In May the costermonger’s profit is greater. He vends fresh fish—of which there is a greater supply and a greater demand, and the fine and often not very hot weather insures its freshness—and he sells dried herrings and “roots” (as they are called) such as wall-flowers and stocks. The average earnings then are from 10s. to 12s. a week.
In June, new potatoes, peas, and beans tempt the costermongers’ customers, and then his earnings rise to 1l. a week. In addition to this 1l., if the season allow, a costermonger at the end of the week, I was told by an experienced hand, “will earn an extra 10s. if he has anything of a round.” “Why, I’ve cleared thirty shillings myself,” he added, “on a Saturday night.”
In July cherries are the principal article of traffic, and then the profit varies from 4s. to 8s. a day, weather permitting, or 30s. a week on a low average. On my inquiry if they did not sell fish in that month, the answer was, “No, sir; we pitch fish to the ——; we stick to cherries, strawberries, raspberries, and ripe currants and gooseberries. Potatoes is getting good and cheap then, and so is peas. Many a round’s worth a crown every day of the week.”
In August, the chief trading is in Orleans plums, green-gages, apples and pears, and in this month the earnings are from 5s. to 6s. a day. [I may here remark that the costermongers care little to deal in either vegetables or fish, “when the fruit’s in,” but they usually carry a certain supply of vegetables all the year round, for those customers who require them.]
In September apples are vended, and about 2s. 6d. a day made.
In October “the weather gets cold,” I was told, “and the apples gets fewer, and the day’s work’s over at four; we then deals most in fish, such as soles; there’s a good bit done in oysters, and we may make 1s. or 1s. 6d. a day, but it’s uncertain.”
In November fish and vegetables are the chief commodities, and then from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a day is made; but in the latter part of the month an extra 6d. or 1s. a day may be cleared, as sprats come in and sell well when newly introduced.
In December the trade is still principally in fish, and 12d. or 18d. a day is the costermonger’s earnings. Towards the close of the month he makes rather more, as he deals in new oranges and lemons, holly, ivy, &c., and in Christmas week he makes 3s. or 4s. a day.
These calculations give an average of about 14s. 6d. a week, when a man pursues his trade regularly. One man calculated it for me at 15s. average the year through—that is supposing, of course, that the larger earnings of the summer are carefully put by to eke out the winter’s income. This, I need hardly say, is never done. Prudence is a virtue, which is comparatively unknown to the London costermongers. They have no knowledge of savings’-banks; and to expect that they themselves should keep their money by them untouched for months (even if they had the means of so doing) is simply to expect impossibilities—to look for the continued withstanding of temptation among a class who are unused to the least moral or prudential restraint.
Some costers, I am told, make upwards of 30s. a week all the year round; but allowing for cessations in the street-trade, through bad weather, neglect, ill-health, or casualty of any kind, and taking the more prosperous costers with the less successful—the English with the Irish—the men with the women—perhaps 10s. a week may be a fair average of the earnings of the entire body the year through.