermongers following the father's trade, but
chiefly from working men, such as the servants
of greengrocers or of innkeepers, when out of

   The great discrepancy between the govern-
ment returns and the accounts of the coster-
mongers themselves, concerning the number of
people obtaining a living by the sale of fish,
fruit, and vegetables, in the streets of London,
caused me to institute an inquiry at the several
metropolitan markets concerning the number of
street-sellers attending them: the following is
the result:

   During the summer months and fruit season,
the average number of costermongers attending
Covent-garden market is about 2,500 per market-
day. In the strawberry season there are nearly
double as many, there being, at that time, a large
number of Jews who come to buy; during that
period, on a Saturday morning, from the com-
mencement to the close of the market, as many
as 4,000 costers have been reckoned purchas-
ing at Covent-garden. Through the winter
season, however, the number of costermongers
does not exceed upon the average 1,000 per
market morning. About one-tenth of the fruit
and vegetables of the least expensive kind sold
at this market is purchased by the costers.
Some of the better class of costers, who have
their regular customers, are very particular as
to the quality of the articles they buy; but
others are not so particular; so long as they
can get things cheap, I am informed, they do
not care much about the quality. The Irish
more especially look out for damaged articles,
which they buy at a low price. One of my
informants told me that the costers were the
best customers to the growers, inasmuch as
when the market is flagging on account of the
weather, they (the costers) wait and make their
purchases. On other occasions, such as fine
mornings, the costers purchase as early as others.
There is no trust given to them -- to use the
words of one of my informants, they are such
slippery customers; here to-day and gone
to-morrow.

   At Leadenhall market, during the winter
months, there are from 70 to 100 costermongers
general attendants; but during the summer not
much more than one-half that number make
their appearance. Their purchases consist of
warren-rabbits, poultry, and game, of which
about one-eighth of the whole amount brought
to this market is bought by them. When the
market is slack, and during the summer, when
there is "no great call" for game, etc., the
costers attending Leadenhall-market turn their
hand to crockery, fruit, and fish.

   The costermongers frequenting Spitalfields-
market average all the year through from 700
to 1,000 each market-day. They come from all
parts, as far as Edmonton, Edgeware, and Tot-
tenham; Highgate, Hampstead, and even from
Greenwich and Lewisham. Full one-third of

Column 2

the produce of this market is purchased by
them.

   The number of costermongers attending the
Borough-market is about 250 during the fruit
season, after which time they decrease to about
200 per market morning. About one-sixth of
the produce that comes into this market is
purchased by the costermongers. One gentle-
man informed me, that the salesmen might shut
up their shops were it not for these men. "In
fact," said another, "I don't know what would
become of the fruit without them."

   The costers at Billingsgate-market, daily,
number from 3,000 to 4,000 in winter, and about
2,500 in summer. A leading salesman told me
that he would rather have an order from a coster-
monger than a fishmonger; for the one paid ready
money, while the other required credit. The
same gentleman assured me, that the coster-
mongers bought excellent fish, and that very
largely. They themselves aver that they pur-
chase half the fish brought to Billingsgate --
some fish trades being entirely in their hands.
I ascertained, however, from the authorities at
Billingsgate, and from experienced salesmen,
that of the quantity of fish conveyed to that
great mart, the costermongers bought one-
third; another third was sent into the country;
and another disposed of to the fishmongers, and
to such hotel-keepers, or other large pur-
chasers, as resorted to Billingsgate.

   The salesmen at the several markets all
agreed in stating that no trust was given to the
costermongers. "Trust them!" exclaimed one,
"O, certainly, as far as I can see them."

   Now, adding the above figures together, we have
the subjoined sum for the gross number of

COSTERMONGERS ATTENDING THE LONDON MARKETS.

Billingsgate-market	3,500
Covent-garden	4,000
Spitalfields	1,000
Borough	250
Leadenhall	100
	9,350

   Besides these, I am credibly informed, that it
may be assumed there are full 1,000 men who
are unable to attend market, owing to the dissi-
pation of the previous night; another 1,000 are
absent owing to their having "stock on hand,"
and so requiring no fresh purchases; and fur-
ther, it may be estimated that there are at least
2,000 boys in London at work for costers, at
half profits, and who consequently have no occa-
sion to visit the markets. Hence, putting these
numbers together, we arrive at the conclusion
that there are in London upwards of 13,000
street-sellers, dealing in fish, fruit, vegetables,
game, and poultry alone. To be on the safe
side, however, let us assume the number of Lon-
don costermongers to be 12,000, and that one-
half of these are married and have two children
(which from all accounts appears to be about the
proportion); and then we have 30,000 for the

   Large as this number may seem, still I am
satisfied it is rather within than beyond the
truth. In order to convince myself of its accu-
racy, I caused it to be checked in several ways.
In the first place, a survey was made as to the
number of stalls in the streets of London -- forty-
six miles of the principal thoroughfares were
travelled over, and an account taken of the
"standings." Thus it was found that there were
upon an average upwards of fourteen stalls to
the mile, of which five-sixths were fish and fruit-
stalls. Now, according to the Metropolitan
Police Returns, there are 2,000 miles of street
throughout London, and calculating that the
stalls through the whole of the metropolis run
upon an average only four to the mile, we shall
thus find that there are 8,000 stalls altogether
in London; of these we may reckon that at least
6,000 are fish and fruit-stalls. I am informed,
on the best authority, that twice as many costers
"go rounds" as have standings; hence we come
to the conclusion that there are 18,000 itinerant
and stationary street-sellers of fish, vegetables,
and fruit, in the metropolis; and reckoning the
same proportion of wives and children as before,
we have thus 45,000 men, women, and children,
obtaining a living in this manner. Further,
"to make assurance doubly sure," the street-
markets throughout London were severally
visited, and the number of street-sellers at each
taken down on the spot. These gave a grand
total of 3,801, of which number two-thirds were
dealers in fish, fruit, and vegetables; and reckon-
ing that twice as many costers again were on
their rounds, we thus make the total number of
London costermongers to be 11,403, or calcu-
lating men, women, and children, 34,209. It
would appear, therefore, that if we estimate the
gross number of individuals subsisting on the
sale of fish, fruit, and vegetables, in the streets
of London, at between thirty and forty thousand,
we shall not be very wide of the truth.

   But, great as is this number, still the coster-
mongers are only a portion of the street-folk.
Besides these, there are, as we have seen, many
other large classes obtaining their livelihood in
the streets. The street musicians, for instance,
are said to number 1,000, and the old clothes-
men the same. There are supposed to be at
the least 500 sellers of water-cresses; 200 cof-
fee-stalls; 300 cats-meat men; 250 ballad-
singers; 200 play-bill sellers; from 800 to
1,000 bone-grubbers and mud-larks; 1,000
crossing-sweepers; another thousand chimney-
sweeps, and the same number of turncocks
and lamp-lighters; all of whom, together with
the street-performers and showmen, tinkers,
chair, umbrella, and clock-menders, sellers
of bonnet-boxes, toys, stationery, songs, last
dying-speeches, tubs, pails, mats, crockery,
blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, clothes-pegs,
brooms, sweetmeats, razors, dog-collars, dogs,
birds, coals, sand, -- scavengers, dustmen, and
others, make up, it may be fairly assumed,

Column 2

full thirty thousand adults, so that, reckoning
men, women, and children, we may truly say
that there are upwards of fifty thousand indi-
viduals, or about a fortieth-part of the entire
population of the metropolis getting their living
in the streets.

   Now of all modes of obtaining subsistence,
that of street-selling is the most precarious.
Continued wet weather deprives those who
depend for their bread upon the number of
people frequenting the public thoroughfares of
all means of living; and it is painful to think
of the hundreds belonging to this class in the
the metropolis who are reduced to starvation by
three or four days successive rain. Moreover,
in the winter, the street-sellers of fruit and
vegetables are cut off from the ordinary means
of gaining their livelihood, and, consequently,
they have to suffer the greatest privations at a
time when the severity of the season demands
the greatest amount of physical comforts. To
expect that the increased earnings of the sum-
mer should be put aside as a provision against
the deficiencies of the winter, is to expect that
a precarious occupation should beget provident
habits, which is against the nature of things,
for it is always in those callings which are the
most uncertain, that the greatest amount of im-
providence and intemperance are found to exist.
It is not the well-fed man, be it observed, but
the starving one that is in danger of surfeiting
himself.

   Moreover, when the religious, moral, and
intellectual degradation of the great majority of
these fifty thousand people is impressed upon
us, it becomes positively appalling to con-
template the vast amount of vice, ignorance
and want, existing in these days in the very
heart of our land. The public have but to
read the following plain unvarnished account of
the habits, amusements, dealings, education,
politics, and religion of the London coster-
mongers in the nineteenth century, and then
to say whether they think it safe -- even if it be
thought fit -- to allow men, women, and chil-
dren to continue in such a state.

   Among the street-folk there are many dis-
tinct characters of people -- people differing as
widely from each in tastes, habits, thoughts
and creed, as one nation from another. Of
these the costermongers form by far the largest
and certainly the mostly broadly marked class.
They appear to be a distinct race -- perhaps,
originally, of Irish extraction -- seldom asso-
ciating with any other of the street-folks, and
being all known to each other. The " pat-
terers," or the men who cry the last dying-
speeches, &c. in the street, and those who help
off their wares by long harrangues in the public
thoroughfares, are again a separate class. These,
to use their own term, are "the aristocracy of
the street-sellers," despising the costers for

   Such are the several varieties of street-folk,
intellectually considered -- looked at in a national
point of view, they likewise include many dis-
tinct people. Among them are to be found the
Irish fruit-sellers; the Jew clothesmen; the
Italian organ boys, French singing women,
the German brass bands, the Dutch buy-a-
broom girls, the Highland bagpipe players,
and the Indian crossing-sweepers -- all of whom
I here shall treat of in due order.

   The costermongering class or order has also
its many varieties. These appear to be in the
following proportions: -- One-half of the entire
class are costermongers proper, that is to say,
the calling with them is hereditary, and perhaps
has been so for many generations; while the
other half is composed of three-eighths Irish,
and one-eighth mechanics, tradesmen, and Jews.

   Under the term "costermonger" is here in-
cluded only such "street-sellers" as deal in fish,
fruit, and vegetables, purchasing their goods at
the wholesale "green" and fish markets. Of these
some carry on their business at the same sta-
tionary stall or standing" in the street, while
others go on "rounds." The itinerant coster-
mongers, as contradistinguished from the sta-
tionary street-fishmongers and greengrocers, have
in many instances regular rounds, which they go
daily, and which extend from two to ten miles.
The longest are those which embrace a suburban

Column 2

part; the shortest are through streets thickly peo-
pled by the poor, where duly to "work" a single
street consumes, in some instances, an hour.
There are also "chance" rounds. Men " work-
ing" these carry their wares to any part in which
they hope to find customers. The costermongers,
moreover, diversify their labours by occasionally
going on a country round, travelling on these
excursions, in all directions, from thirty to ninety
and even a hundred miles from the metropolis.
Some, again, confine their callings chiefly to the
neighbouring races and fairs.

   Of all the characteristics attending these di-
versities of traders, I shall treat severally.
I may here premise, that the regular or
"thorough-bred costermongers," repudiate the
numerous persons who sell only nuts or oranges
in the streets, whether at a fixed stall, or any
given locality, or who hawk them through the
thoroughfares or parks. They repudiate also
a number of Jews, who confine their street-
trading to the sale of "coker-nuts" on Sundays,
vended from large barrows. Nor do they rank
with themselves the individuals who sell tea and
coffee in the streets, or such condiments as
peas-soup, sweetmeats, spice-cakes, and the
like; those articles not being purchased at the
markets. I often heard all such classes called
"the illegitimates."

   "From the numbers of mechanics," said one
smart costermonger to me, "that I know of
in my own district, I should say there's now
more than 1,000 costers in London that were
once mechanics or labourers. They are driven
to it as a last resource, when they can't get
work at their trade. They don't do well, at least
four out of five, or three out of four don't.
They're not up to the dodges of the business.
They go to market with fear, and don't know
how to venture a bargain if one offers. They're
inferior salesmen too, and if they have fish
left that won't keep, it's a dead loss to them,
for they aren't up to the trick of selling it
cheap at a distance where the coster ain't known;
or of quitting it to another, for candle-light sale,
cheap, to the Irish or to the `lushingtons,' that
haven't a proper taste for fish. Some of these
poor fellows lose every penny. They're mostly
middle-aged when they begin costering. They'll
generally commence with oranges or herrings.
We pity them. We say, `Poor fellows! they'll
find it out by-and-bye.' It's awful to see some
poor women, too, trying to pick up a living in
the streets by selling nuts or oranges. It's
awful to see them, for they can't set about it
right; besides that, there's too many before they
start. They don't find a living, it's only another
way of starving."

   The earliest record of London cries is,
according to Mr. Charles Knight, in Lydgate's
poem of "London Lyckpeny," which is as
old as the days of Henry V., or about 430

   It is not my intention, as my inquiries are
directed to the present condition of the coster-
mongers, to dwell on this part of the question,
but some historical notice of so numerous a body
is indispensable. I shall confine myself there-
fore to show from the elder dramatists, how
the costermongers flourished in the days of
Elizabeth and James I.

   "Virtue," says Shakespeare, "is of so little
regard in these coster-monger times, that true
valour is turned bear-herd." Costermonger
times are as old as any trading times of
which our history tells; indeed, the stationary
costermonger of our own day is a legitimate
descendant of the tradesmen of the olden time,
who stood by their shops with their open case-
ments, loudly inviting buyers by praises of their
wares, and by direct questions of "What d'ye
buy? What d'ye lack?"

   Ben Jonson makes his Morose, who hated all
noises, and sought for a silent wife, enter "upon
divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-
women," to moderate their clamour; but Morose, above all other noisy people, "cannot endure a
costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one."

   In Ford's "Sun's Darling" I find the fol-
lowing: "Upon my life he means to turn
costermonger, and is projecting how to forestall
the market. I shall cry pippins rarely."

   In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady"
is the following:

"Pray, sister, do not laugh; you'll anger him,
And then he'll rail like a rude costermonger."

   Dr. Johnson, gives the derivation of costard-
monger (the orthography he uses), as derived
from the sale of apples or costards, "round
and bulky like the head;" and he cites Burton
as an authority: "Many country vicars," writes
Burton, "are driven to shifts, and if our great
patrons hold us to such conditions, they will
make us costard-mongers, graziers, or sell ale."

   "The costard-monger," says Mr. Charles
Knight, in his "London," "was originally an
apple-seller, whence his name, and, from the
mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears
to have been frequently an Irishman."

   In Ireland the word "costermonger" is almost
unknown.

   A brief account of the cries once prevalent
among the street-sellers will show somewhat
significantly the change in the diet or regale-
ments of those who purchase their food in the
street. Some of the articles are not vended in
the public thoroughfares now, while others are
still sold, but in different forms.

   "Hot sheep's feet," for instance, were cried
in the streets in the time of Henry V.; they are

Column 2

now sold cold, at the doors of the lower-priced
theatres, and at the larger public-houses. Among
the street cries, the following were common
prior to the wars of the Roses: "Ribs of
beef," -- "Hot peascod," -- and "Pepper and
saffron." These certainly indicate a different
street diet from that of the present time.

   The following are more modern, running from
Elizabeth's days down to our own. "Pippins,"
and, in the times of Charles II., and subse-
quently, oranges were sometimes cried as
"Orange pips," -- "Fair lemons and oranges;
oranges and citrons," -- "New Wall-fleet oys-
ters," ["fresh" fish was formerly cried as
"new,"] -- "New-river water," [I may here
mention that water-carriers still ply their trade
in parts of Hampstead,] -- "Rosemary and
lavender," -- "Small coals," [a cry rendered
almost poetical by the character, career, and
pitiful end, through a practical joke, of Tom
Britton, the "small-coal man,"] -- "Pretty
pins, pretty women," -- "Lilly-white vinegar,"
-- "Hot wardens" (pears) -- "Hot codlings," --
and lastly the greasy-looking beverage which
Charles Lamb's experience of London at early
morning satisfied him was of all preparations
the most grateful to the stomach of the then
existing climbing-boys -- viz., "Sa-loop." I
may state, for the information of my younger
readers, that saloop (spelt also "salep" and
"salop") was prepared, as a powder, from
the root of the Orchis mascula, or Red-handed
Orchis, a plant which grows luxuriantly in our
meadows and pastures, flowering in the spring,
though never cultivated to any extent in this
country; that required for the purposes of com-
merce was imported from India. The saloop-
stalls were superseded by the modern coffee-stalls.

   There were many other cries, now obsolete,
but what I have cited were the most common.

   Political economy teaches us that, between
the two great classes of producers and con-
sumers, stand the distributors -- or dealers --
saving time, trouble, and inconvenience to, the
one in disposing of, and to the other in purchas-
ing, their commodities.

   But the distributor was not always a part and
parcel of the economical arrangements of the
State. In olden times, the producer and con-
sumer were brought into immediate contact, at
markets and fairs, holden at certain intervals.
The inconvenience of this mode of operation,
however, was soon felt; and the pedlar, or
wandering distributor, sprang up as a means of
carrying the commodities to those who were
unable to attend the public markets at the
appointed time. Still the pedlar or wandering
distributor was not without his disadvantages.
He only came at certain periods, and commodi-
ties were occasionally required in the interim.
Hence the shopkeeper, or stationary distributor,
was called into existence, so that the consumer
might obtain any commodity of the producer at

   But the itinerant tradesman or street-seller is
still further distinguished from the regular fixed
dealer -- the stallkeeper from the shopkeeper --
the street-wareman from the warehouseman, by
the arts they respectively employ to attract
custom. The street-seller cries his goods aloud
at the head of his barrow; the enterprising
tradesman distributes bills at the door of his
shop. The one appeals to the ear, the other to
the eye. The cutting costermonger has a drum
and two boys to excite attention to his stock;
the spirited shopkeeper has a column of adver-
tisements in the morning newspapers. They are
but different means of attaining the same end.

   The street sellers are to be seen in the greatest
numbers at the London street markets on a
Saturday night. Here, and in the shops imme-
diately adjoining, the working-classes generally
purchase their Sunday's dinner; and after
pay-time on Saturday night, or early on
Sunday morning, the crowd in the New-cut,
and the Brill in particular, is almost impass-
able. Indeed, the scene in these parts has
more of the character of a fair than a market.
There are hundreds of stalls, and every
stall has its one or two lights; either it is

Column 2

illuminated by the intense white light of the
new self-generating gas-lamp, or else it is
brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-
fashioned grease lamp. One man shows off his
yellow haddock with a candle stuck in a bundle
of firewood; his neighbour makes a candlestick
of a huge turnip, and the tallow gutters over its
sides; whilst the boy shouting "Eight a penny,
stunning pears!" has rolled his dip in a thick
coat of brown paper, that flares away with the
candle. Some stalls are crimson with the fire
shining through the holes beneath the baked
chestnut stove; others have handsome octo-
hedral lamps, while a few have a candle shining
through a sieve: these, with the sparkling
ground-glass globes of the tea-dealers' shops,
and the butchers' gaslights streaming and flut-
tering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour forth
such a flood of light, that at a distance the at-
mosphere immediately above the spot is as lurid
as if the street were on fire.

   The pavement and the road are crowded with
purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife
in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on
her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look
at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch
of greens. Little boys, holding three or four
onions in their hand, creep between the people,
wriggling their way through every interstice, and
asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking
charity. Then the tumult of the thousand dif-
ferent cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at
the top of their voices, at one and the same
time, is almost bewildering. "So-old again,"
roars one. "Chestnuts all 'to, a penny a score,"
bawls another. "An 'aypenny a skin, blacking,"
squeaks a boy. "Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy --
bu-u-uy!" cries the butcher. "Half-quire of
paper for a penny," bellows the street stationer.
"An 'aypenny a lot ing-uns." "Twopence a
pound grapes." "Three a penny Yarmouth
bloaters." "Who'll buy a bonnet for four-
pence?" "Pick 'em out cheap here! three
pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces." "Now's your
time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot." "Here's
ha'p'orths," shouts the perambulating confec-
tioner. "Come and look at 'em! here's
toasters!" bellows one with a Yarmouth
bloater stuck on a toasting-fork. "Penny a lot,
fine russets," calls the apple woman: and so
the Babel goes on.

   One man stands with his red-edged mats
hanging over his back and chest, like a herald's
coat; and the girl with her basket of walnuts
lifts her brown-stained fingers to her mouth, as
she screams, "Fine warnuts! sixteen a penny,
fine war-r-nuts." A bootmaker, to "ensure
custom," has illuminated his shop-front with
a line of gas, and in its full glare stands a blind
beggar, his eyes turned up so as to show
only "the whites," and mumbling some
begging rhymes, that are drowned in the shrill
notes of the bamboo-flute-player next to him.
The boy's sharp cry, the woman's cracked
voice, the gruff, hoarse shout of the man,
are all mingled together. Sometimes an Irish-

   Then the sights, as you elbow your way
through the crowd, are equally multifarious.
Here is a stall glittering with new tin sauce-
pans; there another, bright with its blue and
yellow crockery, and sparkling with white
glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes
arranged along the pavement; now to a stand
of gaudy tea-trays; then to a shop with red
handkerchiefs and blue checked shirts, flutter-
ing backwards and forwards, and a counter
built up outside on the kerb, behind which
are boys beseeching custom. At the door of
a tea-shop, with its hundred white globes of
light, stands a man delivering bills, thanking
the public for past favours, and "defying com-
petition." Here, alongside the road, are some
half-dozen headless tailors' dummies, dressed in
Chesterfields and fustian jackets, each labelled,
"Look at the prices," or "Observe the quality."
After this is a butcher's shop, crimson and white
with meat piled up to the first-floor, in front
of which the butcher himself, in his blue coat,
walks up and down, sharpening his knife on the
steel that hangs to his waist. A little further
on stands the clean family, begging; the father
with his head down as if in shame, and a box
of lucifers held forth in his hand -- the boys in
newly-washed pinafores, and the tidily got-up
mother with a child at her breast. This stall is
green and white with bunches of turnips -- that
red with apples, the next yellow with onions,
and another purple with pickling cabbages.
One minute you pass a man with an umbrella
turned inside up and full of prints; the
next, you hear one with a peepshow of Ma-
zeppa, and Paul Jones the pirate, describing
the pictures to the boys looking in at the
little round windows. Then is heard the
sharp snap of the percussion-cap from the crowd
of lads firing at the target for nuts; and the
moment afterwards, you see either a black man
half-clad in white, and shivering in the cold
with tracts in his hand, or else you hear the
sounds of music from "Frazier's Circus," on
the other side of the road, and the man outside
the door of the penny concert, beseeching you to
"Be in time -- be in time!" as Mr. Somebody
is just about to sing his favourite song of the
"Knife Grinder." Such, indeed, is the riot,
the struggle, and the scramble for a living,
that the confusion and uproar of the New-
cut on Saturday night have a bewildering and
saddening effect upon the thoughtful mind.

