London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1
Mayhew, Henry
1861
Of the Costermongers in Bad Weather and During the Cholera.
" wet days," I was told by a clergyman, who is now engaged in selling stenographic cards in the streets, "will bring the greater part of street-people to the brink of starvation." This statement, terrible as it is, is not exaggerated. The average number of wet days every year in London is, according to the records of the Royal Society, —that is to say, rain falls in the metropolis more than days in each week, and very nearly every other day throughout the year. How precarious a means of living then must street-selling be! | |
When a costermonger cannot pursue his outdoor 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 , and clear 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 , 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. young men, within the knowledge of 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 of them, "and, perhaps, that | |
58 | was the reason so few costers died of the cholera. I knew them all in , I think, and I knew only 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. had no dread of fish, however; indeed, they reckon it a religious sort of living, living on fish,—but they have it dirt cheap. We were in terrible distress all that time." |