‘Photograph of woman standing by a can of lemonade drink, with a boy drinking out of glass, other figures.’ 12 September, 1884, Catalogue ref: COPY 1/369/269
The photograph was commissioned by Charles H. Spurgeon, a Baptist minister who wanted to create lantern-slides of working people for his sermons. In the 1880s, there were roughly 30,000 street sellers or costermongers in London, selling their goods from barrows, baskets or carts. Others sold their products at fixed stalls.
It is possible to out more about the lives of street sellers in the Victorian period from ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ by contemporary investigative journalist Henry Mayhew. His four volume collection of interviews and engravings captures the lives of London’s working classes in the mid- 19th century.