   Each salesman tries his utmost to sell his
wares, tempting the passers-by with his bar-
gains. The boy with his stock of herbs offers
"a double 'andful of fine parsley for a penny;"
the man with the donkey-cart filled with turnips
has three lads to shout for him to their utmost,
with their "Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you
think of this here? A penny a bunch -- hurrah
for free trade! Here's your turnips!" Until

Column 2

it is seen and heard, we have no sense of the
scramble that is going on throughout London
for a living. The same scene takes place at the
Brill -- the same in Leather-lane -- the same in
Tottenham-court-road -- the same in Whitecross-
street; go to whatever corner of the metropolis
you please, either on a Saturday night or a
Sunday morning, and there is the same shouting
and the same struggling to get the penny profit
out of the poor man's Sunday's dinner.

   Since the above description was written, the
New Cut has lost much of its noisy and brilliant
glory. In consequence of a New Police regula-
tion, "stands" or "pitches" have been forbid-
den, and each coster, on a market night, is now
obliged, under pain of the lock-up house, to
carry his tray, or keep moving with his barrow.
The gay stalls have been replaced by deal boards,
some sodden with wet fish, others stained purple
with blackberries, or brown with walnut-peel;
and the bright lamps are almost totally super-
seded by the dim, guttering candle. Even if
the pole under the tray or "shallow" is seen
resting on the ground, the policeman on duty is
obliged to interfere.

   The mob of purchasers has diminished one-
half; and instead of the road being filled with
customers and trucks, the pavement and kerb-
stones are scarcely crowded.

   Nearly every poor man's market does its Sun-
day trade. For a few hours on the Sabbath
morning, the noise, bustle, and scramble of the
Saturday night are repeated, and but for this
opportunity many a poor family would pass a
dinnerless Sunday. The system of paying the
mechanic late on the Saturday night -- and more
particularly of paying a man his wages in a
public-house -- when he is tired with his day's
work lures him to the tavern, and there the
hours fly quickly enough beside the warm tap-
room fire, so that by the time the wife comes
for her husband's wages, she finds a large
portion of them gone in drink, and the streets
half cleared, so that the Sunday market is the
only chance of getting the Sunday's dinner.

   Of all these Sunday-morning markets, the
Brill, perhaps, furnishes the busiest scene; so
that it may be taken as a type of the whole.

   The streets in the neighbourhood are quiet
and empty. The shops are closed with their
different-coloured shutters, and the people round
about are dressed in the shiney cloth of the
holiday suit. There are no "cabs," and but few
omnibuses to disturb the rest, and men walk in
the road as safely as on the footpath.

   As you enter the Brill the market sounds are
scarcely heard. But at each step the low hum
grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until
at last the different cries become distinct, and
the hubbub, din, and confusion of a thousand
voices bellowing at once again fill the air.
The road and footpath are crowded, as on the
over-night; the men are standing in groups,
smoking and talking; whilst the women run

   The following is a list of the street-markets,
and the number of costers usually attending: --

MARKETS ON THE SURREY SIDE.

New-cut, Lambeth	300
Lambeth-walk	104
Walworth-road	22
Camberwell	15
Newington	45
Kent-street, Borough	38
Bermondsey	107
Union-street, Borough	29
Great Suffolk-street	46
Blackfriars-road	58
	664

MARKETS ON THE MIDDLESEX SIDE.

Brill and Chapel-st., Somers' Town	300
Camden Town	50
Hampstead-rd. and Tottenham-ct.-rd.	333
St. George's Market, Oxford-street	177
Marylebone	37
Edgeware-road	78
Crawford-street	145
Knightsbridge	46
Pimlico	32
Tothill-st. & Broad- way, Westminster	119
Drury-lane	22
Clare-street	139
Exmouth-street and Aylesbury-street, Clerken well	142
Leather-lane	150
St. John's-street	47
Old-street (St. Luke's) 46	Whitecross-street, Cripplegate #150
Islington	79
City-road	49
Shoreditch	100
Bethnal-green	100
Whitechapel	258
Mile End	105
Commercial-rd. (East)	114
Limehouse	88
Ratcliffe Highway	122
Rosemary-lane	119
	3137

   We find, from the foregoing list of markets,
held in the various thoroughfares of the metro-
polis, that there are 10 on the Surrey side and
27 on the Middlesex side of the Thames. The
total number of hucksters attending these

Column 2

markets is 3801, giving an average of 102 to
each market.

   I find it impossible to separate these two head-
ings; for the habits of the costermonger are not
domestic. His busy life is past in the markets
or the streets, and as his leisure is devoted to
the beer-shop, the dancing-room, or the theatre,
we must look for his habits to his demeanour at
those places. Home has few attractions to a
man whose life is a street-life. Even those who
are influenced by family ties and affections,
prefer to "home" -- indeed that word is rarely
mentioned among them -- the conversation,
warmth, and merriment of the beer-shop, where
they can take their ease among their "mates."
Excitement or amusement are indispensable to
uneducated men. Of beer-shops resorted to
by costermongers, and principally supported by
them, it is computed that there are 400 in
London.

   Those who meet first in the beer-shop talk
over the state of trade and of the markets, while
the later comers enter at once into what may
be styled the serious business of the evening --
amusement.

   Business topics are discussed in a most
peculiar style. One man takes the pipe from
his mouth and says, "Bill made a doogheno
hit this morning." "Jem," says another, to
a man just entering, "you'll stand a top o'
reeb?" "On," answers Jem, "I've had a
trosseno tol, and have been doing dab." For
an explanation of what may be obscure in
this dialogue, I must refer my readers to my
remarks concerning the language of the class.
If any strangers are present, the conversation
is still further clothed in slang, so as to be
unintelligible even to the partially initiated.
The evident puzzlement of any listener is
of course gratifying to the costermonger's
vanity, for he feels that he possesses a know-
ledge peculiarly his own.

   Among the in-door amusements of the coster-
monger is card-playing, at which many of them
are adepts. The usual games are all-fours, all-
fives, cribbage, and put. Whist is known to a
few, but is never played, being considered dull
and slow. Of short whist they have not heard;
"but," said one, whom I questioned on the
subject, "if it's come into fashion, it'll soon be
among us." The play is usually for beer, but
the game is rendered exciting by bets both
among the players and the lookers-on. "I'll back
Jem for a yanepatine," says one. "Jack for a
gen," cries another. A penny is the lowest sum
laid, and five shillings generally the highest, but
a shilling is not often exceeded. "We play fair
among ourselves," said a costermonger to me --
"aye, fairer than the aristocrats -- but we'll take
in anybody else." Where it is known that the
landlord will not supply cards, "a sporting
coster" carries a pack or two with him. The
cards played with have rarely been stamped;

   It has been said that there is a close resem-
blance between many of the characteristics of
a very high class, socially, and a very low class.
Those who remember the disclosures on a trial
a few years back, as to how men of rank and
wealth passed their leisure in card-playing --
many of their lives being one continued leisure
-- can judge how far the analogy holds when the
card-passion of the costermongers is described.

   "Shove-halfpenny" is another game played
by them; so is "Three up." Three halfpennies
are thrown up, and when they fall all "heads"
or all "tails," it is a mark; and the man who
gets the greatest number of marks out of a
given amount -- three, or five, or more -- wins.
"Three-up" is played fairly among the coster-
mongers; out is most frequently resorted to
when strangers are present to "make a pitch,"
-- which is, in plain words, to cheat any stranger
who is rash enough to bet upon them. "This is
the way, sir," said an adept to me; "bless you, I
can make them fall as I please. If I'm playing
with Jo, and a stranger bets with Jo, why, of
course, I make Jo win." This adept illustrated
his skill to me by throwing up three halfpennies,
and, five times out of six, they fell upon the floor,
whether he threw them nearly to the ceiling or
merely to his shoulder, all heads or all tails.
The halfpence were the proper current coins --
indeed, they were my own; and the result is
gained by a peculiar position of the coins on the
fingers, and a peculiar jerk in the throwing.
There was an amusing manifestation of the
pride of art in the way in which my obliging
informant displayed his skill.

   "Skittles" is another favourite amusement,
and the costermongers class themselves among
the best players in London. The game is always
for beer, but betting goes on.

   A fondness for "sparring" and "boxing"
lingers among the rude members of some classes
of the working men, such as the tanners. With
the great majority of the costermongers this
fondness is still as dominant as it was among the
"higher classes," when boxers were the pets of
princes and nobles. The sparring among the

Column 2

costers is not for money, but for beer and "a
lark" -- a convenient word covering much mis-
chief. Two out of every ten landlords, whose
houses are patronised by these lovers of "the
art of self-defence," supply gloves. Some charge
2d. a night for their use; others only 1d. The
sparring seldom continues long, sometimes not
above a quarter of an hour; for the costermongers,
though excited for a while, weary of sports in
which they cannot personally participate, and in
the beer-shops only two spar at a time, though
fifty or sixty may be present. The shortness of
the duration of this pastime may be one reason
why it seldom leads to quarrelling. The stake
is usually a "top of reeb," and the winner is the
man who gives the first "noser;" a bloody nose
however is required to show that the blow was
veritably a noser. The costermongers boast of
their skill in pugilism as well as at skittles.
"We are all handy with our fists," said one man,
"and are matches, aye, and more than matches,
for anybody but reg'lar boxers. We've stuck to
the ring, too, and gone reg'lar to the fights, more
than any other men."

   "Twopenny-hops" are much resorted to by
the costermongers, men and women, boys and
girls. At these dances decorum is sometimes,
but not often, violated. "The women," I was
told by one man, "doesn't show their necks as
I've seen the ladies do in them there pictures of
high life in the shop-winders, or on the stage.
Their Sunday gowns, which is their dancing
gowns, ain't made that way." At these "hops"
the clog-hornpipe is often danced, and some-
times a collection is made to ensure the per-
formance of a first-rate professor of that dance;
sometimes, and more frequently, it is volunteered
gratuitously. The other dances are jigs, "flash
jigs" -- hornpipes in fetters -- a dance rendered
popular by the success of the acted "Jack Shep-
pard" -- polkas, and country-dances, the last-
mentioned being generally demanded by the
women. Waltzes are as yet unknown to them.
Sometimes they do the "pipe-dance." For this
a number of tobacco-pipes, about a dozen, are
laid close together on the floor, and the dancer
places the toe of his boot between the different
pipes, keeping time with the music. Two of the
pipes are arranged as a cross, and the toe has to
be inserted between each of the angles, without
breaking them. The numbers present at these
"hops" vary from 30 to 100 of both sexes, their
ages being from 14 to 45, and the female sex
being slightly predominant as to the proportion
of those in attendance. At these "hops" there
is nothing of the leisurely style of dancing -- half
a glide and half a skip -- but vigorous, laborious
capering. The hours are from half-past eight to
twelve, sometimes to one or two in the morning,
and never later than two, as the costermongers
are early risers. There is sometimes a good deal
of drinking; some of the young girls being often
pressed to drink, and frequently yielding to the
temptation. From 1l. to 7l. is spent in drink at
a hop; the youngest men or lads present spend
the most, especially in that act of costermonger

   The other amusements of this class of the
community are the theatre and the penny con-
cert, and their visits are almost entirely confined
to the galleries of the theatres on the Surrey-side
-- the Surrey, the Victoria, the Bower Saloon,
and (but less frequently) Astley's. Three times
a week is an average attendance at theatres and
dances by the more prosperous costermongers.
The most intelligent man I met with among
them gave me the following account. He classes
himself with the many, but his tastes are really
those of an educated man: -- "Love and murder
suits us best, sir; but within these few years I
think there's a great deal more liking for deep
tragedies among us. They set men a thinking;
but then we all consider them too long. Of Ham-
let we can make neither end nor side; and nine
out of ten of us -- ay, far more than that -- would
like it to be confined to the ghost scenes, and the
funeral, and the killing off at the last. Macbeth would be better liked, if it was only the witches
and the fighting. The high words in a tragedy
we call jaw-breakers, and say we can't tumble
to that barrikin. We always stay to the last,
because we've paid for it all, or very few costers
would see a tragedy out if any money was re-
turned to those leaving after two or three acts.
We are fond of music. Nigger music was very
much liked among us, but it's stale now. Flash
songs are liked, and sailors' songs, and patriotic
songs. Most costers -- indeed, I can't call to
mind an exception -- listen very quietly to songs
that they don't in the least understand. We
have among us translations of the patriotic French
songs. `Mourir pour la patrie' is very popular,
and so is the `Marseillaise.' A song to take hold
of us must have a good chorus." "They like
something, sir, that is worth hearing," said one of
my informants, "such as the `Soldier's Dream,'
`The Dream of Napoleon,' or `I 'ad a dream --
an 'appy dream.' "

   The songs in ridicule of Marshal Haynau, and
in laudation of Barclay and Perkin's draymen,
were and are very popular among the costers;
but none are more popular than Paul Jones --
"A noble commander, Paul Jones was his name."
Among them the chorus of "Britons never shall
be slaves," is often rendered "Britons always
shall be slaves." The most popular of all songs
with the class, however, is "Duck-legged Dick,"
of which I give the first verse.

   Their sports, are enjoyed the more, if they
are dangerous and require both courage and
dexterity to succeed in them. They prefer, if
crossing a bridge, to climb over the parapet, and
walk along on the stone coping. When a house
is building, rows of coster lads will climb up
the long ladders, leaning against the unslated
roof, and then slide down again, each one rest-
ing on the other's shoulders. A peep show
with a battle scene is sure of its coster audience,
and a favourite pastime is fighting with cheap
theatrical swords. They are, however, true to
each other, and should a coster, who is the hero
of his court, fall ill and go to a hospital, the
whole of the inhabitants of his quarter will visit
him on the Sunday, and take him presents of
various articles so that "he may live well."

   Among the men, rat-killing is a favourite
sport. They will enter an old stable, fasten the
door and then turn out the rats. Or they will
find out some unfrequented yard, and at night
time build up a pit with apple-case boards, and
lighting up their lamps, enjoy the sport.
Nearly every coster is fond of dogs. Some
fancy them greatly, and are proud of making
them fight. If when out working, they see
a handsome stray, whether he is a "toy" or
"sporting" dog, they whip him up -- many of
the class not being very particular whether the
animals are stray or not.

   Their dog fights are both cruel and frequent.
It is not uncommon to see a lad walking with
the trembling legs of a dog shivering under a
bloody handkerchief, that covers the bitten and
wounded body of an animal that has been figur-
ing at some "match." These fights take place
on the sly -- the tap-room or back-yard of a beer-
shop, being generally chosen for the purpose.
A few men are let into the secret, and they attend
to bet upon the winner, the police being care-
fully kept from the spot.

   Pigeons are "fancied" to a large extent,
and are kept in lath cages on the roofs of the
houses. The lads look upon a visit to the Red-
house, Battersea, where the pigeon-shooting
takes place, as a great treat. They stand with-
out the hoarding that encloses the ground, and
watch for the wounded pigeons to fall, when a
violent scramble takes place among them, each
bird being valued at 3d. or 4d. So popular has
this sport become, that some boys take dogs
with them trained to retrieve the birds, and two
Lambeth costers attend regularly after their
morning's work with their guns, to shoot those
that escape the `shots' within.

   A good pugilist is looked up to with great admi-
ration by the costers, and fighting is considered
to be a necessary part of a boy's education.
Among them cowardice in any shape is despised

   To serve out a policeman is the bravest act
by which a costermonger can distinguish him-
self. Some lads have been imprisoned upwards
of a dozen times for this offence; and are con-
sequently looked upon by their companions
as martyrs. When they leave prison for such
an act, a subscription is often got up for their
benefit. In their continual warfare with the
force, they resemble many savage nations, from
the cunning and treachery they use. The lads
endeavour to take the unsuspecting "crusher"
by surprise, and often crouch at the entrance of
a court until a policeman passes, when a stone or
a brick is hurled at him, and the youngster imme-
diately disappears. Their love of revenge too,
is extreme -- their hatred being in no way
mitigated by time; they will wait for months,
following a policeman who has offended or
wronged them, anxiously looking out for an
opportunity of paying back the injury. One
boy, I was told, vowed vengeance against a
member of the force, and for six months never
allowed the man to escape his notice. At
length, one night, he saw the policeman in a
row outside a public-house, and running into
the crowd kicked him savagely, shouting at the
same time: "Now, you b -- , I've got you
at last." When the boy heard that his per-
secutor was injured for life, his joy was very
great, and he declared the twelvemonth's impri-
sonment he was sentenced to for the offence to
be "dirt cheap." The whole of the court where
the lad resided sympathized with the boy, and
vowed to a man, that had he escaped, they
would have subscribed a pad or two of dry her-
rings, to send him into the country until the
affair had blown over, for he had shown himself
a "plucky one."

   It is called "plucky" to bear pain with-
out complaining. To flinch from expected
suffering is scorned, and he who does so is
sneered at and told to wear a gown, as being
more fit to be a woman. To show a disregard
for pain, a lad, when without money, will say to
his pal, "Give us a penny, and you may have
a punch at my nose." They also delight in
tattooing their chests and arms with anchors,

Column 2

and figures of different kinds. During the
whole of this painful operation, the boy will not
flinch, but laugh and joke with his admiring
companions, as if perfectly at ease.

   It would be difficult to find in the whole of this
numerous class, a youngster who is not -- what
may be safely called -- a desperate gambler. At
the age of fourteen this love of play first comes
upon the lad, and from that time until he is thirty
or so, not a Sunday passes but he is at his
stand on the gambling ground. Even if he has
no money to stake, he will loll away the morn-
ing looking on, and so borrow excitement from
the successes of others. Every attempt made
by the police, to check this ruinous system, has
been unavailing, and has rather given a gloss
of daring courage to the sport, that tends to
render it doubly attractive.

   If a costermonger has an hour to spare, his
first thought is to gamble away the time. He
does not care what he plays for, so long as he
can have a chance of winning something.
Whilst waiting for a market to open, his delight
is to find out some pieman and toss him for his
stock, though, by so doing, he risks his market-
money and only chance of living, to win that
which he will give away to the first friend he
meets. For the whole week the boy will work
untiringly, spurred on by the thought of the
money to be won on the Sunday. Nothing
will damp his ardour for gambling, the most
continued ill-fortune making him even more
reckless than if he were the luckiest man alive.

   Many a lad who had gone down to the gam-
bling ground, with a good warm coat upon his
back and his pocket well filled from the Satur-
day night's market, will leave it at evening
penniless and coatless, having lost all his earn-
ings, stock-money, and the better part of his
clothing. Some of the boys, when desperate
with "bad luck," borrow to the utmost limit of
their credit; then they mortgage their " king's-
man" or neck-tie, and they will even change
their cord trousers, if better than those of the
winner, so as to have one more chance at the
turn of fortune. The coldest winter's day will
not stop the Sunday's gathering on the river-
side, for the heat of play warms them in spite
of the sharp wind blowing down the Thames.
If the weather be wet, so that the half-pence
stick to the ground, they find out some railway-
arch or else a beer-shop, and having filled the
tap-room with their numbers, they muffle the
table with handkerchiefs, and play secretly.
When the game is very exciting, they will even
forget their hunger, and continue to gamble
until it is too dark to see, before they think of
eating. One man told me, that when he was
working the races with lemonade, he had often
seen in the centre of a group, composed of cos-
ters, thimble-riggers and showmen, as much as
100l. on the ground at one time, in gold and
silver. A friend of his, who had gone down in
company with him, with a pony-truck of toys,

   It is perfectly immaterial to the coster with
whom he plays, whether it be a lad from the
Lambeth potteries, or a thief from the West-
minster slums. Very often, too, the gamblers
of one costermonger district, will visit those of
another, and work what is called "a plant" in
this way. One of the visitors will go before
hand, and, joining a group of gamblers, com-
mence tossing. When sufficient time has
elapsed to remove all suspicion of companion-
ship, his mate will come up and commence bet-
ting on each of his pals' throws with those stand-
ing round. By a curious quickness of hand, a
coster can make the toss tell favourably for his
wagering friend, who meets him after the play
is over in the evening, and shares the spoil.

   The spots generally chosen for the Sunday's
sport are in secret places, half-hidden from the
eye of the passers, where a scout can give quick
notice of the approach of the police: in the
fields about King's-cross, or near any unfinished
railway buildings. The Mint, St. George's-fields,
Blackfriars'-road, Bethnal-green, and Maryle-
bone, are all favourite resorts. Between Lam-
beth and Chelsea, the shingle on the left side of
the Thames, is spotted with small rings of lads,
half-hidden behind the barges. One boy (of
the party) is always on the look out, and even
if a stranger should advance, the cry is given of
"Namous" or "Kool Eslop." Instantly the
money is whipped-up and pocketed, and the
boys stand chattering and laughing together.
It is never difficult for a coster to find out
where the gambling parties are, for he has only
to stop the first lad he meets, and ask him
where the "erht pu" or "three up" is going
on, to discover their whereabouts.

   If during the game a cry of "Police!" should
be given by the looker-out, instantly a rush at
the money is made by any one in the group, the
costers preferring that a stranger should have
the money rather than the policeman. There
is also a custom among them, that the ruined
player should be started again by a gift of 2d. in every shilling lost, or, if the loss is heavy, a
present of four or five shillings is made; neither
is it considered at all dishonourable for the party
winning to leave with the full bloom of success
upon him.

   That the description of one of these Sunday
scenes might be more truthful, a visit was paid
to a gambling-ring close to -- . Although not
twenty yards distant from the steam-boat pier,
yet the little party was so concealed among the
the coal-barges, that not a head could be seen.
The spot chosen was close to a small narrow
court, leading from the street to the water-side,
and here the lad on the look-out was stationed.
There were about thirty young fellows, some

Column 2

tall strapping youths, in the costers' cable-cord
costume, -- others, mere boys, in rags, from the
potteries, with their clothes stained with clay.
The party was hidden from the river by the
black dredger-boats on the beach; and it was so
arranged, that should the alarm be given, they
might leap into the coal-barges, and hide until
the intruder had retired. Seated on some oars
stretched across two craft, was a mortar-stained
bricklayer, keeping a look-out towards the river,
and acting as a sort of umpire in all disputes.
The two that were tossing had been playing
together since early morning; and it was easy
to tell which was the loser, by the anxious-look-
ing eye and compressed lip. He was quarrel-
some too; and if the crowd pressed upon him,
he would jerk his elbow back savagely, saying,
"I wish to C -- t you'd stand backer." The
winner, a short man, in a mud-stained canvas
jacket, and a week's yellow beard on his chin,
never spake a word beyond his "heads," or
"tails;" but his cheeks were red, and the pipe
in his mouth was unlit, though he puffed at it.

