The above is what is understood as “fair bunts.”
“Unfair bunts” is what the lad may make unknown to his master; as, if a customer call from the area for goods cried at 2_d._, the lad may get 2-1/2_d._, by pretending what he had carried was a superior sort to that called at 2_d._,--or by any similar trick.
“I have known some civil and industrious boys,” said a costermonger to me, “get to save a few shillings, and in six months start with a shallow, and so rise to a donkey-cart. The greatest drawback to struggling boys is their sleeping in low lodging-houses, where they are frequently robbed, or trepanned to part with their money, or else they get corrupted.”
Some men employ from four to twelve boys, sending them out with shallows and barrows, the boys bringing home the proceeds. The men who send lads out in this way, count the things, and can tell to a penny what can be realised on them. They neither pay nor treat the boys well, I am told, and are looked upon by the other costermongers as extortioners, or unfair dealers, making money by trading on poor lads’ necessities, who serve them to avoid starvation. These men are called “Scurfs.” If the boys working for them make bunts, or are suspected of making bunts, there is generally “a row” about it.
The bunts is for the most part the gambling money, as well as the money for the “penny gaff,” the “twopenny hop,” the tobacco, and the pudding money of the boys. “More would save their wages and their bunts,” was said to me on good authority, “but they have no place to keep their money in, and don’t understand anything about savings banks. Many of these lads are looked on with suspicion by the police, and treated like suspected folks; but in my opinion they are not thieves, or they wouldn’t work so hard; for a thief’s is a much easier life than a costermonger’s.”
When a boy begins business on his own account, or “sets up,” as they call it, he purchases a shallow, which costs at least 1_s._, and a half hundred of herrings, 1_s._ 6_d._ By the sale of the herrings he will clear 1_s._, going the round he has been accustomed to, and then trade on the 2_s._ 6_d._ Or, if it be fruit time, he will trade in apples until master of 5_s._, and then “take to a barrow,” at 3_d._ a day hire. By this system the ranks of the costermongers are not only recruited but increased. There is one grand characteristic of these lads; I heard on all hands they are, every one of them, what the costers call--“wide awake.”