Marriage and Concubinage of Costermongers.
Only one-tenth—at the outside one-tenth—of the couples living together and carrying on the costermongering trade, are married. In Clerkenwell 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 associate with the unmarried mothers of families without 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 married; 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 provided 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 prejudices were certainly not in favour of his present trade, said to me, “What I call the working girls, sir, are as industrious and as faithful a set as can well be. I’m satisfied that they’re more faithful to their mates than other poor working women. I never knew one of these working girls do wrong that way. They’re strong, hearty, healthy girls, and keep clean rooms. Why, there’s numbers of men leave their stock-money with their women, just taking out two or three shillings to gamble with and get drunk upon. They sometimes take a little drop themselves, the women do, and get beaten by their husbands for it, and hardest beaten if the man’s drunk himself. They’re sometimes beaten for other things too, or for nothing at all. But they seem to like the men better for their beating them. I never could make that out.” Notwithstanding this fidelity, it appears that the “larking and joking” of the young, and sometimes of the middle-aged people, among themselves, is anything but delicate. The unmarried separate as seldom as the married. The fidelity characterizing the women does not belong to the men.
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 costermongers, 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 costermonger, 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.