Of Shrimp Selling in the Streets.

Shrimp selling, as I have stated, is one of the trades to which the street-dealer often confines himself throughout the year. The sale is about equally divided between the two sexes, but the men do the most business, walking some of them fifteen to twenty miles a day in a “round” of “ten miles there and ten back.”

The shrimps vended in the streets are the Yarmouth prawn shrimps, sold at Billingsgate at from 6d. to 10d. a gallon, while the best shrimps (chiefly from Lee, in Essex,) vary in price from 10d. to 2s. 6d. a gallon; 2s. being a common price. The shrimps are usually mixed by the street-dealers, and they are cried, from stalls or on rounds, “a penny half-pint, fine fresh s’rimps.” (I heard them called nothing but “s’rimps” by the street-dealers.) The half-pint, however, is in reality but half that quantity. “It’s the same measure as it was thirty years back,” I was told, in a tone as if its antiquity removed all imputation of unfair dealing. Some young men “do well on s’rimps,” sometimes taking 5s. in an hour on a Saturday evening, “when people get their money, and wants a relish.” The females in the shrimp line are the wives, widows, or daughters of costermongers. They are computed to average 1s. 6d. a day profit in fine, and from 9d. to 1s. in bad weather; and, in snowy, or very severe weather, sometimes nothing at all.

One shrimp-seller, a middle-aged woman, wrapped up in a hybrid sort of cloak, that was half a man’s and half a woman’s garment, gave me the following account. There was little vulgarity in either her language or manner.

“I was in the s’rimp trade since I was a girl. I don’t know how long. I don’t know how old I am. I never knew; but I’ve two children, one’s six and t’other’s near eight, both girls; I’ve kept count of that as well as I can. My husband sells fish in the street; so did father, but he’s dead. We buried him without the help of the parish, as many gets—that’s something to say. I’ve known the trade every way. It never was any good in public-houses. They want such great ha’p’orths there. They’ll put up with what isn’t very fresh, to be sure, sometimes; and good enough for them too, I say, as spoils their taste with drink.” [This was said very bitterly.] “If it wasn’t for my husband’s drinking for a day together now and then we’d do better. He’s neither to have nor to hold when he’s the worse for liquor; and it’s the worse with him, for he’s a quiet man when he’s his own man. Perhaps I make 9d. a day, perhaps 1s. or more. Sometimes my husband takes my stand, and I go a round. Sometimes, if he gets through his fish, he goes my round. I give good measure, and my pint’s the regular s’rimp pint.” [It was the half-pint I have described.] “The trade’s not so good as it was. People hasn’t the money, they tells me so. It’s bread before s’rimps, says they. I’ve heard them say it very cross, if I’ve wanted hard to sell. Some days I can sell nothing. My children stays with my sister, when me and my old man’s out. They don’t go to school, but Jane (the sister) learns them to sew. She makes drawers for the slopsellers, but has very little work, and gets very little for the little she does; she would learn them to read if she knew how. She’s married to a pavior, that’s away all day. It’s a hard life mine, sir. The winter’s a coming, and I’m now sometimes ’numbed with sitting at my stall in the cold. My feet feels like lumps of ice in the winter; and they’re beginning now, as if they weren’t my own. Standing’s far harder work than going a round. I sell the best s’rimps. My customers is judges. If I’ve any s’rimps over on a night, as I often have one or two nights a week, I sells them for half-price to an Irishwoman, and she takes them to the beer-shops, and the coffee-shops. She washes them to look fresh. I don’t mind telling that, because people should buy of regular people. It’s very few people know how to pick a s’rimp properly. You should take it by the head and the tail and jam them up, and then the shell separates, and the s’rimp comes out beautifully. That’s the proper way.”

Sometimes the sale on the rounds may be the same as that at the stalls, or 10 or 20 per cent. more or less, according to the weather, as shrimps can be sold by the itinerant dealers better than by the stall-keepers in wet weather, when people prefer buying at their doors. But in hot weather the stall trade is the best, “for people often fancy that the s’rimps is sent out to sell ’cause they’ll not keep no longer. It’s only among customers as knows you, you can do any good on a round then.”

The costermongers sell annually, it appears, about 770,000 pints of shrimps. At 2d. a pint (a very low calculation) the street sale of shrimps amount to upwards of 6,400l. yearly.

Of Oyster Selling in the Streets.

The trade in oysters is unquestionably one of the oldest with which the London—or rather the English—markets are connected; for oysters from Britain were a luxury in ancient Rome.

