The prattle and the laughter (according to Inglis) of the Spanish girls who sort, find no parallel however among the London girls who sell the nuts. The appearance of the latter is often wretched. In the winter months they may be seen as if stupified with cold, and with the listlessness, not to say apathy, of those whose diet is poor in quantity and insufficient in amount.
Very few costermongers buy nuts (as hazel nuts are always called) at the public sales--only those whose dealings are of a wholesale character, and they are anything but regular attendants at the sales. The street-sellers derive nearly the whole of their supply from Duke’s-place. The principal times of business are Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Those who have “capital” buy on the Friday, when they say they can make 10_s._ go as far as 12_s._ on the Sunday. The “Barcelonas” are from 4-1/2_d._ to 6_d._ a quart to the street-sellers. The cob-nuts, which are the large size, used by the pastry-cooks for mottos, &c., are 2_d._ and 2-1/2_d._ the quart, but they are generally destitute of a kernel. A quart contains from 100 to 180 nuts, according to the size. The costermongers buy somewhat largely when nuts are 3_d._ the quart; they then, and not unfrequently, stock their barrows with nuts entirely, but 2_s._ a day is reckoned excellent earnings at this trade. “It’s the worst living of all, sir,” I was told, “on nuts.” The sale in the streets is at the fruit-stalls, in the public-houses, on board the steamers, and at the theatre doors. They are sold by the same class as the oranges, and a stock may be procured for a smaller sum even than is required for oranges. By the outlay of 1_s._ many an Irishwoman can send out her two or three children with nuts, reserving some for herself. Seven-eighths of the nuts imported are sold, I am assured, in the open air.
Some of the costermongers who are to be found in Battersea-fields, and who attend the fairs and races, get through 5_s._ worth of nuts in a day, but only exceptionally. These men have a sort of portable shooting-gallery. The customer fires a kind of rifle, loaded with a dart, and according to the number marked on the centre, or on the encircling rings of a board which forms the head of the stall, and which may be struck by the dart, is the number of nuts payable by the stall-keeper for the halfpenny “fire.”