Street food : hawkers and the history of London / Charlie Taverner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Taverner, Charlie, author.

Series:

Oxford Academic.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Street food.

Street-food vendors (Persons).

Peddlers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (207 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2023]

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.

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on Publisher website; title from home page (viewed on September 30, 2022).

ISBN:

0-19-266244-9

0-19-266243-0

0-19-196689-4

Publisher Number:

10.1093/oso/9780192846945.001.0001 DOI