London Lackpenny.
Spectacles to read before printing was invented must have had a rather limited market; but we must bear in mind where they were sold. In Westminster Hall there were lawyers and rich suitors congregated,—worshipful men, who had a written law to study and expound, and learned treatises diligently to peruse, and titles to hunt after through the labyrinths of fine and recovery. The dealer in spectacles was a dealer in hats, as we see; and the articles were no doubt both of foreign manufacture. But lawyers and suitors had also to feed, as well as to read with spectacles; and on the Thames side, instead of the coffee-houses of modern date, were tables in the open air, where men every day ate of “bread, ribs of beef, both fat and full fine,” and drank jollily of “ale and wine,” as they do now at a horse-race:—
Passing from the City of Westminster, through the village of Charing and along Strand-side, to the City of London, the cries of food and feeding were first especially addressed to those who preferred a vegetable diet, with dessert and “spice, pepper, and saffron” to follow. “Hot peascod one began to cry,” Peascod being the shell of peas; thecodwhat we now call thepod:—
“Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise.” Rise—branch, twig, either a natural branch, or tied on sticks as we still see them.
In Chepe (Cheapside) he saw “much people” standing, who proclaimed the merits of their “velvets, silk, lawn, and Paris thread.” These, however, were shopkeepers; but their shops were not after the modern fashion of plate-glass windows, and carpeted floors, and lustres blazing at night with a splendour that would put to shame the glories of an eastern palace. They were rude booths, the owners of which bawled as loudly as the itinerants; and they went on bawling for several centuries, like butchers in a market, so that, in 1628, Alexander Gell, a bachelor of divinity, was sentenced to lose his ears and to be degraded from the ministry, for giving his opinion of Charles I.,that he was fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop with an apron before him, and say “What do ye lack, what do ye lack? What lack ye?” than to govern a kingdom.
The London Stone, thelapis milliaris(mile stone) of the Romans, has never failed to arrest the attention of the “Countryman in Lunnun.” The Canwyke Street of the days of John Lydgate, is the Cannon Street of the present. “Hot sheep’s feet,” which were cried in the streets in the time of Henry V., are now soldcoldas “sheep’s trotters,” and vended at the doors of the lower-priced theatres, music-halls, and public-houses. Henry Mayhew in his “London Labour and the London Poor,” estimates that there are sold weekly 20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet. The wholesale price at the “trotter yard” is five a penny, which gives an outlay by the street sellers of £3,033 6s. 8d. yearly. The cry which is still heard and tolerated by law, that ofMackerelrang through every street. The cry ofRushes-greentells us of by-gone customs. In ageslong before the luxury of carpets was known in England, the floors of houses were covered with rushes. The strewing of rushes in the way where processions were to pass is attributed by our poets to all times and countries. Thus at the coronation of Henry V., when the procession is coming, the grooms cry—
Not worth a rushbecame a common comparison for anything worthless; the rush being of so little value as to be trodden under foot.Rush-lights, or candles with rush wicks, are of the greatest antiquity.
Eastcheap, this ancient thoroughfare, originally extended from Tower-street westward to the south end of Clement’s-lane, where Cannon-street begins. It was the Eastern Cheap or Market, as distinguished from Westcheap, now Cheapside. The site of the Boar’s Head Tavern, first mentionedtemp.Richard II., the scene of the revels of Falstaff and Henry V., when Prince of Wales, is very nearly that of the statue of King William IV.Lackpennyhad presented to him several of the real Signs of the Times and of Life in London with “ribs of beef—many a pie—pewter pots—music and singing”—strange oaths, “Yea by Cock” being a vulgar corruption for a profane oath. Our own taverns still supply us with ballad-singers—“Buskers”—who will sing of “Jenkin and Julian”—Ben Block; or, She Wore a Wreath of Roses, “for their meed.”
The manners and customs of the dwellers in Cornhill in the time of John Lydgate, when a stranger could have his hood stolen at one end of the town and see it exposed for sale at the other, forcibly reminds us of Field-lane and the Jew Fagin, so faithfully sketched in pen and ink by Charles Dickens of our day. Where “a young man from the country” would run the risk of meeting with an Artful Dodger, to pick his pocket of his silk handkerchief at the entrance of the Lane, and it would be offered him for sale by a Jew fence at the end, not only “Once a Week” but “All the Year Round.” However, when Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist came in, Field-lane and Fagin went out.
