Whispers and Wicker: Nineteenth-Century Markets and Costermonger Baskets

Whispers and Wicker: Nineteenth-Century Markets and Costermonger Baskets

by Abbey J. Fedora

Dalnavert’s Market Bag

Dalnavert’s Market Bag

On a recent visit to Dalnavert Museum, the market bag perched on top of the kitchen cabinet caught my eye. In previous tours of the museum, I was distracted by more ornate objects in the kitchen, such as the cabinet of chinaware. This time, I looked beyond the eye-catching to focus on the everyday objects that fill the home. After leaving the museum, I found myself wondering where the market bag may have travelled and what kinds of things it had once contained.

Dalnavert’s market bag provoked thoughts about markets and commerce, two major aspects of the nineteenth century. The bag looks to be made of raffia or dried grasses. These natural materials were also used to make baskets, another item prevalent in Victorian markets. In this blog, I examine market spaces in nineteenth-century Britain and how they are depicted in literature. With basketry as a focus, I will then discuss the connections between markets and baskets in the poetry of Christina Rossetti, a celebrated Victorian-era writer.

Markets in Nineteenth-Century London

Markets were some of the liveliest places in nineteenth-century London. In addition to being busy places, they were also diverse ones; markets were a place where women and makers with disabilities could sell their wares. Journalist Henry Mayhew’s encyclopedic book London Labour and the London Poor (1851) provides insight into the lives of those who earned their living at London’s street markets. Mayhew’s book discusses a group of people called “costermongers” who sold produce on the streets of London. Costermongers, sometimes labelled “hawkers,” were known for their chants which they used to advertise their products. Though they were familiar to nineteenth-century shoppers, costermongers inspired suspicion in some city dwellers.

Costermongers were often involved in trickery and sometimes crime. Mayhew’s section titled “Of the Tricks of Costermongers” discusses the methods that costermongers used to make their products appear to be of better quality. For example, Mayhew reports on a conversation he had with two London costermongers who claimed they boiled their oranges to make them look plump. One seller explains that boiling the oranges “makes ’em look finer ones, but it spoils them” (61). While not illegal, the manipulation of produce was frowned upon. Tactics like boiling fruit created a skepticism in buyers about street sellers, their methods, and even the origins of their products. Fruit was an item that nineteenth-century shoppers became especially wary of buying in the street as it could be easily manipulated by the seller.

Phoebus Levin’s painting “Covent Garden Market, London” (1864)

Levin’s painting captures the abundance of the Covent Garden Market during the nineteenth-century. Levin’s painting demonstrates how the market was a site of connection for different social groups.

One of the most popular markets in nineteenth-century London was Covent Garden Market, known for its fresh produce and plants. Pioneering photographer John Thomson (1837-1921) provides a sense of the market’s scale in his book Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs, explaining that there were “five hundred flower stalls” with “two thousand men” employed “to bring and grow stock for these stalls” and others employed “in distributing the flowers to their various purchasers” (65). While these workers were “scattered” across “all parts of the metropolis,” many were “divided into the job-workers and the regular hands” at the market (65). Thus, Covent Garden Market was a place which supported London’s economy through providing a space for workers, makers, and sellers.

Baskets in Market Spaces

Fig. 1: John Thomson’s “Covent Garden Laborers” (ca. 1877)

Thomson’s photograph captures a moment of commerce in Covent Garden Market. Featuring one man with a basket on top of his head and another with a basket on his back, Thomson’s photograph provides an example of the role baskets played in nineteenth-century market spaces.

Costermongers often used baskets or wooden crates to transport and display their products. Although costermongers’ baskets varied in shape and size, these tools would often have a strap that would secure the basket around the costermonger’s neck, arms, or torso. Baskets without a strap could be carried on the heads or backs of costermongers or market workers (Fig. 1). While baskets were supported by the costermonger’s body, they also supported the seller by helping them carry their products.

In addition to being used as tools, baskets were often sold at markets as crafted goods. As explained by Mayhew, baskets were made in makers’ homes then sold in the streets. Being homemade objects, baskets enabled independent commerce. Baskets were also made by crafters living with disabilities, including those attending institutions for blind students. To read more about nineteenth-century baskets and their construction, view this tutorial!

Markets in Literature

Due to their popularity, markets were often discussed in literature. Christina Rossetti, one of the Victorian era’s most successful female poets, is best known for her poem “Goblin Market.” While Rossetti’s famous poem is often interpreted as a veiled exploration of women’s experiences of sexuality and social scrutiny, the theme of markets arises in the selling and consumption of the fruit sold by the goblins. The poem follows two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who live together on a farm. Lizzie prioritizes household labour and often warns her sister Laura to stay away from the “goblin men” who sell exotic fruits (42). Tempted by the goblin men, Laura eats their fruit and gives them a lock of her hair as payment. Laura then becomes ill and her hair turns “grey” (277). It seems that Laura is about to die but Lizzie manages to save her. 

Hilda Koe’s painting “The Goblin Market” (1895)

Koe’s painting highlights the daunting nature of the goblin men in Rossetti’s poem as they pressure Laura and Lizzie to buy and eat their fruit.

The goblins’ fruit in Rossetti’s poem resembles the boiled oranges that Mayhew reports on. Lizzie describes the goblins’ chants as “sugar-baited words” which suggests that their products are attractive but lack sustenance, like the costermongers’ boiled oranges (234). This idea is emphasized by Laura’s insatiable hunger even after eating the fruit. As she tells Lizzie, “I ate and ate my fill, / Yet my mouth waters still,” demonstrating how the fruit fails to fulfill her (185-86). Rossetti’s use of the term “bait” also evokes the idea of trickery that Mayhew writes about, signalling that the goblins, like some real-world costermongers, are predators.  