   In their hands they each held a long row of
halfpence, extending to the wrist, and topped by
shillings and half-crowns. Nearly every one
round had coppers in his hands, and bets were
made and taken as rapidly as they could be
spoken. "I lost a sov. last night in less than
no time," said one man, who, with his hands in
his pockets, was looking on; "never mind -- I
musn't have no wenson this week, and try
again next Sunday."

   The boy who was losing was adopting every
means to "bring back his luck again." Before
crying, he would toss up a halfpenny three
times, to see what he should call. At last,
with an oath, he pushed aside the boys round
him, and shifted his place, to see what that
would do; it had a good effect, for he won toss
after toss in a curiously fortunate way, and then
it was strange to watch his mouth gradually
relax and his brows unknit. His opponent was
a little startled, and passing his fingers through
his dusty hair, said, with a stupid laugh, "Well,
I never see the likes." The betting also began
to shift. "Sixpence Ned wins!" cried three or
four; "Sixpence he loses!" answered another;
"Done!" and up went the halfpence. " Half-
a-crown Joe loses!" -- "Here you are," answered
Joe, but he lost again. "I'll try you a `gen' "
(shilling) said a coster; "And a `rouf yenap' "
(fourpence), added the other. "Say a `exes' "
(sixpence). -- "Done!" and the betting con-
tinued, till the ground was spotted with silver
and halfpence.

   "That's ten bob he's won in five minutes,"
said Joe (the loser), looking round with a forced
smile; but Ned (the winner) never spake a
word, even when he gave any change to his
antagonist; and if he took a bet, he only nodded
to the one that offered it, and threw down his
money. Once, when he picked up more than a
sovereign from the ground, that he had won in
one throw, a washed sweep, with a black rim
round his neck, said, "There's a hog!" but

   When one o'clock struck, a lad left, saying,
he was "going to get an inside lining' (dinner).
The sweep asked him what he was going to
have. "A two-and-half plate, and a ha'p'orth
of smash" (a plate of soup and a ha'p'orth of
mashed potatoes), replied the lad, bounding into
the court. Nobody else seemed to care for his
dinner, for all stayed to watch the gamblers.

   Every now and then some one would go up
the court to see if the lad watching for the
police was keeping a good look-out; but the
boy never deserted his post, for fear of losing
his threepence. If he had, such is the wish to
protect the players felt by every lad, that even
whilst at dinner, one of them, if he saw a police-
man pass, would spring up and rush to the
gambling ring to give notice.

   When the tall youth, "Ned," had won nearly
all the silver of the group, he suddenly jerked
his gains into his coat-pocket, and saying, "I've
done," walked off, and was out of sight in an
instant. The surprise of the loser and all
around was extreme. They looked at the court
where he had disappeared, then at one another,
and at last burst out into one expression of
disgust. "There's a scurf!" said one; "He's
a regular scab," cried another; and a coster
declared that he was "a trosseno, and no mis-
take." For although it is held to be fair for
the winner to go whenever he wishes, yet such
conduct is never relished by the losers.

   It was then determined that "they would
have him to rights" the next time he came to
gamble; for every one would set at him, and
win his money, and then "turn up," as he had
done.

   The party was then broken up, the players
separating to wait for the new-comers that would
be sure to pour in after dinner.

   On a good attractive night, the rush of costers
to the threepenny gallery of the Coburg (better
known as "the Vic") is peculiar and almost
awful.

   The long zig-zag staircase that leads to the
pay box is crowded to suffocation at least an
hour before the theatre is opened; but, on the
occasion of a piece with a good murder in it,
the crowd will frequently collect as early as
three o'clock in the afternoon. Lads stand
upon the broad wooden bannisters about 50 feet
from the ground, and jump on each others'
backs, or adopt any expedient they can think of
to obtain a good place.

   The walls of the well-staircase having a

Column 2

remarkably fine echo, and the wooden floor of
the steps serving as a sounding board, the
shouting, whistling, and quarrelling of the
impatient young costers is increased tenfold.
If, as sometimes happens, a song with a chorus
is started, the ears positively ache with the din,
and when the chant has finished it seems as
though a sudden silence had fallen on the
people. To the centre of the road, and all round
the door, the mob is in a ferment of excite-
ment, and no sooner is the money-taker at his
post than the most frightful rush takes place,
every one heaving with his shoulder at the back
of the person immediately in front of him.
The girls shriek, men shout, and a nervous fear
is felt lest the massive staircase should fall in
with the weight of the throng, as it lately did
with the most terrible results. If a hat
tumbles from the top of the staircase, a hundred
hands snatch at it as it descends. When it is
caught a voice roars above the tumult, "All
right, Bill, I've got it" -- for they all seem to
know one another -- "Keep us a pitch and I'll
bring it."

   To any one unaccustomed to be pressed flat
it would be impossible to enter with the mob.
To see the sight in the gallery it is better to
wait until the first piece is over. The ham-
sandwich men and pig-trotter women will give
you notice when the time is come, for with the
first clatter of the descending footsteps they
commence their cries.

   There are few grown-up men that go to the
"Vic" gallery. The generality of the visitors
are lads from about twelve to three-and-twenty,
and though a few black-faced sweeps or whitey-
brown dustmen may be among the throng, the
gallery audience consists mainly of costermon-
gers. Young girls, too, are very plentiful, only
one-third of whom now take their babies, owing
to the new regulation of charging half-price for
infants. At the foot of the staircase stands a
group of boys begging for the return checks,
which they sell again for 1½d. or 1d., according
to the lateness of the hour.

   At each step up the well-staircase the warmth
and stench increase, until by the time one
reaches the gallery doorway, a furnace-heat
rushes out through the entrance that seems to
force you backwards, whilst the odour positively
prevents respiration. The mob on the landing,
standing on tiptoe and closely wedged together,
resists any civil attempt at gaining a glimpse of
the stage, and yet a coster lad will rush up,
elbow his way into the crowd, then jump up on
to the shoulders of those before him, and sud-
denly disappear into the body of the gallery.

   The gallery at "the Vic" is one of the
largest in London. It will hold from 1500 to
2000 people, and runs back to so great a
distance, that the end of it is lost in shadow,
excepting where the little gas-jets, against the
wall, light up the two or three faces around
them. When the gallery is well packed, it is
usual to see piles of boys on each others
shoulders at the back, while on the partition

   As you look up the vast slanting mass of
heads from the upper boxes, each one appears
on the move. The huge black heap, dotted
with faces, and spotted with white shirt sleeves,
almost pains the eye to look at, and should a
clapping of hands commence, the twinkling
nearly blinds you. It is the fashion with the
mob to take off their coats; and the cross-braces
on the backs of some, and the bare shoulders
peeping out of the ragged shirts of others, are
the only variety to be found. The bonnets of
the "ladies" are hung over the iron railing in
front, their numbers nearly hiding the panels,
and one of the amusements of the lads in the
back seats consists in pitching orange peel or
nutshells into them, a good aim being rewarded
with a shout of laughter.

   When the orchestra begins playing, before
"the gods" have settled into their seats, it is
impossible to hear a note of music. The
puffed-out cheeks of the trumpeters, and the
raised drumsticks tell you that the overture has
commenced, but no tune is to be heard. An
occasional burst of the full band being caught
by gushes, as if a high wind were raging.
Recognitions take place every moment, and
"Bill Smith" is called to in a loud voice from
one side, and a shout in answer from the other
asks "What's up?" Or family secrets are
revealed, and "Bob Triller" is asked where
"Sal" is, and replies amid a roar of laughter,
that she is "a-larning the pynanney."

   By-and-by a youngster, who has come in late,
jumps up over the shoulders at the door, and
doubling himself into a ball, rolls down over
the heads in front, leaving a trail of commotion
for each one as he passes aims a blow at the
fellow. Presently a fight is sure to begin, and
then every one rises from his seat whistling and
shouting; three or four pairs of arms fall to,
the audience waving their hands till the moving
mass seems like microscopic eels in paste. But
the commotion ceases suddenly on the rising of
the curtain, and then the cries of "Silence!"
"Ord-a-a-r!" "Ord-a-a-r!" make more noise
than ever.

   The "Vic" gallery is not to be moved by
touching sentiment. They prefer vigorous exer-
cise to any emotional speech. "The Child of the
Storm's" declaration that she would share her
father's "death or imprisonment as her duty,"
had no effect at all, compared with the split in
the hornpipe. The shrill whistling and brayvos
that followed the tar's performance showed how
highly it was relished, and one "god" went so
far as to ask "how it was done." The comic
actor kicking a dozen Polish peasants was
encored, but the grand banquet of the Czar
of all the Russias only produced merriment,
and a request that he would "give them a
bit" was made directly the Emperor took the
willow-patterned plate in his hand. All affect-
ing situations were sure to be interrupted by
cries of "orda-a-r;" and the lady begging

Column 2

for her father's life was told to "speak up
old gal;" though when the heroine of the
"dummestic dreamer" (as they call it) told
the general of all the Cossack forces "not to
be a fool," the uproar of approbation grew
greater than ever, -- and when the lady turned
up her swan's-down cuffs, and seizing four
Russian soldiers shook them successively by
the collar, then the enthusiasm knew no bounds,
and the cries of "Bray-vo Vincent! Go it my
tulip!" resounded from every throat.

   Altogether the gallery audience do not seem
to be of a gentle nature. One poor little lad
shouted out in a crying tone, "that he couldn't
see," and instantly a dozen voices demanded
"that he should be thrown over."

   Whilst the pieces are going on, brown, flat
bottles are frequently raised to the mouth, and
between the acts a man with a tin can, glitter-
ing in the gas-light, goes round crying,
"Port-a-a-a-r! who's for port-a-a-a-r." As
the heat increased the faces grew bright red,
every bonnet was taken off, and ladies could
be seen wiping the perspiration from their
cheeks with the play-bills.

   No delay between the pieces will be allowed,
and should the interval appear too long, some
one will shout out -- referring to the curtain --
"Pull up that there winder blind!" or they
will call to the orchestra, saying, "Now then
you catgut-scrapers! Let's have a ha'purth
of liveliness." Neither will they suffer a play
to proceed until they have a good view of the
stage, and "Higher the blue," is constantly
shouted, when the sky is too low, or "Light
up the moon," when the transparency is rather
dim.

   The dances and comic songs, between the
pieces, are liked better than anything else. A
highland fling is certain to be repeated, and a
stamping of feet will accompany the tune, and
a shrill whistling, keep time through the entire
performance.

   But the grand hit of the evening is always
when a song is sung to which the entire gallery
can join in chorus. Then a deep silence pre-
vails all through the stanzas. Should any
burst in before his time, a shout of "orda-a-r"
is raised, and the intruder put down by a
thousand indignant cries. At the proper time,
however, the throats of the mob burst forth in
all their strength. The most deafening noise
breaks out suddenly, while the cat-calls keep
up the tune, and an imitation of a dozen Mr.
Punches squeak out the words. Some actors
at the minor theatres make a great point of
this, and in the bill upon the night of my visit,
under the title of "There's a good time
coming, boys," there was printed, "assisted
by the most numerous and effective chorus in
the metropolis -- " meaning the whole of the
gallery. The singer himself started the mob,
saying, "Now then, the Exeter Hall touch if
you please gentlemen," and beat time with
his hand, parodying M. Jullien with his baton.
An "angcore" on such occasions is always

   The notion of the police is so intimately blended
with what may be called the politics of the
costermongers that I give them together.

   The politics of these people are detailed in a
few words -- they are nearly all Chartists. "You
might say, sir," remarked one of my informants,
"that they all were Chartists, but as its better
you should rather be under than over the mark,
say nearly all." Their ignorance, and their
being impulsive, makes them a dangerous class.
I am assured that in every district where the
costermongers are congregated, one or two of the
body, more intelligent than the others, have
great influence over them; and these leading
men are all Chartists, and being industrious and
not unprosperous persons, their pecuniary and
intellectual superiority cause them to be re-
garded as oracles. One of these men said to
me: "The costers think that working-men know
best, and so they have confidence in us. I like
to make men discontented, and I will make them
discontented while the present system continues,
because it's all for the middle and the moneyed
classes, and nothing, in the way of rights, for the
poor. People fancy when all's quiet that all's
stagnating. Propagandism is going on for all
that. It's when all's quiet that the seed's a
growing. Republicans and Socialists are press-
ing their doctrines."

   The costermongers have very vague notions
of an aristocracy; they call the more prosperous
of their own body "aristocrats." Their notions
of an aristocracy of birth or wealth seem to be
formed on their opinion of the rich, or reputed
rich salesmen with whom they deal; and the
result is anything but favourable to the no-
bility.

   Concerning free-trade, nothing, I am told,
can check the costermongers' fervour for a cheap
loaf. A Chartist costermonger told me that he
knew numbers of costers who were keen Chartists
without understanding anything about the six
points.

   The costermongers frequently attend political
meetings, going there in bodies of from six to
twelve. Some of them, I learned, could not
understand why Chartist leaders exhorted them
to peace and quietness, when they might as well
fight it out with the police at once. The costers
boast, moreover, that they stick more together
in any "row" than any other class. It is con-
sidered by them a reflection on the character
of the thieves that they are seldom true to one
another.

   It is a matter of marvel to many of this class
that people can live without working. The
ignorant costers have no knowledge of " pro-
perty," or "income," and conclude that the non-
workers all live out of the taxes. Of the taxes
generally they judge from their knowledge that

Column 2

tobacco, which they account a necessary of life,
pays 3s. per lb. duty.

   As regards the police, the hatred of a coster-
monger to a "peeler" is intense, and with their
opinion of the police, all the more ignorant unite
that of the governing power. "Can you wonder
at it, sir," said a costermonger to me, "that I
hate the police? They drive us about, we must
move on, we can't stand here, and we can't pitch
there. But if we're cracked up, that is if we're
forced to go into the Union (I've known it both at
Clerkenwell and the City of London workhouses,)
why the parish gives us money to buy a barrow,
or a shallow, or to hire them, and leave the
house and start for ourselves: and what's the
use of that, if the police won't let us sell our
goods? -- Which is right, the parish or the
police?"

   To thwart the police in any measure the
costermongers readily aid one another. One
very common procedure, if the policeman has
seized a barrow, is to whip off a wheel, while the
officers have gone for assistance; for a large and
loaded barrow requires two men to convey it to
the green-yard. This is done with great dex-
terity; and the next step is to dispose of the stock
to any passing costers, or to any "standing" in
the neighbourhood, and it is honestly accounted
for. The policemen, on their return, find an
empty, and unwheelable barrow, which they must
carry off by main strength, amid the jeers of the
populace.

   I am assured that in case of a political riot
every "coster" would seize his policeman.

   Only one-tenth -- at the outside one-tenth -- of
the couples living together and carrying on the
costermongering trade, are married. In Clerk-
enwell parish, however, where the number of
married couples is about a fifth of the whole,
this difference is easily accounted for, as in
Advent and Easter the incumbent of that parish
marries poor couples without a fee. Of the rights
of "legitimate" or "illegitimate" children the
costermongers understand nothing, and account
it a mere waste of money and time to go through
the ceremony of wedlock when a pair can live
together, and be quite as well regarded by their
fellows, without it. The married women associ-
ate with the unmarried mothers of families with-
out the slightest scruple. There is no honour
attached to the marriage state, and no shame to
concubinage. Neither are the unmarried women
less faithful to their "partners" than the mar-
ried; but I understand that, of the two classes,
the unmarried betray the most jealousy.

   As regards the fidelity of these women I was
assured that, "in anything like good times,"
they were rigidly faithful to their husbands or
paramours; but that, in the worst pinch of
poverty, a departure from this fidelity -- if it pro-
vided a few meals or a fire -- was not considered
at all heinous. An old costermonger, who had
been mixed up with other callings, and whose

   The dancing-rooms are the places where
matches are made up. There the boys go to
look out for "mates," and sometimes a match is
struck up the first night of meeting, and the
couple live together forthwith. The girls at
these dances are all the daughters of coster-
mongers, or of persons pursuing some other
course of street life. Unions take place when
the lad is but 14. Two or three out of 100 have
their female helpmates at that early age; but
the female is generally a couple of years older
than her partner. Nearly all the costermongers
form such alliances as I have described, when
both parties are under twenty. One reason why
these alliances are contracted at early ages is,
that when a boy has assisted his father, or any
one engaging him, in the business of a coster-
monger, he knows that he can borrow money,
and hire a shallow or a barrow -- or he may have
saved 5s. -- "and then if the father vexes him or
snubs him," said one of my informants, "he'll
tell his father to go to h -- l, and he and his gal
will start on their own account."

   Most of the costermongers have numerous
families, but not those who contract alliances
very young. The women continue working down
to the day of their confinement.

   "Chance children," as they are called, or
children unrecognised by any father, are rare
among the young women of the costermongers.

   An intelligent and trustworthy man, until very
recently actively engaged in costermongering,
computed that not 3 in 100 costermongers had
ever been in the interior of a church, or any
place of worship, or knew what was meant by
Christianity. The same person gave me the fol-
lowing account, which was confirmed by others:

   "The costers have no religion at all, and very
little notion, or none at all, of what religion or

Column 2

a future state is. Of all things they hate tracts.
They hate them because the people leaving them
never give them anything, and as they can't read
the tract -- not one in forty -- they're vexed to be
bothered with it. And really what is the use of
giving people reading before you've taught them
to read? Now, they respect the City Mission-
aries, because they read to them -- and the
costers will listen to reading when they don't
understand it -- and because they visit the sick,
and sometimes give oranges and such like to
them and the children. I've known a City
Missionary buy a shilling's worth of oranges
of a coster, and give them away to the sick
and the children -- most of them belonging to
the costermongers -- down the court, and that
made him respected there. I think the City
Missionaries have done good. But I'm satisfied
that if the costers had to profess themselves
of some religion to-morrow, they would all
become Roman Catholics, every one of them.
This is the reason: -- London costers live very
often in the same courts and streets as the poor
Irish, and if the Irish are sick, be sure there
comes to them the priest, the Sisters of Charity
-- they are good women -- and some other
ladies. Many a man that's not a Catholic,
has rotted and died without any good person
near him. Why, I lived a good while in
Lambeth, and there wasn't one coster in 100,
I'm satisfied, knew so much as the rector's
name, -- though Mr. Dalton's a very good man.
But the reason I was telling you of, sir, is that
the costers reckon that religion's the best that
gives the most in charity, and they think the
Catholics do this. I'm not a Catholic myself, but
I believe every word of the Bible, and have the
greater belief that it's the word of God because
it teaches democracy. The Irish in the courts
get sadly chaffed by the others about their
priests, -- but they'll die for the priest. Religion
is a regular puzzle to the costers. They see
people come out of church and chapel, and as
they're mostly well dressed, and there's very few
of their own sort among the church-goers, the
costers somehow mix up being religious with
being respectable, and so they have a queer sort
of feeling about it. It's a mystery to them. It's
shocking when you come to think of it. They'll
listen to any preacher that goes among them;
and then a few will say -- I've heard it often
-- `A b -- y fool, why don't he let people go to
h-ll their own way?' There's another thing
that makes the costers think so well of the
Catholics. If a Catholic coster -- there's only
very few of them -- is `cracked up' (penniless),
he's often started again, and the others have
a notion that it's through some chapel-fund.
I don't know whether it is so or not, but I know
the cracked-up men are started again, if they're
Catholics. It's still the stranger that the regular
costermongers, who are nearly all Londoners,
should have such respect for the Roman
Catholice, when they have such a hatred of the
Irish, whom they look upon as intruders and
underminers." -- "If a missionary came among

   I have stated elsewhere, that only about one in
ten of the regular costermongers is able to read.
The want of education among both men and
women is deplorable, and I tested it in several
instances. The following statement, however,
from one of the body, is no more to be taken as
representing the ignorance of the class gene-
rally, than are the clear and discriminating
accounts I received from intelligent coster-
mongers to be taken as representing the intelli-
gence of the body.

   The man with whom I conversed, and from
whom I received the following statement, seemed
about thirty. He was certainly not ill-looking,
but with a heavy cast of countenance, his light
blue eyes having little expression. His state-
ments, or opinions, I need hardly explain, were
given both spontaneously in the course of con-
versation, and in answer to my questions. I
give them almost verbatim, omitting oaths and
slang:

   "Well, times is bad, sir," he said, "but it's
a deadish time. I don't do so well at present
as in middlish times, I think. When I served
the Prince of Naples, not far from here (I
presume that he alluded to the Prince of
Capua), I did better and times was better.
That was five years ago, but I can't say to
a year or two. He was a good customer, and
was wery fond of peaches. I used to sell them
to him, at 12s. the plasket when they was
new. The plasket held a dozen, and cost me
6s. at Covent-garden -- more sometimes; but I
didn't charge him more when they did. His
footman was a black man, and a ignorant man
quite, and his housekeeper was a English-
woman. He was the Prince o' Naples, was my
customer; but I don't know what he was like, for
I never saw him. I've heard that he was the
brother of the king of Naples. I can't say
where Naples is, but if you was to ask at
Euston-square, they'll tell you the fare there and
the time to go it in. It may be in France for
anything I know may Naples, or in Ireland.
Why don't you ask at the square? I went
to Croydon once by rail, and slept all the
way without stirring, and so you may to
Naples for anything I know. I never heard
of the Pope being a neighbour of the King of
Naples. Do you mean living next door to
him? But I don't know nothing of the King
of Naples, only the prince. I don't know what
the Pope is. Is he any trade? It's nothing
to me, when he's no customer of mine. I have
nothing to say about nobody that ain't no
customers. My crabs is caught in the sea, in
course. I gets them at Billingsgate. I never
saw the sea, but it's salt-water, I know. I

Column 2

can't say whereabouts it lays. I believe it's
in the hands of the Billingsgate salesmen -- all of
it? I've heard of shipwrecks at sea, caused
by drownding, in course. I never heard that
the Prince of Naples was ever at sea. I like
to talk about him, he was such a customer when
he lived near here." (Here he repeated his
account of the supply of peaches to his Royal
Highness.) "I never was in France, no, sir,
never. I don't know the way. Do you think
I could do better there? I never was in
the Republic there. What's it like? Bona-
parte? O, yes; I've heard of him. He was
at Waterloo. I didn't know he'd been alive
now and in France, as you ask me about him.
I don't think you're larking, sir. Did I hear
of the French taking possession of Naples,
and Bonaparte making his brother-in-law
king? Well, I didn't, but it may be true,
because I served the Prince of Naples, what
was the brother of the king. I never heard
whether the Prince was the king's older brother
or his younger. I wish he may turn out his
older if there's property coming to him, as the
oldest has the first turn; at least so I've heard --
first come, first served. I've worked the streets
and the courts at all times. I've worked them by
moonlight, but you couldn't see the moonlight
where it was busy. I can't say how far the
moon's off us. It's nothing to me, but I've
seen it a good bit higher than St. Paul's. I
don't know nothing about the sun. Why do
you ask? It must be nearer than the moon
for it's warmer, -- and if they're both fire, that
shows it. It's like the tap-room grate and that
bit of a gas-light; to compare the two is.
What was St. Paul's that the moon was above?
A church, sir; so I've heard. I never was in
a church. O, yes, I've heard of God; he
made heaven and earth; I never heard of his
making the sea; that's another thing, and you
can best learn about that at Billingsgate. (He
seemed to think that the sea was an appur-
tenance of Billingsgate.) Jesus Christ? Yes.
I've heard of him. Our Redeemer? Well,
I only wish I could redeem my Sunday togs
from my uncle's."

