Of the Costermongers’ Raffles.

In their relief of the sick, if relief it is to be called, the costermongers resort to an exciting means; something is raffled, and the proceeds given to the sufferer. This mode is common to other working-classes; it partakes of the excitement of gambling, and is encouraged by the landlords of the houses to which the people resort. The landlord displays the terms of the raffle in his bar a few days before the occurrence, which is always in the evening. The raffle is not confined to the sick, but when any one of the class is in distress--that is to say, without stock-money, and unable to borrow it,--a raffle for some article of his is called at a public-house in the neighbourhood. Cards are printed, and distributed among his mates. The article, let it be whatever it may--perhaps a handkerchief--is put up at 6d. a member, and from twenty to forty members are got, according as the man is liked by his “mates,” or as he has assisted others similarly situated. The paper of every raffle is kept by the party calling it, and before he puts his name down to a raffle for another party, he refers to the list of subscribers to his raffle, in order to see if the person ever assisted him. Raffles are very “critical things, the pint pots fly about wonderful sometimes”--to use the words of one of my informants. The party calling the raffle is expected to take the chair, if he can write down the subscribers’ names. One who had been chairman at one of these meetings assured me that on a particular occasion, having called a “general dealer” to order, the party very nearly split his head open with a quart measure. If the hucksters know that the person calling the raffle is “down,” and that it is necessity that has made him call it, they will not allow the property put up to be thrown for. “If you was to go to the raffle to-night, sir,” said one of them to me, many months ago, before I became known to the class, “they’d say to one another directly you come in, ‘Who’s this here swell? What’s he want?’ And they’d think you were a ‘cad,’ or else a spy, come from the police. But they’d treat you civilly, I’m sure. Some very likely would fancy you was a fast kind of a gentleman, come there for a lark. But you need have no fear, though the pint pots does fly about sometimes.”

OF THE MARKETS AND TRADE RIGHTS OF THE COSTERMONGERS, AND OF THE LAWS AFFECTING THEM.

The next point of consideration is what are the legal regulations under which the several descriptions of hawkers and pedlars are allowed to pursue their occupations.

The laws concerning hawkers and pedlars, (50 Geo. III., c. 41, and 6 Geo. IV., c. 80,) treat of them as identical callings. The “hawker,” however, is, strictly speaking, one who sells wares by crying them in the streets of towns, while the pedlar travels on foot through the country with his wares, not publicly proclaiming them, but visiting the houses on his way to solicit private custom. Until the commencement of the present century--before the increased facilities for conveyance--the pedlars were a numerous body in the country. The majority of them were Scotchmen and some amassed considerable wealth. Railways, however, have now reduced the numbers to insignificance.

Hawkers and pedlars are required to pay 4l. yearly for a license, and an additional 4l. for every horse or ass employed in the conveyance of wares. The hawking or exposing for sale of fish, fruit, or victuals, does not require a license; and further, it is lawful for any one “being the maker of any home manufacture,” to expose it for sale in any fair or market, without a warrant. Neither does anything in either of the two acts in question prohibit “any tinker, cooper, glazier, plumber, harness-mender, or other person, from going about and carrying the materials proper to their business.”

The right of the costermongers, then, to “hawk” their wares through the streets is plainly inferred by the above acts; that is to say, nothing in them extends to prohibit persons “going about,” unlicensed, and at their own discretion, and selling fish, vegetables, fruit, or provisions generally.

The law acknowledges none of the street “markets.” These congregatings are, indeed, in antagonism to the municipal laws of London, which provide that no market, or public place where provisions are sold, shall be held within seven miles of the city. The law, though it permits butchers and other provisionmongers to hire stalls and standings in the flesh and other markets, recognised by custom or usage, gives no such permission as to street-trading.

