The music includes Scottish military tattoos and folk- dance forms; a music-hall pas de deux for the costermonger Pearly King and Queen; hornpipes, sea songs, work chants and jigs.
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By the time NME journalists Keith Cameron and Roy Wilkinson encountered Gene, the band had already gained some live experience and written several songs. Cameron and Wilkinson were impressed enough to form independent record label Costermonger with the sole purpose of promoting Gene to a wider audience. Their double A-sided debut single "For The Dead" / "Child's Body" was released on Costermonger in May 1994. The single received a great deal of attention from the music press: Select named it "Single Of The Month", whilst NME made it their "Single of the Week".
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Carrots is a 1917 British silent crime film directed by Frank Wilson and starring Chrissie White, Lionelle Howard and Gerald Lawrence.Palmer p.884 A young female costermonger known as "Carrots" helps her policeman boyfriend thwart a criminal gang led by her own brother.
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The story begins with Charlie, grandson of a barrow costermonger. His father usually spends his money on drink instead of his family. Charlie is the youngest of the family, and has three older sisters. His mother died while giving birth to him.
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She is rescued by Daphne, who has her lawyers draw up very strict terms. Rebecca hires somebody to manage the store until Charlie returns. When he does, she tells him everything. Charlie goes about the business of costermonger, rearranging the shop and doing great business.
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"Wot Cher! Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" is a British music hall comedy song written in 1891 by the actor and singer Albert Chevalier. The score was by his brother and manager Charles Ingle. Chevalier developed a stage persona as the archetypal Cockney and was a celebrated variety artist, with the nickname of "The Singing Costermonger".
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The costard is believed to have been a cooking apple, perhaps similar to the modern Bellflower apple. The name is possibly derived from the Latin costatus ("ribbed"), relating to prominent external protrusions on this variety. The apple gave its name to the costermonger (which was originally "costard monger", a seller of costards), a term used to describe a transient fruit seller.
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With NME journalist Keith Cameron, he started the Costermonger record label, on which the pair released records by bands including Gene. Until November 2005, he managed British Sea Power, a band which includes his younger brothers Jan and Hamilton. Wilkinson's book Do It For Your Mum, a biography of British Sea Power and a memoir of his family, was published in 2011.
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Windsor was born in Shoreditch, London, in 1937 (her birth was registered in Stepney),GRO Register of Births: SEP 1937 1a 176 STEPNEY – Barbara A. Windsor, mmn = Ellis the only child of John Deeks, a costermonger, and his wife, Rose (née Ellis), a dressmaker. Windsor is of English and Irish ancestry.Who Do You Think You Are? – Past Stories – Barbara Windsor, BBC.
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An Irish adventurer enlists the help of a retired costermonger and an assortment of British characters to travel to Morocco, where the Irishman had hopes of winning the right to sell theatre concessions. Once there, he fools the local Vizier into believing that his companions are representatives of "the flower of the British music hall" and eventually secures his business venture.
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643 Influenced by The Smiths, their early material also drew comparisons with Elastica. Later they incorporated hip hop and punk rock influences and were compared to Beastie Boys, Plasmatics and Biz Markie.Loftus, Johnny "[ Brassy Biography]", Allmusic, retrieved 2010-09-19Loftus, Johnny "[ Gettin Wise Review]", Allmusic, retrieved 2010-09-19Schulte, Tom "[ Got It Made Review]", Allmusic, retrieved 2010-09-19Schild, Matt (2001) "Down to the Brass Tacks", Aversion.com, 23 April 2001, retrieved 2010-09-19 Their earliest material was released on the Costermonger label (home to Gene). The band found favour with John Peel for whom they recorded a radio session in June 1996, with a return visit in May 2000."Brassy Peel Sessions ", Keeping It Peel, BBC, retrieved 2010-09-19 With financial difficulties affecting Costermonger they moved on to Wiiija where they released their debut album Got It Made in 2000.
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Individuals signalled membership of the coster community through a dress code, especially the large neckerchief, known as a kingsman, tied round their necks. Their hostility towards the police was legendary. The distinctive identity and culture of costermongers led to considerable appeal as subject-matter for artists, dramatists, comedians, writers and musicians. Parodies of the costermonger and his way of life were frequent features in Victorian music halls.
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Albert Chevalier, a music hall comedian, in Coster costume, circa 1890 Costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in London and other British towns. The term is derived from the words costard (a medieval variety of apple) and monger (seller), and later came to be used to describe hawkers in general.Roberts, Chris, Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind Rhyme. Thorndike Press 2006.
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Maisie Dobbs was raised by her father, Frankie Dobbs, who is costermonger, after Maisie's mother died when she was a very young child. She spent her early life as a maid in the household of Lord Julian and Lady Rowan Compton to support herself and her father. Lady Compton discovers Maisie reading books in the Compton's library and is so impressed by Maisie's intelligence that she has her brilliant friend,Dr. Maurice Blanche, tutor Maisie.