   Another costermonger, in answer to inquiries,
said: "I 'spose you think us 'riginal coves that
you ask. We're not like Methusalem, or some
such swell's name, (I presume that Malthus was
meant) as wanted to murder children afore
they was born, as I once heerd lectured
about -- we're nothing like that."

   Another on being questioned, and on being
told that the information was wanted for the
press, replied: "The press? I'll have nothing
to say to it. We are oppressed enough already."

   That a class numbering 30,000 should be per-
mitted to remain in a state of almost brutish
ignorance is a national disgrace. If the London
costers belong especially to the "dangerous
classes," the danger of such a body is assuredly
an evil of our own creation; for the gratitude of
the poor creatures to any one who seeks to give
them the least knowledge is almost pathetic.

   The slang language of the costermongers is not
very remarkable for originality of construction;
it possesses no humour: but they boast that it
is known only to themselves; it is far beyond the
Irish, they say, and puzzles the Jews. The root
of the costermonger tongue, so to speak, is to give
the words spelt backward, or rather pronounced
rudely backward, -- for in my present chapter the
language has, I believe, been reduced to ortho-
graphy for the first time. With this backward
pronunciation, which is very arbitrary, are mixed
words reducible to no rule and seldom referrable
to any origin, thus complicating the mystery
of this unwritten tongue; while any syllable is
added to a proper slang word, at the discretion
of the speaker.

   Slang is acquired very rapidly, and some cos-
termongers will converse in it by the hour. The
women use it sparingly; the girls more than
the women; the men more than the [unclear: ] ; and
the boys most of all. The most ignorant of all
these classes deal most in slang and boast of
their cleverness and proficiency in it. In their
conversations among themselves, the follow-
ing are invariably the terms used in money
matters. A rude back-spelling may generally
be traced:

Flatch	Halfpenny.
Yenep	Penny.
Owt-yenep	Twopence.
Erth-yenep	Threepence.
Rouf-yenep	Fourpence.
Ewif-yenep	Fivepence.
Exis-yenep	Sixpence.
Neves-yenep	Sevenpence.
Teaich-yenep	Eightpence.
Enine-yenep	Ninepence.
Net-yenep	Tenpence.
Leven	Elevenpence.
Gen	Twelvepence.
Yenep-flatch	Three half-pence.

   and so on through the penny-halfpennies.

   It was explained to me by a costermonger,
who had introduced some new words into the
slang, that "leven" was allowed so closely to
resemble the proper word, because elevenpence
was almost an unknown sum to costermongers,
the transition -- weights and measures notwith-
standing -- being immediate from 10d. to 1s.

   "Gen" is a shilling and the numismatic
sequence is pursued with the gens, as regards
shillings, as with the "yeneps" as regards
pence. The blending of the two is also accord-
ing to the same system as "Owt-gen, teaich-
yenep" two-and-eightpence. The exception to
the uniformity of the "gen" enumeration is
in the sum of 8s., which instead of " teaich-
gen" is "teaich-guy:" a deviation with ample
precedents in all civilised tongues.

   As regards the larger coins the translation
into slang is not reducible into rule. The fol-
lowing are the costermonger coins of the higher
value:
Column 2

Couter	Sovereign.
Half-Couter, or Net- gen	Half-sovereign.
Ewif-gen	Crown.
Flatch-ynork	Half-crown.

   The costermongers still further complicate
their slang by a mode of multiplication. They
thus say, "Erth Ewif-gens" or 3 times 5s., which
means of course 15s.

   Speaking of this language, a costermonger said
to me: "The Irish can't tumble to it anyhow;
the Jews can tumble better, but we're their masters. Some of the young salesmen at Bil-
lingsgate understand us, -- but only at Billings-
gate; and they think they're uncommon clever,
but they're not quite up to the mark. The police
don't understand us at all. It would be a pity
if they did."

   I give a few more phrases:

A doogheno or dab- heno?	It is a good or bad market?
A regular trosseno	A regular bad one.
On	No.
Say	Yes.
Tumble to your bar- rikin	Understand you.
Top o' reeb	Pot of beer.
Doing dab	Doing badly.
Cool him	Look at him.

   The latter phrase is used when one coster-
monger warns another of the approach of a
policeman "who might order him to move on,
or be otherwise unpleasant." "Cool" (look)
is exclaimed, or "Cool him" (look at him).
One costermonger told me as a great joke that a
very stout policeman, who was then new to the
duty, was when in a violent state of perspiration,
much offended by a costermonger saying "Cool
him."

   

Cool the esclop	Look at the police.
Cool the namesclop	Look at the police- man.
Cool ta the dillo nemo	Look at the old woman;

said of any woman, young or old, who,
according to costermonger notions, is "giving
herself airs."

   This language seems confined, in its general
use, to the immediate objects of the coster-
monger's care; but is, among the more acute
members of the fraternity, greatly extended,
and is capable of indefinite extension.

   The costermongers oaths, I may conclude,
are all in the vernacular; nor are any of the
common salutes, such as "How d'you do?" or
"Good-night" known to their slang.

   

Kennetseeno	Stinking;
(applied principally to the quality of fish.)
Flatch kanurd	Half-drunk.
Flash it	Show it;
(in cases of bargains offered.)
On doog	No good.
Cross chap	A thief.
Showfulls	Bad money;
(seldom in the hands of costermongers.)
I'm on to the deb	I'm going to bed.
Do the tightner	Go to dinner.
Nommus	Be off
Tol	Lot, Stock, or Share.

   Many costermongers, "but principally -- per-
haps entirely," -- I was told, "those who had
not been regular born and bred to the trade, but
had taken to it when cracked up in their own,"
do not trouble themselves to acquire any know-
ledge of slang. It is not indispensable for the
carrying on of their business; the grand object,
however, seems to be, to shield their bargainings
at market, or their conversation among them-
selves touching their day's work and profits,
from the knowledge of any Irish or uninitiated
fellow-traders.

   The simple principle of costermonger slang --
that of pronouncing backward, may cause its
acquirement to be regarded by the educated as a
matter of ease. But it is a curious fact that
lads who become costermongers' boys, without
previous association with the class, acquire a
very ready command of the language, and this
though they are not only unable to spell, but
don't "know a letter in a book." I saw one lad,
whose parents had, until five or six months back,
resided in the country. The lad himself was
fourteen; he told me he had not been "a cos-
termongering" more than three months, and
prided himself on his mastery over slang. To
test his ability, I asked him the coster's word
for "hippopotamus;" he answered, with tole-
rable readiness, "musatoppop." I then asked
him for the like rendering of "equestrian" (one
of Astley's bills having caught my eye). He
replied, but not quite so readily, "nirtseque."
The last test to which I subjected him was
"good-naturedly;" and though I induced him
to repeat the word twice, I could not, on any of
the three renderings, distinguish any precise
sound beyond an indistinct gabbling, concluded
emphatically with "doog:" -- "good" being a
word with which all these traders are familiar.
It must be remembered, that the words I de-
manded were remote from the young coster-
monger's vocabulary, if not from his under-
standing.

   Before I left this boy, he poured forth a
minute or more's gibberish, of which, from its
rapid utterance, I could distinguish nothing;
but I found from his after explanation, that it
was a request to me to make a further purchase
of his walnuts.

   This slang is utterly devoid of any applica-
bility to humour. It gives no new fact, or
approach to a fact, for philologists. One supe-
rior genius among the costers, who has invented
words for them, told me that he had no system
for coining his term. He gave to the known
words some terminating syllable, or, as he called
it, "a new turn, just," to use his own words,
"as if he chorussed them, with a tol-de-rol."

Column 2

The intelligence communicated in this slang is,
in a great measure, communicated, as in other
slang, as much by the inflection of the voice,
the emphasis, the tone, the look, the shrug, the
nod, the wink, as by the words spoken.

   Like many rude, and almost all wander-
ing communities, the costermongers, like the
cabmen and pickpockets, are hardly ever known
by their real names; even the honest men among
them are distinguished by some strange appel-
lation. Indeed, they are all known one to
another by nicknames, which they acquire either
by some mode of dress, some remark that has
ensured costermonger applause, some peculiarity
in trading, or some defect or singularly in
personal appearance. Men are known as "Rotten
Herrings," "Spuddy" (a seller of bad potatoes,
until beaten by the Irish for his bad wares,)
"Curly" (a man with a curly head), "Foreigner"
(a [unclear: ] had been in the Spanish-Legion),
"Brassy" (a very saucy person), "Gaffy" (once
a performer), "The One-eyed Buffer," " Jaw-
breaker," "Pine-apple Jack," "Cast-iron Poll"
(her head having been struck with a pot without
injury to her), "Whilky," "Blackwall Poll"
(a woman generally having two black eyes),
"Lushy Bet," "Dirty Sall" (the costermongers
generally objecting to dirtywomen), and " Danc-
ing Sue."

   I have used the heading of "Education," but
perhaps to say "non-education," would be more
suitable. Very few indeed of the costermongers'
children are sent even to the Ragged Schools;
and if they are, from all I could learn, it is
done more that the mother may be saved the
trouble of tending them at home, than from
any desire that the children shall acquire useful
knowledge. Both boys and girls are sent out
by their parents in the evening to sell nuts,
oranges, &c., at the doors of the theatres, or in
any public place, or "round the houses" (a
stated circuit from their place of abode). This
trade they pursue eagerly for the sake of "bunts,"
though some carry home the money they take,
very honestly. The costermongers are kind to
their children, "perhaps in a rough way, and the
women make regular pets of them very often."
One experienced man told me, that he had seen
a poor costermonger's wife -- one of the few who
could read -- instructing her children in reading;
but such instances were very rare. The educa-
tion of these children is such only as the streets
afford; and the streets teach them, for the most
part -- and in greater or lesser degrees, -- acute-
ness -- a precocious acuteness -- in all that con-
cerns their immediate wants, business, or gratifi-
cations; a patient endurance of cold and hunger;
a desire to obtain money without working for it;
a craving for the excitement of gambling; an
inordinate love of amusement; and an irrepres-
sible repugnance to any settled in-door industry.

   We have now had an inkling of the London
costermonger's notions upon politics and religion.
We have seen the brutified state in which he is
allowed by society to remain, though possessing
the same faculties and susceptibilities as our-
selves -- the same power to perceive and admire
the forms of truth, beauty, and goodness, as even
the very highest in the state. We have witnessed
how, instinct with all the elements of manhood
and beasthood, the qualities of the beast are prin-
cipally developed in him, while those of the man
are stunted in their growth. It now remains for
us to look into some other matters concerning
this curious class of people, and, first, of their
literature:

   It may appear anomalous to speak of the lite-
rature of an uneducated body, but even the
costermongers have their tastes for books. They
are very fond of hearing any one read aloud to
them, and listen very attentively. One man
often reads the Sunday paper of the beer-shop to
them, and on a fine summer's evening a coster-
monger, or any neighbour who has the advantage
of being "a schollard," reads aloud to them in
the courts they inhabit. What they love best to
listen to -- and, indeed, what they are most eager
for -- are Reynolds's periodicals, especially the
"Mysteries of the Court." "They've got tired
of Lloyd's blood-stained stories," said one man,
who was in the habit of reading to them, "and
I'm satisfied that, of all London, Reynolds is the
most popular man among them. They stuck
to him in Trafalgar-square, and would again.
They all say he's `a trump,' and Feargus
O'Connor's another trump with them.' "

   One intelligent man considered that the spirit
of curiosity manifested by costermongers, as
regards the information or excitement derived
from hearing stories read, augured well for the
improvability of the class.

   Another intelligent costermonger, who had
recently read some of the cheap periodicals to
ten or twelve men, women, and boys, all coster-
mongers, gave me an account of the comments
made by his auditors. They had assembled,
after their day's work or their rounds, for the
purpose of hearing my informant read the last
number of some of the penny publications.

   "The costermongers," said my informant,
"are very fond of illustrations. I have known
a man, what couldn't read, buy a periodical what
had an illustration, a little out of the common
way perhaps, just that he might learn from some
one, who could read, what it was all about. They
have all heard of Cruikshank, and they think
everything funny is by him -- funny scenes in a
play and all. His `Bottle' was very much ad-
mired. I heard one man say it was very prime,
and showed what `lush' did, but I saw the same
man," added my informant, "drunk three hours
afterwards. Look you here, sir," he continued,
turning over a periodical, for he had the number
with him, "here's a portrait of `Catherine of
Russia.' `Tell us all about her,' said one man to

Column 2

me last night; read it; what was she?' When I
had read it," my informant continued, "another
man, to whom I showed it, said, `Don't the cove
as did that know a deal?' for they fancy -- at least,
a many do -- that one man writes a whole peri-
odical, or a whole newspaper. Now here," pro-
ceeded my friend, "you see's an engraving of a
man hung up, burning over a fire, and some
costers would go mad if they couldn't learn what
he'd been doing, who he was, and all about him.
`But about the picture?' they would say, and
this is a very common question put by them
whenever they see an engraving.

   "Here's one of the passages that took their
fancy wonderfully, my informant observed:

   `With glowing cheeks, flashing eyes, and palpitating
bosom, Venetia Trelawney rushed back into the refresh
ment-room, where she threw herself into one of the
arm-chairs already noticed. But scarcely had she thus
sunk down upon the flocculent cushion, when a sharp
click, as of some mechanism giving way, met her ears;
and at the same instant her wrists were caught in
manacles which sprang out of the arms of the treacher-
ous chair, while two steel bands started from the richly-
carved back and grasped her shoulders. A shriek
burst from her lips -- she struggled violently, but all to
no purpose: for she was a captive -- and powerless!

   `We should observe that the manacles and the steel
bands which had thus fastened upon her, were covered
with velvet, so that they inflicted no positive injury
upon her, nor even produced the slightest abrasion of
her fair and polished skin.'

   "Anything about the police sets them a talk-
ing at once. This did when I read it:

   `The Ebenezers still continued their fierce struggle,
and, from the noise they made, seemed as if they were
tearing each other to pieces, to the wild roar of a chorus
of profane swearing. The alarm, as Bloomfield had
predicted, was soon raised, and some two or three
policemen, with their bull's-eyes, and still more effec-
tive truncheons, speedily restored order.'

   "If there's any foreign language which can't
be explained, I've seen the costers," my in-
formant went on, "annoyed at it -- quite annoyed.
Another time I read part of one of Lloyd's
numbers to them -- but they like something
spicier. One article in them -- here it is -- finishes
in this way:

   "The social habits and costumes of the Magyar
noblesse have almost all the characteristics of the cor-
responding class in Ireland. This word noblesse is one
of wide signification in Hungary; and one may with
great truth say of this strange nation, that `qui n'est
point noble n'est rien.' "

   From other quarters I learned that some of
the costermongers who were able to read, or
loved to listen to reading, purchased their litera-
ture in a very commercial spirit, frequently
buying the periodical which is the largest in
size, because when "they've got the reading out
of it," as they say, "it's worth a halfpenny for
the barrow."

   Tracts they will rarely listen to, but if any
persevering man will read tracts, and state that
he does it for their benefit and improvement,
they listen without rudeness, though often with
evident unwillingness. "Sermons or tracts," said
one of their body to me, "gives them the 'orrors."
Costermongers purchase, and not unfrequently,
the first number of a penny periodical, "to see
what it's like."

   The tales of robbery and bloodshed, of heroic,
eloquent, and gentlemanly highwaymen, or of
gipsies turning out to be nobles, now interest the
costermongers but little, although they found
great delight in such stories a few years back.
Works relating to Courts, potentates, or " har-
ristocrats," are the most relished by these rude
people.

   I heard on all hands that the costers never steal
from one another, and never wink at any one
stealing from a neighbouring stall. Any stall-
keeper will leave his stall untended to get his
dinner, his neighbour acting for him; sometimes
he will leave it to enjoy a game at skittles. It
was computed for me, that property worth 10,000l. belonging to costers is daily left exposed in the
streets or at the markets, almost entirely un-
watched, the policeman or market-keeper only
passing at intervals. And yet thefts are rarely
heard of, and when heard of are not attributable
to costermongers, but to regular thieves. The
way in which the sum of 10,000l. was arrived at,
is this: "In Hooper-street, Lambeth," said my
informant, "there are thirty barrows and carts
exposed on an evening, left in the street, with
nobody to see to them; left there all night.
That is only one street. Each barrow and board
would be worth, on the average, 2l. 5s., and that
would be 75l. In the other bye-streets and
courts off the New-cut are six times as many,
Hooper-street having the most. This would give
525l. in all, left unwatched of a night. There
are, throughout London, twelve more districts be-
sides the New-cut -- at least twelve districts -- and,
calculating the same amount in these, we have,
altogether, 6,300l. worth of barrows. Taking in
other bye-streets, we may safely reckon it at
4,000 barrows; for the numbers I have given in
the thirteen places are 2,520, and 1,480 added is
moderate. At least half of those which are in
use next day, are left unwatched; more, I have
no doubt, but say half. The stock of these 2,000
will average 10s. each, or 1,000l.; and the bar-
rows will be worth 4,500l.; in all 5,500l., and

Column 2

the property exposed on the stalls and the markets
will be double in amount, or 11,000l. in value,
every day, but say 10,000l.

   "Besides, sir," I was told, "the thieves
won't rob the costers so often as they will the
shopkeepers. It's easier to steal from a butcher's
or bacon-seller's open window than from a cos-
termonger's stall or barrow, because the shop-
keeper's eye can't be always on his goods. But
there's always some one to give an eye to a cos-
ter's property. At Billingsgate the thieves will
rob the salesmen far readier than they will us.
They know we'd take it out of them readier if
they were caught. It's Lynch law with us. We
never give them in charge."

   The costermongers' boys will, I am informed,
cheat their employers, but they do not steal from
them. The costers' donkey stables have seldom
either lock or latch, and sometimes oysters, and
other things which the donkey will not molest,
are left there, but are never stolen.

   We now come to consider the matters relating
more particularly to the commercial life of the
costermonger.

   All who pass along the thoroughfares of the
Metropolis, bestowing more than a cursory
glance upon the many phases of its busy street
life, must be struck with astonishment to observe
the various modes of conveyance, used by those
who resort to the public thoroughfares for a live-
lihood. From the more provident costermonger's
pony and donkey cart, to the old rusty iron tray
slung round the neck by the vendor of black-
ing, and down to the little grey-eyed Irish boy
with his lucifer-matches, in the last remains of
a willow hand-basket -- the shape and variety of
the means resorted to by the costermongers and
other street-sellers, for carrying about their
goods, are almost as manifold as the articles
they vend.

   The pony -- or donkey -- carts (and the latter
is by far the more usual beast of draught),
of the prosperous costermongers are of three
kinds: -- the first is of an oblong shape, with a
rail behind, upon which is placed a tray filled with
bunches of greens, turnips, celery, &c., whilst
other commodities are laid in the bed of the cart.
Another kind is the common square cart with-
out springs, which is so constructed that the
sides, as well as the front and back, will let
down and form shelves whereon the stock may
be arranged to advantage. The third sort of
pony-cart is one of home manufacture, con-
sisting of the framework of a body without
sides, or front, or hind part. Sometimes a cos-
ter's barrow is formed into a donkey cart merely
by fastening, with cord, two rough poles to the
handles. All these several kinds of carts are
used for the conveyance of either fruit, vege-
tables, or fish; but besides those, there is the
salt and mustard vendor's cart, with and with-
out the tilt or covering, and a square piece of
tin (stuck into a block of salt), on which is

   The above conveyances are all of small
dimensions, the barrows being generally about
five feet long and three wide, while the carts
are mostly about four feet square.

   Every kind of harness is used; some is well
blacked and greased and glittering with brass,
others are almost as grey with dust as the donkey
itself. Some of the jackasses are gaudily capa-
risoned in an old carriage-harness, which fits it
like a man's coat on a boy's back, while the
plated silver ornaments are pink, with the cop-
per showing through; others have rope traces
and belly-bands, and not a few indulge in old
cotton handkerchiefs for pads.

   The next conveyance (which, indeed, is the
most general) is the costermonger's hand-bar-
row. These are very light in their make,
with springs terminating at the axle. Some
have rails behind for the arrangement of their
goods; others have not. Some have side rails,
whilst others have only the frame-work. The
shape of these barrows is oblong, and sloped
from the hind-part towards the front; the bot-
tom of the bed is not boarded, but consists of
narrow strips of wood nailed athwart and across.
When the coster is hawking his fish, or vending
his green stuff, he provides himself with a
wooden tray, which is placed upon his barrow.
Those who cannot afford a tray get some pieces
of board and fasten them together, these answer-
ing their purpose as well. Pine-apple and
pine-apple rock barrows are not unfrequently
seen with small bright coloured flags at the
four corners, fluttering in the wind.

   The knife-cleaner's barrow, which has lately
appeared in the streets, must not be passed
over here. It consists of a huge sentry-box, with
a door, and is fixed upon two small wheels, being
propelled in the same way as a wheel-barrow.
In the interior is one of Kent's Patent Knife-
cleaning Machines, worked by turning a handle.
Then there are the cat and dog's-meat barrows.
These, however, are merely common wheelbar-
rows, with a board in front and a ledge or shelf,
formed by a piece of board nailed across the
top of the barrow, to answer the purpose of a
cutting-board. Lastly, there is the hearth-stone
barrow, piled up with hearth-stone, Bath-brick,
and lumps of whiting.

   Another mode of conveying the goods through
the streets, is by baskets of various kinds; as
the sieve or head basket; the square and oval
"shallow," fastened in front of the fruit-woman
with a strap round the waist; the hand-basket;
and the "prickle." The sieve, or head-basket,
is a round willow basket, containing about one-
third of a bushel. The square and oval shallows
are willow baskets, about four inches deep, and
thirty inches long, by eighteen broad. The
hand-basket is the common oval basket, with

Column 2

a handle across to hang upon the arm; the
latter are generally used by the Irish for onions
and apples. The prickle is a brown willow
basket, in which walnuts are imported into this
country from the Continent; they are about
thirty inches deep, and in bulk rather larger
than a gallon measure; they are used only by
the vendors of walnuts.

   Such are the principal forms of the coster-
mongers' conveyances; but besides carts, bar-
rows, and baskets, there are many other means
adopted by the London street-sellers for carrying
their goods from one part of the metropolis to
another. The principal of these are cans, trays,
boxes, and poles.

