London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) by Henry Mayhew

Cripplegate
150
Islington
79
City-road
49
Shoreditch
100
Bethnal-green
100
Whitechapel
258
Mile End
105
Commercial-road (East)
114
Limehouse
88
Ratcliffe Highway
122
Rosemary-lane
119
 
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3147
 
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    We find, from the foregoing list of markets, held in the various thoroughfares of the metropolis, that there are 10 on the Surrey side and 27 on the Middlesex side of the Thames. The total number of hucksters attending these markets is 3,911, giving an average of 105 to each market.
    Habits and Amusements of Costermongers
    [pp. 13 –16] I find it impossible to separate these two headings; for the habits of the costermonger are not domestic. His busy life is past in the markets or the streets, and as his leisure is devoted to the beer-shop, the dancing-room, or the theatre, we must look for his habits to his demeanour at those places. Home has few attractions to a man whose life is a street-life. Even those who are influenced by family ties and affections, prefer to ‘home’ – indeed that word is rarely mentioned among them – the conversation, warmth, and merriment of the beer-shop, where they can take their ease among their ‘mates’. Excitement or amusement are indispensable to uneducated men. Of beer-shops resorted to by costermongers, and principally supported by them, it is computed that there are 400 in London.
    Those who meet first in the beer-shop talk over the state of trade andof the markets, while the later comers enter at once into what may be styled the serious business of the evening – amusement.
    Business topics are discussed in a most peculiar style. One man takes the pipe from his mouth and says, ‘Bill made a doogheno hit this morning.’ ‘Jem,’ says another, to a man just entering, ‘you’ll stand a top o’ reeb?’ ‘On,’ answers Jem, ‘I’ve had a trosseno tol, and have been doing dab.’ For an explanation of what may be obscure in this dialogue, I must refer my readers to my remarks concerning the language of the class. If any strangers are present, the conversation is still further clothed in slang, so as to be unintelligible even to the partially initiated. The evident puzzlement of any listener is of course gratifying to the costermonger’s vanity, for he feels that he possesses a knowledge peculiarly his own.
    Among the in-door amusements of the costermonger is card-playing, at which many of them are adepts. The usual games are all-fours, all-fives, cribbage, and put. Whist is known to a few, but is never played, being considered dull and slow. Of short whist they have not heard; ‘but,’ said one, whom I questioned on the subject, ‘if it’s come into fashion, it’ll soon be among us.’ The play is usually for beer, but the game is rendered exciting by bets both among the players and the lookers-on. ‘I’ll back Jem for a yanepatine,’ says one. ‘Jack for a gen,’ cries another. A penny is the lowest sum laid, and five shillings generally the highest, but a shilling is not often exceeded. ‘We play fair among ourselves,’ said a costermonger to me – ‘aye, fairer than the aristocrats – but we’ll take in anybody else.’ Where it is known that the landlord will not supply cards, ‘a sporting coster’ carries a pack or two with him. The cards played with have rarely been stamped; they are generally dirty, and sometimes almost illegible, from long handling and spilled beer. Some men will sit patiently for hours at these games, and they watch the dealing round of the dingy cards intently, and without the attempt – common among politer gamesters – to appear indifferent, though they bear their losses well. In a full room of card-players, the groups are all shrouded in tobacco-smoke, and from them are heard constant sounds – according to the games they are engaged in – of ‘I’m low, and Ped’s high.’ ‘Tip and me’s game.’ ‘Fifteen four and a flush of five.’ I may remark it is curious that costermongers, who can neither read nor write,