Have you ever heard of the interviews conducted by Henry Mayhew?
He was a Victorian journalist, social reformer, and co-founder of Punch magazine. In the 1840s and 1850s, he went out into the streets of London to document the lives, working conditions, and perspectives of the city’s working-class poor. His compilation was published as London Labour and the London Poor.
Of particular interest is his section on costermongers; street vendors who sold fruit, vegetables, and fish from barrows.
Because these communities were entirely cut off from formal education and spent every waking hour working just to survive, their understanding of history, religion, and geography was completely decoupled from any schoolbook facts. Instead, they relied on oral tradition, fragments of street theater, and random guessing.
Here are a few choice quotations from Mayhew’s interviews with the street sellers of London that illustrate the fascinating limited perspective of the XIXth century urban proletariat.
When Mayhew questioned a young costermonger about history and the age of the Earth, he got the following answer:
"I have heard of Asyria, and India, and Peru... I don't know where they are. I shouldn't think anybody knows... I know there's a book called the Bible, and I think it's all about the history of the world. I should think the world's been made about a hundred years, or perhaps more. I've heard it was made in seven days, but that's a long time ago."
When asked about the rulers of England, another costermonger noted:
"I've heard of Queen Victoria. She's a good queen, they say... I don't know who was queen before her. I've heard of a King George, but I don't know if he was before or after her. I think he was before her, because I've seen an old coin with his name on it."
Their view of the world outside of London was entirely practical. If a place didn't produce goods they could sell, or if they couldn't walk there, it barely existed. One vendor explained:
"I don't know what France is. I've heard of it, but I don't know whether it's a town or a country. I think it's a place where they make lace... I've heard of America, too. It's a place where the black people live. I don't know how far it is. I should think it's a good many miles off; perhaps twenty."
Costers viewed themselves as a distinct class, completely separate from the "mechanics" (artisans) and the middle class. They held a deep, systemic hatred for the police ("peelers"), whom they saw as their natural enemies because of street clearance laws.
Mayhew was shocked to discover that the vast majority of costermongers had no concept of Christianity, despite living in the heart of the British Empire. They were almost entirely illiterate. One young coster boy famously told him he had "heard of God, but didn't know what He was," while others associated religion only with the tract-sellers who tried to stop them from working on Sundays.
Marriage was rare; Mayhew estimated that 90% of costermonger couples cohabited without legal marriage. However, they took these partnerships seriously, and a young "coster-girl" was expected to work just as hard as her partner, often starting her own street rounds when she was "a'most a baby"
Their primary amusements were beer shops, gambling, dog-fighting, and visiting "Penny Gaffs", makeshift, cheap theatres in abandoned storefronts that staged crude, rowdy, and often highly suggestive performances.
In one of the most famous interviews, an 18-year-old girl describes her life selling apples and her view of the world:
"I never go to churches or chapels. And I don’t know that I know any girls as goes, without they’re dressed up and wants to go and look at the young men... Father used to beat me shocking; and he’s beat me since I’ve been living with my young man. I’m quite past his power now... We regular costers is a class to ourselves, and we don’t mix with others."
A teenage boy explains the daily grind of the markets and the constant struggle against the police:
"The police is our ruin, sir. If we stall, they move us on; if we show our barrows, they run us in. They treat us like dogs, and we hates them like poison. I’d rather see a policeman get a hiding than get a free pint of beer myself, any day."
Most costers spent their entire lives within a radius of just a few miles, yet they mapped that tiny area with staggering, microscopic detail.
They knew every alleyway to escape the police, which pubs allowed them to sell to patrons, the exact income level of every street's residents, and who was likely to buy stale fish at a discount. To them, "the world" wasn't Great Britain or the colonies; it was a patchwork of territories, rivals, and friendly neighborhoods. Going to a different part of London was treated with the same suspicion and preparation as traveling to a foreign country.
Their narrow focus was also actively maintained as a shield. Costers were fiercely proud. They saw "the system" (the government, the church, the tax collectors, and the police) not as institutions designed to help them, but as hostile forces trying to crush their independence.
By keeping their culture insular, speaking their own secret language (back slang), and refusing to assimilate into mainstream Victorian society, they protected themselves. Learning to read, going to church, or caring about parliament was seen by many costers as "going soft" or aligning with the very people who wanted to sweep their barrows off the streets.
One of Mayhew's interviewees captured this perfectly when asked about the Queen. The boy knew there was a Queen, and that she was rich, but his ultimate assessment of her was entirely through the lens of his own trade:
"I've heard of the Queen... I should think she has a power of money. But she side-slips the costers. If she was to come down our street, we'd show her what a barrow looks like, but I don't suppose she'd buy a single onion."
A coster’s entire livelihood depended on what they could buy at dawn (at Billingsgate for fish, or Covent Garden for fruit) and sell by dark. If they had a bad day, it was far more than just lost profit; they would lack the capital to buy stock for the next morning.
When your daily existence is a high-stakes calculation of pence, halfpence, and the spoilage rate of watercress, abstract concepts like global geography, history, or theology are expensive luxuries. They didn't help buy the next bushel of apples.
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