   The baked potato-cans sometimes are square
and sometimes oval; they are made with and
without legs, a lid fastened on with hinges, and
have a small charcoal fire fixed at the bottom
of the can, so as to keep the potatoes hot, while
there is a pipe at top to let off the steam. On
one side of the can is a little compartment for the
salt, and another on the other side for the butter.
The hot pie-can is a square tin can, standing
upon four legs, with a door in front, and three
partitions inside; a fire is kept in the bottom,
and the pies arranged in order upon the iron
plates or shelves. When the pies at the bottom
are sufficiently hot they are taken out, and
placed on the upper shelf, whilst those above are
removed to the lower compartments, by which
means all the pies are kept "hot and hot."

   The muffin and crumpet-boy carries his
articles in a basket, covered outside with oil-
cloth and inside with green-baize, either at his
back, or slung over his arm, and rings his bell
as he walks.

   The blacking boy, congreve-match and water-
cress girl, use a rusty tray, spread over with
their "goods," and suspended to the neck by a
piece of string.

   The vendors of corn-salve, plating balls, soap
for removing grease spots, paper, steel pens,
envelopes, &c., carry their commodities in front
of them in boxes, suspended round the neck by
a narrow leather strap.

   Rabbits and game are sometimes carried in
baskets, and at other times tied together and
slung over a pole upon the shoulder. Hat and
bonnet-boxes are likewise conveyed upon a pole.

   Door-mats, baskets and "duffer's" packs,
wood pails, brushes, brooms, clothes-props,
clothes-lines and string, and grid-irons, Dutch-
ovens, skewers and fire-shovels, are carried
across the shoulder.

   Having set forth the costermonger's usual mode
of conveying his goods through the streets of
London, I shall now give the reader a descrip-
tion of the place and scene where and when he
purchases his donkeys.

   When a costermonger wishes to [unclear: ] or buy a
donkey, he goes to Smithfield-market on a Fri-
day afternoon. On this day, between the hours
of one and five, there is a kind of fair held,

   Every thing necessary for the starting of a
costermonger's barrow can be had in Smithfield
on a Friday, -- from the barrow itself to the
weights -- from the donkey to the whip. The
animals can be purchased at prices ranging from
5s. to 3l. On a brisk market-day as many as
two hundred donkeys have been sold. The bar-
rows for sale are kept apart from the steeds, but
harness to any amount can be found everywhere,
in all degrees of excellence, from the bright
japanned cart saddle with its new red pads, to
the old mouldy trace covered with buckle marks.
Wheels of every size and colour, and springs in
every stage of rust, are hawked about on all
sides. To the usual noise and shouting of a
Saturday night's market is added the shrill
squealing of distant pigs, the lowing of the
passing oxen, the bleating of sheep, and the
braying of donkeys. The paved road all down
the "race-course" is level and soft, with the
mud trodden down between the stones. The
policeman on duty there wears huge fishermen's
or flushermen's boots, reaching to their thighs;
and the trouser ends of the costers' corduroys
are black and sodden with wet dirt. Every
variety of odour fills the air; you pass from
the stable smell that hangs about the donkeys,
into an atmosphere of apples and fried fish, near
the eating-stalls, while a few paces further on
you are nearly choked with the stench of goats.
The crowd of black hats, thickly dotted with red
and yellow plush caps, reels about; and the
"hi-hi-i-i" of the donkey-runners sounds on all
sides. Sometimes a curly-headed bull, with a
fierce red eye, on its way to or from the adjacent
cattle-market, comes trotting down the road,
making all the visitors rush suddenly to the
railings, for fear -- as a coster near me said -- of
"being taught the hornpipe."

   The donkeys standing for sale are ranged in
a long line on both sides of the "race-course,"
their white velvetty noses resting on the wooden
rail they are tied to. Many of them wear
their blinkers and head harness, and others are
ornamented with ribbons, fastened in their hal-
ters. The lookers-on lean against this railing,
and chat with the boys at the donkeys' heads,
or with the men who stand behind them,
and keep continually hitting and shouting at
the poor still beasts to make them prance.
Sometimes a party of two or three will be seen
closely examining one of these "Jerusalem
ponys," passing their hands down its legs, or
looking quietly on, while the proprietor's ash
stick descends on the patient brute's back,
making a dull hollow sound. As you walk in
front of the long line of donkeys, the lads seize
the animals by their nostrils, and show their

Column 2

large teeth, asking if you "want a hass, sir,"
and all warranting the creature to be "five
years old next buff-day." Dealers are quarrel-
ling among themselves, downcrying each other's
goods. "A hearty man," shouted one proprietor,
pointing to his rival's stock, "could eat three
sich donkeys as yourn at a meal."

   One fellow, standing behind his steed, shouts
as he strikes, "Here's the real Brittannia
mettle;" whilst another asks, "Who's for the
Pride of the Market?" and then proceeds to flip
"the pride" with his whip, till she clears away
the mob with her kickings. Here, standing by
its mother, will be a shaggy little colt, with a
group of ragged boys fondling it, and lifting it
in their arms from the ground.

   During all this the shouts of the drivers and
runners fill the air, as they rush past each
other n the race-course. Now a tall fellow,
dragging a donkey after him, runs by crying,
as he charges in amongst the mob, "Hulloa!
Hulloa! hi! hi!' his mate, with his long coat-
tails flying in the wind, hurrying after and roar-
ing, between his blows, "Keem-up!"

   On nearly every post are hung traces or
bridles; and in one place, on the occasion of my
visit, stood an old collar with a donkey nibbling
at the straw that had burst out. Some of the
lads, in smock-frocks, walk about with cart-
saddles on their heads, and crowds gather
round the trucks, piled up with a black heap
of harness studded with brass. Those without
trays have spread out old sacks on the ground,
on which are laid axle-trees, bound-up springs,
and battered carriage-lamps. There are plenty
of rusty nails and iron bolts to be had, if a
barrow should want mending; and if the handles
are broken, an old cab-shaft can be bought
cheap, to repair them.

   In another "race-course," opposite to the
donkeys, -- the ponies are sold. These make a
curious collection, each one showing what was
his last master's whim. One has its legs and
belly shorn of its hair, another has its mane
and tail cut close, and some have switch tails,
muddy at the end from their length. A big-
hipped black nag, with red tinsel-like spots on
its back, had its ears cut close, and another
curly-haired brute that was wet and steaming
with having been shown off, had two huge
letters burnt into its hind-quarters. Here the
clattering of the hoofs and the smacking of
whips added to the din; and one poor brute,
with red empty eye-holes, and carrying its head
high up -- as a blind man does -- sent out show-
ers of sparks from its hoofs as it spluttered over
the stones, at each blow it received. Occasion-
ally, in one part of the pony market, there may
be seen a crowd gathered round a nag, that
some one swears has been stolen from him.

   Raised up over the heads of the mob are
bundles of whips, and men push their way past,
with their arms full of yellow-handled curry-
combs; whilst, amongst other cries, is heard that
of "Sticks ½d. each! sticks -- real smarters."
At one end of the market the barrows for sale

   On all sides the refreshment-barrows are sur-
rounded by customers. The whelk-man peppers
his lots, and shouts, "A lumping penn'orth for a
ha'penny;" and a lad in a smock-frock carries
two full pails of milk, slopping it as he walks, and
crying, "Ha'penny a mug-full, new milk from
the ke-ow!" The only quiet people to be seen
are round the peas-soup stall, with their cups in
their hands; and there is a huge crowd cover-
ing in the hot-eel stand, with the steam rising
up in the centre. Baskets of sliced cake, apples,
nuts, and pine-apple rock, block up the path-
way; and long wicker baskets of live fowls hem
you in, round which are grouped the costers,
handling and blowing apart the feathers on the
breast.

   The costermongers almost universally treat
their donkeys with kindness. Many a coster-
monger will resent the ill-treatment of a
donkey, as he would a personal indignity.
These animals are often not only favourites, but
pets, having their share of the costermonger's
dinner when bread forms a portion of it, or
pudding, or anything suited to the palate of the
brute. Those well-used, manifest fondness for
their masters, and are easily manageable; it is,
however, difficult to get an ass, whose master
goes regular rounds, away from its stable for
any second labour during the day, unless it has
fed and slept in the interval. The usual fare
of a donkey is a peck of chaff, which costs 1d., a quart of oats and a quart of beans, each
averaging 1½d., and sometimes a pennyworth
of hay, being an expenditure of 4d. or 5d. a day; but some give double this quantity in a
prosperous time. Only one meal a day is given.
Many costermongers told me, that their donkeys
lived well when they themselves lived well.

   "It's all nonsense to call donkeys stupid,"
said one costermonger to me; "them's stupid that
calls them so: they're sensible. Not long since
I worked Guildford with my donkey-cart and a
boy. Jack (the donkey) was slow and heavy in
coming back, until we got in sight of the lights
at Vauxhall-gate, and then he trotted on like
one o'clock, he did indeed! just as if he smelt
it was London besides seeing it, and knew he
was at home. He had a famous appetite in the
country, and the fresh grass did him good. I
gave a country lad 2d. to mind him in a green
lane there. I wanted my own boy to do so, but
he said, `I'll see you further first.' A London
boy hates being by himself in a lone country
part. He's afraid of being burked; he is
indeed. One can't quarrel with a lad when

Column 2

he's away with one in the country; he's very
useful. I feed my donkey well. I sometimes
give him a carrot for a luxury, but carrots are
dear now. He's fond of mashed potatoes, and
has many a good mash when I can buy them at
4lb. a penny."

   "There was a friend of mine," said another
man, "had great trouble about his donkey a
few months back. I saw part of it, and knew
all about it. He was doing a little work on a
Sunday morning at Wandsworth, and the poor
thing fell down dead. He was very fond of his
donkey and kind to it, and the donkey was very
fond of him. He thought he wouldn't leave
the poor creature he'd had a good while, and
had been out with in all weathers, by the road
side; so he dropped all notion of doing business,
and with help got the poor dead thing into his
cart; its head lolloping over the end of the
cart, and its poor eyes staring at nothing.
He thought he'd drag it home and bury it
somewheres. It wasn't for the value he dragged
it, for what's a dead donkey worth? There
was a few persons about him, and they was all
quiet and seemed sorry for the poor fellow and
for his donkey; but the church-bells struck up,
and up came a `crusher,' and took the man up,
and next day he was fined 10s., I can't exactly
say for what. He never saw no more of the
animal, and lost his stock as well as his
donkey."

   The costermongers, though living by buying
and selling, are seldom or never capitalists. It
is estimated that not more than one-fourth of the
entire body trade upon their own property.
Some borrow their stock money, others borrow
the stock itself, others again borrow the donkey-
carts, barrows, or baskets, in which their stock
is carried round, whilst others borrow even the
weights and measures by which it is meted out.

   The reader, however uninformed he may be as
to the price the poor usually have to pay for any
loans they may require, doubtlessly need not be
told that the remuneration exacted for the use
of the above-named commodities is not merely
confined to the legal 5l. per centum per annum;
still many of even the most "knowing" will
hardly be able to credit the fact that the ordi-
nary rate of interest in the costermongers' money-
market amounts to 20 per cent. per week, or no
less than 1040l. a year, for every 100l. advanced.

   But the iniquity of this usury in the present
instance is felt, not so much by the costermon-
gers themselves, as by the poor people whom
they serve; for, of course, the enormous rate of
interest must be paid out of the profits on the
goods they sell, and consequently added to the
price, so that coupling this overcharge with the
customary short allowance -- in either weight or
measure, as the case may be -- we can readily
perceive how cruelly the poor are defrauded, and
how they not only get often too little for what
they do, but have as often to pay too much for
what they buy.

   Premising thus much, I shall now proceed to
describe the terms upon which the barrow, the
cart, the basket, the weights, the measures, the
stock-money, or the stock, is usually advanced
to the needy costermongers by their more
thrifty brethren.

   The hire of a barrow is 3d. a day, or 1s. a
week, for the six winter months; and 4d. a day,
or 1s. 6d. a week, for the six summer months.
Some are to be had rather lower in the summer,
but never for less than 4d. -- sometimes for not less
than 6d. on a Saturday, when not unfrequently
every barrow in London is hired. No security
and no deposit is required, but the lender satis-
fies himself that the borrower is really what he
represents himself to be. I am informed that
5,000 hired barrows are now in the hands of the
London costermongers, at an average rental of
3l. 5s. each, or 16,250l. a year. One man lets
out 120 yearly, at a return (dropping the 5s.) of
360l.; while the cost of a good barrow, new, is
2l. 12s., and in the autumn and winter they may
be bought new, or "as good as new," at 30s. each; so that reckoning each to cost this barrow-
letter 2l. each, he receives 360l. rent or interest
-- exactly 150 per cent. per annum for pro-
perty which originally cost but 240l., and
property which is still as good for the ensuing
year's business as for the past. One man has
rented a barrow for eight years, during which pe-
riod he has paid 26l. for what in the first instance
did not cost more than twice as many shillings,
and which he must return if he discontinues its
use. "I know men well to do," said an intelligent
costermonger, "who have paid 1s. and 1s. 6d. a week for a barrow for three, four, and five
years; and they can't be made to understand
that it's rather high rent for what might cost
40s. at first. They can't see they are losers.
One barrow-lender sends his son out, mostly on
a Sunday, collecting his rents (for barrows), but
he's not a hard man." Some of the lenders
complain that their customers pay them irregu-
larly and cheat them often, and that in conse-
quence they must charge high; while the
"borrowers" declare that it is very seldom indeed
that a man "shirks" the rent for his barrow,
generally believing that he has made an advan-
tageous bargain, and feeling the want of his
vehicle, if he lose it temporarily. Let the
lenders, however, be deceived by many, still, it
is evident, that the rent charged for barrows is
most exorbitant, by the fact, that all who take
to the business become men of considerable
property in a few years.

   Donkey-carts are rarely hired. "If there's
2,000 donkey and pony-carts in London, more
or less, not 200 of them's borrowed; but of
barrows five to two is borrowed." A donkey-
cart costs from 2l. to 10l.; 3l. 10s. being an
average price. The hire is 2s. or 2s. 6d. a week.
The harness costs 2l. 10s. new, but is bought,
nineteen times out of twenty, second-hand, at
from 2s. 6d. to 20s. The donkeys themselves
are not let out on hire, though a costermonger
may let out his donkey to another in the trade

Column 2

when he does not require its services; the usual
sum paid for the hire of a donkey is 2s. 6d. or
3s. per week. The cost price of a pony varies
from 5l. to 13l.; that of a donkey from 1l. to 3l.
There may be six donkeys, or more, in coster-
monger use, to one pony. Some traffic almost
weekly in these animals, liking the excitement
of such business.

   The repairs to barrows, carts, and harness are
almost always effected by the costermongers
themselves.

   "Shallows" (baskets) which cost 1s. and 1s. 6d., are let out at 1d. a day; but not five in 100 of
those in use are borrowed, as their low price
places them at the costermonger's command.
A pewter quart-pot, for measuring onions, &c.,
is let out at 2d. a day, its cost being 2s. Scales
are 2d., and a set of weights 1d. a day.

   Another common mode of usury is in the
lending of stock-money. This is lent by the
costermongers who have saved the means for
such use of their funds, and by beer-shop
keepers. The money-lending costermongers
are the most methodical in their usury --
1,040l. per cent. per annum, as was before
stated, being the rate of interest usually charged.
It is seldom that a lower sum than 10s. is bor-
rowed, and never a higher sum than 2l. When
a stranger applies for a loan, the money-lender
satisfies himself as I have described of the bar-
row-lender. He charges 2d. a day for a loan
of 2s. 6d.; 3d. a day for 5s.; 6d. a day for 10s.; and 1s. a day for 1l. If the daily payments are
rendered regularly, at a month's end the terms
are reduced to 6d. a week for 5s.; 1s. for 10s.; and 2s. for 1l. "That's reckoned an extraor-
dinary small interest," was said to me, "only
4d. a day for a pound." The average may be 3s. a week for the loan of 20s.; it being only to a
few that a larger sum than 20s. is lent. "I paid
2s. a week for 1l. for a whole year," said one
man, "or 5l. 4s. for the use of a pound, and then
I was liable to repay the 1l." The principal,
however, is seldom repaid; nor does the lender
seem to expect it, though he will occasionally
demand it. One money-lender is considered to
have a floating capital of 150l. invested in loans
to costermongers. If he receive 2s. per week per
1l. for but twenty-six weeks in the year (and he
often receives it for the fifty-two weeks) -- his
150l. brings him in 390l. a year.

   Sometimes a loan is effected only for a day,
generally a Saturday, as much as 2s. 6d. being
sometimes given for the use of 5s.; the 5s. being
of course repaid in the evening.

   The money-lenders are subject to at least
twice the extent of loss to which the barrow-
lender is exposed, as it is far oftener that money
is squandered (on which of course no interest
can be paid) than that a barrow is disposed of.

   The money-lenders, (from the following state-
ment, made to me by one who was in the habit
of borrowing,) pursue their business in a not
very dissimilar manner to that imputed to those
who advance larger sums: -- "If I want to bor-
row in a hurry," said my informant, "as I may

   The beer-shop keepers lend on far easier
terms, perhaps at half the interest exacted by
the others, and without any regular system of
charges; but they look sharp after the repay-
ment, and expect a considerable outlay in beer,
and will only lend to good customers; they how-
ever have even lent money without interest.

   "In the depth of last winter," said a man of
good character to me, "I borrowed 5s. The
beer-shop keeper wouldn't lend; he'll rather
lend to men doing well and drinking. But I
borrowed it at 6d. a day interest, and that 6d. a day I paid exactly four weeks, Sundays and
all; and that was 15s. in thirty days for the use
of 5s. I was half starving all the time, and then
I had a slice of luck, and paid the 5s. back slap,
and got out of it."

   Many shopkeepers lend money to the stall-
keepers, whom they know from standing near
their premises, and that without interest. They
generally lend, however, to the women, as they
think the men want to get drunk with it.
"Indeed, if it wasn't for the women," said a
costermonger to me, "half of us might go to
the Union."

   Another mode of usurious lending or trading
is, as I said before, to provide the costermonger
-- not with the stock-money -- but with the stock
itself. This mode also is highly profitable to
the usurer, who is usually a costermonger, but
sometimes a greengrocer. A stock of fruit, fish,
or vegetables, with a barrow for its conveyance,
is entrusted to a street-seller, the usual way
being to "let him have a sovereign's worth."
The value of this, however, at the market cost,
rarely exceeds 14s., still the man entrusted with
it must carry 20s. to his creditor, or he will
hardly be trusted a second time. The man
who trades with the stock is not required
to pay the 20s. on the first day of the transac-
tion, as he may not have realised so much,
but he must pay some of it, generally 10s., and must pay the remainder the next day or
the money-lender will decline any subsequent
dealings.

   It may be thought, as no security is given,
and as the costermongering barrow, stock, or
money-lender never goes to law for the recovery
of any debt or goods, that the per centage is
not so very exorbitant after all. But I ascer-

Column 2

tained that not once in twenty times was the
money lender exposed to any loss by the non-
payment of his usurious interest, while his
profits are enormous. The borrower knows
that if he fail in his payment, the lender will
acquaint the other members of his fraternity,
so that no future loan will be attainable, and
the costermonger's business may be at an end.
One borrower told me that the re-payment of
his loan of 2l., borrowed two years ago at 4s. a
week, had this autumn been reduced to 2s. 6d. a week: "He's a decent man I pay now," he
said; "he has twice forgiven me a month at a
time when the weather was very bad and the
times as bad as the weather. Before I borrowed
of him I had dealings with -- . He was a
scurf. If I missed a week, and told him I
would make it up next week, `That won't do,'
he'd say, `I'll turn you up. I'll take d -- d
good care to stop you. I'll have you to rights.'
If I hadn't satisfied him, as I did at last, I
could never have got credit again; never." I
am informed that most of the money-lenders,
if a man has paid for a year or so, will now
"drop it for a month or so in a very hard-up
time, and go on again." There is no I.O.U.
or any memorandum given to the usurer.
"There's never a slip of paper about it, sir,"
I was told.

   I may add that a very intelligent man from
whom I derived information, said to me con-
cerning costermongers never going to law to
recover money owing to them, nor indeed for
any purpose: "If any one steals anything from
me -- and that, as far as I know, never happened
but once in ten years -- and I catch him, I take
it out of him on the spot. I give him a jolly
good hiding and there's an end of it. I know
very well, sir, that costers are ignorant men, but
in my opinion" (laughing) "our never going
to law shows that in that point we are in
advance of the aristocrats. I never heard of a
coster in a law court, unless he was in trouble
(charged with some offence) -- for assaulting a
crusher, or anybody he had quarrelled with, or
something of that kind."

   The barrow-lender, when not regularly paid,
sends some one, or goes himself, and carries
away the barrow.

   My personal experience with this peculiar
class justifies me in saying that they are far
less dishonest than they are usually believed to
be, and much more honest than their wandering
habits, their want of education and "principle"
would lead even the most charitable to suppose.
Since I have exhibited an interest in the suffer-
ings and privations of these neglected people,
I have, as the reader may readily imagine, had
many applications for assistance, and without
vanity, I believe I may say, that as far as
my limited resources would permit, I have
striven to extricate the street-sellers from the
grasp of the usurer. Some to whom I have
lent small sums (for gifts only degrade strug-
gling honest men into the apathy of beggars)
have taken the money with many a protesta-

   Those who are unacquainted with the charac-
ter of the people may feel inclined to doubt the
trustworthiness of the class, but it is an extraor-
dinary fact that but few of the costermongers
fail to repay the money advanced to them, even
at the present ruinous rate of interest. The
poor, it is my belief, have not yet been suffi-
ciently tried in this respect; -- pawnbrokers, loan-
offices, tally-shops, dolly-shops, are the only
parties who will trust them -- but, as a startling
proof of the good faith of the humbler classes
generally, it may be stated that Mrs. Chisholm
(the lady who has exerted herself so benevolently
in the cause of emigration) has lent out, at diffe-
rent times, as much as 160,000l. that has been
entrusted to her for the use of the "lower
orders," and that the whole of this large amount
has been returned -- with the exception of 12l.!

   I myself have often given a sovereign
to professed thieves to get "changed," and
never knew one to make off with the money.
Depend upon it, if we would really improve,

Column 2

we must begin by elevating instead of de-
grading.

