London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The Irishmen who are in this trade are also very poor; and I learned that both Irishmen and Irishwomen left the occupation now and then, and took to begging, as a more profitable calling, often going begging this month and fruit-selling the next. This is one of the causes which prompt the London costermongers’ dislike of the Irish. “They’ll beg themselves into a meal, and work us out of one,” said an English coster to me. Some of them are, however, less “poverty-struck” (a word in common use among the costermongers); but these for the most part are men who have been in the trade for some years, and have got regular “pitches.”

The woman who gave me the following statement seemed about twenty-two or twenty-three. She was large-boned, and of heavy figure and deportment. Her complexion and features were both coarse, but her voice had a softness, even in its broadest brogue, which is not very frequent among poor Irishwomen. The first sentence she uttered seems to me tersely to embody a deplorable history of the poverty of a day. It was between six and seven in the evening when I saw the poor creature:—

“Sure, thin, sir, it’s thrippince I’ve taken to-day, and tuppince is to pay for my night’s lodgin’. I shall do no more good to-night, and shall only stay in the cowld, if I stay in it, for nothing. I’m an orphand, sir,” (she three or four times alluded to this circumstance,) “and there’s nobody to care for me but God, glory be to his name! I came to London to join my brother, that had come over and did will, and he sint for me, but whin I got here I couldn’t find him in it anyhow. I don’t know how long that’s ago. It may be five years; it may be tin; but” (she added, with the true eloquence of beggary,) “sure, thin, sir, I had no harrut to keep count, if I knew how. My father and mother wasn’t able to keep me, nor to keep thimsilves in Ireland, and so I was sint over here. They was counthry payple. I don’t know about their landlorrud. They died not long afther I came here. I don’t know what they died of, but sure it was of the will of God, and they hadn’t much to make them love this worruld; no more have I. Would I like to go back to my own counthry? Will, thin, what would be the use? I sleep at a lodging-house, and it’s a dacint place. It’s mostly my own counthrywomen that’s in it; that is, in the women’s part. I pay 1s. a week, that’s 2d. a night, for I’m not charged for Sundays. I live on brid, and ’taties and salt, and a herrin’ sometimes. I niver taste beer, and not often tay, but I sit here all day, and I feel the hunger this day and that day. It goes off though, if I have nothin’ to ate. I don’t know why, but I won’t deny the goodness of God to bring such a thing about. I have lived for a day on a pinny, sir: a ha’pinny for brid, and a ha’pinny for a herrin’, or two herrin’s for a ha’pinny, and ’taties for the place of brid. I’ve changed apples for a herrin’ with a poor man, God rewarrud him. Sometimes I make on to 6d. a day, and sometimes I have made 1s. 6d., but I think that I don’t make 5d. a day—arrah, no, thin, sir! one day with the other, and I don’t worruk on Sunday, not often. If I’ve no mate to ate, I’d rather rist. I never miss mass on a Sunday. A lady gives me a rag sometimes, but the bitther time’s comin’. If I was sick I don’t know what I’d do, but I would sind for the praste, and he’d counsil me. I could read a little oncte, but I can’t now.”

Of the Irish “Refuse”-Sellers.

There still remains to be described one branch of the Irish street-trade which is peculiar to the class—viz., the sale of “refuse,” or such fruit and vegetables as are damaged, and suited only to the very poorest purchasers.

In assorting his goods, a fruit-salesman in the markets generally throws to one side the shrivelled, dwarfish, or damaged fruit—called by the street-traders the “specks.” If the supply to the markets be large, as in the pride of the season, he will put his several kinds of specks in separate baskets. At other times all kinds are tossed together, and sometimes with an admixture of nuts and walnuts. The Irish women purchase these at a quarter, or within a quarter, of the regular price, paying from 6d. to 1s. a bushel for apples; 9d. to 1s. 6d. for pears; 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. for plums. They are then sorted into halfpenny-worths for sale on the stalls. Among the refuse is always a portion of what is called “tidy” fruit, and this occupies the prominent place in the “halfpenny lots”—for they are usually sold at a halfpenny. Sometimes, too, a salesman will throw in among the refuse a little good fruit, if he happen to have it over, either gratuitously or at the refuse price; and this, of course, is always made the most conspicuous on the stalls. Of other fruits, perhaps, only a small portion is damaged, from over-ripeness, or by the aggression of wasps and insects, the remainder being very fine, so that the retail “lots” are generally cheap. The sellers aim at “half profits,” or cent. per cent.

The “refuse” trade in fruit—and the refuse-trade is mainly confined to fruit—is principally in the hands of the Irish. The persons carrying it on are nearly all middle-aged and elderly women. I once or twice saw a delicate and pretty-looking girl sitting with the old “refuse” women; but I found that she was not a “regular hand,” and only now and then “minded the stall” in her mother’s absence. She worked with her needle, I was told.

Of the women who confine themselves to this trade there are never less than twenty, and frequently thirty. Sometimes, when the refuse is very cheap and very abundant, as many as 100 fruit-sellers, women and girls, will sell it in halfpenny-worths, along with better articles. These women also sell refuse dry-fruit, purchased in Duke’s-place, but only when they cannot obtain green-fruit, or cannot obtain it sufficiently. All is sold at stalls; as these dealers seem to think that if it were hawked, the police might look too inquisitively at a barrow stocked with refuse. The “refuse-sellers” buy at all the markets. The poorer street-sellers, whose more staple trade is in oranges or nuts, are occasional dealers in it.

Perhaps the regular refuse-buyers are not among the very poorest class, as their sale is tolerably quick and certain, but with the usual drawbacks of wet weather. They make, I was told, from 4d. to 1s. a day the year round, or perhaps 7d. or 8d. a day, Sunday included. They are all Roman Catholics, and resort to the street-sale after mass. They are mostly widows, or women who have reached middle-age, unmarried. Some are the wives of street-sellers. Two of their best pitches are on Saffron-hill and in Petticoat-lane. It is somewhat curious to witness these women sitting in a line of five or six, and notwithstanding their natural garrulity, hardly exchanging a word one with another. Some of them derive an evident solace from deliberate puffs at a short black pipe.

A stout, healthy-looking woman of this class said:—“Sure thin, sir, I’ve sat and sould my bit of fruit in this place, or near it, for twinty year and more, as is very well known indeed, is it. I could make twice the money twinty year ago that I can now, for the boys had the ha’pinnies more thin than they has now, more’s the pity. The childer is my custhomers, very few beyant—such as has only a ha’pinny now and thin, God hilp them. They’ll come a mile from any parrut, to spind it with such as me, for they know it’s chape we sill! Yis, indeed, or they’ll come with a fardin either, for it’s a ha’pinny lot we’ll split for them any time. The boys buys most, but they’re dridful tazes. It’s the patience of the divil must be had to dale wid the likes of thim. They was dridful about the Pope, but they’ve tired of it now. O, no, it wasn’t the boys of my counthry that demaned themselves that way. Well, I make 4d. some days, and 6d. some, and 1s. 6d. some, and I have made 3s. 6d., and I have made nothing. Perhaps I make 5s. or 6s. a week rigular, but I’m established and well-known you see.”