An intelligent man gave me the following account. He had been connected with street-trading from his youth up, and is now about thirty:
“The chief customers for whelks, sir, are working people and poor people, and they prefer them to oysters; I do myself, and I think they’re not so much eaten because they’re not fashionable like oysters. But I’ve sold them to first-rate public-houses, and to doctors’ shops—more than other shops, I don’t know why—and to private houses. Masters have sent out their servant-maids to me for three or four penn’orths for supper. I’ve offered the maids a whelk, but they won’t eat them in the street; I dare say they’re afraid their young men may be about, and might think they wasn’t ladies if they eat whelks in the street. Boys are the best customers for ‘small,’ but if you don’t look sharp, you’ll be done out of three-ha’porth of vinegar to a ha’porth of whelks. I can’t make out why they like it so. They’re particular enough in their way. If the whelks are thin, as they will be sometimes, the lads will say, ‘What a lot of snails you’ve gathered to-night!’ If they’re plump and fine, then they’ll say, ‘Fat ’uns to-night—stunners!’ Some people eat whelks for an appetite; they give me one, and more in summer than winter. The women of the town are good customers, at least they are in the Cut and Shoreditch, for I know both. If they have five-penn’orth, when they’re treated perhaps, there’s always sixpence. They come on the sly sometimes, by themselves, and make what’s a meal, I’m satisfied, on whelks, and they’ll want credit sometimes. I’ve given trust to a woman of that sort as far as 2s. 6d. I’ve lost very little by them; I don’t know how much altogether. I keep no account, but carry any credit in my head. Those women’s good pay, take it altogether, for they know how hard it is to get a crust, and have a feeling for a poor man, if they haven’t for a rich one—that’s my opinion, sir. Costermongers in a good time are capital customers; they’ll buy five or six penn’orths at a time. The dust’s a great injury to the trade in summer time; it dries the whelks up, and they look old. I wish whelks were cheaper at Billingsgate, and I could do more business; and I could do more if I could sell a few minutes after twelve on a Saturday night, when people must leave the public-house. I have sold three wash of a Saturday night, and cleared 15s. on them. I one week made 3l., but I had a few stewed eels to help,—that is, I cleared 2l., and had a pound’s worth over on the Saturday night, and sent them to be sold—and they were sold—at Battersea on the Sunday; I never went there myself. I’ve had twenty people round my stall at one time on a Saturday. Perhaps my earnings on that (and other odd things) may come to 1l. a week, or hardly so much, the year round. I can’t say exactly. The shells are no use. Boys have asked me for them ‘to make sea-shells of,’ they say—to hold them to their ears when they’re big, and there’s a sound like the sea rolling. Gentlemen have sometimes told me to keep a dozen dozen or twenty dozen, for borders to a garden. I make no charge for them—just what a gentleman may please to give.”
The information given shows an outlay of 5,250l. yearly for street whelks, and as the return I have cited shows the money spent in whelks at Billingsgate to be 2,500l., the number of whelks being 4,950,000, the account is correct, as the coster’s usual “half-profits” make up the sum expended.
Of the Street Sellers, and of the Preparation of Fried Fish.
Among the cooked food which has for many years formed a portion of the street trade is fried fish. The sellers are about 350, as a maximum and 250 as a minimum, 300 being an average number. The reason of the variation in number is, that on a Saturday night, and occasionally on other nights, especially on Mondays, stall-keepers sell fried fish, and not as an ordinary article of their trade. Some men, too, resort to the trade for a time, when they cannot be employed in any way more profitable or suitable to them. The dealers in this article are, for the most part, old men and boys, though there may be 30 or 40 women who sell it, but only 3 or 4 girls, and they are the daughters of the men in the business as the women are the wives. Among the fried-fish sellers there are not half a dozen Irish people, although fish is so especial a part of the diet of the poor Irish. The men in the calling have been, as regards the great majority, mechanics or servants; none, I was told, had been fishmongers, or their assistants.
