“I was in the s’rimp trade since I was a girl. I don’t know how long. I don’t know how old I am. I never knew; but I’ve two children, one’s six and t’other’s near eight, both girls; I’ve kept count of that as well as I can. My husband sells fish in the street; so did father, but he’s dead. We buried him without the help of the parish, as many gets--that’s something to say. I’ve known the trade every way. It never was any good in public-houses. They want such great ha’p’orths there. They’ll put up with what isn’t very fresh, to be sure, sometimes; and good enough for them too, I say, as spoils their taste with drink.” [This was said very bitterly.] “If it wasn’t for my husband’s drinking for a day together now and then we’d do better. He’s neither to have nor to hold when he’s the worse for liquor; and it’s the worse with him, for he’s a quiet man when he’s his own man. Perhaps I make 9_d._ a day, perhaps 1_s._ or more. Sometimes my husband takes my stand, and I go a round. Sometimes, if he gets through his fish, he goes my round. I give good measure, and my pint’s the regular s’rimp pint.” [It was the _half_-pint I have described.] “The trade’s not so good as it was. People hasn’t the money, they tells me so. It’s bread before s’rimps, says they. I’ve heard them say it very cross, if I’ve wanted hard to sell. Some days I can sell nothing. My children stays with my sister, when me and my old man’s out. They don’t go to school, but Jane (the sister) learns them to sew. She makes drawers for the slopsellers, but has very little work, and gets very little for the little she does; she would learn them to read if she knew how. She’s married to a pavior, that’s away all day. It’s a hard life mine, sir. The winter’s a coming, and I’m now sometimes ’numbed with sitting at my stall in the cold. My feet feels like lumps of ice in the winter; and they’re beginning now, as if they weren’t my own. Standing’s far harder work than going a round. I sell the best s’rimps. My customers is judges. If I’ve any s’rimps over on a night, as I often have one or two nights a week, I sells them for half-price to an Irishwoman, and she takes them to the beer-shops, and the coffee-shops. She washes them to look fresh. I don’t mind telling that, because people should buy of regular people. It’s very few people know how to pick a s’rimp properly. You should take it by the head and the tail and jam them up, and then the shell separates, and the s’rimp comes out beautifully. That’s the proper way.”