ABSTRACT
Widespread and rapid urban growth generated a whole new set of social conditions and problems. Time and again visitors to London, as well as residents, commented on the large number of itinerant traders of all sorts that wandered about the streets. London lacked any real sense of metropolitan unity in the first half of the nineteenth century. The expansion of the urban fringe profoundly altered the work involved in urban hawking and helps to explain why such characters as ‘Honest Jack’ and William Friday were replaced by the brooding and melancholy woodcuts of Mayhew’s street sellers. The occupational breakdown they reveal tells a familiar story of the decline of traditional London consumer trades and a highly restricted market for female unskilled labour. The largest proportion of men came from general unskilled work. This group comprised casual labourers such as porters, cabmen and bricklayers’ labourers. Street trading was of even greater significance for women.