Oysters are now sold out of the smacks at Billingsgate, and a few at Hungerford. The more expensive kind such as the real Milton, are never bought by the costermongers, but they buy oysters of a “good middling quality.” At the commencement of the season these oysters are 14s. a “bushel,” but the measure contains from a bushel and a half to two bushels, as it is more or less heaped up. The general price, however, is 9s. or 10s., but they have been 16s. and 18s. The “big trade” was unknown until 1848, when the very large shelly oysters, the fish inside being very small, were introduced from the Sussex coast. They were sold in Thames-street and by the Borough-market. Their sale was at first enormous. The costermongers distinguished them by the name of “scuttle-mouths.” One coster informant told me that on the Saturdays he not unfrequently, with the help of a boy and a girl, cleared 10s. by selling these oysters in the streets, disposing of four bags. He thus sold, reckoning twenty-one dozen to the bag, 2,016 oysters; and as the price was two for a penny, he took just 4l. 4s. by the sale of oysters in the streets in one night. With the scuttle-mouths the costermonger takes no trouble: he throws them into a yard, and dashes a few pails of water over them, and then places them on his barrow, or conveys them to his stall. Some of the better class of costermongers, however, lay down their oysters carefully, giving them oatmeal “to fatten on.”

In April last, some of the street-sellers of this article established, for the first time, “oyster-rounds.” These were carried on by costermongers whose business was over at twelve in the day, or a little later; they bought a bushel of scuttle-mouths (never the others), and, in the afternoon, went a round with them to poor neighbourhoods, until about six, when they took a stand in some frequented street. Going these oyster-rounds is hard work, I am told, and a boy is generally taken to assist. Monday afternoon is the best time for this trade, when 10s. is sometimes taken, and 4s. or 5s. profit made. On other evenings only from 1s. to 5s. is taken—very rarely the larger sum—as the later the day in the week the smaller is the receipt, owing to the wages of the working classes getting gradually exhausted.

The women who sell oysters in the street, and whose dealings are limited, buy either of the costermongers or at the coal-sheds. But nearly all the men buy at Billingsgate, where as small a quantity as a peck can be had.

An old woman, who had “seen better days,” but had been reduced to keep an oyster-stall, gave me the following account of her customers. She showed much shrewdness in her conversation, but having known better days, she declined to enter upon any conversation concerning her former life:—

“As to my customers, sir,” she said, “why, indeed, they’re all sorts. It’s not a very few times that gentlemen (I call them so because they’re mostly so civil) will stop—just as it’s getting darkish, perhaps,—and look about them, and then come to me and say very quick: ‘Two penn’orth for a whet.’ Ah! some of ’em will look, may be, like poor parsons down upon their luck, and swallow their oysters as if they was taking poison in a hurry. They’ll not touch the bread or butter once in twenty times, but they’ll be free with the pepper and vinegar, or, mayhap, they’ll say quick and short, ‘A crust off that.’ I many a time think that two penn’orth is a poor gentleman’s dinner. It’s the same often—but only half as often, or not half—with a poor lady, with a veil that once was black, over a bonnet to match, and shivering through her shawl. She’ll have the same. About two penn’orth is the mark still; it’s mostly two penn’orth. My son says, it’s because that’s the price of a glass of gin, and some persons buy oysters instead—but that’s only his joke, sir. It’s not the vulgar poor that’s our chief customers. There’s many of them won’t touch oysters, and I’ve heard some of them say: ‘The sight on ’em makes me sick; it’s like eating snails.’ The poor girls that walk the streets often buy; some are brazen and vulgar, and often the finest dressed are the vulgarest; at least, I think so; and of those that come to oyster stalls, I’m sure it’s the case. Some are shy to such as me, who may, perhaps, call their own mothers to their minds, though it aint many of them that is so. One of them always says that she must keep at least a penny for gin after her oysters. One young woman ran away from my stall once after swallowing one oyster out of six that she’d paid for. I don’t know why. Ah! there’s many things a person like me sees that one may say, ‘I don’t know why’ to; that there is. My heartiest customers, that I serve with the most pleasure, are working people, on a Saturday night. One couple—I think the wife always goes to meet her husband on a Saturday night—has two, or three, or four penn’orth, as happens, and it’s pleasant to hear them say, ‘Won’t you have another, John?’ or, ‘Do have one or two more, Mary Anne.’ I’ve served them that way two or three years. They’ve no children, I’m pretty sure, for if I say, ‘Take a few home to the little ones,’ the wife tosses her head, and says, half vexed and half laughing, ‘Such nonsense.’ I send out a good many oysters, opened, for people’s suppers, and sometimes for supper parties—at least, I suppose so, for there’s five or six dozen often ordered. The maid-servants come for them then, and I give them two or three for themselves, and say, jokingly-like, ‘It’s no use offering you any, perhaps, because you’ll have plenty that’s left.’ They’ve mostly one answer: ‘Don’t we wish we may get ’em?’ The very poor never buy of me, as I told you. A penny buys a loaf, you see, or a ha’porth of bread and a ha’porth of cheese, or a half-pint of beer, with a farthing out. My customers are mostly working people and tradespeople. Ah! sir, I wish the parson of the parish, or any parson, sat with me a fortnight; he’d see what life is then. ‘It’s different,’ a learned man used to say to me—that’s long ago—‘from what’s noticed from the pew or the pulpit.’ I’ve missed the gentleman as used to say that, now many years—I don’t know how many. I never knew his name. He was drunk now and then, and used to tell me he was an author. I felt for him. A dozen oysters wasn’t much for him. We see a deal of the world, sir—yes, a deal. Some, mostly working people, take quantities of pepper with their oysters in cold weather, and say it’s to warm them, and no doubt it does; but frosty weather is very bad oyster weather. The oysters gape and die, and then they are not so much as manure. They are very fine this year. I clear 1s. a day, I think, during the season—at least 1s., taking the fine with the wet days, and the week days with the Sundays, though I’m not out then; but, you see, I’m known about here.”

