Andrew Tuer’s Old London Cries

Andrew White Tuer (1838–1900) was a bookseller, writer and publisher who set up the Leadenhall Press in the City of London, and had a passion for the centuries-old culture of chapbooks and pamphlets that preceded him.

In 1885, within ten year of John Thomson publishing Street Life in London, the first photographic survey of street traders in 1876, Tuer published Old London Cries – a self-consciously arcane production in the form of a chapbook from an earlier age.

It was an affectionate anecdotal history of the popular print tradition of the Cries of London, put together just as it was coming to an end, and I am proud to have acquired a first edition this week for a mere pittance, as the latest in my ever-growing collection that I have been amassing in recent years.

“Three rows a penny, pins!”

“Buy a fine singing bird!”

“Fine writing ink!”

“Buy a fork or fire shovel!”

“Troope every one!”

“Hot spice gingerbread!”

“Knives to grind!”

“Cabbages O! Turnips!”

“Cherries O! Ripe cherries O!”

“All a blowin’ !”

“Fresh oysters! Penny a lot!”

“Sand O!”

“Fine large cucumbers!”

“Large silver eels!”

“Buy my fine myrtles and roses!”

“Tiddy diddy doll!”

“Young lambs to sell!”

“Chairs to mend!”

You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London

John Player’s Cries of London

More John Player’s Cries of London

Faulkner’s Street Cries

Sam Syntax’s Cries Of London

Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London

More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London

Kendrew’s Cries of London

London Characters

Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders

William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders

London Melodies

Henry Mayhew’s Street 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

William Nicholson’s London Types

John Leighton’s London Cries

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

Victorian Tradesmen Scraps

Cries of London Scraps

New Cries of London 1803

Cries of London Snap Cards

Julius M Price’s London Types

Adam Dant’s  New Cries of Spittlefields