[2] The half-bushel measure at Billingsgate is double quantity—or, more correctly, a bushel.
[3][3] The above fruits are not all home grown. The currants, I am informed, are one-fifteenth foreign. The foreign “tender” fruit being sent to the markets, it is impossible to obtain separate returns.
[4][4] A common sale of strawberries in the markets is “rounds.” I have, however, given the quantity thus sold less technically, and in the measures most familiar to the general public.
[5][5] The cabbages, turnips, &c. are brought in loads to the great wholesale markets, a load varying from 150 to 200 dozen, but being more frequently nearer 200, and not unfrequently to fully that amount. Not to perplex my reader with too great a multiplicity of figures in a tabular arrangement, I have given the quantity of individual articles in a load, without specifying it. In the smaller market (for vegetables) of Portman, the cabbages, &c., are not conveyed in waggons, as to the other markets, but in carts containing generally sixty dozens.
[6] The numbers here given do not include the shrubs, roots, &c., bought by the hawkers at the nursery gardens.
[7] These totals include the supplies sent to the other markets.
[8] I inquired as to what was meant by the reproachful appellation, “horrid horn,” and my informant declared that “to the best of his hearing,” those were the words used; but doubtless the word was “omad-haun,” signifying in the Erse tongue, a half-witted fellow. My informant had often sold fruit to the same lad, and said he had little of the brogue, or of “old Irish words,” unless “his temper was riz, and then it came out powerful.”
[9] The hot-eel trade being in conjunction with the pea-soup, the same stall, candles, towels, sleeves, and aprons do for both.
[10] There are altogether 500 vendors of lemonade in the streets, but 300 of these sell also ginger-beer, and consequently do not have separate stalls, &c.
[11] The street-sellers of rice-milk are included in the street-sellers of curds and whey; hence the stalls, saucepans, cups, &c., of the two classes are the same.
[12] I may here observe that I have rarely heard tradesmen dealing in the same wares as street-sellers, described by those street-sellers by any other term than that of “shopkeepers.”
[13] This is evidently a rude copy of Lawrence’s picture of George the Fourth.
[14] This originally was an illustration to “Thump em the Drummer,” in one of Fairburn’s Song-books.