The fish fried by street dealers is known as “plaice dabs” and “sole dabs,” which are merely plaice and soles, “dab” being a common word for any flat fish. The fish which supplies upwards of one half the quantity fried for the streets is plaice; the other fishes used are soles, haddocks, whitings, flounders, and herrings, but very sparingly indeed as regards herrings. Soles are used in as large a quantity as the other kinds mentioned altogether. On my inquiry as to the precise quantity of each description fried, the answer from the traders was uniform: “I can’t say, sir. I buy whatever’s cheapest.” The fish is bought at Billingsgate, but some of the street dealers obtain another and even a cheaper commodity than at that great mart. This supply is known in the trade as “friers,” and consists of the overplus of a fishmonger’s stock, of what he has not sold overnight, and does not care to offer for sale on the following morning, and therefore vends it to the costermongers, whose customers are chiefly among the poor. The friers are sometimes half, and sometimes more than half, of the wholesale price in Billingsgate. Many of the friers are good, but some, I was told, “in any thing like muggy or close weather were very queer fish, very queer indeed,” and they are consequently fried with a most liberal allowance of oil, “which will conceal anything.”
The fish to be fried is first washed and gutted; the fins, head, and tail are then cut off, and the trunk is dipped in flour and water, so that in frying, oil being always used, the skin will not be scorched by the, perhaps, too violent action of the fire, but merely browned. Pale rape oil is generally used. The sellers, however, are often twitted with using lamp oil, even when it is dearer than that devoted to the purpose. The fish is cooked in ordinary frying-pans. One tradesman in Cripplegate, formerly a costermonger, has on his premises a commodious oven which he had built for the frying, or rather baking, of fish. He supplies the small shopkeepers who deal in the article (although some prepare it themselves), and sells his fish retail also, but the street-sellers buy little of him, as they are nearly all “their own cooks.” Some of the “illegitimates,” however, lay in their stock by purchase of the tradesman in question. The fish is cut into portions before it is fried, and the frying occupies about ten minutes. The quantity prepared together is from six to twenty portions, according to the size of the pans; four dozen portions, or “pieces,” as the street people call them, require a quart of oil.
The fried fish-sellers live in some out of the way alley, and not unfrequently in garrets; for among even the poorest class there are great objections to their being fellow-lodgers, on account of the odour from the frying. Even when the fish is fresh (as it most frequently is), and the oil pure, the odour is rank. In one place I visited, which was, moreover, admirable for cleanliness, it was very rank. The cooks, however, whether husbands or wives—for the women often attend to the pan—when they hear of this disagreeable rankness, answer that it may be so, many people say so; but for their parts they cannot smell it at all. The garments of the fried-fish sellers are more strongly impregnated with the smell of fish than were those of any “wet” or other fish-sellers whom I met with. Their residences are in some of the labyrinths of courts and alleys that run from Gray’s-inn-lane to Leather-lane, and similar places between Fetter and Chancery-lanes. They are to be found, too, in the courts running from Cow-cross, Smithfield; and from Turnmill-street and Ray-street, Clerkenwell; also, in the alleys about Bishopsgate-street and the Kingsland-road, and some in the half-ruinous buildings near the Southwark and Borough-roads. None, or very few, of those who are their own cooks, reside at a greater distance than three miles from Billingsgate. A gin-drinking neighbourhood, one coster said, suits best, “for people hasn’t their smell so correct there.”
The sale is both on rounds and at stalls, the itinerants being twice as numerous as the stationary. The round is usually from public-house to public-house, in populous neighbourhoods. The itinerants generally confine themselves to the trade in fried fish, but the stall-keepers always sell other articles, generally fish of some kind, along with it. The sale in the public-houses is the greatest.
At the neighbouring races and fairs there is a great sale of fried fish. At last Epsom races, I was told, there were at least fifty purveyors of that dainty from London, half of them perhaps being costermongers, who speculated in it merely for the occasion, preparing it themselves. Three men joined in one speculation, expending 8l. in fish, and did well, selling at the usual profit of cent. per cent., but with the drawback of considerable expenses. Their customers at the races and fairs are the boys who hold horses or brush clothes, or who sell oranges or nuts, or push at roundabouts, and the costers who are there on business. At Epsom races there was plenty of bread, I was informed, to be picked up on the ground; it had been flung from the carriages after luncheon, and this, with a piece of fish, supplied a meal or “a relish” to hundreds.