One Irish street-seller I saw informed me that she was a “widdy wid three childer.” Her husband died about four years since. She had then five children, and was near her confinement with another. Since the death of her husband she had lost three of her children; a boy about twelve years died of stoppage on his lungs, brought on, she said, through being in the streets, and shouting so loud “to get sale of the fruit.” She has been in Clare-street, Clare-market, seven years with a fruit stall. In the summer she sells green fruit, which she purchases at Covent-garden. When the nuts, oranges, &c., come in season, she furnishes her stall with that kind of fruit, and continues to sell them until the spring salad comes in. During the spring and summer her weekly average income is about 5_s._, but the remaining portion of the year her income is not more than 3_s._ 6_d._ weekly, so that taking the year through, her average weekly income is about 4_s._ 3_d._; out of this she pays 1_s._ 6_d._ a week rent, leaving only 2_s._ 9_d._ a week to find necessary comforts for herself and family. For fuel the children go to the market and gather up the waste walnuts, bring them home and dry them, and these, with a pennyworth of coal and coke, serve to warm their chilled feet and hands. They have no bedstead, but in one corner of a room is a flock bed upon the floor, with an old sheet, blanket, and quilt to cover them at this inclement season. There is neither chair nor table; a stool serves for the chair, and two pieces of board upon some baskets do duty for a table, and an old penny tea-canister for a candlestick. She had parted with every article of furniture to get food for her family. She received nothing from the parish, but depended upon the sale of her fruit for her living.
The Irishmen who are in this trade are also very poor; and I learned that both Irishmen and Irishwomen left the occupation now and then, and took to begging, as a more profitable calling, often going begging this month and fruit-selling the next. This is one of the causes which prompt the London costermongers’ dislike of the Irish. “They’ll beg themselves into a meal, and work us out of one,” said an English coster to me. Some of them are, however, less “poverty-struck” (a word in common use among the costermongers); but these for the most part are men who have been in the trade for some years, and have got regular “pitches.”