The fruit of which there is the readiest sale in the streets is one usually considered among the least useful—cherries. Probably, the greater eagerness on the part of the poorer classes to purchase this fruit arises from its being the first of the fresh “green” kind which our gardens supply for street-sale after the winter and the early spring. An intelligent costermonger suggested other reasons. “Poor people,” he said, “like a quantity of any fruit, and no fruit is cheaper than cherries at 1d. a pound, at which I have sold some hundreds of pounds’ weight. I’m satisfied, sir, that if a cherry could be grown that weighed a pound, and was of a finer flavour than ever was known before, poor people would rather have a number of little ones, even if they was less weight and inferior quality. Then boys buy, I think, more cherries than other fruit; because, after they have eaten ’em, they can play at cherry-stones.”
From all I can learn, the halfpenny-worth of fruit purchased most eagerly by a poor man, or by a child to whom the possession of a halfpenny is a rarity, is cherries. I asked a man “with a good connection,” according to his own account, as to who were his customers for cherries. He enumerated ladies and gentlemen; working-people; wagoners and carters (who “slipped them quietly into their pockets,” he said); parlour-livers (so he called the occupants of parlours); maid-servants; and soldiers. “Soldiers,” I was told, “are very fond of something for a change from their feed, which is about as regular as a prison’s.”
The currant, and the fruit of the same useful genus, the gooseberry, are sold largely by the costermongers. The price of the currants is 1d. or 2d. the half-pint, 1d. being the more usual charge. Of red currants there is the greatest supply, but the black “go off better.” The humbler classes buy a half-pint of the latter for a dumpling, and “they’re reckoned,” said my informant, “capital for a sore throat, either in jam or a pudding.” Gooseberries are also retailed by the half-pint, and are cheaper than currants—perhaps ½d. the half-pint is the average street-price. The working-classes do not use ripe gooseberries, as they do ripe currants, for dumplings, but they are sold in greater quantities and may be said to constitute, when first introduced, as other productions do afterwards, the working-people’s Sunday dessert. “Only you go on board a cheap steamer to Greenwich, on a fine summer Sunday,” observed a street-seller to me, “and you’ll see lots of young women with gooseberries in their handkerchiefs in their laps. Servant-maids is very good customers for such things as gooseberries, for they always has a penny to spare.” The costers sell green gooseberries for dumplings, and sometimes to the extent of a fourth of the ripe fruit. The price of green gooseberries is generally ½d. a pint dearer than the ripe.
When strawberries descend to such a price as places them at the costermonger’s command, the whole fraternity is busily at work, and as the sale can easily be carried on by women and children, the coster’s family take part in the sale, offering at the corners of streets the fragrant pottle, with the crimson fruit just showing beneath the green leaves at the top. Of all cries, too, perhaps that of “hoboys” is the most agreeable. Strawberries, however, according to all accounts, are consumed least of all fruits by the poor. “They like something more solid,” I was told, “something to bite at, and a penny pottle of strawberries is only like a taste; what’s more, too, the really good fruit never finds its way into penny pottles.” The coster’s best customers are dwellers in the suburbs, who purchase strawberries on a Sunday especially, for dessert, for they think that they get them fresher in that way than by reserving them from the Saturday night, and many are tempted by seeing or hearing them cried in the streets. There is also a good Sunday sale about the steam-wharfs, to people going “on the river,” especially when young women and children are members of a party, and likewise in the “clerk districts,” as Camden-town and Camberwell. Very few pottles, comparatively, are sold in public-houses; “they don’t go well down with the beer at all,” I was told. The city people are good customers for street strawberries, conveying them home. Good strawberries are 2d. a pottle in the streets when the season is at its height. Inferior are 1d. These are the most frequent prices. In raspberries the coster does little, selling them only to such customers as use them for the sake of jam or for pastry. The price is from 6d. to 1s. 6d. the pottle, 9d. being the average.
The great staple of the street trade in green fruit is apples. These are first sold by the travelling costers, by the measure, for pies, &c., and to the classes I have described as the makers of pies. The apples, however, are soon vended in penny or halfpenny-worths, and then they are bought by the poor who have a spare penny for the regalement of their children or themselves, and they are eaten without any preparation. Pears are sold to the same classes as are apples. The average price of apples, as sold by the costermonger, is 4s. a bushel, and six a penny. The sale in halfpenny and pennyworths is very great. Indeed the costermongers sell about half the apples brought to the markets, and I was told that for one pennyworth of apples bought in a shop forty were bought in the street. Pears are 9d. a bushel, generally, dearer than apples, but, numerically, they run more to the bushel.
The costers purchase the French apples at the wharf, close to London-bridge, on the Southwark side. They give 10s., 12s., 18s., or 20s. for a case containing four bushels. They generally get from 9d. to 1s. profit on a bushel of English, but on the French apples they make a clear profit of from 1s. 3d. to 2s. a bushel, and would make more, but the fruit sometimes “turns out damaged.” This extra profit is owing to the French giving better measure, their four bushels being about five market bushels, as there is much straw packed up with the English apples, and none with the French.
Plums and damsons are less purchased by the humbler classes than apples, or than any other larger sized fruit which is supplied abundantly. “If I’ve worked plums or damsons,” said an experienced costermonger, “and have told any woman pricing them: ‘They don’t look so ripe, but they’re all the better for a pie,’ she’s answered, ‘O, a plum pie’s too fine for us, and what’s more, it takes too much sugar.’” They are sold principally for desserts, and in penny-worths, at 1d. the half-pint for good, and ½ d. for inferior. Green-gages are 50 per cent. higher. Some costers sell a cheap lot of plums to the eating-house keepers, and sell them more readily than they sell apples to the same parties.
West Indian pine-apples are, as regards the street sale, disposed of more in the city than elsewhere. They are bought by clerks and warehousemen, who carry them to their suburban homes. The slices at ½d. and 1d. are bought principally by boys. The average price of a “good street pine” is 9d.
Peaches are an occasional sale with the costermongers’, and are disposed of to the same classes as purchase strawberries and pines. The street sale of peaches is not practicable if the price exceed 1d. a piece.
Of other fruits, vended largely in the streets, I have spoken under their respective heads.