Oxford University Press, 2023
I’ve just finished reading this book. Its subtitle is ‘Hawkers and the history of London.’
Charlie is an engaging guide, using easy language and fluid prose. I felt he was knowledgeable and insightful in showing me the distant past of London’s street-sellers at the end of the middle-ages, through to the more recent history at the beginning of the 20th Century.
His chapters cover who the streetsellers were; the hierarchy and organisation among them; the street food that they sold; the London markets and the importance of streetsellers in bringing food through the streets to the well-off and poorest Londoners; where they sold their wares; what tools were available to them to carry on their trade; how they coped with the growing traffic and the ever-changing city, and how residents coped with the hawkers; nuisances from road blockages and street markets that closed off roads to pilfering; how the streetsellers’ voices were part of their art and identity. After this, there is an epilogue that briefly discusses the connections and distinctions between the historical streetsellers and the modern phenomenon of urban street food.
There are lots of references, though not many footnotes.
My reason for reading is as research for a historical novel series that takes my characters into London in the 1640s to 1660s. Charlie provides a wealth of detail about this period, even as he flits from one century to another. I felt I was learning about the hawkers in ways that will be valuable for me in my search for ways to make my story more vivid. And street sellers certainly contributed to making London life vivid in the seventeenth century.
For my period there are reference texts about ‘the cries of London’ that I intend to dig into.
I have learned how the hawkers bought their produce, brought it into the city streets and advertised their presence. I know about the many attempts by the London authorities to regulate streetsellers. It seems, pragmatism was a valuable tool and a ‘light touch’ often used to manage the conflicting demands and needs of residents and hawkers.
I was fascinated to look through a window at the lives of the streetsellers and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. For me, it was invaluable in bringing London’s past to life via the people who knew it best.