A costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in British towns. The term is derived from the words costard (a medieval variety of apple) and monger (seller), and later came to be used to describe hawkers in general.Roberts, Chris, Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind Rhyme. Thorndike Press 2006. () Some historians have noted a class hierarchy in which the costermonger sold from a handcart or animal-drawn cart, while the lower-level hawker carried wares in a basket.
Costermongers distributed food rapidly from wholesale markets (in London: Smithfield for meat, Spitalfields for fruit and vegetables, Billingsgate for fish) to convenient locations for the labouring classes. Costermongers used a variety of devices to transport and display produce: a cart stood stationary at a market stall; a horse-drawn or wheelbarrow cart made the rounds; or a hand-held basket carried around light-weight goods such as herbs and flowers.
Costermongers survived numerous attempts to eliminate their class from the streets. Programmes to curtail them occurred during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Charles I. Victorian times saw a peak in both their numbers and attempts to suppress them. However, solidarity among costers along with public support enabled their commercial survival until the second half of the 20th century, when they began to take up pitches in the regulated markets.
They became known for their melodic sales patter, poems, and chants, which they used to attract attention. Both the sound and appearance of costermongers contributed to a distinctive street life that characterised London, Paris, and other large European cities, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their loud sing-song cries became part of the fabric of street life in large cities in Britain and Europe. Costermongers exhibited their membership in the coster community through dress, especially the large neckerchief, known as a kingsman. Their hostility to police was legendary. Their distinctive culture and appearance led to considerable appeal as subject-matter for artists, dramatists, comedians, writers and musicians. The cheeky costermonger was a stock character in Victorian music hall shows.
Etymology The term costermonger first appeared in written English in the early 16th century. The term coster is a corruption of costard, a kind of apple; and the word means a trader or broker. The first known use of the term costermonger occurs in the writings of Alexander Barclay, poet and clergyman, in the Fyfte Eglog of Alexandre Barclay of the cytezene and vplandyshman published around 1518. "I was acquaynted with many a hucster [=huckster], with a costardemonger and an hostler."Word Histories, http://wordhistories.com/2016/05/02/costermonger/ The derivation of the term "costermonger" appears in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English language, published in 1759. Charles Knight's London, published in 1851, also notes that a costermonger was originally an apple-seller.Knight, C., London, Vol. 5 (1851), FC & B, London (Classic Reprint), 2017 Although the original costermongers worked as itinerant apple-sellers, the word gradually came to refer to anyone who sold fresh fruit or vegetables from a basket, hand cart or temporary stall. The term can be used to describe anyone who sells goods outdoors or in the streets and has come to be a synonym for street vendor.Longman's Dictionary of Occupations, http://www.ldoceonline.com/Occupations-topic/costermongerMacmillan Dictionary, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/british/costermongerOxford Encyclopedia, http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/costermongerThe Free Dictionary, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/costermongerCollins Dictionary, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/costermonger
Definition and description Most contemporary dictionary definitions of costermonger refer to them as retail sellers or street vendors of fresh produce, operating from temporary stalls or baskets or barrows which are either taken on regular routes for door-to-door selling or which are set up in high traffic areas such as informal markets or lining the streets of busy thoroughfares. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a costermonger as "a person who sells fruit and vegetables outside rather than in a store" while the Collins Dictionary defines a costermonger as "a person who sells fruit or vegetables from a cart or street stand.