The right to sell provisions from stands in the streets of the metropolis, it appears, is merely permissive. The regulation observed is this: where the costermongers or other street-dealers have been in the habit of standing to sell their goods, they are not to be disturbed by the police unless on complaint of an adjacent shopkeeper or other inhabitant. If such a person shows that the costermonger, whose stand is near his premises, is by his improper conduct a nuisance, or that, by his clamour or any peculiarity in his mode of business, he causes a crowd to gather and obstruct the thoroughfare, the policeman’s duty is to remove him. If the complaint from the inhabitants against the street-sellers be at all general the policemen of the beat report it to the authorities, taking no steps until they receive instructions.

It is somewhat anomalous, however, that the law now recognises--inferentially it is true--the right of costermongers to carry about their goods for sale. Formerly the stands were sometimes tolerated, but not the itinerancy.

The enactments of the Common-council from the time of Elizabeth are stringent against itinerant traders of all descriptions, but stringent to no purpose of prevention. In 1607, a Common-council enactment sets forth, that “many People of badd and lewde Condicon daylie resorte from the most Parte of this Realme to the said Cyttie, Suburbes, and Places adjoininge, procuringe themselves small Habytacons, namely, one Chamber-Roome for a poore Forreynor and his Familye, in a small Cottage with some other as poore as himself in the Cyttie, Suburbes, or Places adjacente, to the great Increase and Pestringe of this Cyttie with poore People; many of them proovinge Shifters, lyvinge by Cozeninge, Stealinge, and Imbeazellinge of Mens Gooddes as Opportunitye may serve them, remoovinge from Place to Place accordinglye; many Tymes runninge away, forsakinge their Wives and Children, leavinge them to the Charge of the said Cyttie, and the Hospitalles of the same.”

It was towards this class of men who, by their resort to the capital, recruited the numbers of the street-sellers and public porters and others that the jealousy of the Corporation was directed. The city shop-keepers, three centuries ago, complained vehemently and continuously of the injuries inflicted on their trade by itinerant dealers, complaints which led to bootless enactments. In Elizabeth’s reign the Court of Common Council declared that the streets of the city should be used, as in ancient times, for the common highway, and not for the traffic of hucksters, pedlars, and hagglers. But this traffic increased, and in 1632 another enactment was accounted necessary. Oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and all such “unruly people,” were threatened with the full pains and penalties of the outraged law if they persevered in the prosecution of their callings, which are stigmatised as “a way whereby to live a more easie life than by labour.” In 1694 the street-sellers were menaced with the punishments then deemed suitable for arrant rogues and sturdy beggars--whipping; and that remedy to be applied alike to males and females!

The tenor of these Vagrant Laws not being generally known, I here transcribe them, as another proof of the “wisdom” and mercy of our “ancestors” in “the good old times!”

In the year 1530 the English Parliament enacted, that, while the impotent poor should receive licenses from the justices of the peace to beg within certain limits, all men and women, “being whole and mighty in body, and able to labour,” if found vagrant and unable to give an account as to how they obtained their living, should be apprehended by the constables, tied to the tail of a cart naked, and beaten with whips through the nearest market-town, or hamlet, “till their bodies be bloody by reason of such whipping!” Five years afterwards it was added, that, if the individual had been once already whipped, he or she should not only be whipped again, but “also shall have the upper part of the gristle of his ear clean cut off, so as it may appear for a perpetual token hereafter that he hath been a contemner of the good order of the commonwealth.” And finally, in 1562, it was directed that any beggar convicted of being a vagabond should, after being grievously whipped, be burnt through the gristle of the right ear “with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about,” unless some person should agree to take him as a servant--of course without wages--for a year; then, that if he twice ran away from such master, he should be adjudged a felon; and that if he ran away a third time, he should “suffer pains of death and loss of land and goods as a felon, without benefit of clergy or sanctuary.”

The only acts now in force which regulate the government of the streets, so to speak, are those best known as Michael Angelo Taylor’s Act, and the 2 & 3 Vic., best known as the Police Act.