At length the Kentish man being wearied, falls a prey to the invitation of a taverner, who with a cringing bow, and taking him by the sleeve:—“Sir,” saith he, “will you our wine assay?” WhereuponLackpenny, coming to the safe conclusion that “a penny can do no more than it may,” enters the tempting and hospitable house of entertainment, and there spends his only penny, for which he is supplied with a pint of wine:—
Worthy old John Stow supposes this interesting incident to have happened at the Pope’s Head, in Cornhill, and bids us enjoy the knowledge of the fact, that:—“Wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink it was given free in every taverne.” Yet Lydgate’s hero went away “Sore a-hungered,” for there was no eating at taverns at this time beyond a crust to relish the wine, and he who wished to dine before he drank had to go to the cook’s.
Wanting money,Lackpennyhas now no choice but to return to the country, and applies to the watermen at Billingsgate:—
We have a corroboration of the accuracy of this picture in Lambarde’s “Perambulation of Kent.” The old topographer informs us that in the time of Richard II. the inhabitants of Milton and Gravesend agreed to carry in their boats, from London to Gravesend, a passenger with his truss or fardel [burden] for twopence.
The poor Kentish suitor, without two-pence in his pocket to pay the Gravesend bargemen, whispers a mild anathema against London lawyers, then takes his solitary way on foot homeward—a sadder and a wiser man.
With unpaved streets, and no noise of coaches to drown any particular sound, we may readily imagine the din of the great London thoroughfares of four centuries ago, produced by all the vociferous demand for custom. The chief body of London retailers were then itinerant,—literally pedlars; and those who had attained some higher station were simply stall-keepers. The streets of trade must have borne a wonderful resemblance to a modern fair. Competition was then a very rude thing, and the loudest voice did something perhaps to carry the customer.
The London Stone.
In the old play entitled:—“A ryght excellent and famous Comedy called theThree Ladies of London, wherein is Notable declared and set fourth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Love and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination. A Perfect Patterne of All Estates to looke into, and a worke ryght worthie to be marked. Written by R. W.; as it hath been publiquely played. At London, Printed by Roger Warde, dwelling neere Holburne Conduit at the sign of the Talbot, 1584,” is the following poetical description of some London cries:—
EnterConscience, with brooms, singing as followeth:—
By another old comedy by the same author as the preceding one, which he entitles:—“The pleasant and Stately Morall of theThree Lords and Three Ladies of London. With the great Joye and Pompe, Solemnized at their Marriages: Commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall observations, and other important matters of due regard. By R. W., London. Printed by R. Ihones, at the Rose and Crowne, neere Holburne Bridge, 1590,” it appears that woodmen went about with their beetles and wedges on their backs, crying “Have you any wood to cleave?” It must be borne in mind that in consequence of the many complaints against coal as a public nuisance, it was not in common use in London until the reign of Charles I., 1625.
There is a character in the play namedSimplicity, a poor Freeman of London, who for a purpose turns ballad-monger, and in answer to the question of “What dainty fine ballad have you now to be sold?” replies:—“I have ‘Chipping-Norton,’ ‘A mile from Chapel o’ th’ Heath’—‘A lamentable ballad of burning of the Pope’s dog;’ ‘The sweet ballad of the Lincolnshire bagpipes;’ and ‘Peggy and Willy: But now he is dead and gone; Mine own sweet Willy is laid in his grave.’”
SHAKESPEARE’S LONDON.
The London of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Co.,—Limitedas it was within its great wall, occupied very much the same space as that now covered by the City proper; its streets were narrow and winding, yet there were still left many open spaces; it was covered with people; its river was full of shipping; it was rich, prosperous, and possessed of a considerable amount ofliberty. The great wall of London, broad and strong, with towers at intervals, was more than two miles long, from end to end, beginning at the Tower of London on the east, and ending at the Fleet River and the Thames on the west.
ALDERSGATE.
As regards the gates, there were anciently only four—namely, Aldersgate, Aldgate, Ludgate, and Bridgegate—that is to say, one for each of the cardinal points. Then other gates and posterns were added for the convenience of the citizens: Bishopsgate, for those who had business in the direction of Norfolk, Suffolk, or Cambridgeshire; Moorgate, for those whowould practice archery, or take their recreation in Moor Fields; Cripplegate, more ancient than the two preceding, had a prison for debtors attached to it; and there was also a postern for the Convent of Grey Friars, now Christ’s Hospital. At Newgate was a small, incommodious, and fever-haunted prison for criminals; and at Ludgate was another prison, appropriated to debtors, trespassers, and those who committed contempt of Court. Along the river-side were several water-gates, the chief of which were Blackfriars, Greenhithe, Dowgate and Billingsgate.
Within the narrow space of the City Walls there rose a forest of towers and spires. The piety of Merchants had erected no fewer than a hundred and three churches, which successive citizens were continually rebuilding, beautifying, or enlarging. They were filled with the effigies and splendid tombs, the painted and gilded arms, of their founders and benefactors, for whose souls masses were continually said.
