24b
I
The costermongers of the streets of London were without
or hope, but, within the necessary limits, they practiced charity.
were, Mayhew tells us, scrupulously honest among themselves,
though they could seldom indulge in the luxury of being honest
strangers. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them as
agin us," said a coster to Mayhew. "It's a very good thing, in
but no costers can't do it." They were nevertheless surprisingly
with the "deserving" rich. A certain Mrs. Chisholm, Mayhew
ports, had let out at different times as much as £160,000
that
been entrusted to her for helping out the "lower orders,"
and
whole of this large amount had been returned,
({with the
of
£12."
They had no trust in banks or similar institutions,
and
though they had to pay usurious rates when forced to borrow
their own kind-sometimes at the rate of twenty percent per
or no less than £1,040 a year for every £100 advanced-still
profound and unshakable distrust of all the institutions above
rendered them impervious to the whole idea of capitalism,
ments, inheritances, and so on, although, it should be added,
passed on, like true entrepreneurs, the usurer's exorbitant
rates
their benighted customers.
If
the costers did not partake of the idea of capitalism
animated a great section of the middle class above them, neither
they bow down to the official Victorian deities of God, Home,
Country. Their nationalism was deep-grained in the sense that
disliked and distrusted foreigners- especially the omnipresent
whom they called the "Greeks"-yet they were completely
and rightly so, about the ecstatic chauvinism of part of the
class. Like Matthew Arnold, they could be moved only to
laughter at Mr. Roebuck's Parliamentary encomiums on the
of being an Englishman in the nineteenth century. The popular
that was punctuated by the refrain, "Britons never shall be
the costers rendered as "Britons always shall be slaves." For
the
tailed social structure of their society they had equal distrust
and
norance. To be sure, Queen Victoria's granite-like moral
was so towering that it cast a shade even over these lower
Yet the costers would not be solemn about Her Majesty,
and
love letters between her and Albert were hawked
in
the streets.
