Description |
1 online resource (256 pages) : illustrations (color) |
Contents |
List of Illustrations -- Note to the Reader -- Introduction: Hawkers and the history of London -- Historians and hawkers -- Medieval capital to metropolis -- 1. People -- Fishwives and costermongers -- All sorts of Londoners -- The status of street sellers -- Hawkers at home -- 2. Workers -- Gutter merchants -- Aristocracy of the kerb -- The costermonger class -- 3. Street food -- Garden city -- Perishing commodities -- As regular as the weather permits -- Movable feasts -- The metropolitan diet -- 4. Markets -- Liberty of the markets -- In defence of hawkers -- Friends of the poor -- 5. Retailers -- About the streets -- Keeping score -- Carnivals of shopping -- 6. Tools -- Shops on their heads -- Barrow wheelers -- The coster's companion -- 7. Traffic -- Broken pavements -- Around the clock -- Crossing the road -- 8. Nuisances -- The costermongers' charter -- Infamous wretches -- Preventing free passage -- 9. Voices -- Tortures of the ear -- The crying art -- Declaring the seasons -- The end of the cries? -- Epilogue: The return of street food -- Curating street food -- Hawkers past and present -- Notes -- Appendix: Identifying street sellers, 1600-1825 -- Bibliography -- Index |
Summary |
This is a social, economic, and cultural history of food hawking in London, which challenges how we think about street food and urban life in both the past and present. Focused on London between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book reconstructs the working lives of the poor women and men who sold fruit, fish, vegetables, milk, and dishes like pies and sausages on the streets, outside the formal economy of markets and shops. It demonstrates the complexity and sophistication of hawkers' work, as well as their vital roles in feeding the city during a critical period of expansion. It also shows how a deeper understanding of street selling provides a new perspective on key debates and issues within metropolitan history, including the improvement of the streets, economic polarization, the rise of retail and shopkeeping, working class diets, the gender division of labour, and the grand narrative of modernization. Finally, the book reflects on the demise of London street trading over the twentieth century and the emergence of a gastronomic street food trend since the 2007-8 financial crisis-highlighting the differences with hawkers' historical experience and that of street vendors around the world today |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed October 11, 2023) |
Subject |
Peddlers -- England -- London -- History
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Street-food vendors (Persons) -- England -- London -- History
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Street food -- England -- London -- History
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Peddlers
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Street food
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Street-food vendors (Persons)
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Business & Management.
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Industry.
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England -- London
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Genre/Form |
History
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Form |
Electronic book
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ISBN |
9780191966897 |
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0191966894 |
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9780192662446 |
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0192662449 |
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