“Green walnuts for pickling I sell a quantity of. One day I sold 20s. worth—half profit—I got them so cheap, but that was an exception. I sold them cheap too. One lady has bought a bushel and a half at a time. For walnut catsup the refuse of the walnut is used; it’s picked up in the court, where I’ve got children or poor fellows for a few ha’pence or a pint of beer to help me to peel the walnuts.”
Of Onion Selling in the Streets.
The sale of onions in the streets is immense. They are now sold at the markets at an average of 2s. a bushel. Two years ago they were 1s., and they have been 4s. and up to 7s. the bushel. They are now twisted into “ropes” for street sale. The ropes are of straw, into which the roots are platted, and secured firmly enough, so that the ropes can be hung up; these have superseded the netted onions, formerly sold by the Jew boys. The plaiting, or twisting, is done rapidly by the women, and a straw-bonnet-maker described it to me as somewhat after the mode of her trade, only that the top, or projecting portion of the stem of the onion, was twisted within the straw, instead of its being plaited close and flat together. The trade in rope onions is almost entirely in the hands of the Irish women and girls. There are now, it is said, from 800 to 1000 persons engaged in it. Onion selling can be started on a small amount of capital, from 6d. to 1s., which is no doubt one inducement for those poor persons to resort to it. The sixpenny ropes, bunches, or strings (I heard each word applied), contain from three to four dozen; the penny bunches, from six to twenty roots, according to size; and the intermediate and higher priced bunches in proportion. Before Christmas, a good many shilling lots are sold. Among the costermongers I heard this useful root—which the learned in such matters have pronounced to be, along with the mushroom, the foundation of every sauce, ancient or modern—called ing-guns, ing-ans, injens, injyens, inions, innons, almost everything but onions.
An Irishwoman, apparently of thirty-five, but in all probability younger—she did not know her age—gave me the following account. Her face, with its strongly-marked Irish features, was almost purpled from constant exposure to the weather. She was a teetotaller. She was communicative and garrulous, even beyond the average of her countrywomen. She was decently clad, had been in London fifteen years (she thought) having been brought from Ireland, viâ Bristol, by her parents (both dead). She herself was a widow, her husband, “a bricklayer” she called him (probably a bricklayer’s labourer), having died of the cholera in 1849. I take up her statement from that period:
“Yes, indeed, sir, he died—the heavins be his bed!—and he was prepared by Father M——. We had our thrials togither, but sore’s been the cross and heavy the burthin since it plased God to call him. Thin, there’s the two childer, Biddy and Ned. They’ll be tin and they’ll be eight come their next burreth-days, ’plase the Lorrud. They can hilp me now, they can. They sells ing-uns as well. I ropes ’em for ’em. How is ing-uns roped? Shure, thin—but it’s not mocking me your ’onnur is—shure, thin, a gintleman like you, that can write like a horrus a-galloping, and perhaps is as larned as a praste, glory be to God! must know how to rope ing-uns! Poor people can do it. Some say it’s a sacrit, but that’s all a say, or there couldn’t be so many ropes a-silling. I buy the sthraw at a sthraw-daler’s; twopinn’orth at a time; that’ll make six or twilve ropes, according to what they are, sixpinny or what. It’s as sthraight as it can be grown, the sthraw, that it is indeed. Och, sir, we’ve had many’s the black day, me and the childer, poor things; it’s thim I care about, but—God’s name be praised!—we’ve got on somehow. Another poor woman—she’s a widdur too, hilp her!—and me has a 2s. room for the two of us. We’ve our siprate furnithur. She has only hersilf, but is fond of the childer, as you or your lady—bliss her! if you’ve got one—might be, if you was with them. I can read a little mysilf, at laste I could oncte, and I gits them a bit o’ schoolin’ now and thin, whin I can, of an evenin’ mostly. I can’t write a letther; I wish I could. Shure, thin, sir, I’ll tell you the thruth—we does best on ing-uns. Oranges is nixt, and nuts isn’t near so good. The three of us now makes 1s. and sometimes 1s. 6d. a day, and that’s grand doin’s. We may sill bechuxt us from two to three dozin ropes a day. I’m quick at roping the ing-uns. I never noted how many ropes an hour. I buy them of a thradesman, an honist gintleman, I know, and I see him at mass ivery Sunday, and he gives me as many as he can for 1s. or what it is. We has 1d., plase God, on ivery 6d.; yis, sir, perhaps more sometimes. I’ll not tell your ’onnur a bit of a lie. And so we now get a nice bit o’ fish, with a bit of liver on a Sunday. I sell to the thradesmen, and the lodgers of them, about here (Tottenham-court-road), and in many other parruts, for we thravels a dale. The childer always goes the same round. We follows one another. I’ve sould in the sthreets ever since I’ve been in this counthry.”
The greatest sum of money expended by the poor upon any vegetable (after potatoes) is spent upon onions—99,900l. being annually devoted to the purchase of that article. To those who know the habits of the poor, this will appear in no way singular—a piece of bread and an onion being to the English labourer what bread and an apple or a bunch of grapes is to the French peasant—often his dinner.
Of Pot-Herbs and Celery.
I use the old phrase, pot-herbs, for such productions as sage, thyme, mint, parsley, sweet marjoram, fennel, (though the last is rarely sold by the street-people), &c.; but “herbs” is the usual term. More herbs, such as agrimony, balm (balsam), wormwood, tansy, &c., used to be sold in the streets. These were often used for “teas,” medicinally perhaps, except tansy, which, being a strong aromatic, was used to flavour puddings. Wormwood, too, was often bought to throw amongst woollen fabrics, as a protective against the attack of moths.
The street herb-trade is now almost entirely in the hands of Irishwomen, and is generally carried on during the autumn and winter at stalls. With it, is most commonly united the sale of celery. The herbs are sold at the several markets, usually in shilling lots, but a quarter of a shilling lot may be purchased. The Irishwoman pursues a simple method of business. What has cost her 1s. she divides into 24 lots, each of 1d., or she will sell half of a lot for a halfpenny. An Irishwoman said to me:
“Thrade isn’t good, sir; it falls and it falls. I don’t sell so many herrubs or so much ciliry as I did whin mate was higher. Poor people thin, I’ve often been said it, used to buy bones and bile them for broth with ciliry and the beautiful herrubs. Now they buys a bit of mate and ates it without brothing. It’s good one way and it’s bad another. Only last Sathurday night my husband—and a good husband he’s to me, though he is a London man, for he knows how to make a bargain—he bought a bit of mutton, afore the stroke of twilve, in Newgit-markit, at 2½d. the pound. I don’t know what parrut it was. I don’t understand that, but he does, and tills me how to cook it. He has worruk at the docks, but not very rigular. I think I sill most parrusley. Whin frish herrings is chape, some biles them with parrusley, and some fries them with ing-uns. No, sir; I don’t make sixpence a day; not half-a-crown a week, I’m shure. Whin herrubs isn’t in—and they’re autumn and winther things, and so is ciliry—I sills anything; gooseberries and currints, or anything. If I’d had a family, I couldn’t have had a shoe to my futt.”