HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

according to Alexander, that shopkeepers had pressed to totally abolish the itinerant trade, yet
none of this legislation applied directly to costermongers and peddling tradesmen. Control over
unlicensed peddling was a local matter ultimately defined by town or market improvement
Acts 224 as Mayhew had recorded.
Shopkeepers had considerable influence on the poiicy adopted by town authorities towards
hawkers. Even though licensed pedlars, not costermongers, were the shopkeeper's principal
competitor. shopkeepers - in their symbiotic relationship with the costers - expressed real and
imagined grievances from time-to-time against them as well. But, as Mayhew notes, shopkeepers
could not control the working-class trade for they would "not be driven to buy at the shops."
"They can't be persuaded that they can buy as cheap ay the shops," he continued. "Besides they
are apt to think shopkeepers are rich and the street-sellers poor, and that they may as well
encourage the poor." Mayhew concluded that "[tlhe poorer women, the wives of mechanics or
small tradesmen, who have to prepare dinners for their husbands, like, as they call it, 'to make
one errand do'." zi Working-class housewives purchased fruit, fish. and vegetables from street
traders and the market, and their bread. meat. cheese. and groceries from shopkeepers. When the
police suppressed a street market usually at the request of the London shopkeepers, trade in the
shops fell sharply as women shopped elsewhere in other street markets and surrounding shops.
Mayhew recalled the street battle over New Cut market:
Within these three months, or a little more. there had been removals of
the costermongers from their customary standings in the streets. This.
I have stated, is never done, unless the shopkeepers represent to the potice
that the costermongers are an injury and a nuisance to them in the
prosecution of their respective trades. "Leather-lane," I was told, "looked
2~' Ibid., 67.
Ibid.. I: 60.