The Sunday Morning Markets.
Nearly every poor man’s market does its Sunday 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, thus 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 shiny 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 to and fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled aprons, others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat dangling from their hands. Only a few of the shops are closed; but the butcher’s and the coal shed are filled with customers, and from the door of the shut-up baker’s, the women come streaming forth with bags of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber’s, smoothing their clean-shaved chins. Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions, braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and corn-plasters, are all bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with their pet terriers under their arms. The pavement is green with the refuse leaves of vegetables, and round a cabbage-barrow the women stand turning over the bunches, as the man shouts “Where you like, only a penny.” Boys are running home with the breakfast herring held in a piece of paper, and the side-pocket of an apple man’s stuff coat hangs down with the weight of halfpence stored within it. Presently the tolling of the neighbouring church bells break forth. Then the bustle doubles itself, the cries grow louder, the confusion greater. Women run about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers, for in half-an-hour the market will close. In a little time the butcher puts up his shutters, and leaves the door still open; the policemen in their clean gloves come round and drive the street-sellers before them, and as the clock strikes eleven the market finishes, and the Sunday’s rest begins.”
As it was in the beginning of our book and in the days of Queen Elizabeth:—
“When the City shopkeepers railed against itinerant traders of every denomination, and the Common Council declared that in ancient times the open streets and lanes had been used, and ought to be used only, as the common highway, and not for the hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to stand and sell their wares in”—
so it is now, in the Victorian age, and ever will be a very vexed question, and thinking representative men of varied social positions materially differ in opinion; some contending that the question is not of class interest but that of the interest of the public at large; some argue in an effective but perfectly legal and orderly manner for the removal of what they term a greivous nuisance; others ask that an industrious and useful class of men and women should be allowed their honest calling. They protest against the enforcement of an almost obsolete statute which conduces to the waste of fruit, fish, and vegetables, in London and large towns, which practically maintains a trade monopoly, and discourages an abundant supply. They claim for the public a right to buy in the cheapest market, and plead for a liberty which is enjoyed unmolested in many parts of the kingdom, and protest against a remnant of protectionist restriction being put into force against street-hawking.
By the side of this temperate reasoning, let us place the principal arguments which are so often reiterated by aldermen, deputies, councillors, vestrymen, and others, when “drest in a little brief authority,” and come at once to the gravamen of the charge against the hawkers, which we find to consist in the nuisance of the street cries.