‘I can’t tumble to that barrikin,’ said a young fellow; ‘it’s a jaw-breaker. But if this here--what d’ye call it, you talk about--was like the Irish, why they was a rum lot.’ ‘Noblesse,’ said a man that’s considered a clever fellow, from having once learned his letters, though he can’t read or write. ‘Noblesse! Blessed if I know what he’s up to.’ Here there was a regular laugh.”
From other quarters I learned that some of the costermongers who were able to read, or loved to listen to reading, purchased their literature in a very commercial spirit, frequently buying the periodical which is the largest in size, because when “they’ve got the reading out of it,” as they say, “it’s worth a halfpenny for the barrow.”
Tracts they will rarely listen to, but if any persevering man _will_ read tracts, and state that he does it for their benefit and improvement, they listen without rudeness, though often with evident unwillingness. “Sermons or tracts,” said one of their body to me, “gives them the ’orrors.” Costermongers purchase, and not unfrequently, the first number of a penny periodical, “to see what it’s like.”
The tales of robbery and bloodshed, of heroic, eloquent, and gentlemanly highwaymen, or of gipsies turning out to be nobles, now interest the costermongers but little, although they found great delight in such stories a few years back. Works relating to Courts, potentates, or “harristocrats,” are the most relished by these rude people.
I heard on all hands that the costers never steal from one another, and never wink at any one stealing from a neighbouring stall. Any stall-keeper will leave his stall untended to get his dinner, his neighbour acting for him; sometimes he will leave it to enjoy a game at skittles. It was computed for me, that property worth 10,000_l._ belonging to costers is daily left exposed in the streets or at the markets, almost entirely unwatched, the policeman or market-keeper only passing at intervals. And yet thefts are rarely heard of, and when heard of are not attributable to costermongers, but to regular thieves. The way in which the sum of 10,000_l._ was arrived at, is this: “In Hooper-street, Lambeth,” said my informant, “there are thirty barrows and carts exposed on an evening, left in the street, with nobody to see to them; left there all night. That is only one street. Each barrow and board would be worth, on the average, 2_l._ 5_s._, and that would be 67_l._ 10_s._ In the other bye-streets and courts off the New-cut are six times as many, Hooper-street having the most. This would give 405_l._ in all, left unwatched of a night. There are, throughout London, twelve more districts besides the New-cut--at least twelve districts--and, calculating the same amount in these, we have, altogether, 4,860_l._ worth of barrows. Taking in other bye-streets, we may safely reckon it at 4,000 barrows; for the numbers I have given in the thirteen places are 2,520, and 1,480 added is moderate. At least half of those which are in use next day, are left unwatched; more, I have no doubt, but say half. The stock of these 2,000 will average 10_s._ each, or 1,000_l._; and the barrows will be worth 4,500_l._; in all 5,500_l._, and the property exposed on the stalls and the markets will be double in amount, or 11,000_l._ in value, every day, but say 10,000_l._