CHEAPSIDE CROSS.
“London was divided into Wards, and was perhaps as catholic in its commercial and industrial pursuits then as now. Every kind of trade was carried on within its walls, just as every kind of merchandise was sold. The combination of fellows of the same craft began in very early times, guilds were formed for the protection of trade and its followers; the guild-brothers met once a month to consider the interests of the craft, regulating prices, recovering debts and so forth. But the London of the period was not so gay as Paris, nor so bustling and prosperous as Antwerp, nor so full of splendour and intellectual life as Venice.[1]Yet to the Englishman of the day it was anever-lasting wonder. Its towers and palaces, its episcopal residences and gentlemen’s inns, the bustle of its commerce, the number of its foreigners, the wealth of its Companies, and the bravery of its pageants, invested it with more poetry than can be claimed for it at the present time, unless Wealth be our deity, Hurry our companion, and Progress our muse. The rich were leaving their pleasant country mansions to plunge into its delights. At the law terms there was a regular influx of visitors, who seemed to think more of taking tobacco than of winning a lawsuit. Ambitious courtiers, hopeful ecclesiastics, pushing merchants, and poetic dreamers, were all caught by the fascinations of London. Site, antiquity, life, and, above all, abundance of the good things that make up half its charm, inthe shape of early delicacies, costly meats, and choice wines, combined to make it a miraculous city in the eyes of the Elizabethan.”
“The external appearance of the City was certainly picturesque. Old grey walls threw round it the arm of military protection. Their gates were conspicuous objects, and the white uniforms of the train-bands on guard, with their red crosses on the back, fully represented the valour which wraps itself in the British flag and dies in its defence. To the north were the various fields whose names survive, diversified by an occasional house, and Dutch-looking windmills, creaking in the breeze. Finsbury was a fenny tract, where the City archers practised; Spitalfields, an open, grassy place, with grounds for artillery exercise and a market cross; and Smithfield, or Smoothfield, was an unenclosed plain, where tournaments were held, horses were sold, and martyrs had been burnt. To the east was the Tower of London, black with age, armed with cannon and culverin, and representing the munificence which entertained royalty as well as the power which punished traitors. Beyond it was Wapping, the Port of London, with its narrow streets, its rope-walks and biscuit shops. Black fronted taverns, with low doorways and leaden framed windows, their rooms reeking with smoke and noisy with the chatter of ear-ringed sailors, were to be found in nearly every street. Here the merchant adventurer came to hire his seamen, and here the pamphleteer or the ballad-maker could any night gather materials for many a long-winded yarn about Drake and the Spanish main, negroes, pearls, and palm-groves.
OLD STAGE WAGGON.
“To the west, the scene was broken with hamlets, trees, and country roads. Marylebone and Hyde Park were a royal hunting-ground, with a manor house, where the Earls of Oxford lived in later times. Piccadilly was ‘the road to Reading,’ with foxgloves growing in its ditches, gathered by the simple dealers of Bucklersbury, to make anodynes for the weary-hearted. Chelsea was a village; Pimlico a country hamlet, where pudding-pies were eaten by strolling Londoners on a Sunday. Westminster was a city standing by itself, with its Royal Palace, its Great Hall for banquets and the trial of traitors, its sanctuary, its beautiful Abbey, and its famous Almonry. St. James’s Park was walled with red brick, and contained the palace Henry VIII. had built for Anne Boleyn. Whitehall Palace was in its glory. The Strand, along which gay ladies drove in their‘crab-shell coaches,’ had been recently paved, and its streams of water diverted. A few houses had made their appearance on the north side of the Strand, between the timber house and its narrow gateway, which then formed Temple Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, and the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. The southern side was adorned with noble episcopal residences, and with handsome turreted mansions, extending to the river, rich with trees and gardens, and relieved by flashes of sparkling water.
SMITH’S ARMS, BANKSIDE.[2]
“To the south, Lambeth, with its palace and church, and Faux Hall, were conspicuous objects. Here were pretty gardens and rustic cottages. The village of Southwark, with its prisons, its public theatres, its palace, and its old Tabard Inn, had many charms. It was the abode of Shakespeare himself, as he resided in a good house in the Liberty of the Clink, and was assessed in the weekly payment of 6d., no one but Henslowe, Alleyn, Collins, and Barrett, being so highly rated. That part of the Borough of Southwark known as Bankside was not only famous in Shakespeare’s time for its Theatres, but also as the acknowledged retreat of the warmest of thedemi-monde!