   All counterfeit weights and measures, the
costermongers call by the appropriate name of
"slang." "There are not half so many
slangs as there was eighteen months ago,"
said a `general dealer' to me. "You see,
sir, the letters in the Morning Chronicle set
people a talking, and some altered their way of
business. Some was very angry at what was
said in the articles on the street-sellers, and
swore that costers was gentlemen, and that
they'd smash the men's noses that had told
you, sir, if they knew who they were. There's
plenty of costers wouldn't use slangs at all, if
people would give a fair price; but you see
the boys will try it on for their bunts, and how
is a man to sell fine cherries at 4d. a pound
that cost him 3½d., when there's a kid along-
side of him a selling his `tol' at 2d. a pound, and
singing it out as bold as brass? So the men
slangs it, and cries `2d. a pound,' and gives
half-pound, as the boy does; which brings it to
the same thing. We doesn't 'dulterate our
goods like the tradesmen -- that is, the regular
hands doesn't. It wouldn't be easy, as you say,
to 'dulterate cabbages or oysters; but we deals
fair to all that's fair to us, -- and that's more
than many a tradesman does, for all their
juries."

   The slang quart is a pint and a half. It is
made precisely like the proper quart; and the
maker, I was told, "knows well enough what it's
for, as it's charged, new, 6d. more than a true
quart measure; but it's nothing to him, as he
says, what it's for, so long as he gets his price."
The slang quart is let out at 2d. a day -- 1d. extra
being charged "for the risk." The slang pint
holds in some cases three-fourths of the just
quantity, having a very thick bottom; others
hold only half a pint, having a false bottom
half-way up. These are used chiefly in mea-
suring nuts, of which the proper quantity is
hardly ever given to the purchaser; "but, then,"
it was often said, or implied to me, the "price is
all the lower, and people just brings it on them-
selves, by wanting things for next to nothing;
so it's all right; it's people's own faults." The
hire of the slang pint is 2d. per day.

   The scales used are almost all true, but the
weights are often beaten out flat to look large,
and are 4, 5, 6, or even 7 oz. deficient in a pound,
and in the same relative proportion with other
weights. The charge is 2d., 3d., and 4d. a day
for a pair of scales and a set of slang weights.

   The wooden measures -- such as pecks, half
pecks, and quarter pecks -- are not let out slang,
but the bottoms are taken out by the costers, and
put in again half an inch or so higher up. "I
call this," said a humorous dealer to me, " slop-
work, or the cutting-system."

   One candid costermonger expressed his per-
fect contempt of slangs, as fit only for bunglers,
as he could always "work slang" with a true

   In conclusion, it is but just I should add that
there seems to be a strong disposition on the
part of the more enlightened of the class to
adopt the use of fair weights and measures; and
that even among the less scrupulous portion of
the body, short allowance seems to be given
chiefly from a desire to be even with a "scaly
customer." The coster makes it a rule never
to refuse an offer, and if people will give him
less than what he considers his proper price,
why -- he gives them less than their proper quan-
tity. As a proof of the growing honesty among
this class, many of the better disposed have re-
cently formed themselves into a society, the
members of which are (one and all) pledged not
only to deal fairly with their customers, but to
compel all other street-sellers to do the same.
With a view of distinguishing themselves to the
public, they have come to the resolution of wear-
ing a medal, on which shall be engraved a par-
ticular number, so that should any imposition
be practised by any of their body, the public
will have the opportunity of complaining to the
Committee of the Association, and having the
individual (if guilty) immediately expelled from
the society.

   Besides the modes of trading on borrowed
capital above described, there is still another
means of obtaining stock prevalent among the
London costermongers. It is a common prac-
tice with some of the more provident coster-
mongers, who buy more largely -- for the sake
of buying cheaply -- than is required for the
supply of their own customers, to place goods
in the hands of young men who are unable
to buy goods on their own account, "on half
profits," as it is called. The man adopting
this means of doing a more extensive business,
says to any poor fellow willing to work on
those terms, "Here's a barrow of vegetables
to carry round, and the profit on them will be
2s.; you sell them, and half is for yourself."
The man sells them accordingly; if however
he fail to realize the 2s. anticipated profit, his
employer must still be paid 1s., even if the
"seller" prove that only 13d. was cleared; so
that the costermonger capitalist, as he may be
described, is always, to use the words of one
of my informants, "on the profitable side of
the hedge."

   Boys are less frequently employed on half-

Column 2

profits than young men; and I am assured that
instances of these young men wronging their
employers are hardly ever known.

   But there are still other "agents" among the
costermongers, and these are the "boys" de-
puted to sell a man's goods for a certain sum,
all over that amount being the boys' profit
or "bunts." Almost every costermonger who
trades through the streets with his barrow is
accompanied by a boy. The ages of these lads
vary from ten to sixteen, there are few above
sixteen, for the lads think it is then high time
for them to start on their own account. These
boys are useful to the man in "calling,"
their shrill voices being often more audible than
the loudest pitch of an adult's lungs. Many
persons, moreover, I am assured, prefer buying
of a boy, believing that if the lad did not suc-
ceed in selling his goods he would be knocked
about when he got home; others think that they
are safer in a boy's hands, and less likely to be
cheated; these, however, are equally mistaken
notions. The boys also are useful in pushing at
the barrow, or in drawing it along by tugging at a
rope in front. Some of them are the sons of the
costermongers; some go round to the coster-
mongers' abodes and say: "Will you want me
to-morrow?" "Shall I come and give you a
lift?" The parents of the lads thus at large are,
when they have parents, either unable to sup-
port them, or, if able, prefer putting their money
to other uses, (such as drinking); and so the lads
have to look out for themselves, or, as they say,
"pick up a few halfpence and a bit of grub as
we can." Such lads, however, are the smallest
class of costermongering youths; and are some-
times called "cas'alty boys," or "nippers."

   The boys -- and nearly the whole of them --
soon become very quick, and grow masters of
slang, in from six weeks to two or three months.
"I suppose," said one man familiar with their
character, "they'd learn French as soon, if they
was thrown into the way of it. They must
learn slang to live, and as they have to wait at
markets every now and then, from one hour to
six, they associate one with another and carry
on conversations in slang about the "penny gaffs"
(theatres), criticising the actors; or may be they
toss the pieman, if they've got any ha'pence,
or else they chaff the passers by. The older
ones may talk about their sweethearts; but
they always speak of them by the name of
`nammow' (girls).

   "The boys are severe critics too (continued
my informant) on dancing. I heard one say
to another; `What do you think of Johnny
Millicent's new step?' for they always recognise
a new step, or they discuss the female dancer's
legs, and not very decently. At other times
the boys discuss the merits or demerits of their
masters, as to who feeds them best. I have
heard one say, `O, aint Bob stingy? We have
bread and cheese!' Another added; `We have

   Some of these lads are paid by the day,
generally from 2d. or 3d. and their food, and as
much fruit as they think fit to eat, as by that
they soon get sick of it. They generally carry
home fruit in their pockets for their playmates,
or brothers, or sisters; the costermongers allow
this, if they are satisfied that the pocketing
is not for sale. Some lads are engaged by
the week, having from 1s. to 1s. 6d., and their
food when out with their employer. Their
lodging is found only in a few cases, and then
they sleep in the same room with their master and
mistress. Of master or mistress, however, they
never speak, but of Jack and Bet. They behave
respectfully to the women, who are generally
kind to them. They soon desert a very surly
or stingy master; though such a fellow could get
fifty boys next day if he wanted them, but not
lads used to the trade, for to these he's well
known by their talk one with another, and they
soon tell a man his character very plainly -- "very plainly indeed, sir, and to his face too," said one.

   Some of theśe boys are well beaten by their
employers; this they put up with readily enough,
if they experience kindness at the hands of the
man's wife; for, as I said before, parties that
have never thought of marriage, if they live to-
gether, call one another husbands and wives.

   In "working the country" these lads are put
on the same footing as their masters, with whom
they eat, drink, and sleep; but they do not
gamble with them. A few, however, go out and
tempt country boys to gamble, and -- as an almost
inevitable consequence -- to lose. "Some of the
boys," said one who had seen it often, "will
keep a number of countrymen in a beer-shop in
a roar for the hour, while the countrymen ply
them with beer, and some of the street-lads can
drink a good deal. I've known three bits of boys
order a pot of beer each, one after the other,
each paying his share, and a quartern of gin each
after that -- drunk neat; they don't understand
water. Drink doesn't seem to affect them as it
does men. I don't know why." "Some coster-
mongers," said another informant, "have been
known, when they've taken a fancy to a boy --
I know of two -- to dress him out like themselves,
silk handkerchiefs and all; for if they didn't
find them silk handkerchiefs, the boys would
soon get them out of their `bunts.' They like silk
handkerchiefs, for if they lose all their money
gambling, they can then pledge their handker-
chiefs."

   I have mentioned the term "bunts." Bunts is
the money made by the boys in this manner: --
If a costermonger, after having sold a sufficiency,
has 2s. or 3s. worth of goods left, and is anxious
to get home, he says to the boy, "Work these
streets, and bring me 2s. 6d. for the tol," (lot)
which the costermonger knows by his eye -- for
he seldom measures or counts -- is easily worth
that money. The lad then proceeds to sell the
things entrusted to him, and often shows great
ingenuity in so doing. If, for instance, turnips

Column 2

be tied up in penny bunches, the lad will open
some of them, so as to spread them out to nearly
twice their previous size, and if any one ask if
that be a penn'orth, he will say, "Here's a larger
for 1½d., marm," and so palm off a penny bunch
at 1½d. Out of each bunch of onions he takes
one or two, and makes an extra bunch. All that
the lad can make in this way over the half-crown
is his own, and called "bunts." Boys have made
from 6d. to 1s. 6d. "bunts," and this day after
day. Many of them will, in the course of their
traffic, beg old boots or shoes, if they meet with
better sort of people, and so "work it to rights,"
as they call it among themselves; servants often
give them cast-off clothes. It is seldom that a
boy carries home less than the stipulated sum.

   The above is what is understood as "fair
bunts."

   "Unfair bunts" is what the lad may make
unknown to his master; as, if a customer call
from the area for goods cried at 2d., the lad may
get 2½d., by pretending what he had carried was
a superior sort to that called at 2d., -- or by any
similar trick.

   "I have known some civil and industrious
boys," said a costermonger to me, "get to save
a few shillings, and in six months start with a
shallow, and so rise to a donkey-cart. The
greatest drawback to struggling boys is their
sleeping in low lodging-houses, where they are
frequently robbed, or trepanned to part with
their money, or else they get corrupted."

   Some men employ from four to twelve boys,
sending them out with shallows and barrows,
the boys bringing home the proceeds. The men
who send lads out in this way, count the things,
and can tell to a penny what can be realised on
them. They neither pay nor treat the boys well,
I am told, and are looked upon by the other
costermongers as extortioners, or unfair dealers,
making money by trading on poor lads' necessi-
ties, who serve them to avoid starvation. These
men are called "Scurfs." If the boys working
for them make bunts, or are suspected of
making bunts, there is generally "a row" about
it.

   The bunts is for the most part the gambling
money, as well as the money for the "penny
gaff," the "twopenny hop," the tobacco, and the
pudding money of the boys. "More would
save their wages and their bunts," was said to
me on good authority, "but they have no
place to keep their money in, and don't under-
stand anything about savings banks. Many of
these lads are looked on with suspicion by the
police, and treated like suspected folks; but in
my opinion they are not thieves, or they wouldn't
work so hard; for a thief's is a much easier life
than a costermonger's."

   When a boy begins business on his own ac-
count, or "sets up," as they call it, he purchases
a shallow, which costs at least 1s., and a half
hundred of herrings, 1s. 6d. By the sale of the
herrings he will clear 1s., going the round he
has been accustomed to, and then trade on the
2s. 6d. Or, if it be fruit time, he will trade in

   There are I am assured from 200 to 300
costers, who, in the busier times of the year,
send out four youths or lads each on an
average. The young men thus sent out gene-
rally live with the costermonger, paying 7s. a week for board, lodging and washing. These
youths, I was told by one who knew them
well, were people who "didn't care to work for
themselves, because they couldn't keep their
money together; it would soon all go; and they
must keep it together for their masters. They
are not fed badly, but then they make `bunts'
sometimes, and it goes for grub when they're
out, so they eat less at home."

   My inquiries among the costermongers induced
one of their number to address me by letter.
My correspondent -- a well-informed and well-
educated man -- describes himself as "being
one of those that have been unfortunately thrust
into that precarious way of obtaining a living,
not by choice but circumstances." The writer
then proceeds to say: "No person but those
actually connected with the streets can tell the
exertion, anxiety, and difficulties we have to
undergo; and I know for a fact it induces a
great many to drink that would not do so,
only to give them a stimulant to bear up
against the troubles that they have to contend
with; and so it ultimately becomes habitual.
I could point out many instances of the kind.
My chief object in addressing you is to give my
humble suggestion as to the best means of alle-
viating our present position in society, and
establishing us in the eyes of the public as a
respectable body of men, honestly endeavouring
to support our families, without becoming
chargeable to the parish, and to show that we
are not all the degraded class we are at present
thought to be, subject to the derision of every
passer by, and all looked upon as extortioners
and the confederates of thieves. It is grievous
to see children, as soon as they are able to speak,
thrust into the streets to sell, and in many in-
stances, I am sorry to state, to support their
parents. Kind sir, picture to yourself a group
of those children mixing together indiscrimi-
nately -- the good with the bad -- all uneducated --
and without that parental care which is so essen-
tial for youth -- and judge for yourself the result:
the lads in some instances take to thieving,
(this being easier for a living), and the girls to
prostitution; and so they pass the greater part of
their time in gaol, or get transported. Even
those who are honestly disposed cannot have a
chance of bettering their condition, in conse-
quence of their being uneducated, so that they

Column 2

often turn out brutal husbands and bad fathers.
Surely, sir, Government could abolish in a
measure this juvenile trading, so conducive to
crime and so injurious to the shopkeeper, who
is highly rated. How is it possible, if children
congregate around his door with the very articles
he may deal in, that he can meet the de-
mands for rates and taxes; whereas the
educated man, brought by want to sell in the
streets, would not do so, but keep himself
apart from the shopkeeper, and not merit
his enmity, and the interference of the police,
which he necessarily claims. I have procured
an existence (with a few years' exception) in the
streets for the last twenty-five years as a general
salesman of perishable and imperishable articles,
and should be most happy to see anything done
for the benefit of my class. This juvenile trading
I consider the root of the evil; after the removal
of this, the costermongers might, by classifying
and co-operation, render themselves compara-
tively happy, in their position, and become
acknowledged members of society."

   Another costermonger, in conversing with me
concerning these young traders, said, that many
of them would ape the vices of men: mere
urchins would simulate drunkenness, or boast,
with many an exaggeration, of their drinking
feats. They can get as much as they please at
the public-houses; and this too, I may add,
despite the 43rd clause in the Police Act, which
enacts, that "every person, licensed to deal in
exciseable liquors within the said (Metropolitan
Police) District, who shall knowingly supply any
sort of distilled exciseable liquor to be drunk
upon the premises, to any boy or girl, apparently
under the age of sixteen years, shall be liable to
a penalty of not more than 20s.;" and upon a
second conviction to 40s. penalty; and on a
third to 5l.

   Among the costers the term education is (as I
have already intimated) merely understood as
meaning a complete knowledge of the art of
"buying in the cheapest market and selling in
the dearest." There are few lads whose training
extends beyond this. The father is the tutor,
who takes the boy to the different markets,
instructs him in the art of buying, and when
the youth is perfect on this point, the parent's
duty is supposed to have been performed.
Nearly all these boys are remarkable for their
precocious sharpness. To use the words of one
of the class, "these young ones are as sharp
as terriers, and learns every dodge of business
in less than half no time. There's one I knows
about three feet high, that's up to the business
as clever as a man of thirty. Though he's only
twelve years old he'll chaff down a peeler so
uncommon severe, that the only way to stop
him is to take him in charge!"

   It is idle to imagine that these lads, possessed
of a mental acuteness almost wonderful, will
not educate themselves in vice, if we neglect

   As soon as a boy is old enough to shout well
and loudly, his father takes him into the streets.
Some of these youths are not above seven years
of age, and it is calculated that not more than
one in a hundred has ever been to a school of
any kind. The boy walks with the barrow, or
guides the donkey, shouting by turns with the
father, who, when the goods are sold, will as a
reward, let him ride home on the tray. The
lad attends all markets with his father, who
teaches him his business and shows him his
tricks of trade; "for," said a coster, "a governor
in our line leaves the knowledge of all his
dodges to his son, jist as the rich coves do their
tin."

   The life of a coster-boy is a very hard one.
In summer he will have to be up by four
o'clock in the morning, and in winter he is
never in bed after six. When he has re-
turned from market, it is generally his duty
to wash the goods and help dress the barrow.
About nine he begins his day's work, shouting
whilst the father pushes; and as very often the
man has lost his voice, this share of the
labour is left entirely to him. When a coster
has regular customers, the vegetables or fish
are all sold by twelve o'clock, and in many
coster families the lad is then packed off with
fruit to hawk in the streets. When the work
is over, the father will perhaps take the boy to
a public-house with him, and give him part of
his beer. Sometimes a child of four or five is
taken to the tap-room, especially if he be pretty
and the father proud of him. "I have seen,"
said a coster to me, "a baby of five year old
reeling drunk in a tap-room. His governor
did it for the lark of the thing, to see him chuck
hisself about -- sillyfied like."

   The love of gambling soon seizes upon the
coster boy. Youths of about twelve or so will
as soon as they can get away from work go to
a public-house and play cribbage for pints of
beer, or for a pint a corner. They generally
continue playing till about midnight, and
rarely -- except on a Sunday -- keep it up all
night.

   It ordinarily happens that when a lad is
about thirteen, he quarrels with his father, and
gets turned away from home. Then he is
forced to start for himself. He knows where
he can borrow stock-money and get his barrow,
for he is as well acquainted with the markets is
the oldest hand at the business, and children
may often be seen in the streets under-selling
their parents. "How's it possible," said a
woman, "for people to live when there's their
own son at the end of the court a-calling his

Column 2

goods as cheap again as we can afford to sell
ourn."

   If the boy is lucky in trade, his next want is
to get a girl to keep home for him. I was
assured, that it is not at all uncommon for a
lad of fifteen to be living with a girl of the
same age, as man and wife. It creates no
disgust among his class, but seems rather to
give him a position among such people. Their
courtship does not take long when once the
mate has been fixed upon. The girl is invited
to "raffles," and treated to "twopenny hops,"
and half-pints of beer. Perhaps a silk neck
handkerchief -- a "King's-man" is given as
a present; though some of the lads will, when
the arrangement has been made, take the gift
back again and wear it themselves. The boys
are very jealous, and if once made angry behave
with great brutality to the offending girl. A
young fellow of about sixteen told me, as he
seemed to grow angry at the very thought,
"If I seed my gal a talking to another chap
I'd fetch her sich a punch of the nose as
should plaguy quick stop the whole business."
Another lad informed me, with a knowing look,
"that the gals -- it was a rum thing now he
come to think on it -- axully liked a feller for
walloping them. As long as the bruises hurted,
she was always thinking on the cove as gived
'em her." After a time, if the girl continues
faithful, the young coster may marry her; but
this is rarely the case, and many live with
their girls until they have grown to be men,
or perhaps they may quarrel the very first
year, and have a fight and part.

   These boys hate any continuous work. So
strong is this objection to continuity that they
cannot even remain selling the same article for
more than a week together. Moreover none of
them can be got to keep stalls. They must be
perpetually on the move -- or to use their own
words "they like a roving life." They all
of them delight in dressing "flash" as they
call it. If a "governor" was to try and
"palm off" his old cord jacket upon the lad
that worked with him, the boy wouldn't take
it. "Its too big and seedy for me," he'd say,
"and I aint going to have your leavings."
They try to dress like the men, with large
pockets in their cord jackets and plenty of
them. Their trowsers too must fit tight at the
knee, and their boots they like as good as pos-
sible. A good "King's-man," a plush skull
cap, and a seam down the trowsers are the great
points of ambition with the coster boys.

   A lad about fourteen informed me that "brass
buttons, like a huntman's, with foxes' heads on
em, looked stunning flash, and the gals liked
em." As for the hair, they say it ought to be
long in front, and done in "figure-six" curls,
or twisted back to the ear "Newgate-knocker
style." "But the worst of hair is," they add,
"that it is always getting cut off in quod, all
along of muzzling the bobbies."

   The whole of the coster-boys are fond of
good living. I was told that when a lad started

   One lad that I spoke to gave me as much of
his history as he could remember. He was a
tall stout boy, about sixteen years old, with a
face utterly vacant. His two heavy lead-
coloured eyes stared unmeaningly at me, and,
beyond a constant anxiety to keep his front
lock curled on his cheek, he did not exhibit the
slightest trace of feeling. He sank into his
seat heavily and of a heap, and when once
settled down he remained motionless, with his
mouth open and his hands on his knees -- almost
as if paralyzed. He was dressed in all the slang
beauty of his class, with a bright red handker-
chief and unexceptionable boots.

   "My father" he told me in a thick unim-
passioned voice, "was a waggoner, and worked
the country roads. There was two on us at
home with mother, and we used to play along
with the boys of our court, in Golding-lane, at
buttons and marbles. I recollects nothing more
than this -- only the big boys used to cheat like
bricks and thump us if we grumbled -- that's
all I recollects of my infancy, as you calls it.
Father I've heard tell died when I was three
and brother only a year old. It was worse luck
for us! -- Mother was so easy with us. I once
went to school for a couple of weeks, but the
cove used to fetch me a wipe over the knuckles
with his stick, and as I wasn't going to stand
that there, why you see I aint no great schol-
lard. We did as we liked with mother, she
was so precious easy, and I never learned any-
thing but playing buttons and making leaden

Column 2

`bonces,' that's all," (here the youth laughed
slightly.) "Mother used to be up and out very
early washing in families -- anything for a
living. She was a good mother to us. We
was left at home with the key of the room and
some bread and butter for dinner. Afore she
got into work -- and it was a goodish long time --
we was shocking hard up, and she pawned nigh
everything. Sometimes, when we had'nt no
grub at all, the other lads, perhaps, would give
us some of their bread and butter, but often our
stomachs used to ache with the hunger, and we
would cry when we was werry far gone. She
used to be at work from six in the morning till
ten o'clock at night, which was a long time for
a child's belly to hold out again, and when it
was dark we would go and lie down on the bed
and try and sleep until she came home with the
food. I was eight year old then.

   "A man as know'd mother, said to her, `Your
boy's got nothing to do, let him come along with
me and yarn a few ha'pence,' and so I became
a coster. He gave me 4d. a morning and my
breakfast. I worked with him about three
year, until I learnt the markets, and then I and
brother got baskets of our own, and used to
keep mother. One day with another, the two
on us together could make 2s. 6d. by selling
greens of a morning, and going round to the
publics with nuts of a evening, till about ten
o'clock at night. Mother used to have a bit
of fried meat or a stew ready for us when we
got home, and by using up the stock as we
couldn't sell, we used to manage pretty tidy.
When I was fourteen I took up with a girl.
She lived in the same house as we did, and I
used to walk out of a night with her and give
her half-pints of beer at the publics. She were
about thirteen, and used to dress werry nice,
though she weren't above middling pretty.
Now I'm working for another man as gives me
a shilling a week, victuals, washing, and lodging,
just as if I was one of the family.

