“I sell dry fruit, sir, in February and March, because I must be doing something, and green fruit’s not my money then. It’s a poor trade. I’ve sold figs at 1_d._ a pound,--no, sir, not slang the time I mean--and I could hardly make 1_s._ a day at it, though it was half profits. Our customers look at them quite particler. ‘Let’s see the other side of them figs,’ the boys’ll say, and then they’ll out with--‘I say, master, d’you see any green about me?’ Dates I can hardly get off at all, no!--not if they was as cheap as potatoes, or cheaper. I’ve been asked by women if dates was good in dumplings? I’ve sometimes said ‘yes,’ though I knew nothing at all about them. They’re foreign. I can’t say where they’re grown. Almonds and raisins goes off best with us. I don’t sell them by weight, but makes them up in ha’penny or penny lots. There’s two things, you see, and one helps off the other. Raisins is dry grapes, I’ve heard. I’ve sold grapes before they was dried, at 1_d._ and 2_d._ the pound. I didn’t do no good in any of ’em; 1_s._ a day on ’em was the topper, for all the half profits. I’ll not touch ’em again if I aint forced.”
There are a few costers who sell tolerable dry fruit, but not to any extent.
The old couple I have alluded to stand all the year round at the corner of a street running into a great city thoroughfare. They are supplied with their fruit, I am told, through the friendliness of a grocer who charges no profit, and sometimes makes a sacrifice for their benefit. As I was told that this old couple would not like inquiries to be made of them, I at once desisted.
There are sometimes twenty costermongers selling nothing but dry fruit, but more frequently only ten, and sometimes only five; while, perhaps, from 300 to 400 sell a few figs, &c., with other things, such as late apples, the dry fruit being then used “just as a fill up.”
According to the returns before given, the gross quantity of dry fruit disposed of yearly in the streets of London may be stated as follows:
7,000 lbs. of shell almonds, 37,800 „ raisins, 24,300 „ figs, 4,200 „ prunes.
The seller of fruit in the streets confines his traffic far more closely to fruit, than does the vegetable-dealer to vegetables. Within these three or four years many street-traders sell only fruit the year through; but the purveyor of vegetables now usually sells fish with his cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, or other garden stuff. The fish that he carries out on his round generally consists of soles, mackerel, or fresh or salt herrings. This combination of the street-green-grocer and street-fishmonger is called a “general dealer.”