Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

STREET INDUSTRIES OF LONDON. IN London, street in- dustries form a much more important fea- ture of open-air life than in any provincial city. Alike in number, variety, and service to the com- munity, they are peculiar to the Metropolis, which depends on them for the satisfying of its daily needs to an extent not paralleled elsewhere. Among those who follow street occupations in London the coster- mongers are the most numerous class. They A STREET musician. I1umber between sixty and seventy thousand, and sell not only perishable goods, but earthenware, old clothes, books, sweets, etc. Some of the vendors of fish, fruit, and vegetables are like ordinary greengrocers, and possess rounds which they work regularly; some—“draggers” —ply their trade in the gutter of business thoroughfares; and some stand in the street markets, of which there are more than one hundred in the Metropolis, from busy, frowsy “ Petticoat Lane,” with about eleven hundred stalls, displaying everything, from pickled gherkins to second-hand cameras and surgical instruments, to suburban marts containing fewer than a dozen stands, and those given up to nothing beyond fruit, vegetables, and fish. I he men who sell articles which will keep for an indefinite period invariably carry on business in these street markets, or, as the costers say, market streets, or on isolated “ pitches,” and for this reason they are technically known as “ pitchers.” 1 here are several grades of costermongers. In the first rank are the men who own a barrow and a pony or donkey ; next come those who hire a turn-out at a cost of about 6s. per week, plus, of course, the keep of the animal ; and below these, perhaps the largest section of costers, are the industrious and resourceful street merchants, whose stock is set out on a hand barrow, hired at the rate of is. per week. Numbers of such men sell on commission. A prosperous coster- monger in many cases provides a dozen or score of them with both stock and barrow. For the barrow, which he himself has hired, they must pay at the usual rate ; the unsold stock they return to him, and give him a percentage of their takings for his trouble and risk. Without exception, costermongers, whether “big” or “little” men, are a hard-working class. The fish vendor has to be astir in the small hours of the morning, to get to Billingsgate betimes, while the fruit and vegetable dealer is usually at Covent Garden, the Borough, Pudding Lane, or Spitalfields, long before London is awake. Sometimes he visits all these markets in turn, and in the end finds nothing worth buying. Prices rule too high. Occasionally, the lot of the suburban coster is still harder. As a rule, he does his marketing in the afternoon, purchasing then the commodities that he will retail on the following day. But, after pushing his barrow for five or six miles to Spitalfields, he may be unable to get what he wants, and consequently have to rise at three or four o’clock next morning and go over the ground again. Costermongers, in fact, are among the most hard-working members of the community. Included in the ranks of these street hawkers are a good many men who, while GREENGROCER.