The number of oysters sold by the costermongers amounts to 124,000,000 a year. These, at four a penny, would realise the large sum of 129,650l. We may therefore safely assume that 125,000l. is spent yearly in oysters in the streets of London.

Of Periwinkle Selling in the Streets.

There are some street people who, nearly all the year through, sell nothing but periwinkles, and go regular rounds, where they are well known. The “wink” men, as these periwinkle sellers are called, generally live in the lowest parts, and many in lodging-houses. They are forced to live in low localities, they say, because of the smell of the fish, which is objected to. The city district is ordinarily the best for winkle-sellers, for there are not so many cheap shops there as in other parts. The summer is the best season, and the sellers then make, upon the average, 12s. a week clear profit; in the winter, they get upon the average, 5s. a week clear, by selling mussels and whelks—for, as winkles last only from March till October, they are then obliged to do what they can in the whelk and mussel way. “I buy my winks,” said one, “at Billingsgate, at 3s. and 4s. the wash. A wash is about a bushel. There’s some at 2s., and some sometimes as low as 1s. the wash, but they wouldn’t do for me, as I serve very respectable people. If we choose we can boil our winkles at Billingsgate by paying 4d. a week for boiling, and ½d. for salt, to salt them after they are boiled. Tradesmen’s families buy them for a relish to their tea. It’s reckoned a nice present from a young man to his sweetheart, is winks. Servant girls are pretty good customers, and want them cheaper when they say it’s for themselves; but I have only one price.”

One man told me he could make as much as 12s. a week—sometimes more and sometimes less.

He made no speeches, but sung—“Winketty-winketty-wink-wink-wink—wink-wink—wicketty-wicketty-wink—fine fresh winketty-winks wink wink.” He was often so sore in the stomach and hoarse with hallooing that he could hardly speak. He had no child, only himself and wife to keep out of his earnings. His room was 2s. a week rent. He managed to get a bit of meat every day, he said, “somehow or ’nother.”

Another, more communicative and far more intelligent man, said to me concerning the character of his customers: “They’re people I think that like to daddle” (dawdle, I presume) “over their teas or such like; or when a young woman’s young man takes tea with her mother and her, then they’ve winks; and then there’s joking, and helping to pick winks, between Thomas and Betsy, while the mother’s busy with her tea, or is wiping her specs, ’cause she can’t see. Why, sir, I’ve known it! I was a Thomas that way myself when I was a tradesman. I was a patten-maker once, but pattens is no go now, and hasn’t been for fifteen year or more. Old people, I think, that lives by themselves, and has perhaps an annuity or the like of that, and nothing to do pertickler, loves winks, for they likes a pleasant way of making time long over a meal. They’re the people as reads a newspaper, when it’s a week old, all through. The other buyers, I think, are tradespeople or working-people what wants a relish. But winks is a bad trade now, and so is many that depends on relishes.”