   "On a Sunday I goes out selling, and all I
yarns I keeps. As for going to church, why, I
can't afford it, -- besides, to tell the truth, I
don't like it well enough. Plays, too, ain't in
my line much; I'd sooner go to a dance -- its
more livelier. The `penny gaffs' is rather more
in my style; the songs are out and out, and
makes our gals laugh. The smuttier the better,
I thinks; bless you! the gals likes it as much
as we do. If we lads ever has a quarrel, why,
we fights for it. [unclear: ] I was to let a cove off once,
he'd do it again but I never give a lad a
chance, so long as I can get anigh him. I
never heard about Christianity, but if a cove
was to fetch me a lick of the head, I'd give it
him again, whether he was a big 'un or a little
'un. I'd precious soon see a henemy of mine
shot afore I'd forgive him, -- where's the use?
Do I understand what behaving to your neigh-
bour is? -- In coorse I do. If a feller as lives
next me wanted a basket of mine as I wasn't
using, why, he might have it; if I was working
it though, I'd see him further! I can under-

   In many of the thoroughfares of London there
are shops which have been turned into a kind of
temporary theatre (admission one penny), where
dancing and singing take place every night.
Rude pictures of the performers are arranged
outside, to give the front a gaudy and attractive
look, and at night-time coloured lamps and
transparencies are displayed to draw an au-
dience. These places are called by the costers
"Penny Gaffs;" and on a Monday night as
many as six performances will take place, each
one having its two hundred visitors.

   It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance
and immorality of so numerous a class as that
of the costermongers, without wishing to discover
the cause of their degradation. Let any one
curious on this point visit one of these penny
shows, and he will wonder that any trace of
virtue and honesty should remain among the
people. Here the stage, instead of being the
means for illustrating a moral precept, is turned
into a platform to teach the cruelest debauchery.
The audience is usually composed of children so
young, that these dens become the school-rooms
where the guiding morals of a life are picked
up; and so precocious are the little things, that
the girl of nine will, from constant attendance at
such places, have learnt to understand the filthi-
est sayings, and laugh at them as loudly as the
grown-up lads around her. What notions can
the young female form of marriage and chastity,
when the penny theatre rings with applause at
the performance of a scene whose sole point
turns upon the pantomimic imitation of the un-
restrained indulgence of the most corrupt appe-
tites of our nature? How can the lad learn to
check his hot passions and think honesty and
virtue admirable, when the shouts around him
impart a glory to a descriptive song so painfully
corrupt, that it can only have been made tole-

Column 2

rable by the most habitual excess? The men
who preside over these infamous places know
too well the failings of their audiences. They
know that these poor children require no nicely-
turned joke to make the evening pass merrily,
and that the filth they utter needs no double
meaning to veil its obscenity. The show that
will provide the most unrestrained debauchery
will have the most crowded benches; and to
gain this point, things are acted and spoken
that it is criminal even to allude to.

   Not wishing to believe in the description
which some of the more intelligent of the cos-
termongers had given of these places, it was
thought better to visit one of them, so that all
exaggeration might be avoided. One of the
least offensive of the exhibitions was fixed upon.

   The "penny gaff" chosen was situated in a
broad street near Smithfield; and for a great
distance off, the jingling sound of music was
heard, and the gas-light streamed out into the
thick night air as from a dark lantern, glitter-
ing on the windows of the houses opposite, and
lighting up the faces of the mob in the road,
as on an illumination night. The front of a
large shop had been entirely removed, and the
entrance was decorated with paintings of the
"comic singers," in their most "humourous"
attitudes. On a table against the wall was
perched the band, playing what the costers call
"dancing tunes" with great effect, for the hole
at the money-taker's box was blocked up with
hands tendering the penny. The crowd with-
out was so numerous, that a policeman was in
attendance to preserve order, and push the boys
off the pavement -- the music having the effect of
drawing them insensibly towards the festooned
green-baize curtain.

   The shop itself had been turned into a
waiting-room, and was crowded even to the top
of the stairs leading to the gallery on the first
floor. The ceiling of this "lobby" was painted
blue, and spotted with whitewash clouds, to re-
present the heavens; the boards of the trap-
door, and the laths that showed through the
holes in the plaster, being all of the same
colour. A notice was here posted, over the
canvass door leading into the theatre, to the
effect that "Ladies and Gentlemen to the
front places must pay Twopence."

   The visitors, with a few exceptions, were all
boys and girls, whose ages seemed to vary from
eight to twenty years. Some of the girls -- though
their figures showed them to be mere children --
were dressed in showy cotton-velvet polkas, and
wore dowdy feathers in their crushed bonnets.
They stood laughing and joking with the lads,
in an unconcerned, impudent manner, that was
almost appalling. Some of them, when tired
of waiting, chose their partners, and commenced
dancing grotesquely, to the admiration of the
lookers-on, who expressed their approbation in
obscene terms, that, far from disgusting the
poor little women, were received as compliments,
and acknowledged with smiles and coarse repar-
tees. The boys clustered together, smoking their

   To discover the kind of entertainment, a lad
near me and my companion was asked "if
there was any flash dancing." With a knowing
wink the boy answered, "Lots! show their legs
and all, prime!" and immediately the boy fol-
lowed up his information by a request for a
"yennep" to get a "tib of occabot." After wait-
ing in the lobby some considerable time, the
performance inside was concluded, and the au-
dience came pouring out through the canvass
door.-As they had to pass singly, I noticed
them particularly. Above three-fourths of
them were women and girls, the rest consisting
chiefly of mere boys -- for out of about two
hundred persons I counted only eighteen men.
Forward they came, bringing an overpowering
stench with them, laughing and yelling as
they pushed their way through the waiting-
room. One woman carrying a sickly child
with a bulging forehead, was reeling drunk, the
saliva running down her mouth as she stared
about her with a heavy fixed eye. Two boys
were pushing her from side to side, while the
poor infant slept, breathing heavily, as if stupi-
fied, through the din. Lads jumping on girls'
shoulders, and girls laughing hysterically from
being tickled by the youths behind them, every
one shouting and jumping, presented a mad
scene of frightful enjoyment.

   When these had left, a rush for places by
those in waiting began, that set at defiance the
blows and strugglings of a lady in spangles
who endeavoured to preserve order and take the
checks. As time was a great object with the
proprietor, the entertainment within began
directly the first seat was taken, so that the
lads without, rendered furious by the rattling
of the piano within, made the canvass partition
bulge in and out, with the strugglings of those
seeking admission, like a sail in a flagging
wind.

   To form the theatre, the first floor had been
removed; the whitewashed beams however
still stretched from wall to wall. The lower
room had evidently been the warehouse, while
the upper apartment had been the sitting-room,
for the paper was still on the walls. A gallery,
with a canvass front, had been hurriedly built
up, and it was so fragile that the boards bent
under the weight of those above. The bricks
in the warehouse were smeared over with red
paint, and had a few black curtains daubed
upon them. The coster-youths require no very

Column 2

great scenic embellishment, and indeed the
stage -- which was about eight feet square --
could admit of none. Two jets of gas, like
those outside a butcher's shop, were placed on
each side of the proscenium, and proved very
handy for the gentlemen whose pipes required
lighting. The band inside the "theatre"
could not compare with the band without.
An old grand piano, whose canvass-covered
top extended the entire length of the stage,
sent forth its wiry notes under the be-ringed
fingers of a "professor Wilkinsini," while an-
other professional, with his head resting on his
violin, played vigorously, as he stared uncon-
cernedly at the noisy audience.

   Singing and dancing formed the whole of the
hours' performance, and, of the two, the singing
was preferred. A young girl, of about fourteen
years of age, danced with more energy than
grace, and seemed to be well-known to the
spectators, who cheered her on by her Christian
name. When the dance was concluded, the
proprietor of the establishment threw down a
penny from the gallery, in the hopes that
others might be moved to similar acts of
generosity; but no one followed up the offer-
ing, so the young lady hunted after the
money and departed. The "comic singer," in
a battered hat and the huge bow to his cravat,
was received with deafening shouts. Several
songs were named by the costers, but the
"funny gentleman" merely requested them "to
hold their jaws," and putting on a "knowing"
look, sang a song, the whole point of which
consisted in the mere utterance of some filthy
word at the end of each stanza. Nothing, how-
ever, could have been more successful. The
lads stamped their feet with delight; the girls
screamed with enjoyment. Once or twice a
young shrill laugh would anticipate the fun -- as
if the words were well known -- or the boys would
forestall the point by shouting it out before the
proper time. When the song was ended the
house was in a delirium of applause. The
canvass front to the gallery was beaten with
sticks, drum-like, and sent down showers of
white powder on the heads in the pit. Another
song followed, and the actor knowing on what
his success depended, lost no opportunity of in-
creasing his laurels. The most obscene thoughts,
the most disgusting scenes were coolly described,
making a poor child near me wipe away the
tears that rolled down her eyes with the enjoy-
ment of the poison. There were three or four of
these songs sung in the course of the evening,
each one being encored, and then changed.
One written about "Pine-apple rock," was the
grand treat of the night, and offered greater
scope to the rhyming powers of the author
than any of the others. In this, not a single
chance had been missed; ingenuity had been
exerted to its utmost lest an obscene thought
should be passed by, and it was absolutely
awful to behold the relish with which the
young ones jumped to the hideous meaning of
the verses.

   There was one scene yet to come, that was
perfect in its wickedness. A ballet began be-
tween a man dressed up as a woman, and a
country clown. The most disgusting attitudes
were struck, the most immoral acts represented,
without one dissenting voice. If there had been
any feat of agility, any grimacing, or, in fact,
anything with which the laughter of the unedu-
cated classes is usually associated, the applause
might have been accounted for; but here were
two ruffians degrading themselves each time
they stirred a limb, and forcing into the brains
of the childish audience before them thoughts
that must embitter a lifetime, and descend from
father to child like some bodily infirmity.

   When I had left, I spoke to a better class
costermonger on this saddening subject. "Well,
sir, it is frightful," he said, "but the boys will have their amusements. If their amusements is
bad they don't care; they only wants to laugh,
and this here kind of work does it. Give 'em
better singing and better dancing, and they'd go,
if the price was as cheap as this is. I've seen,
when a decent concert was given at a penny, as
many as four thousand costers present, behaving
themselves as quietly and decently as possible.
Their wives and children was with 'em, and no
audience was better conducted. It's all stuff
talking about them preferring this sort of thing.
Give 'em good things at the same price, and I
know they will like the good, better than the
bad."

   My own experience with this neglected class
goes to prove, that if we would really lift them
out of the moral mire in which they are wallow-
ing, the first step must be to provide them with
wholesome amusements. The misfortune, how-
ever, is, that when we seek to elevate the cha-
racter of the people, we give them such mere
dry abstract truths and dogmas to digest, that
the uneducated mind turns with abhorrence from
them. We forget how we ourselves were origi-
nally won by our emotions to the consideration
of such subjects. We do not remember how our
own tastes have been formed, nor do we, in our
zeal, stay to reflect how the tastes of a people
generally are created; and, consequently, we
cannot perceive that a habit of enjoying any
matter whatsoever can only be induced in the
mind by linking with it some æsthetic affection.
The heart is the mainspring of the intellect, and
the feelings the real educers and educators of the
thoughts. As games with the young destroy the
fatigue of muscular exercise, so do the sympa-
thies stir the mind to action without any sense
of effort. It is because "serious" people gene-
rally object to enlist the emotions in the educa-
tion of the poor, and look upon the delight which
arises in the mind from the mere perception of
the beauty of sound, motion, form, and colour --
or from the apt association of harmonious or
incongruous ideas -- or from the sympathetic
operation of the affections; it is because, I say,
the zealous portion of society look upon these
matters as "vanity," that the amusements of the
working-classes are left to venal traders to pro-

Column 2

vide. Hence, in the low-priced entertainments
which necessarily appeal to the poorer, and,
therefore, to the least educated of the people,
the proprietors, instead of trying to develop in
them the purer sources of delight, seek only to
gratify their audience in the coarsest manner, by
appealing to their most brutal appetites. And
thus the emotions, which the great Architect of
the human mind gave us as the means of quick-
ening our imaginations and refining our senti-
ments, are made the instruments of crushing
every operation of the intellect and debasing our
natures. It is idle and unfeeling to believe that
the great majority of a people whose days are
passed in excessive toil, and whose homes are
mostly of an uninviting character, will forego all amusements, and consent to pass their evenings
by their no firesides, reading tracts or singing
hymns. It is folly to fancy that the mind, spent
with the irksomeness of compelled labour, and
depressed, perhaps, with the struggle to live by
that labour after all, will not, when the work is
over, seek out some place where at least it can
forget its troubles or fatigues in the temporary
pleasure begotten by some mental or physical
stimulant. It is because we exact too much of
the poor -- because we, as it were, strive to make
true knowledge and true beauty as forbidding as
possible to the uneducated and unrefined, that
they fly to their penny gaffs, their twopenny-
hops, their beer-shops, and their gambling-
grounds for pleasures which we deny them, and
which we, in our arrogance, believe it is possible
for them to do without.

   The experiment so successfully tried at
Liverpool of furnishing music of an enlivening
and yet elevating character at the same price as
the concerts of the lowest grade, shows that the
people may be won to delight in beauty instead
of beastiality, and teaches us again that it is our fault to allow them to be as they are and not
their's to remain so. All men are compound
animals, with many inlets of pleasure to their
brains, and if one avenue be closed against
them, why it but forces them to seek delight
through another. So far from the perception of
beauty inducing habits of gross enjoyment as
"serious" people generally imagine, a mo-
ment's reflection will tell us that these very
habits are only the necessary consequences of
the non-development of the æsthetic faculty;
for the two assuredly cannot co-exist. To culti-
vate the sense of the beautiful is necessarily to
inculcate a detestation of the sensual. Moreover,
it is impossible for the mind to be accustomed to
the contemplation of what is admirable without
continually mounting to higher and higher
forms of it -- from the beauty of nature to that
of thought -- from thought to feeling, from
feeling to action, and lastly to the fountain of
all goodness -- the great munificent Creator of
the sea, the mountains, and the flowers -- the
stars, the sunshine, and the rainbow -- the fancy,
the reason, the love and the heroism of man and
womankind -- the instincts of the beasts -- the
glory of the angels -- and the mercy of Christ.

   The costermongers, taken as a body, entertain
the most imperfect idea of the sanctity of mar-
riage. To their undeveloped minds it merely
consists in the fact of a man and woman living
together, and sharing the gains they may each
earn by selling in the street. The father and
mother of the girl look upon it as a convenient
means of shifting the support of their child over
to another's exertions; and so thoroughly do
they believe this to be the end and aim of
matrimony, that the expense of a church cere-
mony is considered as a useless waste of money,
and the new pair are received by their com-
panions as cordially as if every form of law and
religion had been complied with.

   The notions of morality among these people
agree strangely, as I have said, with those of
many savage tribes -- indeed, it would be curious
if it were otherwise. They are a part of the
Nomades of England, neither knowing nor caring
for the enjoyments of home. The hearth, which
is so sacred a symbol to all civilized races as
being the spot where the virtues of each suc-
ceeding generation are taught and encouraged,
has no charms to them. The tap-room is the
father's chief abiding place; whilst to the
mother the house is only a better kind of tent.
She is away at the stall, or hawking her goods
from morning till night, while the children are
left to play away the day in the court or alley,
and pick their morals out of the gutter. So
long as the limbs gain strength the parent cares
for nothing else. As the young ones grow up,
their only notions of wrong are formed by what
the policeman will permit them to do. If we,
who have known from babyhood the kindly
influences of a home, require, before we are
thrust out into the world to get a living for our-
selves, that our perceptions of good and evil
should be quickened and brightened (the same
as our perceptions of truth and falsity) by the
experience and counsel of those who are wiser
and better than ourselves, -- if, indeed, it needed
a special creation and example to teach the best
and strongest of us the law of right, how bitterly
must the children of the street-folk require tui-
tion, training, and advice, when from their very
cradles (if, indeed, they ever knew such luxuries)
they are doomed to witness in their parents,
whom they naturally believe to be their supe-
riors, habits of life in which passion is the sole
rule of action, and where every appetite of our
animal nature is indulged in without the least
restraint.

   I say thus much because I am anxious to
make others feel, as I do myself, that we are
the culpable parties in these matters. That
they poor things should do as they do is but
human nature -- but that we should allow them
to remain thus destitute of every blessing
vouchsafed to ourselves -- that we should wil-
lingly share what we enjoy with our brethren
at the Antipodes, and yet leave those who are
nearer and who, therefore, should be dearer to

Column 2

us, to want even the commonest moral neces-
saries is a paradox that gives to the zeal of our
Christianity a strong savour of the chicanery of
Cant.

   The costermongers strongly resemble the
North American Indians in their conduct to
their wives. They can understand that it is the
duty of the woman to contribute to the happi-
ness of the man, but cannot feel that there is a
reciprocal duty from the man to the woman.
The wife is considered as an inexpensive servant,
and the disobedience of a wish is punished with
blows. She must work early and late, and to
the husband must be given the proceeds of her
labour. Often when the man is in one of his
drunken fits -- which sometimes last two or three
days continuously -- she must by her sole ex-
ertions find food for herself and him too. To
live in peace with him, there must be no mur-
muring, no tiring under work, no fancied cause
for jealousy -- for if there be, she is either beaten
into submission or cast adrift to begin life again --
as another's leavings.

   The story of one coster girl's life may be taken
as a type of the many. When quite young she
is placed out to nurse with some neighbour,
the mother -- if a fond one -- visiting the child at
certain periods of the day, for the purpose of
feeding it, or sometimes, knowing the round she
has to make, having the infant brought to her
at certain places, to be "suckled." As soon as
it is old enough to go alone, the court is its
play-ground, the gutter its school-room, and
under the care of an elder sister the little one
passes the day, among children whose mothers
like her own are too busy out in the streets help-
ing to get the food, to be able to mind the family
at home. When the girl is strong enough, she
in her turn is made to assist the mother by
keeping guard over the younger children, or, if
there be none, she is lent out to carry about a
baby, and so made to add to the family income
by gaining her sixpence weekly. Her time is
from the earliest years fully occupied; indeed,
her parents cannot afford to keep her without
doing and getting something. Very few of the
children receive the least education. "The
parents," I am told, "never give their minds to
learning, for they say, `What's the use of it?
that won't yarn a gal a living."' Everything is
sacrificed -- as, indeed, under the circumstances
it must be -- in the struggle to live -- aye! and to
live merely. Mind, heart, soul, are all absorbed
in the belly. The rudest form of animal life,
physiologists tell us, is simply a locomotive
stomach. Verily, it would appear as if our
social state had a tendency to make the highest
animal sink into the lowest.

   At about seven years of age the girls first go
into the streets to sell. A shallow-basket is
given to them, with about two shillings for stock-
money, and they hawk, according to the time of
year, either oranges, apples, or violets; some
begin their street education with the sale of
water-cresses. The money earned by this means
is strictly given to the parents. Sometimes --

   The life of the coster-girls is as severe as that
of the boys. Between four and five in the
morning they have to leave home for the mar-
kets, and sell in the streets until about nine.
Those that have more kindly parents, return then
to breakfast, but many are obliged to earn the
morning's meal for themselves. After break-
fast, they generally remain in the streets until
about ten o'clock at night; many having nothing
during all that time but one meal of bread and
butter and coffee, to enable them to support the
fatigue of walking from street to street with
the heavy basket on their heads. In the course
of a day, some girls eat as much as a pound of
bread, and very seldom get any meat, unless it
be on a Sunday.

   There are many poor families that, without
the aid of these girls, would be forced into the
workhouse. They are generally of an affection-
ate disposition, and some will perform acts of
marvellous heroism to keep together the little
home. It is not at all unusual for mere chil-
dren of fifteen to walk their eight or ten miles
a day, carrying a basket of nearly two hundred
weight on their heads. A journey to Woolwich
and back, or to the towns near London, is often
undertaken to earn the 1s. 6d. their parents are
anxiously waiting for at home.

   Very few of these girls are married to the
men they afterwards live with. Their courtship
is usually a very short one; for, as one told me,
"the life is such a hard one, that a girl is ready
to get rid of a little of the labour at any price."
The coster-lads see the girls at market, and if
one of them be pretty, and a boy take a fancy
to her, he will make her bargains for her, and
carry her basket home. Sometimes a coster
working his rounds will feel a liking for a wench
selling her goods in the street, and will leave
his barrow to go and talk with her. A girl
seldom takes up with a lad before she is sixteen,
though some of them, when barely fifteen or
even fourteen, will pair off. They court for a
time, going to raffles and "gaffs" together, and
then the affair is arranged. The girl tells her
parents "she's going to keep company with
so-and-so," packs up what things she has, and
goes at once, without a word of remonstrance
from either father or mother. A furnished
room, at about 4s. a week, is taken, and the
young couple begin life The lad goes out as
usual with his barrow, and the girl goes out
with her basket, often working harder for her
lover than she had done for her parents. They
go to market together, and at about nine o'clock
her day's selling begins. Very often she will
take out with her in the morning what food she
requires during the day, and never return home
until eleven o'clock at night.

   The men generally behave very cruelly to

Column 2

the girls they live with. They are as faithful
to them as if they were married, but they are
jealous in the extreme. To see a man talking
to their girl is sufficient to ensure the poor
thing a beating. They sometimes ill-treat
them horribly -- most unmercifully indeed --
nevertheless the girls say they cannot help
loving them still, and continue working for
them, as if they experienced only kindness at
their hands. Some of the men are gentler and
more considerate in their treatment of them,
but by far the larger portion are harsh and
merciless. Often when the Saturday night's
earnings of the two have been large, the man
will take the entire money, and as soon as the
Sunday's dinner is over, commence drinking
hard, and continue drunk for two or three days
together, until the funds are entirely exhausted.
The women never gamble; they say, "it gives
them no excitement." They prefer, if they
have a spare moment in the evening, sitting
near the fire making up and patching their
clothes. "Ah, sir," said a girl to me, "a neat
gown does a deal with a man; he always likes
a girl best when everybody else likes her too."
On a Sunday they clean their room for the
week and go for a treat, if they can persuade
their young man to take them out in the after-
noon, either to Chalk Farm or Battersea Fields
-- "where there's plenty of life."

