The New Cries Of London, 1803
This battered little chapbook of 1803 with its intricate hand-tinted engravings of street-sellers – that I found in the Bishopsgate Library – is the latest wonder to be uncovered in my investigation into popular prints of The Cries of London down through the ages. Even within the convention of these images, each artist brought something different and these plates are distinguished by their finely drawn figures – including some unexpected grotesques that appear to have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, imparting an air of mystery to these everyday scenes of street trading.
Milk below!
New Mackerel!
Dust Ho!
Chairs to mend!
Hot cross buns!
Any work for the tinker?
Cherries, threepence a pound!
Flowers for your garden!
Green cucumber!
Buy my watercress!
Sweep! Sweep!
Ground Ivy!
Green hastings!
Scarlet strawberries!
Primroses!
Past ten o’clock!
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
I love the way he incorporates a mongrel dog into most of the pictures.
What were ‘Green Hastings’?
Green hastings were fresh peas in their pods.
These are stunning, very evocative.
Gorgeous! I love the creator’s style and use of colour.
Thanks again for another splendid find. Between these “Cries of London” and the Trades Cards. I’m always delighted.
What a delightful set. Books of London cries were always popular and eventually in the late nineteenth century became self-consciously archaic. These still look like the real thing. Is there an author or at least an artist for this set?
I love these! Thank you! I have a copy of the “olde chairs to mend” but it is a newer version one of my aunts who lived in London sent me….