“We fear our best zeal for the drama will not authorise us to deny that Covent-garden and Drury-lane have succeeded to theBank-sidein every species of fame!
The Globe Theatre.
“We must not forget the river Thames. It was one of the sights of the time. Its waters were pure and bright, full of delicate salmon, and flecked by snowy swans, ‘white as Lemster wool.’ Wherries plied freely on its surface. Tall masts clustered by its banks. Silken-covered tiltboats, freighted with ruffed and feathered ladies and gentlemen, swept by, the watermen every now and then breaking the plash of the waves against their boats by singing out, in their bass voices, ‘Heave and how, rumbelow.’ At night, the scene reminded the travelled man of Venice. All the mansions by the water-side had river-terraces and steps, and each one its own tiltboat, barge, and watermen. Down these steps, lighted by torches and lanterns, stepped dainty ladies, in their coloured shoes, with masks on their faces, and gay gallants, in laced cloaks, by their side, bound for Richmond or Westminster, to mask and revel. Noisy parties of wits and Paul’s men crossed to Bankside to seeRomeo and Juliet, orHamlet the Dane, or else ‘The most excellenthistorie of theMerchant of Venice, with the extreme crueltie ofShylocke, the Jewe, towards the sayd merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and obtaining of Portia by the choyse of three caskets, as it hath diverse times been acted by the Lord Chamberlain, his servants. Written by William Shakespeare.’
BAYNARD’S CASTLE.
“From Westminster to London Bridge was a favourite trip. There was plenty to see. The fine Strand-side houses were always pointed out—Northumberland House, York House, Baynard’s Castle, the scene of the secret interview between the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, was singled out, between Paul’s Wharf and Puddle Dock. Next to the Temple, and between it and Whitefriars, was the regionknown as Alsatia. Here safe from every document but the writ of the Lord Chief Justice and the Lords of the Privy Council, in dark dwellings, with subterranean passages, narrow streets, and trap-doors that led to the Thames, dwelt all the rascaldom of the time—men who had been ‘horned’ or outlawed, bankrupts, coiners, thieves, cheaters at dice and cards, duellists, homicides, and foreign bravoes, ready to do any desperate deed. At night the contents of this kingdom of villany were sprayed out over London, to the bewilderment of good-natured Dogberries, and country gentlemen, making their first visit to town.
“Still further down the river was the famous London Bridge. It consisted of twenty arches; its roadway was sixty feet from the river; and the length of the bridge from end to end was 926 feet.
“It was one of the wonders that strangers never ceased to admire. Its many shops were occupied by pin nacres, just beginning to feel the competition with the Netherland pin-makers, and the tower at its Southwark end was adorned with three hundred heads, stuck on poles, like gigantic pins, memorials of treachery and heresy.
“The roar of the river through the arches was almost deafening. ‘The noise at London Bridge is nothing near her,’ says one of the characters in Beaumont and Fletcher’sWoman’s Prize. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson & Co., must have crossed the bridge many a time on their visits to the City, to ‘gather humours of men daily,’ as Aubrey quaintly expresses it.”
The name of Ben Jonson reminds us that inThe Silent Woman,—one of the most popular of his Comedies,—we have presented to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found ofthe characteristic noises, and street-cries of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their resemblances and their differences with the roar which the great Babelnow“sends through all her gates.” We propose, therefore, to put before our readers this passage of Jonson’s comedy; and then, classifying what he describes, illustrate our fine old dramatic painter of manners by references to other writers, and by the results of our own observation.
The principal character of Jonson’sSilent Womanis founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson designates this character by the name of“Morose;” and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, not even that of ordinary talk. The plot turns upon this affectation; for having been entrapped into a marriage with the “Silent Woman,” she and her friends assail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune and is relieved of the “Silent Woman,” who is in reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue of the whole scene; the speakers being “Truewitt,” “Clerimont,” and a “Page”:—
“True.I met that stiff piece of formality, Master Morose, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears.“Cler.O! that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man.“True.So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them: marry, the chimney-sweepes will not be drawn in.“Cler.No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.“True.Methinks a smith should be ominous.“Cler.Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer’d to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove-Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit.“True.A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys.“Cler.Out of his senses. The waits of the City have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword; and there left him flourishing with the air.“Page.Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these commonnoises; and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his games under Master Morose’s window; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request.“True.A good wag! How does he for the bells?“Cler.O! In the queen’s time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o’clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk’d; and there he lives by candlelight.”
“True.I met that stiff piece of formality, Master Morose, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears.
“Cler.O! that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man.
“True.So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them: marry, the chimney-sweepes will not be drawn in.
“Cler.No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.
“True.Methinks a smith should be ominous.
