When a costermonger cannot pursue his out-door labour, he leaves it to the women and children to “work the public-houses,” while he spends his time in the beer-shop. Here he gambles away his stock-money oft enough, “if the cards or the luck runs again him;” or else he has to dip into his stock-money to support himself and his family. He must then borrow fresh capital at any rate of interest to begin again, and he begins on a small scale. If it be in the cheap and busy seasons, he may buy a pad of soles for 2s. 6d., and clear 5s. on them, and that “sets him a-going again, and then he gets his silk handkerchief out of pawn, and goes as usual to market.”
The sufferings of the costermongers during the prevalence of the cholera in 1849, were intense. Their customers generally relinquished the consumption of potatoes, greens, fruit, and fish; indeed, of almost every article on the consumption of which the costermongers depend for his daily bread. Many were driven to apply to the parish; “many had relief and many hadn’t,” I was told. Two young men, within the knowledge of one of my informants, became professional thieves, after enduring much destitution. It does not appear that the costermongers manifested any personal dread of the visitation of the cholera, or thought that their lives were imperilled: “We weren’t a bit afraid,” said one of them, “and, perhaps, that was the reason so few costers died of the cholera. I knew them all in Lambeth, I think, and I knew only one die of it, and he drank hard. Poor Waxy! he was a good fellow enough, and was well known in the Cut. But it was a terrible time for us, sir. It seems to me now like a shocking dream. Fish I could’nt sell a bit of; the people had a perfect dread of it—all but the poor Irish, and there was no making a crust out of them. They had no dread of fish, however; indeed, they reckon it a religious sort of living, living on fish,—but they will have it dirt cheap. We were in terrible distress all that time.”
Of the Costermongers’ Raffles.
In their relief of the sick, if relief it is to be called, the costermongers resort to an exciting means; something is raffled, and the proceeds given to the sufferer. This mode is common to other working-classes; it partakes of the excitement of gambling, and is encouraged by the landlords of the houses to which the people resort. The landlord displays the terms of the raffle in his bar a few days before the occurrence, which is always in the evening. The raffle is not confined to the sick, but when any one of the class is in distress—that is to say, without stock-money, and unable to borrow it,—a raffle for some article of his is called at a public-house in the neighbourhood. Cards are printed, and distributed among his mates. The article, let it be whatever it may—perhaps a handkerchief—is put up at 6d. a member, and from twenty to forty members are got, according as the man is liked by his “mates,” or as he has assisted others similarly situated. The paper of every raffle is kept by the party calling it, and before he puts his name down to a raffle for another party, he refers to the list of subscribers to his raffle, in order to see if the person ever assisted him. Raffles are very “critical things, the pint pots fly about wonderful sometimes”—to use the words of one of my informants. The party calling the raffle is expected to take the chair, if he can write down the subscribers’ names. One who had been chairman at one of these meetings assured me that on a particular occasion, having called a “general dealer” to order, the party very nearly split his head open with a quart measure. If the hucksters know that the person calling the raffle is “down,” and that it is necessity that has made him call it, they will not allow the property put up to be thrown for. “If you was to go to the raffle to-night, sir,” said one of them to me, many months ago, before I became known to the class, “they’d say to one another directly you come in, ‘Who’s this here swell? What’s he want?’ And they’d think you were a ‘cad,’ or else a spy, come from the police. But they’d treat you civilly, I’m sure. Some very likely would fancy you was a fast kind of a gentleman, come there for a lark. But you need have no fear, though the pint pots does fly about sometimes.”
Of the Markets and Trade Rights of the Costermongers, and of the laws affecting them.
The next point of consideration is what are the legal regulations under which the several descriptions of hawkers and pedlars are allowed to pursue their occupations.
The laws concerning hawkers and pedlars, (50 Geo. III., c. 41, and 6 Geo. IV., c. 80,) treat of them as identical callings. The “hawker,” however, is, strictly speaking, one who sells wares by crying them in the streets of towns, while the pedlar travels on foot through the country with his wares, not publicly proclaiming them, but visiting the houses on his way to solicit private custom. Until the commencement of the present century—before the increased facilities for conveyance—the pedlars were a numerous body in the country. The majority of them were Scotchmen and some amassed considerable wealth. Railways, however, have now reduced the numbers to insignificance.
Hawkers and pedlars are required to pay 4l. yearly for a license, and an additional 4l. for every horse or ass employed in the conveyance of wares. The hawking or exposing for sale of fish, fruit, or victuals, does not require a license; and further, it is lawful for any one “being the maker of any home manufacture,” to expose it for sale in any fair or market, without a warrant. Neither does anything in either of the two acts in question prohibit “any tinker, cooper, glazier, plumber, harness-mender, or other person, from going about and carrying the materials proper to their business.”
The right of the costermongers, then, to “hawk” their wares through the streets is plainly inferred by the above acts; that is to say, nothing in them extends to prohibit persons “going about,” unlicensed, and at their own discretion, and selling fish, vegetables, fruit, or provisions generally.
The law acknowledges none of the street “markets.” These congregatings are, indeed, in antagonism to the municipal laws of London, which provide that no market, or public place where provisions are sold, shall be held within seven miles of the city. The law, though it permits butchers and other provisionmongers to hire stalls and standings in the flesh and other markets, recognised by custom or usage, gives no such permission as to street-trading.