Concerning this head, I give the statement of a man whose information I found fully confirmed:--“We are not such a degraded set as some believe; sir, but a living doesn’t tumble into a man’s mouth, now a days. A good many of us costers rises into greengrocers and coal-sheds, and still carries on their rounds as costers, all the same. Why, in Lock’s-fields, I could show you twenty such, and you’d find them very decent men, sir--very. There’s one man I know, that’s risen that way, who is worth hundreds of pounds, and keeps his horse and cart like a gentleman. They rises to be voters, and they all vote liberal. Some marry the better kind of servants,--such servant-maids as would’nt marry a rag and bottle shop, but doesn’t object to a coal shed. It’s mostly younger men that manages this. As far as I have observed, these costers, after they has settled and got to be housekeepers, don’t turn their backs on their old mates. They’d have a nice life of it if they did--yes! a very nice life.”
The costermongers usually reside in the courts and alleys in the neighbourhood of the different street-markets. They themselves designate the locality where, so to speak, a colony of their people has been established, a “coster district,” and the entire metropolis is thus parcelled out, almost as systematically as if for the purposes of registration. These costermonger districts are as follows, and are here placed in the order of the numerical importance of the residents:
The New Cut (Lambeth). Whitecross-street. Leather-lane. The Brill, Somers’ Town. Whitechapel. Camberwell. Walworth. Peckham. Bermondsey. The Broadway, Westminster. Shoreditch. Paddington and Edgeware Road. Tottenham-court Road. Drury-lane. Old-street Road. Clare Market. Ratcliffe Highway. Lisson-grove. Petticoat and Rosemary-lane. Marylebone-lane. Oxford-street. Rotherhithe. Deptford. Dockhead. Greenwich. Commercial-road (East). Poplar. Limehouse. Bethnal-green. Hackney-road. Kingsland. Camden Town.
The homes of the costermongers in these places, may be divided into three classes; firstly, those who, by having a regular trade or by prudent economy, are enabled to live in comparative ease and plenty; secondly, those who, from having a large family or by imprudent expenditure, are, as it were, struggling with the world; and thirdly, those who for want of stock-money, or ill success in trade are nearly destitute.