I shall now treat of the tricks of trade practised
by the London costermongers. Of these the
costers speak with as little reserve and as little
shame as a fine gentleman of his peccadilloes.
"I've boiled lots of oranges," chuckled one
man, "and sold them to Irish hawkers, as wasn't
wide awake, for stunning big uns. The boiling
swells the oranges and so makes 'em look finer
ones, but it spoils them, for it takes out the
juice. People can't find that out though until
it's too late. I boiled the oranges only a few
minutes, and three or four dozen at a time."
Oranges thus prepared will not keep, and any
unfortunate Irishwoman, tricked as were my
informant's customers, is astonished to find her
stock of oranges turn dark-coloured and worth-
less in forty-eight hours. The fruit is "cooked"
in this way for Saturday night and Sunday sale
-- times at which the demand is the briskest.
Some prick the oranges and express the juice,
which they sell to the British wine-makers.
Apples cannot be dealt with like oranges, but
they are mixed. A cheap red-skinned fruit,
known to costers as "gawfs," is rubbed hard, to
look bright and feel soft, and is mixed with
apples of a superior description. "Gawfs are
sweet and sour at once," I was told, "and fit for
nothing but mixing." Some foreign apples, from
Holland and Belgium, were bought very cheap
last March, at no more than 16d. a bushel, and
on a fine morning as many as fifty boys might
be seen rubbing these apples, in Hooper-street,
Lambeth. "I've made a crown out of a bushel
of 'em on a fine day," said one sharp youth.
The larger apples are rubbed sometimes with a
piece of woollen cloth, or on the coat skirt, if
that appendage form part of the dress of the
person applying the friction, but most frequently
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they are rolled in the palms of the hand. The
smaller apples are thrown to and fro in a sack,
a lad holding each end. "I wish I knew how
the shopkeepers manage their fruit," said one
youth to me; "I should like to be up to some
of their moves; they do manages their things so
plummy."
Cherries are capital for mixing, I was assured
by practical men. They purchase three sieves
of indifferent Dutch, and one sieve of good
English cherries, spread the English fruit over
the inferior quality, and sell them as the best.
Strawberry pottles are often half cabbage leaves,
a few tempting strawberries being displayed on
the top of the pottle. "Topping up," said a
fruit dealer to me, "is the principal thing, and
we are perfectly justified in it. You ask any
coster that knows the world, and he'll tell you
that all the salesmen in the markets tops up.
It's only making the best of it." Filberts they
bake to make them look brown and ripe.
Prunes they boil to give them a plumper and
finer appearance. The latter trick, however, is
not unusual in the shops.
The more honest costermongers will throw
away fish when it is unfit for consumption,
less scrupulous dealers, however, only throw
away what is utterly unsaleable; but none of
them fling away the dead eels, though their
prejudice against such dead fish prevents their
indulging in eel-pies. The dead eels are mixed
with the living, often in the proportion of 20 lb.
dead to 5 lb. alive, equal quantities of each being
accounted very fair dealing. "And after all,"
said a street fish dealer to me, "I don't know
why dead eels should be objected to; the aristo-
crats don't object to them. Nearly all fish is
dead before it's cooked, and why not eels? Why
not eat them when they're sweet, if they're ever
so dead, just as you eat fresh herrings? I be-
lieve it's only among the poor and among our
chaps, that there's this prejudice. Eels die
quickly if they're exposed to the sun."
Herrings are made to look fresh and bright
by candle-light, by the lights being so disposed
"as to give them," I was told, "a good reflec-
tion. Why I can make them look splendid;
quite a pictur. I can do the same with macke-
rel, but not so prime as herrings."
There are many other tricks of a similar
kind detailed in the course of my narrative.
We should remember, however, that shopkeepers are not immaculate in this respect.