London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

Of Nut Selling in the Streets.

The sellers of foreign hazel nuts are principally women and children, but the stall-keepers, and oftentimes the costermongers, sell them with other “goods.” The consumption of them is immense, the annual export from Tarragona being little short of 8,000 tons. They are to be found in every poor shop in London, as well as in the large towns; they are generally to be seen on every street-stall, in every country village, at every fair, and on every race-ground. The supply is from Gijon and Tarragona. The Gijon nuts are the “Spanish,” or “fresh” nuts. They are sold at public sales, in barrels of three bushels each, the price being from 35s. to 40s. The nuts from Tarragona, whence comes the great supply, are known as “Barcelonas,” and they are kiln-dried before they are shipped. Hence the Barcelonas will “keep,” and the Spanish will not. The Spanish are coloured with the fumes of sulphur, by the Jews in Duke’s-place.

It is somewhat remarkable that nuts supply employment to a number of girls in Spain, and then yield the means of a scanty subsistence to a number of girls (with or without parents) in England.

The prattle and the laughter (according to Inglis) of the Spanish girls who sort, find no parallel however among the London girls who sell the nuts. The appearance of the latter is often wretched. In the winter months they may be seen as if stupified with cold, and with the listlessness, not to say apathy, of those whose diet is poor in quantity and insufficient in amount.

Very few costermongers buy nuts (as hazel nuts are always called) at the public sales—only those whose dealings are of a wholesale character, and they are anything but regular attendants at the sales. The street-sellers derive nearly the whole of their supply from Duke’s-place. The principal times of business are Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Those who have “capital” buy on the Friday, when they say they can make 10s. go as far as 12s. on the Sunday. The “Barcelonas” are from 4½d. to 6d. a quart to the street-sellers. The cob-nuts, which are the large size, used by the pastry-cooks for mottos, &c., are 2d. and 2½d. the quart, but they are generally destitute of a kernel. A quart contains from 100 to 180 nuts, according to the size. The costermongers buy somewhat largely when nuts are 3d. the quart; they then, and not unfrequently, stock their barrows with nuts entirely, but 2s. a day is reckoned excellent earnings at this trade. “It’s the worst living of all, sir,” I was told, “on nuts.” The sale in the streets is at the fruit-stalls, in the public-houses, on board the steamers, and at the theatre doors. They are sold by the same class as the oranges, and a stock may be procured for a smaller sum even than is required for oranges. By the outlay of 1s. many an Irishwoman can send out her two or three children with nuts, reserving some for herself. Seven-eighths of the nuts imported are sold, I am assured, in the open air.

Some of the costermongers who are to be found in Battersea-fields, and who attend the fairs and races, get through 5s. worth of nuts in a day, but only exceptionally. These men have a sort of portable shooting-gallery. The customer fires a kind of rifle, loaded with a dart, and according to the number marked on the centre, or on the encircling rings of a board which forms the head of the stall, and which may be struck by the dart, is the number of nuts payable by the stall-keeper for the halfpenny “fire.”

The Brazil nuts, which are now sold largely in the streets at twelve to sixteen a penny, were not known in this country as an article of commerce before 1824. They are sold by the peck—2s. being the ordinary price—in Duke’s-place.

Coker-nuts—as they are now generally called, and indeed “entered” as such at the Custom-house, and so written by Mr. Mc Culloch, to distinguish them from cocoa, or the berries of the cacâo, used for chocolate, etc.—are brought from the West Indies, both British and Spanish, and Brazil. They are used as dunnage in the sugar ships, being interposed between the hogsheads, to steady them and prevent their being flung about. The coker-nut was introduced into England in 1690. They are sold at public sales and otherwise, and bring from 10s. to 14s. per 100. Coker-nuts are now used at fairs to “top” the sticks.

The costermongers rarely speculate in coker-nuts now, as the boys will not buy them unless cut, and it is almost impossible to tell how the coker-nut will “open.” The interior is sold in halfpenny-worths and penny-worths. These nuts are often “worked with a drum.” There may be now forty coker-nut men in the street trade, but not one in ten confines himself to the article.

A large proportion of the dry or ripe walnuts sold in the streets is from Bordeaux. They are sold at public sales, in barrels of three bushels each, realising 21s. to 25s. a barrel. They are retailed at from eight to twenty a penny, and are sold by all classes of street-traders.

A little girl, who looked stunted and wretched, and who did not know her age (which might be eleven), told me she was sent out by her mother with six halfpenny-worth of nuts, and she must carry back 6d. or she would be beat. She had no father, and could neither read nor write. Her mother was an Englishwoman, she believed, and sold oranges. She had heard of God; he was “Our Father who art in heaven.” She’d heard that said. She did not know the Lord’s Prayer; had never heard of it; did not know who the Lord was; perhaps the Lord Mayor, but she had never been before him. She went into public-houses with her nuts, but did not know whether she was ever insulted or not; she did not know what insulted was, but she was never badly used. She often went into tap-rooms with her nuts, just to warm herself. A man once gave her some hot beer, which made her ill. Her mother was kind enough to her, and never beat her but for not taking home 6d. She had a younger brother that did as she did. She had bread and potatoes to eat, and sometimes tea, and sometimes herrings. Her mother didn’t get tipsy (at first she did not know what was meant by tipsy) above once a week.