ABSTRACT
The rough working class were both more and less than the ‘Labouring Poor’ at the base of the social pyramid. To the English middle classes, the marital relationships of the poor were incomprehensible and a source of continual debate. The lower orders were generally unmoved by the agonies over sex that their betters went through. Henry Mayhew described the lives and attitudes to marriage of some roughs. Costermongers, who bought food wholesale and sold it at a stand or on a round, were proud and independent, with their own dress, public-houses, slang and social gaieties; they frequented ‘two-penny hops’ and were fond of gambling, singing, fighting and their donkeys. Mumming, in which men and women exchanged clothes and visited each other’s houses at New Year, was said to be the occasion of much debauchery, as was also the custom of going into the woods the night before May Day.
