Introduction
Introduction
In 1851 the social explorer Henry Mayhew counted thirty-seven street markets in London. These periodic gatherings of costermongers and street sellers sold fruit, vegetables, fish and a great range of other commodities from barrows and stalls in the open air, especially on Saturday nights:
The sights, as you elbow your way through the crowd, are … multifarious. Here is a stall glittering with new tin saucepans; there another, bright with its blue and yellow crockery, and sparkling with white glass. Now you come to a row of old shoes arranged along the pavement … This stall is green and white with bunches of turnips – that red with apples, the next yellow with onions, and another purple with pickling cabbages … Go to whatever corner of the metropolis you please … and there is the same shouting and the same struggling to get the penny profit out of the poor man’s Sunday dinner....
Manchester Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.