“Cler.Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer’d to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove-Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit.
“True.A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys.
“Cler.Out of his senses. The waits of the City have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword; and there left him flourishing with the air.
“Page.Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these commonnoises; and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his games under Master Morose’s window; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request.
“True.A good wag! How does he for the bells?
“Cler.O! In the queen’s time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o’clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk’d; and there he lives by candlelight.”
The first class of noises, then, against which “Morose” protected his ears by “a huge turban of night-caps,” is that of the ancient and far-famedLondon Cries. We have here the very loudest of them—fish-wives, orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might almost say that there werehundredsof other cries; and therefore, reserving to ourselves some opportunity for a special enumeration of a few of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them, as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations.
We shall not readily associate any very agreeable sounds with the voices of the “fish-wives.” The one who cried “Mackerel” in Lydgate’s day had probably no such explanatory cry as the “Mackerel alive, alive ho!” of modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was “New Mackerel.” And in the same way there was:—
The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in those days of tardy intercourse. But quantity was also to be taken into the account, and so we find the criesof “Buy my dish of Great Smelts;” “Great Plaice;” “Great Mussels.” Such are the fish-cries enumerated in Lauron’s and various other collections of “London Cries.”
But, we are forgetting “Morose,” and his “turban of night-caps.” Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own:—
Enraged Musician.
In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist’s description of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid’s scream, the mackerel seller’s shout, the sweep upon the house top,—to match the fish-wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard-mongers. The smith, who was “ominous,” had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth’s time; the armourer was obsolete: but Hogarth can rival their noises with the pavior’s hammer, the sow-gelder’s horn, and the knife-grinder’s wheel. The waits ofthe city had a pension not to come near “Morose’s” ward; but it was out of the power of the “Enraged Musician” to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct; but modern London had acquired the dustman’s bell. The bear-ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. “Morose” and the “Enraged Musician” had each the church bells to fill up the measure of discord.
The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great city of London thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court-road, Hoxton, Shoreditch,Kingsland, Whitechapel, Hackney-road, and many other suburban districts, which still retain the character of a street-market, they stand in long rows as the evening draws in, with paper-lanterns stuck in their baskets on dark nights; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the olden time.
The “costard-monger” whom Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is still noisy. He bawls so loud even to this day, that he puts his hand behind his ear to mitigate the sensation which he inflicts upon his own tympanum. He was originally an apple-seller, whence his name; and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman. In Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,” he cries “pears.” Ford makes him cry “pippins.” He is a quarrelsome fellow, according to Beaumont and Fletcher:—
The costermonger is now a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand: in the neighbourhood of the great markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in some silent streets stretching into the suburbs; and there, with his donkey and hampers stands at the door, as the servant-maid cheapens a bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were anciently represented by such cries as “Buy my artichokes, mistress;” “Ripe cowcumbers;” “White onions, white St. Thomas’ onions;” “White radish;” “Ripe young beans;” “Any baking pears;” “Ripe sparrowgrass.” He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen interfering with his wholesale operations. He would rail against them as the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries railed against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth, they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the common highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers, to stand or sit to sell their wares in, and to pass from street to street hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and the like, as “unruly people;” and they charge them somewhat unjustly, as it must appear, with “framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more easy life than by labour.”
The evil, as the citizens term it, seems to have increased; for in 1694 the common council threatened the pedlars and petty chapmen with the terrors of the laws against rogues and sturdybeggars, the least penalty being whipping, whether for male or female. The reason for this terrible denunciation is very candidly put: the citizens and shopkeepers are greatly hindered and prejudiced in their trades by the hawkers and pedlars. Such denunciations as these had little share in putting down the itinerant traders. They continued to flourish, because society required them; and they vanished from our view when society required them no longer. In the middle of the last century they were fairly established as rivals to the shopkeepers. Dr. Johnson, than whom no man knew London better, thus writes in the “Adventurer:”—“The attention of a new-comer is generally first struck by the multiplicity of cries that stun him in the streets, and the variety of merchandise and manufactures which the shopkeepers expose on every hand.” The shopkeepers have now ruined the itinerants—not by putting them down by fiery penalties, but by the competition amongst themselves to haveevery article at hand for every man’s use, which shall be better and cheaper than the wares of the itinerant. Whose ear is now ever deafened by the cries of the broom-man? He was a sturdy fellow in the days of old “Morose,” carrying on a barter which in itself speaks of the infancy of civilization. His cry was “Old Shoes for some Brooms.” Those proclamations for barter no doubt furnished a peculiar characteristic of the old London Cries. The itinerant buyers were as loud, though not so numerous, as the sellers.