Editing Costermonger (section)

==Definition and description==
Most contemporary dictionary definitions of costermonger refer to them as retail sellers or street vendors of fresh produce, operating from temporary stalls or baskets or barrows which are either taken on regular routes for door-to-door selling or which are set up in high traffic areas such as informal markets or lining the streets of busy thoroughfares. The ''Merriam-Webster Dictionary'' defines a costermonger as "a person who sells fruit and vegetables outside rather than in a store"<ref name="merriam-webster.com"/> while the ''Collins Dictionary'' defines a costermonger as "a person who sells fruit or vegetables from a cart or street stand.<ref name="collinsdictionary.com"/>

Henry Mayhew, a Victorian social commentator, distinguished between itinerant and stationary costermongers in the following terms:
{{blockquote|Under the term "costermonger" is here included only such "street-sellers" as deal in fish, fruit, and vegetables, purchasing their goods at the wholesale "green" and fish markets. Of these some carry on their business at the same stationary stall or "standing" in the street, while others go on "rounds." The itinerant costermongers, as contradistinguished from the stationary street-fishmongers and greengrocers, have in many instances regular rounds, which they go daily, and which extend from two to ten miles. The longest are those which embrace a suburban part; the shortest are through streets thickly peopled by the poor, where duly to "work" a single street consumes, in some instances, an hour. There are also "chance" rounds. Men "working" these carry their wares to any part in which they hope to find customers. The costermongers, moreover, diversify their labours by occasionally going on a country round, travelling on these excursions, in all directions, from thirty to ninety and even a hundred miles from the metropolis. Some, again, confine their callings chiefly to the neighbouring races and fairs.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=cDYUb-tzToUC&dq=class+%22costermonger%22&pg=PA42 Henry Mayhew, ''London Labour and the London Poor'', Vol 1]</ref>}}

Technically, costermongers were [[Hawker (trade)|hawkers]] since they rarely traded from fixed stalls. They filled a gap in the food distribution system by purchasing produce from the wholesale markets, breaking it down into smaller lots and offering it for retail sale. Their fruit and vegetables were placed in baskets, [[Wheelbarrow|barrows]], carts or on temporary stalls. From an economic viewpoint, they provided form [[utility]] (breaking down wholesale lots into smaller retail sizes); place utility (making produce available close to shoppers' place of work or residence) and time utility (making goods available at times that are convenient to shoppers such as when they are on their way to work). Some costermongers walked the streets crying out to sell their produce, while others operated out of unauthorised, but highly organised informal markets, thereby contributing to an informal system of food distribution which was highly valued by the working classes and poorer customers.<ref name="Jones, P.T.A. 2006, pp 64">Jones, P.T.A., "Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London's Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity," ''The London Journal'', Vol 41, No. 1, 2006, pp 64–65</ref>

While the term costermonger is typically used to describe sellers of fresh produce, primarily fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat, both Victorian commentators and historians point out that costers sold an "astonishly large amount of raw and prepared food."<ref>Graham, K., ''Gone to the Shops: Shopping in Victorian England'', Praeger, London, 2008, p. 61</ref> In their photographic essay, ''Street Life in London'', published in 1877, John Thomson and Adolphe Smith depict costermongers selling a variety of fresh and prepared foods as well as beverages—from ginger beer through to iced confections.<ref>Thomson, J. and Smith, A., ''Street Life in London'', 1877</ref> Mayhew provided extensive descriptions of costers selling potted plants and cut flowers:

{{blockquote|The coster ordinarily confines himself to the cheaper sorts of plants, and rarely meddles with such things as acacias, mezereons, savines, syringas, lilacs, or even myrtles, and with none of these things unless cheap. [. . .] A poor costermonger will on a fine summer's day send out his children to sell flowers, while on other days they may be selling watercresses or, perhaps, onions."<ref>Henry Mayhew, cited in Jackson, L., ''Dirty Old London'', Yale University Press, 2015. In addition, James Greenwood, writing in 1883, also provides detailed descriptions of costermongers buying and selling flowers of all sorts, and including flowers in pots and single flowers destined for a genteleman's lapel in Greenwood, J., "Only a Coster" in ''Toilers in London by One of the Crowd'', 1883; cited in ''Victorian London'', Online: http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications3/toilers-14.htm. Montagu Williams explains, in 1893, any number of costermongers "who post themselves in various parts of the metropolis with barrows laden with plants, seedlings, roots, and bulbs, purchased at Covent Garden" in Williams, M., ''Round London: Down East and Up West'', London, 1893, p. 294</ref>}}

Mayhew also pointed out that young coster girls often started out by selling cut flowers and small bunches of herbs:
{{blockquote|At about seven years of age the girls first go into the streets to sell. A shallow-basket is given to them, with about two shillings for stock-money, and they hawk, according to the time of year, either oranges, apples, or violets; some begin their street education with the sale of water- cresses.<ref>Henry Mayhew, (1851) ''London Labour and the London Poor'', https://archive.org/stream/mayhewslondonbei00mayhuoft/mayhewslondonbei00mayhuoft_djvu.txt</ref>}}

Images from ''Street Life in London'', by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, 1877
<gallery widths="200px">
File:From 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith- (6516045387).jpg|'Black Jack', a London costermonger
File:From 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith. (6257456398).jpg|Halfpenny ices
File:Covent Garden Flower Women.jpg|Covent Garden Flower Women
File:Strawberries, All Ripe!, All Ripe! (5710956977).jpg|Strawberry seller. Strawberries, All Ripe!, All Ripe!
File:The Seller of Shell-Fish by John Thomson.jpg|The Seller of Shell-Fish
</gallery>