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 is an affectionate anecdotal history of the popular print tradition of the Cries of London, 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 amassed 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
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ 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
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