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He based his act on life as a costermonger and became known to his audiences as a "coster" singer, similar to that of Gus Elen and Albert Chevalier. Hurley supported many popular acts, including Marie Lloyd, with whom he conducted a tour with in Australia. The two became romantically involved and married upon their return to England in 1906. Hurley continued to professionally support Lloyd in all of her performances until the marriage broke up a few years later.
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A Peking fruit seller, c. 1869 Peddler in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a canvasser, chapman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a traveling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used for travellers hawking goods in the countryside to small towns and villages; they might also be called tinkers or gypsies. In London more specific terms were used, such as costermonger.
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Baldwin was on 22 April 1769 in the Lambeth area of Westminster to a fruit seller or costermonger as they were called. During this period, Westminster was considered a poverty-blighted area on the outer edge of London. As he had to go to the markets each day to buy goods to sell and peddle all over London, he was forced to defend himself at an early age. Frequent disputes had to be settled with his fists.
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In 1904, she was commissioned to write a seven part series of articles for Pearson's Magazine. For this she explored women's work in various trades by disguising herself as a street singer, street peddler, factory girl, shop girl, costermonger, waitress, and barmaid. The series 'The Heart of All Things' appeared in the magazine between November 1904 and May 1905, before being published together in her first book 'The Soul Market'. The success of this book led to Malvery being in great demand as a public speaker.
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J.J. Eeckhout, 1884 Peddlers have been known since antiquity. They were known by a variety of names throughout the ages, including Arabber, hawker, costermonger (English), chapman (medieval English), huckster, itinerant vendor or street vendor. According to marketing historian, Eric Shaw, the peddler is "perhaps the only substantiated type of retail marketing practice that evolved from Neolithic times to the present."Shaw, E. H. "Ancient and medieval marketing" in Jones, D.G. Brian and Tadajewski, Mark, The Routledge Companion to Marketing History, London, Routledge, p. 24.
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Albert Chevalier Albert Chevalier born Albert Onésime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier; (21 March 186110 July 1923), was an English music hall comedian, singer and musical theatre actor. He specialised in cockney related humour based on life as a costermonger in London during the Victorian era. Owing to this and his ability to write songs, he became known to his audiences as the "costers' laureate". Born in London, Chevalier showed an interest in entertainment from an early age through his private performances to family and friends.
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The paper also reported that the contract granted Hogan "the largest salary he has ever drawn". Despite this lucrative contract, Hogan established and maintained his own advertising distribution agency in Indianapolis. "He goes about the streets dressed much like an English costermonger", Sporting Life reported in January 1897. "Marty can be seen with a little red wagon full of signs and advertising matter chasing up and down streets nailing the signs to buildings and convenient places and distributing advertising literature in the reel-dance portion of Indianapolis".
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It may have been inspired by the clothes of costermongers (street vendors of fruit and vegetables) in Somers Town: some sources mention a common practice of adding decorative metal buttons to their plain clothes, others indicate that it was unknown. Croft himself was never a costermonger. Alternatively, the costume may also have been inspired by coster singers - such as Hyram Travers who performed as the "Pearly King"’ - or the stage clothes of other music hall entertainers. By 1880, Croft was wearing a "smother" suit completely covered with thousands of white buttons.
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Croft was presented to Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at the Horse of the Year Show at Olympia in 1907, and led a display by costermongers and their donkeys at the show in 1912. By 1911, all 28 of the metropolitan boroughs of London had its own pearly king, pearly queen, and pearly family, often members of the local costermonger community. The Original Pearly Kings' and Queens' Association was established that year. South of the River Thames, the pearly families were associated into a Pearly Kings' and Queens' Guild.
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Cullen, Frank. Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances, Elen Gus, Volume 1, pg 351 – 354 After the death of Daniels, he returned to being a solo performer and bought the rights to "Never introduce your donah to a pal" from the song's writer A.E Durandeau, (donah was cockney slang meaning girlfriend). The song was performed on stage on 4 June 1891, at Harewood's varieties in Hoxton. Elen performed songs and sketches as the character of an old east end costermonger and became known as a 'coster' comedian.
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The Coster's Mansion, 1899 sheet music A costermonger was a street seller of fruit and vegetables. The term, which derived from the words costard (a type of apple) and monger, i.e. "seller", came to be particularly associated with the "barrow boys" of London who would sell their produce from a wheelbarrow or wheeled market stall. Costermongers have existed in London since at least the 16th century, when they were mentioned by Shakespeare and Marlowe and were probably most numerous during the Victorian era, when there were said to be over 30,000 in 1860.
