The London Poor c. 1850 Trivia Quiz

Answer: All these are named by him as 'classes'

The sixth class were street-labourers who included cleaners, lamplighters, billstickers and horse-holders.

Street-artisans included people who repair items and those who actually made items - even glass-blowers!

Street-buyers were mostly varieties of what we would call rag and bone men who bought recyclable items.

Street-finders hunted for things like old cigar ends for recycling. He also included 'sewer-hunters' and people who hunted for 'valuables' on the tidal flats of the Thames as street people.

Answer: 10,000-15,000

His estimate of 13,000 is based on 9,350 attending five wholesale markets plus 1,000 who still had stock so did not attend, 1,000 unable to attend 'owing to the dissipations of the previous night' and about 2,000 boys working for 'half profits'.

Answer: Two up

They actually played three up. Among costermongers cards and three up were played fairly but an outsider was considered fair game (apparently one man could get the coins to fall as he wanted them five times out of six).

Other popular amusements were some other card games which are not now played, shove halfpenny (a game once popular in many public houses)and two penny hops (dances), concerts, theatres (they would have liked Hamlet to be reduced to the ghost, the funeral and the final scene), taking risks (such as crossing bridges by walking on the parapet), rat killing and dog fights.
They danced jigs, hornpipes and polkas but not waltzes. One dance was the pipe dance that seems to be like the Scottish sword dance but with long clay tobacco pipes. There was always a fiddle and sometimes a harp or a cornopean (a predecessor of the cornet).

Answer: 10% or less

It was estimated that only three percent of costermongers had been in church. 'Chance children', that is children with no acknowledged father, were rare. Boys seemed to start cohabiting at about 14 and the girls a couple of years older.

Answer: 30,000

Costermongers often held raffles to aid the sick or people who had no money and could not borrow it. Loans were at usurious rates but costers rarely defaulted. Most equipment needed for the trade could be hired but it cost about one old penny to hire something that cost one shilling (twelve old pennies) new.

Answer: 1820

A Mr Myatt tried to sell seven bundles of rhubarb but only sold three (and the stalks were only half the size of the ones sold in 1850). He was laughed at for selling 'physic pies'.

Similarly pineapples were first sold on the street in 1842 (from the Bahamas). By 1850 costers were selling 20,000 of the 200,000 sold in London. When they first arrived they were costing the costers 4d and were sold for 1/- to 1/6 (12d to 18d) or 1d per slice.

Answer: False

Mayhew remarks on how well they treated their animals. Prosperous costers had a donkey cart and very prosperous ones had a pony. These animals were treated like pets and shared the family's food (if it was suitable).

One man who dealt in shellfish said he killed his crabs before boiling them and wished he could kill the lobsters before boiling without ruining them.

Answer: 300 tea stalls

He says there were 300 coffee stalls. About a dozen also sold cocoa and only a very few sold tea. The coffee was adulterated - usually with chicory but sometimes with baked carrots! Coffee selling was rare before 1842 (when the duty was reduced). Previously people drank saloop - which was made from the roots of orchis mascula, the early purple or red-handed orchid. Most stalls also sold bread and butter, currant cake, boiled eggs, watercress and ham sandwiches.

Some sold only lemonade but many also sold ginger beer and some sold other similar drinks. The trade became common in about 1820. Many sellers also sold some sort of food. To increase the sharpness of the lemonade some people added oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid)! The sale includes both bottled drinks and soda fountains. The biggest soda fountain was drawn by two expensive ponies.

Rice milk is rice cooked in water, sweetened and spiced with allspice. Rice milk sellers often also sold fruit and chestnuts.
The water carriers used buckets, not the fancy containers you still see in Arab souks. 60 carriers worked from springs at Highgate and Hampstead - laundresses used quite a lot of the water.

Many trades were seasonal, for instance the rice milk season was four winter months. In summer they usually sold curds and whey.

Answer: 300 Fish and chip sellers (chips are what the Americans call French fries)

Fish was shallow fried and sold with bread and butter. By the 20th century the preferred type of fish sold was cod with some haddock and plaice but

Mayhew found that half the fish was plaice and the rest was sole, haddock, whiting and flounders plus a very few herring. There were also 300 eel and pea soup sellers and 150 pickled whelk sellers.
What Americans call an "English muffin" is not what the muffin sellers sold.

Answer: Long song sellers - beggars who try to get alms by long, pitiful (almost invariably false) accounts of their woes

Patterers also sold 'love letters'. If there was no sensational news they would sell 'cocks' which were fictitious accounts passed off as genuine. They were called running patterers as the kept moving.
A long song seller sold song sheets. These sheets were about one yard (90cm long) with 3 columns of songs and advertised as 'three yards of songs for a penny', so they were long songs. There were typically about 45 songs that on one sheet included 'Buffalo gals come out tonight' and 'I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls'

'Slang' volume measures had false bottoms giving three quarters of the true volume and 'slang' weights were between 55 and 75% of the true weight. A costermonger was contemptuous of people using 'slang' weights as he could give short measure using true weights. It was excused by saying costers would not turn down an offer but if people tried to buy for less than a full price they would get less than a full measure.

Duffers (or lumpers) usually pretended to be seamen. The most common article sold was 'injy' handkerchiefs, which were perfumed and then claimed to have been smuggled in bales of spices.