The people crowd the streets, along which no vehicle dreams of passing, chatting with each other, chaffering [haggling] with the sellers, buying what they want or looking on while others buy. The air is bright with flaring lights and resonant with voices.” This is social explorer Charles Booth describing a London street market on a Saturday night in the 1890s, noisy with sellers and shoppers, and dramatically lit by naphtha lamps which produced a naked flame.
At a similar date, the Royal Commission on Markets Rights and Tolls heard evidence from several costermongers: traders who bought fish, fruit and vegetables in the city’s wholesale markets, and sold them from stalls in the streets in markets