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Street hawkers selling bags and sunglasses in central Rome, Italy A hawker is a vendor of merchandise that can be easily transported; the term is roughly synonymous with costermonger or peddler. In most places where the term is used, a hawker sells inexpensive goods, handicrafts, or food items. Whether stationary or mobile, hawkers often advertise by loud street cries or chants, and conduct banter with customers, to attract attention and enhance sales. When accompanied by a demonstration or detailed explanation of the product, the hawker is sometimes referred to as a demonstrator or pitchman.
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Percival Christopher Wren was born in Deptford, South London, England, the son of a schoolmaster. His literary influences included Frederick Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne, G. A. Henty, and H. Rider Haggard. He graduated with a Master of Arts degree from St Catherine's Society, now St Catherine's College, Oxford but then a non-collegiate institution for poorer students. Wren subsequently claimed to have worked as a navvy, deckhand, costermonger and fairground boxer during a three-year period between school and Oxford, as well as enlisting briefly as a cavalry trooper in the Queen's Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards).
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4, 4 April 1821 In September of 1825, two years before his death, he attended a boxing match between Jones the Sailor Boy, a known boxer and a fellow costermonger, and Tommy O'Lynne also known as Jemmy Wilson at Old Oak Common, six miles from London. A considerable number of fellow Westminster residents were present."Milling in a Small Way", The Morning Chronicle, London, England, pg. 4, 9 September 1825 Baldwin later was present at a modestly attended sparring presentation by the great English heavyweight champion Daniel Mendoza given at a London Tennis Court around 16 November 1825.
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Born one of ten children in Stepney, London to a costermonger father, McCarthy was a boyhood friend of Terry Lawless,Rawling, John (2009) "Terry Lawless obituary", The Guardian, 28 December 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2016 and had a successful amateur career fighting out of St. George's Gym in Stepney, winning 83 of 90 fights and representing England four times."Sammy McCarthy, Flyweight Champion", Spitalfields Life, 12 July 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2016Dirs, Nick "Sammy McCarthy", London ex-Boxers Association. Retrieved 5 March 2016 He turned professional under managers Jarvis Astaire and Ben Schmidt, and made his pro debut in April 1951 with a first round knockout of Hector Macrow.
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The Pearly Kings and Queens, or more usually pearlies, are a traditional part of London costermonger culture, their name derives from their clothes which are decorated with mother-of-pearl buttons. Pearly King and Queen The pearlies are described as the ‘aristocracy‘ of the costermongers and were originally elected by them to safeguard their rights from competitors and ‘roughs’. They are now devoted entirely to charitable activities.The origins of the pearlies are briefly described in The London Encyclopaedia, Weinreb and Hibbert, 1983 Pearlies are part of the East End's heritage, but contrary to the widespread perception, they are not an exclusively East End institution, there are Pearly Kings and Queens across inner London.
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In her autobiography, May described her "coster" (costermonger) roots as being inherited from her grandmother, saying "I am a true coster in my flamboyance and my love of colour, in my violence of feeling and its immediate response in speech and action. Even now I am often caught with a sudden longing regret for the streets of Limehouse as I knew them, for the girls with their gaudy shawls and heads of ostrich feathers, like clouds in a wind, and the men in their caps, silk neckerchiefs and bright yellow pointed boots in which they took such pride. I adored the swagger and the showiness of it all." May was small, green-eyed, and dressed like a gypsy.
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The extent and the targets of racist attitudes in Great Britain have varied over the course of time. The history of racism in the United Kingdom is heavily linked to its relationship with its former colonies and citizens that comprised the British Empire, many of whom settled in Great Britain, particularly following World War II. Racism was mitigated by the attitudes and norms of the British class system, in which during the 19th century, race mattered far less than social distinction: a West African tribal chief was unquestionably superior to an East End costermonger. Laws were passed in the 1960s that specifically prohibited racial segregation.J. Brown, An early history of British race relations legislation (09/07/18).
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Mayhew describes a Saturday night in the New Cut, a street in Lambeth, south of the river, Actress, Mrs Patrick Campbell, dressed in costermonger costume, 1914 During the 19th-century, costermongers gained an unsavoury reputation for their "low habits, general improvidence, love of gambling, total want of education, disregard for lawful marriage ceremonies, and their use of a peculiar slang language."John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 1859 Mayhew was aware of this reputation, but exhibited an ambivalent attitude towards them. On the one hand, he described them as usurers and pointed out that cheating was widespread. Weights were flattened to make products look bigger and heavier, and measures were fitted with thick or false bottoms to give false readings.
