The regular costers rarely buy oranges until the spring, except, perhaps, for Sunday afternoon sale--though this, as I said before, they mostly object to. In the spring, however, they stock their barrows with oranges. One man told me that, four or five years back, he had sold in a day 2,000 oranges that he picked up as a bargain. They did not cost him half a farthing each; he said he “cleared 2_l._ by the spec.” At the same period he could earn 5_s._ or 6_s._ on a Sunday afternoon by the sale of oranges in the street; but now he could not earn 2_s._
A poor Irishwoman, neither squalid in appearance nor ragged in dress, though looking pinched and wretched, gave me the subjoined account; when I saw her, resting with her basket of oranges near Coldbath-fields prison, she told me she almost wished she was inside of it, but for the “childer.” Her history was one common to her class--
“I was brought over here, sir, when I was a girl, but my father and mother died two or three years after. I was in service then, and very good service I continued in as a maid-of-all-work, and very kind people I met; yes, indeed, though I was Irish and a Catholic, and they was English Protistants. I saved a little money there, and got married. My husband’s a labourer; and when he’s in full worruk he can earn 12_s._ or 14_s._ a week, for he’s a good hand and a harrud-worruking man, and we do middlin’ thin. He’s out of worruk now, and I’m forced to thry and sill a few oranges to keep a bit of life in us, and my husband minds the childer. Bad as I do, I can do 1_d._ or 2_d._ a day profit betther than him, poor man! for he’s tall and big, and people thinks, if he goes round with a few oranges, it’s just from idleniss; and the Lorrud above knows he’ll always worruk whin he can. He goes sometimes whin I’m harrud tired. One of us must stay with the childer, for the youngist is not three and the ildest not five. We don’t live, we starruve. We git a few ’taties, and sometimes a plaice. To-day I’ve not taken 3_d._ as yit, sir, and it’s past three. Oh, no, indeed and indeed, thin, I dont make 9_d._ a day. We live accordingly, for there’s 1_s._ 3_d._ a week for rint. I have very little harrut to go into the public-houses to sill oranges, for they begins flying out about the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman, as if I had anything to do with it. And that’s another reason why I like my husband to stay at home, and me to go out, because he’s a hasty man, and might get into throuble. I don’t know what will become of us, if times don’t turn.”