Henry Mayhew, a Victorian social commentator, distinguished between itinerant and stationary costermongers in the following terms:
Technically, costermongers were hawkers since they rarely traded from fixed stalls. They filled a gap in the food distribution system by purchasing produce from the wholesale markets, breaking it down into smaller lots and offering it for retail sale. Their fruit and vegetables were placed in baskets, barrows, carts or on temporary stalls. From an economic viewpoint, they provided form utility (breaking down wholesale lots into smaller retail sizes); place utility (making produce available close to shoppers' place of work or residence) and time utility (making goods available at times that are convenient to shoppers such as when they are on their way to work). Some costermongers walked the streets crying out to sell their produce, while others operated out of unauthorised, but highly organised informal markets, thereby contributing to an informal system of food distribution which was highly valued by the working classes and poorer customers.Jones, P.T.A., "Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London's Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity," The London Journal, Vol 41, No. 1, 2006, pp 64–65
While the term costermonger is typically used to describe sellers of fresh produce, primarily fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat, both Victorian commentators and historians point out that costers sold an "astonishly large amount of raw and prepared food."Graham, K., Gone to the Shops: Shopping in Victorian England, Praeger, London, 2008, p. 61 In their photographic essay, Street Life in London, published in 1877, John Thomson and Adolphe Smith depict costermongers selling a variety of fresh and prepared foods as well as beverages—from ginger beer through to iced confections.Thomson, J. and Smith, A., Street Life in London, 1877 Mayhew provided extensive descriptions of costers selling potted plants and cut flowers:
Mayhew also pointed out that young coster girls often started out by selling cut flowers and small bunches of herbs:
Images from Street Life in London, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, 1877
History
Costermongers were known to have been in London from at least the 15th century, and possibly much earlier. Mayhew, writing in the 1840s, called costermongering an "ancient calling" and attributed the first written descriptions of the street sellers' distinctive cries and sales patter appearing in a ballad, entitled London Lyckpeny by John Lydgate probably written in the late 1300s and first performed around 1409. Shakespeare and Marlowe mention costermongers in their writings.Mayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Will Not Work and Those who Cannot Work, Vol. 1, (originally published in 1848) NY, Cosimo Classics, 2009, pp 7–8
Although the term 'costermonger' was used to describe any hawker of fresh produce, it became strongly associated with London-based street vendors following a surge in their numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were most numerous during the Victorian era, when Mayhew estimated their London numbers at between 30,000 and 45,000 in the late 1840s.Mayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Will Not Work and Those who Cannot Work, Vol. 1, (originally published in 1848), NY, Cosimo Classics, 2009, pp 4–6; Mayhew notes that the census figures are unreliable on account of high levels of illiteracy amongst costermongers and provides a detailed account of how he arrived at these estimates. It may be worth noting that most historians accept Mayhew's estimates and the numbers are widely cited in secondary sources.
In the decades after the Great Fire of London, a major rebuilding programme led to the removal of London's main produce market, Stocks Market, in 1773. The displacement of the open market to a less strategic location led to a period of decline for retail markets. While wholesale markets continued to prosper, retail markets lost their foothold. Costermongers filled the gap by providing inexpensive produce in small quantities to the working classes, who, for their part, worked long hours in arduous occupations leaving them no time to attend markets far from the city centre. With the influx of people in London, in the years after the Industrial Revolution, demand outstripped retail capacity, such that costermongers performed a 'vital role' providing food and service to the labouring classes.
Throughout the 18th century, the streets of London filled with costermongers and competition between them became intense.Kelley, V., "The Streets for the People: London's Street Markets 1850–1939, Urban History, June, 2015, pp 1-21, To stand out amid the crowd, costers began to develop distinctive cries. Mayhew describes a Saturday night in the New Cut, a street in Lambeth, south of the river,
During the 19th century, costermongers gained an unsavoury reputation for their "low habits, general improvidence, love of gambling, total want of education, disregard for lawful marriage ceremonies, and their use of a peculiar slang language."John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 1859 Mayhew was aware of this reputation, but exhibited an ambivalent attitude towards them. On the one hand, he described them as usurers and pointed out that cheating was widespread. Weights were flattened to make products look bigger and heavier, and measures were fitted with thick or false bottoms to give false readings. On the other hand, Mayhew also noted that in his own personal experience, "they are far less dishonest than they are usually believed to be.Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1848 James Greenwood, a Victorian journalist and social commentator, also used derogatory language to describe costermongers and their markets but was aware of the essential service they provided by noting that the poor would be the ultimate "losers" if they were denied access to the costermongering culture which supported them.As cited in Jones, P.T.A., "Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London's Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity," The London Journal, Vol 41, No. 1, 2006, p. 72 The Methodist writer, Godfrey Holden Pike, argued that the Sabbath market was vulgar, but in later writings, he noted that "influential newspapers have often misrepresented him [the costermonger]."As cited in Jones, P.T.A., "Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London's Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity," The London Journal, Vol 41, No. 1, 2006, p. 61 and p. 72