Moreover, the importation of foreign “pines” may be cited as another instance of the increased luxuries of the poor. The trade in this commodity was unknown until the year 1842. At that period Mr. James Wood and Messrs. Claypole and Son, of Liverpool, imported them from the Bahamas, a portion being conveyed to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, of London. Since that period the trade has gradually increased until, instead of 1000 pines being sent to Liverpool, and a portion of them conveyed to London, as at first, 200,000 pines are now imported to London alone. The fruit is brought over in “trees,” stowed in numbers from ten to thirty thousand, in galleries constructed fore and aft in the vessel, which is so extravagantly fragrant, that it has to be ventilated to abate the odour. But for this importation, and but for the trade having become a part of the costermonger’s avocation, hundreds and thousands in London would never have tasted a pine-apple. The quality of the fruit has, I am informed, been greatly improved since its first introduction; the best description of “pines” which Covent-garden can supply having been sent out to graft, to increase the size and flavour of the Bahaman products, and this chiefly for the regalement of the palates of the humbler classes of London. The supply from the Bahamas is considered inexhaustible.
Pine-apples, when they were first introduced, were a rich harvest to the costermonger. They made more money “working” these than any other article. The pines cost them about 4_d._ each, one with the other, good and bad together, and were sold by the costermonger at from 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ The public were not aware then that the pines they sold were “salt-water touched,” and the people bought them as fast as they could be sold, not only by the whole one, but at 1_d._ a slice,--for those who could not afford to give 1_s._ for the novelty, had a slice as a taste for 1_d._ The costermongers used then to have flags flying at the head of their barrows, and gentlefolk would stop them in the streets; indeed, the sale for pines was chiefly among “the gentry.” The poorer people--sweeps, dustmen, cabmen--occasionally had pennyworths, “just for the fun of the thing;” but gentlepeople, I was told, used to buy a whole one to take home, so that all the family might have a taste. One costermonger assured me that he had taken 22_s._ a day during the rage for pines, when they first came up.