The Cries of London: Street-Traders of the 18thC
Hark! How the the cries in every street
Make the lanes and allies ring:
With their goods and ware, both nice and rare,
All in a pleasant lofty strain;
Come buy my gudgeons fine and new.
Old cloaths to change for earthen ware,
Come taste and try before you buy.
Here's dainty poplin pears.
Diddle diddle diddle dumplins, ho!
With walnuts nice and brown
Let none despise the merry, merry cries
Of famous London town.
Make the lanes and allies ring:
With their goods and ware, both nice and rare,
All in a pleasant lofty strain;
Come buy my gudgeons fine and new.
Old cloaths to change for earthen ware,
Come taste and try before you buy.
Here's dainty poplin pears.
Diddle diddle diddle dumplins, ho!
With walnuts nice and brown
Let none despise the merry, merry cries
Of famous London town.
The Cries of London, c. 1680
In Georgian London there were three ways to buy the things you wanted: shops (or warehouses in some cases), markets or street traders. The street traders had their own routes, but how were you supposed to know if your favourite pretty milkmaid, or the man with the best quality ink was in the square? The answer is the Cries of London. Much as the modern day market trader informs you of the quality of his bananas or apples, the street traders of Georgian London had their distinctive cries, to which they gave their own voice and often, a special twist. The cries listed here were the standard rhymes, which were altered to each trader's stock and personality. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but some of the other street traders will get their own posts.The earliest of London's cries doesn't belong to a trader at all, but the nightwatchmen. Besides policing the lighting of the streets, they were also a reliable nocturnal clock for Londoners. Each half an hour, the watchman called out the time, and also the weather; indicating that the English obsession with what the weather is up to is no new invention.
Past one o'clock and a starlit night.
The other cries were daytime ones, and one of the most easily recognizable is the orange-seller, made famous by the darling Nelly Gwynne. The girls pulled their stock in little wooden carts and the main types were China (grown here during the summer months, although it was Chinese in origin), or Spanish and Portuguese oranges.
Fine Sevil oranges, fine lemon, fine;
Round, sound and tender, inside and rine,
One pin's prick their virtue show;
They've liquor by their weight, you may know.
Round, sound and tender, inside and rine,
One pin's prick their virtue show;
They've liquor by their weight, you may know.
The Penny Pieman is a London legend. There are no figures for the Georgian period, but during the Victorian period, the City pie trade was reckoned in hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. London's favourite pies were beef, eel, or kidney. The pieman was able to sell hot pies because he had a base, with an oven, from which he sallied forth with his pies (also meat puddings in suet crusts) in a tin box with a fall front (which had been heated in the oven as well), encased in a leather harness, making him look like an ice-cream seller at the cinema. After making your choice, the pie came in a piece of newspaper. If you wanted gravy, you made a hole in the top with your finger and the pieman administered gravy or liquor from the bottles he carried with him (which you then devoured with the spoon you carried in your pocket). When his stock or gravies began to cool, the good pieman returned to base for more pies, or more heat.
Penny pies all hot hot hot!
Strawberry and soft fruit sellers were everywhere during the summer months, and had to cash in the on the brief window offered by the English climate. This was a trade dominated by women, and pretty girls in particular, who spent a great deal of time making 'pottles', the 18thC version of a punnet: thin wicker cones with a loop handle, into which they packed their wares.
Rare ripe strawberries and
Hautboys (a small, wild strawberry), ****pence a pottle.
Full to the bottom, hautboys.
Hautboys (a small, wild strawberry), ****pence a pottle.
Full to the bottom, hautboys.
The vegetable man and his donkey or 'little moke', its back laden with panniers, were a common sight. There was no fixed cry for the vegetable seller, as his shouts varied with his stock, which would include collyflowers, asparagus, potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, parsnips, leeks and turnips, amongst other things.
Cabbages, O! Turnips!
Two bunches a penny, turnips, ho!
Two bunches a penny, turnips, ho!
London's milkmaids are famous, and rightly so. Most milkmaids came to London from the West Country or Wales with the breeding cattle brought to the London markets. Enterprising families set up 'milking parlours' throughout the city, including the famous one in the Strand where the cows were lowered into a cellar where they were kept and milked for a time, before being sent back to the pastures to the north, and the next shift of 'girls' brought in. One milkmaid recorded her daily route and the results are astonishing: 19 miles. Milkmaids are famous for their pretty skin, and this was largely because many of them had acquired immunity to smallpox through milking duties. As milk delivery was a daily occurence, many milkmaids ran slates for their customers, proving they were to some extent both literate and numerate, and also hard enough to call in a debt. However, on May Day, the milkmaids of London claimed the equivalent of Christmas for other traders: they donned flowers and tied shiny objects to their clothes, and were entitled to 'knock-up' all their customers for a gift. Their cry was short, presumeably because they said it so often during the day. Some called out their name in addition.
Milk below.
The Old Clothes Man is another famous London character. Dealers in old clothes were usually Jewish, and residing towards Whitechapel. They offered ready money for clothing that was no longer wanted, or worn out, which they then sold onto others who could use it, for industrial or recycling purposes. Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a curious story to relate about an Old Clo' Man he met in the street, showing how those who used street cries were adopting an accepted 'patter':
The other day I was what you call floored by a Jew. He passed my several times calling out for old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last, I was so provoked, that I said to him, 'Pray, why can't you say "Old clothes", in as plain a way as I do now?' The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even fine accent, 'Sir, I can say "old clothes" as well as you can; but if you had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say Ogh Clo as I do now;' and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only one I had.
Other street traders included the mouse-trap man, the water-carriers, the knife grinder, the ink seller, the muffin man, the egg girls, and the earthenware sellers, but there is one class of street seller who sticks even in the modern mind: the fishwife. Described even in Georgian London as 'boisterous', these 'crying, wandering, travelling creatures carry their shops on their heads, and their storehouse is ordinarily Byllingsgate or Ye Brydge Foot; and their habitation Turnagain Lane...They set up every morning their trade afresh. They are easily furnished; get something and spend it jovially and merrily. Five shillings a basket and a good cry are a large stock for them.' These women were very specialized, selling either eels, herring, white fish, crabs or other small shellfish. They had no particular cry, but would announce what their stock held on any day. Of all the humble, grotesque images of London street-sellers available through prints and etchings, one image stands alone to represent these ordinary Londoners: Hogarth's shrimp girl. Even unfinished, it is one of his finest works, her vivacity and beauty captured better than a photograph. I can only imagine that whatever her cry, there were many who listened out for it.