The goblins gain power over Laura after her ‘purchase’ as she longs to buy their fruits again. Laura’s dependence on the goblins is demonstrated by her pining and physical decline, which is evident in her greying hair:

Laura kept watch in vain

In sullen silence of exceeding pain.

She never caught again the goblin cry:

“Come buy, come buy;”—

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But when the noon waxed bright

Her hair grew thin and grey (270-7)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s illustration “Buy from Us with a Golden Curl (frontispiece to Goblin Market and other Poems by Christina Rossetti)” (1862)

This illustration by Dante Gabriel Rossetti depicts the scene in Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” where Laura trades a lock of her hair for the fruit. Aligning with photos and documentation of real costermongers, the goblin men in Rossetti’s illustration carry baskets and trays to sell their fruit to Laura.

Laura’s “exceeding pain” expresses Rossetti’s concerns about a decline in nineteenth-century shoppers’ self-reliance due to their increasing dependence on purchased products rather than homegrown goods. Laura’s loss of self is also signified by the lock of hair she trades, an act which suggests that she must sacrifice her body to buy the fruit. While many critics rightfully interpret this act as a sexualized form of trade, Laura’s sacrifice can also be interpreted as the compromise of her bodily wellbeing for the temporary pleasure of eating the fruit. The loss of Laura’s hair through both her trading of it and its greying can then be read as a symptom of food-induced illness.

Scholar Clayton Carlyle Tarr discusses the dangers of market shopping in his essay “Covent Goblin Market.” Tarr discusses both physical violence and Laura’s potential poisoning in “Goblin Market.” Noting the parallels between Rossetti’s goblin men and real-world costermongers, including their shared use of “catchy advertisements,” Tarr argues that Rossetti’s poem was inspired by Covent Garden Market (305). Tarr notes that, like Rossetti’s goblins, real-world costermongers were “generally distrusted and even feared” (305). Tarr elaborates that produce was sometimes laced with harmful ingredients, a practice that resulted in “poisonous” apples (309). With Tarr’s insights to guide us, Rossetti’s poem becomes a cautionary tale about marketplaces and their temptations.

Baskets Beyond the Market

In “Goblin Market,” the goblins use their baskets like costermongers to carry their fruit; early in the poem, we learn, for example, that “One hauls a basket” (76). Although not set in a market, another Rossetti poem, this one titled “An Apple Gathering,” also features baskets. “An Apple Gathering” is a poem about a girl who goes to harvest apples but finds none because she had plucked the blossoms off the apple tree earlier in the season. Like Laura, the speaker of “An Apple Gathering” faces consequences for indulging in temporary pleasure. Picking the blossoms instead of letting fruit grow causes her to return home without any apples:

I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree

And wore them all that evening in my hair:

Then in due season when I went to see

I found no apples there. (1-4)

Harold Charles Harvey’s painting “Apples” (1912)

Harvey’s painting features multiple full baskets, depicting apple gathering as a rewarding and reliable activity. The green and sunny atmosphere in the painting creates an image of abundance, fertility, and, most of all, food.

The speaker elaborates that she returns home “empty-handed” and describes her “dangling basket” which swings empty “all long the grass” (8, 5). The speaker’s empty basket becomes a symbol of her inability to fulfill herself, similar to Laura in “Goblin Market.”

Laura from “Goblin Market” and the speaker of “An Apple Gathering” are linked by their shared feelings of longing. The speaker of “An Apple Gathering” states that, having failed to harvest any apples, “I loitered, while the dews / Fell fast I loitered still” (27-28). Similar to Laura searching for the goblin men, the speaker in “An Apple Gathering” wanders in hopes of finding fruit, but both women leave with empty baskets. It is in this way that Rossetti’s poems “Goblin Market” and “An Apple Gathering” use images of unfed women and baskets void of fruit to explore the ideas of women’s unfulfilled appetites and the dangers of public spaces, such as markets.

Unpacking the Basket

In both real-world markets like Covent Garden Market and fictional markets like Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” baskets are helpful tools for selling, transporting, and purchasing. Being such a prominent object in the lives and homes of those in the nineteenth-century, it is not surprising that baskets are featured in the work of famous poets such as Christina Rossetti. Baskets were logically associated with sustenance and independence, but, as Rossetti’s cautionary poem teaches us, the risks for women venturing into market spaces went beyond plumped-up produce. While enabling independence, baskets, like markets, could evoke both excitement and fear, especially for Victorian-era female shoppers.

Returning to Dalnavert Museum, the display of Dalnavert’s market bag in the kitchen, the workspace of the home’s servants, suggests that this object would have assisted servants in sourcing food for the home. While the market bag may be an easily overlooked object in Dalnavert’s beautiful and visually rich collection, it was one of few objects designed to leave the home, functioning as a connection between the private spaces of the home and busy, public spaces such as markets.

Works Cited

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work. G. Woodfall, 1851.

Rossetti, Christina. “An Apple Gathering.” Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti, 2nd ed., Macmillan and Co., 1865, pp. 73-74.

Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti, 2nd ed., Macmillan and Co., 1865, pp. 1-30.

Tarr, Clayton Carlyle. “Covent Goblin Market.” Victorian Poetry, vol. 50, no. 3, 2012, pp. 297–316.

---

About the author

Abbey Fedora is a fourth-year Honours English student at the University of Manitoba. As a Research Assistant to Dr. Vanessa Warne, Abbey studied craft and disability in the nineteenth century with a focus on basketry. She is passionate about material culture and what craft reveals about the body and the past.

---

More From the Blog