Many shopkeepers lend money to the stall-keepers, whom they know from standing near their premises, and that without interest. They generally lend, however, to the women, as they think the men want to get drunk with it. “Indeed, if it wasn’t for the women,” said a costermonger to me, “half of us might go to the Union.”
Another mode of usurious lending or trading is, as I said before, to provide the costermonger--not with the stock-money--but with the stock itself. This mode also is highly profitable to the usurer, who is usually a costermonger, but sometimes a greengrocer. A stock of fruit, fish, or vegetables, with a barrow for its conveyance, is entrusted to a street-seller, the usual way being to “let him have a sovereign’s worth.” The value of this, however, at the market cost, rarely exceeds 14_s._, still the man entrusted with it must carry 20_s._ to his creditor, or he will hardly be trusted a second time. The man who trades with the stock is not required to pay the 20_s._ on the first day of the transaction, as he may not have realised so much, but he must pay some of it, generally 10_s._, and must pay the remainder the next day or the money-lender will decline any subsequent dealings.
It may be thought, as no security is given, and as the costermongering barrow, stock, or money-lender never goes to law for the recovery of any debt or goods, that the per centage is not so very exorbitant after all. But I ascertained that not once in twenty times was the money lender exposed to any loss by the non-payment of his usurious interest, while his profits are enormous. The borrower knows that if he fail in his payment, the lender will acquaint the other members of his fraternity, so that no future loan will be attainable, and the costermonger’s business may be at an end. One borrower told me that the re-payment of his loan of 2_l._, borrowed two years ago at 4_s._ a week, had this autumn been reduced to 2_s._ 6_d._ a week: “He’s a decent man I pay now,” he said; “he has twice forgiven me a month at a time when the weather was very bad and the times as bad as the weather. Before I borrowed of him I had dealings with ----. He _was_ a scurf. If I missed a week, and told him I would make it up next week, ‘That won’t do,’ he’d say, ‘I’ll turn you up. I’ll take d----d good care to stop you. _I’ll_ have you to rights.’ If I hadn’t satisfied him, as I did at last, I could never have got credit again; never.” I am informed that most of the money-lenders, if a man has paid for a year or so, will now “drop it for a month or so in a very hard-up time, and go on again.” There is no I.O.U. or any memorandum given to the usurer. “There’s never a slip of paper about it, sir,” I was told.