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Rutland Barrington later wrote of Fisher, "He had a charming and sympathetic voice, and was one of the very few tenors it has been my good fortune to meet who could act as well as sing."Barrington, Rutland. Chapter four, A Record of Thirty-five Years' Experience on the English Stage, Grant Richards, London (1908) Fisher next returned to the Olympic, where he had another long run in The Gascon. In 1876, after another stint as The Defendant, he went on tour with Carte and Dolaro, repeating the roles of the Defendant and Piquillo and played Ange Pitou, the leading tenor role in La fille de Madame Angot, as well as the Costermonger in Carte's own one-act operetta, Happy Hampstead.
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During this engagement, however, he "became unreliable" (a euphemism for alcoholism) and, despite his "delightful" performances and good notices from the critics, Carte asked him to leave the company, as "the disease was too deeply rooted for permanent cure". Later in the year, however, he was back in London with Charles Wyndham at The Crystal Palace, then returned to the Olympic. Fisher was engaged again by Carte in 1877 for Tita in Thibet as Brum opposite Kate Santley at the Royalty, where he also played the title role in Orpheus in the Underworld and reprised his role as the Costermonger in Happy Hampstead.Royalty Theatre programme, January 1877 In 1879 he was Hector in Madame Favart opposite Florence St. John at the Strand Theatre and on tour.
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On the other hand, Mayhew also noted that in his own personal experience, "they are far less dishonest than they are usually believed to be.Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1848 James Greenwood, a Victorian journalist and social commentator, also used derogatory language to describe costermongers and their markets but was aware of the essential service they provided by noting that the poor would be the ultimate "losers" if they were denied access to the costermongering culture which supported them.As cited in 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, p. 72 The Methodist writer, Godfrey Holden Pike, argued that the Sabbath market was vulgar, but in later writings, he noted that "influential newspapers have often misrepresented him [the costermonger].
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A guest worker from Cuba, working in an East German factory (Chemiefaserkombinat "Wilhelm Pieck"), 1986 After the division of Germany into East and West in 1949, East Germany faced an acute labour shortage, mainly because of East Germans fleeing into the western zones occupied by the Allies; in 1963 the GDR (German Democratic Republic) signed its first guest-worker contract with Poland. In contrast to the guest-workers in West Germany, the guest-workers that arrived in East Germany came mainly from socialist and communist countries allied with the Soviets and the SED used its guest-worker program to build international solidarity among fellow communist governments. 1990: Vietnamese costermonger in Gera The guest workers in East Germany came mainly from the Eastern Bloc, Vietnam, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, and Cuba. Residency was typically limited to only three years.
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Mayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Will Not Work and Those who Cannot Work, Vol. 1, (originally published in 1848) NY, Cosimo Classics, 2009, pp 7–8 Although the term 'costermonger' was used to describe any hawker of fresh produce, it became strongly associated with London-based street vendors following a surge in their numbers in the 18th and 19th- centuries. They were most numerous during the Victorian era, when Mayhew estimated their London numbers at between 30,000 and 45,000 in the late 1840s.Mayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Will Not Work and Those who Cannot Work, Vol. 1, (originally published in 1848), NY, Cosimo Classics, 2009, pp 4–6; Mayhew notes that the census figures are unreliable on account of high levels of illiteracy amongst costermongers and provides a detailed account of how he arrived at these estimates.
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Increased planting of apple trees began in earnest as soon as the feudal system introduced by William of Normandy could be secured, and continued down over what is becoming close to a thousand years. One of the earliest mentions of a named apple cultivar in English comes from the Plantagenet era near the end of the 12th century, ”Costard”. This apple was an all-purpose apple that was occasionally used in cider and remained wildly popular until at least the 19th century: as an illustration, a slang term for the head or brain in the works of Shakespeare is ”costard”, a word a man who spent his life traveling back and forth between his wife in Warwickshire and the theatre in London would have known very well; indeed Shakespeare named one of his clowns after the product in the case of Love's Labour's Lost. In Renaissance England, a ”costermonger” was a seller of apples or wares and remained so right up until the 1960s, long after the apple it was named for became extinct.
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1, C. Knight & Co.,1841. p. 135 However, from the 1840s, the community of costermongers faced increasing opposition from three distinct quarters; the vestry, which viewed street markets as the focus of public disorder; the movement to abolish Sunday trading and public authorities who were concerned with the rise of unregulated markets and associated problems associated with street congestion.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, p. 64; Ian Peddie, "Playing at Poverty: The Music Hall and the Staging of the Working Class," Chapter 12 in Aruna Krishnamurthy (ed), The Working-Class Intellectual in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Britain Ashgate Publishing, 2009 Throughout the 1860s, the Commissioner of the Police, Richard Mayne, waged war on costermongers and succeeded in closing several markets while authorities and prominent philanthropists began constructing new covered market places designed to replace street selling.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 p. 64 and pp 73–74 Cartoon featuring a costermonger from Punch, 1841 In London's Bethnal Green, hostilities between authorities and costers reached a crescendo by the late 1870s.
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