The street-sellers of second-hand articles – of whom there are again four separate classes; as (a) those who sell old metal articles – viz. old knives and forks, keys, tin-ware, tools, and marine stores generally; (b) those who sell old linen articles – as old sheeting for towels; (c) those who sell old glass and crockery-including bottles, old pans and pitchers, old looking glasses, &c.; and (d) those who sell old miscellaneous articles – as old shoes, old clothes, old saucepan lids, &c., &c.

7. The street-sellers of live animals – including the dealers in dogs, squirrels, birds, gold and silver fish, and tortoises.

8. The street-sellers of mineral productions and curiosities – as red and white sand, silver sand, coals, coke, salt, spar ornaments, and shells.

These, so far as my experience goes, exhaust the whole class of street-sellers, and they appear to constitute nearly three-fourths of the entire number of individuals obtaining a subsistence in the streets of London.

The next class are the STREET-BUYERS, under which denomination come the purchasers of hare-skins, old clothes, old umbrellas, bottles, glass, broken metal, rags, waste paper, and dripping.

After these we have the STREET-FINDERS, or those who, as I said before, literally ‘pick up’ their living in the public thoroughfares. They are the ‘pure’ pickers, or those who live by gathering dogs’-dung; the cigar-end finders, or ‘hard-ups’, as they are called, who collect the refuse pieces of smoked cigars from the gutters, and having dried them, sell them as tobacco to the very poor; the dredgermen or coal-finders; the mud-larks, the bone-grubbers; and the sewer-hunters.

Under the fourth division, or that of the STREET-PERFORMERS, ARTISTS, AND SHOWMEN, are likewise many distinct callings.

1. The street-performers, who admit of being classified into (a) mountebanks – or those who enact puppet-shows, as Punch and Judy, the fantoccini, and the Chinese shades. (b) The street-performers of feats of strength and dexterity – as ‘acrobats’ or posturers, ‘equilibrists’ or balancers, stiff and bending tumblers, jugglers, conjurors, sword-swallowers, ‘salamanders’ or fire-eaters, swordsmen, etc. (c) The street-performers with trained animals – as dancing dogs, performing monkeys, trained birds and mice, cats and hares, sapient pigs, dancing bears, and tame camels, (d) The street-actors – as clowns, ‘Billy Barlows’, ‘Jim Crows’, and others.

2. The street showmen, including shows of (a) extraordinary persons – as giants, dwarfs, Albinoes, spotted boys, and pig-faced ladies, (b) Extraordinary animals – as alligators, calves, horses and pigs with six legs or two heads, industrious fleas, and happy families, (c) Philosophic instruments – as the microscope, telescope, thaumascope. (d) Measuring-machines – as weighing, lifting, measuring, and striking machines; and (e) miscellaneous shows – such as peep-shows, glass ships, mechanical figures, wax-work shows, pugilistic shows, and fortune-telling apparatus.

3. The street-artists – as black profile-cutters, blind paper-cutters, ‘screevers’ or draughtsmen in coloured chalks on the pavement, writers without hands, and readers without eyes.

4. The street dancers – as street Scotch girls, sailors, slack and tight rope dancers, dancers on stilts, and comic dancers.

5. The street musicians – as the street bands (English and German), players of the guitar, harp, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, musical bells, cornet, tom-tom, &c.

6. The street singers, as the singers of glees, ballads, comic songs, nigger melodies, psalms, serenades, reciters, and improvisatori.

7. The proprietors of street games, as swings, highflyers, roundabouts, puff-and-darts, rifle shooting, down the dolly, spin-’em-rounds, prick the garter, thimble-rig, etc.

Then comes the Fifth Division of the Street-folk, viz., the STREET-ARTIZANS, or WORKING PEDLARS;

These may be severally arranged into three distinct groups – (1) Those who make things in the streets; (2) Those who mend things in the streets; and (3) Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets.

1. Of those who make things in the streets there are the following varieties: (a) the metal workers – such as toasting-fork makers, pin makers, engravers, tobacco-stopper makers, (b) The textile-workers-stocking-weavers, cabbage-net makers, night-cap knitters, doll-dress knitters, (c) The miscellaneous workers, – the wooden spoon makers, the leather brace and garter makers, the printers, and the glass-blowers.

2. Those who mend things in the streets, consist of broken china and glass menders, clock menders, umbrella menders, kettle menders, chair menders, grease removers, hat cleaners, razor and knife grinders, glaziers, traveling bell hangers, and knife cleaners.

3. Those who make things at home and sell them in the streets, are (a) the wood workers – as the makers of clothes-pegs, clothes-props, skewers, needle-cases, foot-stools and clothes-horses, chairs and tables, tea-caddies, writing-desks, drawers, work-boxes, dressing-cases, pails and tubs, (b) The trunk, hat, and bonnet-box makers, and the cane and rush basket makers, (c) The toy makers – such as Chinese roarers, children’s windmills, flying birds and fishes, feathered cocks, black velvet cats and sweeps, paper houses, cardboard carriages, little copper pans and kettles, tiny tin fire-places, children’s watches, Dutch dolls, buy-a-brooms, and gutta-percha heads, (d) The apparel makers – viz., the makers of women’s caps, boys’ and men’s cloth caps, night-caps, straw bonnets, children’s dresses, watch-pockets, bonnet shapes, silk bonnets, and gaiters, (e) The metal workers, – as the makers of fire-guards, bird-cages, the wire workers. (f) The miscellaneous workers – or makers of ornaments for stoves, chimney ornaments, artificial flowers in pots and in nosegays, plaster-of-Paris night-shades, brooms, brushes, mats, rugs, hearthstones, firewood, rush matting, and hassocks.

Of the last division, or STREET-LABOURERS, there are four classes:

1. The cleansers – such as scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimneysweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, ‘street-orderlies’, labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts.

2. The lighters and waterers – or the turn-cocks and the lamplighters.

3. The street-advertisers – viz., the bill-stickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement stencillers.

4. The street-servants – as horse holders, linkmen, coach-hirers, street-porters, shoe-blacks.

OF THE VARIETIES OF STREET-FOLK IN GENERAL, AND COSTERMONGERS IN PARTICULAR

[pp. 8–9] Among the street-folk there are many distinct characters of people – people differing as widely from each in tastes, habits, thoughts and creed, as one nation from another. Of these the costermongers form by far the largest and certainly the mostly broadly marked class. They appear to be a distinct race – perhaps, originally, of Irish extraction – seldom associating with any other of the street-folks, and being all known to each other. The ‘patterers’, or the men who cry the last dying-speeches, &c. in the street, and those who help off their wares by long harangues in the public thoroughfares, are again a separate class. These, to use their own term, are ‘the aristocracy of the street-sellers’, despising the costers for their ignorance, and boasting that they live by their intellect. The public, they say, do not expect to receive from them an equivalent for their money – they pay to hear them talk.