AN intelligent man gave me the following account. He had been connected with streettrading from his youth up, and is now about :

The chief customers for whelks, sir, are working people and poor people, and they prefer them to oysters; I do myself, and I think they're not so much eaten because they're not fashionable like oysters. But I've sold them to first-rate public-houses, and to doctors' shops— more than other shops, I don't know why—and to private houses. Masters have sent out their servant-maids to me for three or four penn'orths for supper. I've offered the maids a whelk, but they won't eat them in the street; I dare say they're afraid their young men may be about, and might think they wasn't ladies if they eat whelks in the street. Boys are the best customers for 'small,' but if you don't look sharp, you'll be done out of three-ha'porth of vinegar to a ha'porth of whelks. I can't make out why they like it so. They're particular enough in their way. If the whelks are thin, as they will be sometimes, the lads will say, 'What a lot of snails you've gathered to-night!' If they're plump and fine, then they'll say, 'Fat 'uns tonight—stunners!' Some people eat whelks for an appetite; they give me one, and more in summer than winter. The women of the town are good customers, at least they are in the Cut and Shoreditch, for I know both. If they have five-penn'orth, when they're treated perhaps, there's always sixpence. They come on the sly sometimes, by themselves, and make what's a meal, I'm satisfied, on whelks, and they'll want credit sometimes. I've given trust to a woman of that sort as far as 2s. 6d. I've lost very little by them; I don't know how much altogether. I keep no account, but carry any credit in my head. Those women's good pay, take it altogether, for they know how hard it is to get a crust, and have a feeling for a poor man, if they haven't for a rich one—that's my opinion, sir. Costermongers in a good time are capital customers; they'll buy five or six penn'orths at a time. The dust's a great injury to the trade in summer time; it dries the whelks up, and they look old. I wish whelks were cheaper at Billingsgate, and I could do more business; and I could do more if I could sell a few minutes after twelve on a Saturday night, when people must leave the public-house. I have sold three wash of a Saturday night, and cleared 15s. on them. I one week made 3l., but I had a few stewed eels to help,—that is, I cleared 2l., and had a pound's worth over on the Saturday night, and sent them to be sold— and they were sold—at Battersea on the Sunday; I never went there myself. I've had twenty people round my stall at one time on a Saturday. Perhaps my earnings on that (and other odd things) may come to 1l. a week, or hardly so much, the year round. I can't say exactly. The shells are no use. Boys have asked me for them 'to make sea-shells of,' they say—to hold them to their ears when they're big, and there's a sound like the sea rolling. Gentlemen have sometimes told me to keep a dozen dozen or twenty dozen, for borders to a garden. I make no charge for them—just what a gentleman may please to give.

The information given shows an outlay of yearly for street whelks, and as the return I have cited shows the money spent in whelks at to be , the number of whelks being , the account is correct, as the coster's usual "half-profits" make up the sum expended.