Middlemen in English Business 317 



difficulties and expense attached to a trip to market were great. The 

 petty chapman specialized in the service of rural deliver>^ His scale 

 of living, tenor of life, and experience of the road made it possible for 

 him to serve the country public more cheaply and with more economy 

 than they could do it themselves. He carried new ideas into the rural 

 community and created a market which otherwise would have been 

 latent and unknown, and at the same time was a leaven in socializing 

 the people. His opportunity and function declined with the rise of 

 better means of communication and the country store served his cus- 

 tomers thereafter. 



In the cities hawking was a more common method of distribution 

 and sale than is practiced today. The rise of trade in shops reduced 

 the business of the city hawker as it did that of the country hawker. 

 Besant pictures the eighteenth century street hawking as follows: "the 

 apple-woman, with her barrow in the summer, and in the mnter her 

 stall, pan of live charcoal, and plate of tin on which she roasts her 

 apples. The band-box-man carried a pole over his shoulder loaded 

 vnth. bandboxes neatly covered \\ith coloured papers. . . . Bas- 

 kets were carried about in the same manner on the shoulder. The 

 bellows-mender carried his bag of tools over his shoulder, and did his 

 mending on the kerb or on the doorstep. Brick-dust was carried 

 about in small sacks on the back of a donkey . . . The bill of 

 the play was sold with oranges and nuts outside Drury Lane 

 Theatre. Cats'-meat was vended by women. Chairs were mended 

 by a family, of whom one carried the cane or the rushes, another 

 collected the chairs, and a third sat down on a doorstep and mended 

 them. Things to eat such as cherries, hot loaves, hot spiced ginger- 

 bread, mackerel, milk, new potatoes, rabbits, strawberries, water- 

 cresses, muffins, were hawked in the streets. Such things as door- 

 mats, brooms, lavender, matches, were also sold in the streets; . . . 

 the lusty Turk . . . who offered rhubarb, the carter with the 

 sand, . . . (the) Corsair, who sold slippers . . . these you 

 will find in the picture . . ."^ Another common commodity so 

 hawked was water; the "Cobbs," as they were called, carried it from 

 the conduits, in large tankards, of about three gallons.- Much of 

 the produce that was not sold in the pubHc markets during the day 

 was hqiwked about town in the evening.^ 



1 Besant, Eighteenth Century London, 101-2; pages 102-104 of this reference 

 jcontain contemporary engravings of various trucksters. 

 - About 1600; see Besant, Tudor London, 285. 

 ' Besant, Eighteenth Century London, 105. 



