English Working Boys: Street Traders


Figure 1.--The photograph here shows two onion sellers in Plymouth, Deveon during 1907. The boy on the right appears to be aiming for a Breton look with a natty beret. I am not sure why he is wearing a beret, but there used to be a tradition of itinerant French onion sellers in Britain.

Hawkers sold anything from matches and ice creams to flowers and hot peas. Some were knife sharpeners, others organ grinders. One regular job was as a “knocker-up” i.e. to walk along the street, early in the morning, carrying a long stick with which to hit the bedroom windows to wake people up in time for work. Here we see onion sellers in Plymouth (figure 1). The 1903 Employment of Children Act prohibited all those under 11 years from any selling and those under 14 from trading before 6.00 a.m. or after 9.00 p.m. However these laws were only partially effective because parents paid little attention to them due to the need for children of the poor to help the family economy where regular adult employment was scarce. Therefore children either traded without a licence or misrepresented their age to make sure they obtained a trading licence. It was not unknown for magistrates to deal leniently with those who broke the trading licence laws because it was felt that many boys had difficult conditions to contend with at home.









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Created: February 14, 2004
Last updated: April 20, 2004