   After a girl has once grown accustomed to a
street-life, it is almost impossible to wean her
from it. The muscular irritability begotten by
continued wandering makes her unable to rest
for any time in one place, and she soon, if put
to any settled occupation, gets to crave for the
severe exercise she formerly enjoyed. The
least restraint will make her sigh after the
perfect liberty of the coster's "roving life." As
an instance of this I may relate a fact that
has occurred within the last six months. A
gentleman of high literary repute, struck with
the heroic strugglings of a coster Irish girl to
maintain her mother, took her to his house,
with a view of teaching her the duties of a
servant. At first the transition was a painful
one to the poor thing. Having travelled bare-
foot through the streets since a mere child, the
pressure of shoes was intolerable to her, and in
the evening or whenever a few minutes' rest
could be obtained, the boots were taken off, for
with them on she could enjoy no ease. The
perfect change of life, and the novelty of being
in a new place, reconciled her for some time to
the loss of her liberty. But no sooner did she
hear from her friends, that sprats were again
in the market, than, as if there were some
magical influence in the fish, she at once
requested to be freed from the confinement, and
permitted to return to her old calling.

   Such is the history of the lower class of girls,
though this lower class, I regret to say, consti-
tutes by far the greater portion of the whole.
Still I would not for a moment have it inferred
that all are bad. There are many young girls
getting their living, or rather helping to get

   I wished to have obtained a statement from
the girl whose portrait is here given, but she
was afraid to give the slightest information
about the habits of her companions, lest they
should recognize her by the engraving and per-
secute her for the revelations she might make.
After disappointing me some dozen times, I was
forced to seek out some other coster girl.

   The one I fixed upon was a fine-grown young
woman of eighteen. She had a habit of curtsying
to every question that was put to her. Her plaid
shawl was tied over the breast, and her cotton-
velvet bonnet was crushed in with carrying her
basket. She seemed dreadfully puzzled where
to put her hands, at one time tucking them
under her shawl, warming them at the fire, or
measuring the length of her apron, and when
she answered a question she invariably addressed
the fireplace. Her voice was husky from shout-
ing apples.

   "My mother has been in the streets selling all
her lifetime. Her uncle learnt her the markets
and she learnt me. When business grew bad
she said to me, `Now you shall take care on the
stall, and I'll go and work out charing.' The
way she learnt me the markets was to judge of
the weight of the baskets of apples, and then
said she, `Always bate 'em down, a'most a
half.' I always liked the street-life very well,
that was if I was selling. I have mostly kept a
stall myself, but I've known gals as walk about
with apples, as have told me that the weight of
the baskets is sich that the neck cricks, and
when the load is took off, its just as if you'd a
stiff neck, and the head feels as light as a
feather. The gals begins working very carly at
our work; the parents makes them go out when
a'most babies. There's a little gal, I'm sure
she an't more than half-past seven, that stands
selling water-cresses next my stall, and mother
was saying, `Only look there, how that little
one has to get her living afore she a'most knows
what a penn'orth means.'

   "There's six on us in family, and father and
mother makes eight. Father used to do odd jobs
with the gas-pipes in the streets, and when
work was slack we had very hard times of it.
Mother always liked being with us at home,
and used to manage to keep us employed out of
mischief -- she'd give us an old gown to make
into pinafores for the children and such like!
She's been very good to us, has mother, and
so's father. She always liked to hear us read
to her whilst she was washing or such like! and
then we big ones had to learn the little ones.
But when father's work got slack, if she had no

Column 2

employment charing, she'd say, `Now I'll go
and buy a bushel of apples,' and then she'd
turn out and get a penny that way. I suppose
by sitting at the stall from nine in the morning
till the shops shuts up -- say ten o'clock at night,
I can earn about 1s. 6d. a day. It's all according
to the apples -- whether they're good or not --
what we makes. If I'm unlucky, mother will
say, `Well, I'll go out to-morrow and see what
I can do;' and if I've done well, she'll say `Come
you're a good hand at it; you've done famous.'
Yes, mother's very fair that way. Ah! there's
many a gal I knows whose back has to suffer
if she don't sell her stock well; but, thank God!
I never get more than a blowing up. My
parents is very fair to me.

   "I dare say there ain't ten out of a hundred
gals what's living with men, what's been married
Church of England fashion. I know plenty
myself, but I don't, indeed, think it right. It
seems to me that the gals is fools to be 'ticed
away, but, in coorse, they needn't go without
they likes. This is why I don't think it's right.
Perhaps a man will have a few words with his
gal, and he'll say, `Oh! I ain't obligated to keep
her!' and he'll turn her out: and then where's
that poor gal to go? Now, there's a gal I knows
as came to me no later than this here week, and
she had a dreadful swole face and a awful black
eye; and I says, `Who's done that?' and she says,
says she, `Why, Jack' -- just in that way; and then
she says, says she, `I'm going to take a warrant
out to-morrow.' Well, he gets the warrant that
same night, but she never appears again him, for
fear of getting more beating. That don't seem to
me to be like married people ought to be. Be-
sides, if parties is married, they ought to bend to
each other; and they won't, for sartain, if they're
only living together. A man as is married is
obligated to keep his wife if they quarrels or not;
and he says to himself, says he, `Well, I may
as well live happy, like.' But if he can turn a
poor gal off, as soon as he tires of her, he begins
to have noises with her, and then gets quit of
her altogether. Again, the men takes the money
of the gals, and in coorse ought to treat 'em well
-- which they don't. This is another reason: when
the gal is in the family way, the lads mostly
sends them to the workhouse to lay in, and only
goes sometimes to take them a bit of tea and
shuggar; but, in coorse, married men wouldn't
behave in such likes to their poor wives. After
a quarrel, too, a lad goes and takes up with
another young gal, and that isn't pleasant for
the first one. The first step to ruin is them
places of `penny gaffs,' for they hears things
there as oughtn't to be said to young gals.
Besides, the lads is very insinivating, and after
leaving them places will give a gal a drop of
beer, and make her half tipsy, and then they
makes their arrangements. I've often heerd
the boys boasting of having ruined gals, for all
the world as if they was the first noblemen in
the land.

   "It would be a good thing if these sort of
goings on could be stopped. It's half the pa-

   "Only last night father was talking about
religion. We often talks about religion. Father
has told me that God made the world, and I've
heerd him talk about the first man and woman
as was made and lived -- it must be more than a
hundred years ago -- but I don't like to speak
on what I don't know. Father, too, has told
me about our Saviour what was nailed on a cross
to suffer for such poor people as we is. Father
has told us, too, about his giving a great many
poor people a penny loaf and a bit of fish each,
which proves him to have been a very kind gen-
tleman. The Ten Commandments was made by
him, I've heerd say, and he performed them too
among other miracles. Yes! this is part of
what our Saviour tells us. We are to forgive
everybody, and do nobody no injury. I don't
think I could forgive an enemy if she injured
me very much; I'm sure I don't know why
I couldn't, unless it is that I'm poor, and never
learnt to do it. If a gal stole my shawl and
didn't return it back or give me the value on it,
I couldn't forgive her; but if she told me she
lost it off her back, I shouldn't be so hard on
her. We poor gals ain't very religious, but
we are better than the men. We all of us
thanks God for everything -- even for a fine day;
as for sprats, we always says they're God's bles-
sing for the poor, and thinks it hard of the
Lord Mayor not to let 'em come in afore the
ninth of November, just because he wants to
dine off them -- which he always do. Yes, we
knows for certain that they eats plenty of
sprats at the Lord Mayor's `blanket.' They
say in the Bible that the world was made in six
days: the beasts, the birds, the fish, and all --
and sprats was among them in coorse. There
was only one house at that time as was made,
and that was the Ark for Adam and Eve and
their family. It seems very wonderful indeed
how all this world was done so quick. I should
have thought that England alone would have
took double the time; shouldn't you, sir? But
then it says in the Bible, God Almighty's a just
and true God, and in coorse time would be nothing
to him. When a good person is dying, we says,
`The Lord has called upon him, and he must
go,' but I can't think what it means, unless
it is that an angel comes -- like when we're
a-dreaming -- and tells the party he's wanted in
heaven. I know where heaven is; it's above
the clouds, and they're placed there to prevent
us seeing into it. That's where all the good people
go, but I'm afeerd," -- she continued solemnly --

Column 2

"there's very few costers among the angels --
'specially those as deceives poor gals.

   "No, I don't think this world could well go
on for ever. There's a great deal of ground in
it, certainly, and it seems very strong at present;
but they say there's to be a flood on the earth,
and earthquakes, and that will destroy it. The
earthquake ought to have took place some time
ago, as people tells me, but I never heerd any
more about it. If we cheats in the streets, I
know we shan't go to Heaven; but it's very
hard upon us, for if we didn't cheat we couldn't
live, profits is so bad. It's the same with the
shops, and I suppose the young men there won't
go to Heaven neither; but if people won't give
the money, both costers and tradesmen must
cheat, and that's very hard. Why, look at
apples! customers want them for less than
they cost us, and so we are forced to shove in
bad ones as well as good ones; and if we're to
suffer for that, it does seem to me dreadful
cruel."

   Curious and extravagant as this statement
may perhaps appear to the uninitiated, never-
theless it is here given as it was spoken; and it
was spoken with an earnestness that proved the
poor girl looked upon it as a subject, the solem-
nity of which forced her to be truthful.

   Concerning the connection of these two classes
I had the following account from a costermonger:
"I've known the coster trade for twelve years,
and never knew thieves go out a costering as a
cloak; they may have done so, but I very
much doubt it. Thieves go for an idle life, and
costermongering don't suit them. Our chaps
don't care a d -- n who they associate with, -- if
they're thieves they meet 'em all the same, or
anything that way. But costers buy what they
call `a gift,' -- may-be it's a watch or coat wot's
been stolen -- from any that has it to sell. A
man will say: `If you've a few shillings, you
may make a good thing of it. Why this iden-
tical watch is only twenty shillings, and it's
worth fifty;' so if the coster has money, he buys.
Thieves will get 3d. where a mechanic or a cos-
ter will earn ½d., and the most ignorant of our
people has a queer sort of respect for thieves,
because of the money they make. Poverty's as
much despised among costers as among other
people. People that's badly off among us are
called `cursed.' In bad weather it's common
for costers to `curse themselves,' as they call
having no trade. `Well, I'm cursed,' they say
when they can make no money. It's a common
thing among them to shout after any one they
don't like, that's reduced, `Well, ain't you
cursed?"' The costers, I am credibly informed,
gamble a great deal with the wealthier class of
thieves, and win of them the greater part of the
money they get.

   Concerning this head, I give the statement of
a man whose information I found fully con-

   The costermongers usually reside in the courts
and alleys in the neighbourhood of the different
street-markets. They themselves designate the
locality where, so to speak, a colony of their
people has been established, a "coster district,"
and the entire metropolis is thus parcelled out,
almost as systematically as if for the purposes
of registration. These costermonger districts
are as follows, and are here placed in the order
of the numerical importance of the residents:

   The homes of the costermongers in these
places, may be divided into three classes; firstly,
those who, by having a regular trade or by pru-
dent economy, are enabled to live in compara-
tive ease and plenty; secondly, those who, from
having a large family or by imprudent expendi-
ture, are, as it were, struggling with the world;
and thirdly, those who for want of stock-money,
or ill success in trade are nearly destitute.

   The first home I visited was that of an old
woman, who with the assistance of her son and
girls, contrived to live in a most praiseworthy
and comfortable manner. She and all her
family were teetotallers, and may be taken as a
fair type of the thriving costermonger.

   As I ascended a dark flight of stairs, a savory
smell of stew grew stronger at each step I
mounted. The woman lived in a large airy
room on the first floor ("the drawing-room")

Column 2

as she told me laughing at her own joke), well
lighted by a clean window, and I found her
laying out the savory smelling dinner looking
most temptingly clean. The floor was as white
as if it had been newly planed, the coke fire
was bright and warm, making the lid of the
tin saucepan on it rattle up and down as the
steam rushed out. The wall over the fire-place
was patched up to the ceiling with little square
pictures of saints, and on the mantel-piece,
between a row of bright tumblers and wine
glasses filled with odds and ends, stood glazed
crockeryware images of Prince Albert and M.
Jullien. Against the walls, which were papered
with "hangings" of four different patterns and
colours, were hung several warm shawls, and in
the band-box, which stood on the stained chest
of drawers, you could tell that the Sunday
bonnet was stowed safely away from the dust.
A turn-up bedstead thrown back, and covered
with a many-coloured patch-work quilt, stood
opposite to a long dresser with its mugs and
cups dangling from the hooks, and the clean
blue plates and dishes ranged in order at the
back. There were a few bushel baskets piled
up in one corner, "but the apples smelt so," she
said, "they left them in a stable at night."

   By the fire sat the woman's daughter, a
pretty meek-faced gray-eyed girl of sixteen,
who "was home nursing" for a cold. "Steve"
(her boy) I was informed, was out working.
With his help, the woman assured me, she could
live very comfortably -- "God be praised!" and
when he got the barrow he was promised, she
gave me to understand, that their riches were to
increase past reckoning. Her girl too was to be
off at work as soon as sprats came in. "Its on
Lord Mayor's-day they comes in," said a neigh-
bour who had rushed up to see the strange
gentleman, "they says he has 'em on his table,
but I never seed 'em. They never gives us the
pieces, no not even the heads," and every one
laughed to their utmost. The good old dame
was in high spirits, her dark eyes sparkling as
she spoke about her "Steve." The daughter in
a little time lost her bashfulness, and informed
me "that one of the Polish refugees was
a-courting Mrs. M -- , who had given him a
pair of black eyes."

   On taking my leave I was told by the mother
that their silver gilt Dutch clock -- with its glass
face and blackleaded weights -- "was the best
one in London, and might be relied on with the
greatest safety."

   As a specimen of the dwellings of the strug-
gling costers, the following may be cited:

   The man, a tall, thick-built, almost good-
looking fellow, with a large fur cap on his head,
lived with his family in a front kitchen, and
as there were, with his mother-in-law, five
persons, and only one bed, I was somewhat
puzzled to know where they could all sleep.
The barrow standing on the railings over the
window, half shut out the light, and when any
one passed there was a momentary shadow
thrown over the room, and a loud rattling of the

   Whilst we were talking, the man's little
girl came home. For a poor man's child she
was dressed to perfection; her pinafore was
clean, her face shone with soap, and her tidy
cotton print gown had clearly been newly put on
that morning. She brought news that "Janey"
was coming home from auntey's, and instantly
a pink cotton dress was placed by the mother-
in-law before the fire to air. (It appeared that
Janey was out at service, and came home once
a week to see her parents and take back a clean
frock.) Although these people were living,
so to speak, in a cellar, still every endeavour
had been made to give the home a look of
comfort. The window, with its paper-patched
panes, had a clean calico blind. The side-table
was dressed up with yellow jugs and cups and
saucers, and the band-boxes had been stowed
away on the flat top of the bedstead. All the
chairs, which were old fashioned mahogany ones,
had sound backs and bottoms.

   Of the third class, or the very poor, I chose
the following "type" out of the many others
that presented themselves. The family here
lived in a small slanting-roofed house, partly
stripped of its tiles. More than one half of the
small leaden squares of the first-floor window
were covered with brown paper, puffing out and
crackling in the wind, while through the greater
part of the others were thrust out ball-shaped
bundles of rags, to keep out the breeze. The
panes that did remain were of all shapes and
sizes, and at a distance had the appearance of
yellow glass, they were so stained with dirt. I
opened a door with a number chalked on it, and
groped my way up a broken tottering staircase.

   It took me some time after I had entered the
apartment before I could get accustomed to the
smoke, that came pouring into the room from
the chimney. The place was filled with it,
curling in the light, and making every thing so
indistinct that I could with difficulty see the
white mugs ranged in the corner-cupboard, not
three yards from me. When the wind was in
the north, or when it rained, it was always that
way, I was told, "but otherwise," said an old

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dame about sixty, with long grisly hair spread-
ing over her black shawl, "it is pretty good for
that."

   On a mattrass, on the floor, lay a pale-faced
girl -- "eighteen years old last twelfth-cake day"
-- her drawn-up form showing in the patch-work
counterpane that covered her. She had just
been confined, and the child had died! A little
straw, stuffed into an old tick, was all she
had to lie upon, and even that had been given
up to her by the mother until she was well
enough to work again. To shield her from the
light of the window, a cloak had been fastened
up slantingly across the panes; and on a string
that ran along the wall was tied, amongst the
bonnets, a clean nightcap -- "against the doctor
came," as the mother, curtsying, informed me.
By the side of the bed, almost hidden in the dark
shade, was a pile of sieve baskets, crowned by
the flat shallow that the mother "worked" with.

   The room was about nine feet square, and
furnished a home for three women. The ceiling
slanted like that of a garret, and was the colour
of old leather, excepting a few rough white
patches, where the tenants had rudely mended
it. The white light was easily seen through the
laths, and in one corner a large patch of the
paper looped down from the wall. One night
the family had been startled from their sleep by
a large mass of mortar -- just where the roof
bulged in -- falling into the room. "We never
want rain water," the woman told me, "for we
can catch plenty just over the chimney-place."

   They had made a carpet out of three or four
old mats. They were "obligated to it, for fear
of dropping anything through the boards into
the donkey stables in the parlour underneath.
But we only pay ninepence a week rent," said
the old woman, "and mustn't grumble."

   The only ornament in the place was on the
mantel-piece -- an old earthenware sugar-basin,
well silvered over, that had been given by the
eldest girl when she died, as a remembrance to
her mother. Two cracked tea-cups, on their
inverted saucers, stood on each side, and dressed
up the fire-side into something like tidiness.
The chair I sat on was by far the best out of
the three in the room, and that had no back,
and only half its quantity of straw.

   The parish, the old woman told me, allowed
her 1s. a week and two loaves. But the doctor
ordered her girl to take sago and milk, and she
was many a time sorely puzzled to get it. The
neighbours helped her a good deal, and often
sent her part of their unsold greens; -- even if
it was only the outer leaves of the cabbages, she
was thankful for them. Her other girl -- a big-
boned wench, with a red shawl crossed over her
bosom, and her black hair parted on one side --
did all she could, and so they lived on. "As
long as they kept out of the `big house' (the
workhouse) she would not complain."

   I never yet beheld so much destitution
borne with so much content. Verily the acted
philosophy of the poor is a thing to make those
who write and preach about it hide their heads.

   From the homes of the costermongers we pass
to a consideration of their dress.

   The costermonger's ordinary costume partakes
of the durability of the warehouseman's, with the
quaintness of that of the stable-boy. A well-
to-do "coster," when dressed for the day's
work, usually wears a small cloth cap, a little
on one side. A close-fitting worsted tie-up
skull-cap, is very fashionable, just now, among
the class, and ringlets at the temples are looked
up to as the height of elegance. Hats they
never wear -- excepting on Sunday -- on account
of their baskets being frequently carried on
their heads. Coats are seldom indulged in;
their waistcoats, which are of a broad-ribbed
corduroy, with fustian back and sleeves, being
made as long as a groom's, and buttoned
up nearly to the throat. If the corduroy
be of a light sandy colour, then plain brass, or
sporting buttons, with raised fox's or stag's heads
upon them -- or else black bone-buttons, with a
flower-pattern -- ornament the front; but if the
cord be of a dark rat-skin hue, then mother-of-
pearl buttons are preferred. Two large pockets
-- sometimes four -- with huge flaps or lappels,
like those in a shooting-coat, are commonly
worn. If the costermonger be driving a good
trade and have his set of regular customers, he
will sport a blue cloth jacket, similar in cut to
the cord ones above described; but this is
looked upon as an extravagance of the highest
order, for the slime and scales of the fish stick to
the sleeves and shoulders of the garment, so as
to spoil the appearance of it in a short time. The
fashionable stuff for trousers, at the present, is a
dark-coloured "cable cord," and they are made
to fit tightly at the knee and swell gradually
until they reach the boot, which they nearly
cover. Velveteen is now seldom worn, and knee-
breeches are quite out of date. Those who deal
wholly in fish wear a blue serge apron, either
hanging down or tucked up round their waist.
The costermonger, however, prides himself most
of all upon his neckerchief and boots. Men, wo-
men, boys and girls, all have a passion for these
articles. The man who does not wear his silk
neckerchief -- his "King's-man" as it is called
-- is known to be in desperate circumstances;
the inference being that it has gone to supply
the morning's stock-money. A yellow flower
on a green ground, or a red and blue pattern, is
at present greatly in vogue. The women wear
their kerchiefs tucked-in under their gowns,
and the men have theirs wrapped loosely round
the neck, with the ends hanging over their
waistcoats. Even if a costermonger has two or
three silk handkerchiefs by him already, he sel-
dom hesitates to buy another, when tempted
with a bright showy pattern hanging from a
Field-lane door-post.

   The costermonger's love of a good strong boot
is a singular prejudice that runs throughout the
whole class. From the father to the youngest
child, all will be found well shod. So strong is

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their predilection in this respect, that a coster-
monger may be immediately known by a glance
at his feet. He will part with everything rather
than his boots, and to wear a pair of second-
hand ones, or "translators" (as they are called), is
felt as a bitter degradation by them all. Among
the men, this pride has risen to such a pitch,
that many will have their upper-leathers tastily
ornamented, and it is not uncommon to see the
younger men of this class with a heart or a
thistle, surrounded by a wreath of roses, worked
below the instep, on their boots. The general
costume of the women or girls is a black
velveteen or straw bonnet, with a few ribbons or
flowers, and almost always a net cap fitting
closely to the cheek. The silk "King's-man"
covering their shoulders, is sometimes tucked
into the neck of the printed cotton-gown, and
sometimes the ends are brought down outside
to the apron-strings. Silk dresses are never
worn by them -- they rather despise such arti-
cles. The petticoats are worn short, ending at
the ankles, just high enough to show the
whole of the much-admired boots. Coloured,
or "illustrated shirts," as they are called, are
especially objected to by the men.

   On the Sunday no costermonger will, if he
can possibly avoid it, wheel a barrow. If a
shilling be an especial object to him, he may,
perhaps, take his shallow and head-basket as
far as Chalk-farm, or some neighbouring resort;
but even then he objects strongly to the Sun-
day-trading. They leave this to the Jews and
Irish, who are always willing to earn a penny --
as they say.

   The prosperous coster will have his holiday
on the Sunday, and, if possible, his Sunday suit
as well -- which usually consists of a rough
beaver hat, brown Petersham, with velvet
facings of the same colour, and cloth trousers,
with stripes down the side. The women, gene-
rally, manage to keep by them a cotton gown
of a bright showy pattern, and a new shawl.
As one of the craft said to me -- "Costers likes
to see their gals and wives look lady-like when
they takes them out." Such of the costers as
are not in a flourishing way of business, sel-
dom make any alteration in their dress on the
Sunday.

   There are but five tailors in London who
make the garb proper to costermongers; one of
these is considered somewhat "slop," or as a
coster called him, a "springer-up."

   This springer-up is blamed by some of the
costermongers, who condemn him for employ-
ing women at reduced wages. A whole court of
costermongers, I was assured, would withdraw
their custom from a tradesman, if one of their
body, who had influence among them, showed
that the tradesman was unjust to his workpeople.
The tailor in question issues bills after the fol-
lowing fashion. I give one verbatim, merely
withholding the address for obvious reasons:

"once try you'll come again.