One man who “works” the New Cut, has the “best wink business of all.” He sells only a little dry fish with his winks, never wet fish, and has “got his name up,” for the superiority of that shell-fish—a superiority which he is careful to ensure. He pays 8s. a week for a stand by a grocer’s window. On an ordinary afternoon he sells from 7s. to 10s. worth of periwinkles. On a Monday afternoon he often takes 20s.; and on the Sunday afternoon 3l. and 4l. He has two coster lads to help him, and sometimes on a Sunday from twenty to thirty customers about him. He wraps each parcel sold in a neat brown paper bag, which, I am assured, is of itself, an inducement to buy of him. The “unfortunate” women who live in the streets contiguous to the Waterloo, Blackfriars, and Borough-roads, are among his best customers, on Sundays especially. He is rather a public character, getting up dances and the like. “He aint bothered—not he—with ha’p’orths or penn’orths of a Sunday,” said a person who had assisted him. “It’s the top of the tree with his customers; 3d. or 6d. at a go.” The receipts are one-half profit. I heard from several that he was “the best man for winks a-going.”

The quantity of periwinkles disposed of by the London street-sellers is 3,600,000 pints, which, at 1d. per pint, gives the large sum of 15,000l. expended annually in this street luxury. It should be remembered, that a very large consumption of periwinkles takes place in public-houses and suburban tea-gardens.

Of “Dry” Fish Selling in the Streets.

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

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

“There’s Scotch haddies that never knew anything about Scotland,” he said, “for I’ve made lots of them myself by Tower-street, just a jump or two from the Lambeth station-house. I used to make them on Sundays. I was a wet fish-seller then, and when I couldn’t get through my haddocks or my whitings of a Saturday night, I wasn’t a-going to give them away to folks that wouldn’t take the trouble to lift me out of a gutter if I fell there, so I presarved them. I’ve made haddies of whitings, and good ones too, and Joe made them of codlings besides. I had a bit of a back-yard to two rooms, one over the other, that I had then, and on a Sunday I set some wet wood a fire, and put it under a great tub. My children used to gut and wash the fish, and I hung them on hooks all round the sides of the tub, and made a bit of a chimney in a corner of the top of the tub, and that way I gave them a jolly good smoking. My wife had a dry fish-stall and sold them, and used to sing out ‘Real Scotch haddies,’ and tell people how they was from Aberdeen; I’ve often been fit to laugh, she did it so clever. I had a way of giving them a yellow colour like the real Scotch, but that’s a secret. After they was well smoked they was hung up to dry all round the rooms we lived in, and we often had stunning fires that answered as well to boil crabs and lobsters when they was cheap enough for the streets. I’ve boiled a mate’s crabs and lobsters for 2½d.; it was two boilings and more, and 2½d. was reckoned the price of half a quarter of a hundred of coals and the use of the pan. There’s more ways than one of making 6d., if a man has eyes in his head and keeps them open. Haddocks that wouldn’t fetch 1d. a piece, nor any money at all of a Saturday night, I’ve sold—at least she has” (indicating his wife by a motion of his thumb)—“at 2d., and 3d., and 4d. I’ve bought fish of costers that was over on a Saturday night, to make Scotch haddies of them. I’ve tried experience” (experiments) “too. Ivy, burnt under them, gave them, I thought, a nice sort of flavour, rather peppery, for I used always to taste them; but I hate living on fish. Ivy with brown berries on it, as it has about this time o’ year, I liked best. Holly wasn’t no good. A black-currant bush was, but it’s too dear; and indeed it couldn’t be had. I mostly spread wetted fire-wood, as green as could be got, or damp sticks of any kind, over shavings, and kept feeding the fire. Sometimes I burnt sawdust. Somehow, the dry fish trade fell off. People does get so prying and so knowing, there’s no doing nothing now for no time, so I dropped the dry fish trade. There’s few up to smoking them proper; they smoke ’em black, as if they was hung up in a chimbley.”

Another costermonger gave me the following account:

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

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

Gross Value of the several Kinds of Fish annually Sold in the Streets of London.

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

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

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

Moreover as to the enormity of the amount dispelling all ideas of privation among the industrious portion of the community, we shall also find on examination that assuming the working-men of the metropolis to be 500,000 in number (the Occupation Abstract of 1841, gives 773,560 individuals following some employment in London, but these include merchants, employers, shopkeepers, Government-officers and others), and that they, with their wives and children, make up one million individuals, it follows that the sum per head, expended in fish by the poorer classes every week, is a fraction more than 6¾d., or, in other words not quite one penny a day.

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

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

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