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Archive for the ‘Regency London’ Category

Street Cries of London

Posted in Regency Life, Regency London, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2007| 2 Comments »


Chairs to mend, old chairs to mend, Rush or cane bottomed chairs to mend, If I had the money that I could spend, I never would cry old chairs to mend, Rush or cane bottomed chairs to mend, chairs to mend old chairs to mend

Imagine London during Jane Austen’s time, a loud and brash city, filled with the stench of horse manure and sewage in the summer, and the smell of coal and wood smoke during the winter. Fog, thick as cotton, crept up from the Thames, snaking its tendrils and engulfing pedestrians and carriages alike. The rattle of wheels and horse’s hooves on cobblestones and the click click click of the pattens that protected a lady’s delicate slippers from mud were the ordinary sounds people were accustomed to. Above all this din, they could hear the cries of the street vendors.

Cries are phrases which, beginning in the 15th century, were called out in the streets by itinerant sellers of food and other commodities and by people offering their trades. They were especially prevalent in large towns and advertised for sale such diverse products and services as strawberries, fish, brooms, muffins, printed ballads and chimney sweeping. The criers were poor, and apparently loud and annoying. In 1711 Joseph Addison wrote an essay in The Spectator complaining of the noise at night and the loud, unpleasant manner in which the cries were uttered. “Milk” he writes “is generally sold in a note above high E, and in sounds so exceedingly shrill that it often sets our teeth an edge. (From Cries of London, see below).

Ripe Strawberries ripe, Ripe Strawberries ripe. Six-pence a pottle fine strawberries ripe strawberries…only six-pence a pottle… I have ripe Strawberries ripe, Ripe Strawberries ripe.


Who will buy a new love song? Only a ha’-penny a piece…Who will buy a hew love song? Only a ha’-penny a piece.


Find out more about London’s Street Vendors in these links:

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Early 19th Century London

Posted in jane austen, Regency Life, Regency London, Regency World, tagged , on January 20, 2007|

“The huge size of London meant that is was also the largest single market for basic consumer goods, which stimulated the production of shoes, clothing, furniture, bread, beer and the other necessities of life. London breweries were amongst the most capital intensive concerns in the land. The cattle driven to the market at Smithfield supplied hides for the tanners at Bermondsley who produced leather to be used in shoes, saddles, coaches, book bindings.” P. 35, London – World City, 1800-1840, Edited by Celina Fox, 1992, Yale University Press, New haven & London, in Association with The Museum of London. “By the turn of the nineteenth century London had almost ten thousand acres of market gardens serving the hungry metropolis. The gardens were richly fertilized with the dung from the streets and stables from London – each acre had sixty cartloads of manure spread over and dug into it each year. This contrasts with regular farming land about London which, during this period, was only manured once every three or four years. (During September to October.) As well as dung, the market gardeners made copious use of marl, dug up from Enfield chase to the north of the city. A by-product of marl production were thousands of fossilised dinosaur bones, to be sent down to the newly developed British Museum (although many, no doubt, were crushed for the market gardens as well). Manure and/or marl was ploughed in by a clumsy swing plough, and harrowed once ploughed over. Working the gardens began soon after Christmas. Once the weather was favourable, the market gardeners began by sowing the borders with radishes, spinach, onions as well many seed crops.” In An American in Regency England, 1810-1811, Louis Simond writes: “The streets have all common sewers, which drain the filth of every house. The drains preclude the awkward process by which necessaries are emptied at Paris, poisoning the air of whole streets during the night, with effluvia, hurtful and sometimes fatal to the inhabitants. Rich houses have what are called water-closets; a cistern in the upper story, filled with rain-water, communicates by a pipe and cock to a vessel of earthenware, which it constantly washes.” Other Links Related to City Living in the Early 19th Century:

Images: City of London

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Male Bastions: The Clubs of St. James’s

Posted in Dandy, jane austen, Regency Life, Regency London, Regency World, tagged , , , on August 30, 2006| 1 Comment »


Found on the Internet, an abstract of the following article:

The Clubs of St. James’s: places of public patriarchy – exclusivity, domesticity and secrecy, Jane Rendell

“The male clubs of St. James’s, specifically the four at the top of St. James’s Street; Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Crockford’s and White’s, were frequented by men of the same class who used their control of space to assert social and political allegiances and rivalries between men. The exclusivity of the first floor gambling room, a place of secrecy and privacy, is contrasted with the ground floor bow window, a site of public display and exclusivity. Male leisure pastimes, such as drinking, sporting, gambling, are explored as social and spatial practices which, by establishing shared codes of consumption, display and exchange, represent public masculinities.”

During the period of his greatest popularity and influence, Beau Brummell (depicted above) held court in the Bow Window at White’s in full view of the public. White’s was founded in 1693 as a Chocolate House. By the end of the 18th Century, the popularity of chocolate houses declined, and many of the exclusive chocolate houses became Gentleman’s Clubs.

Find more information about Gentlemens Clubs in the following:

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