When street hawkers were a vital part of London life

If you read only the title of Charlie Taverner’s book Street Food you could be forgiven for assuming it was an exploration of the stalls that line the trendier streets of our cities, offering bibimbap and bao, jerk chicken and jian bing. But the author’s focus predates brightly coloured gazebo hoardings and polystyrene packaging and looks instead at the working lives of the itinerant traders who populated London before 1900, touting everything from oysters to milk, and what their work meant for a changing capital city.

By placing these vendors at the centre of the story rather than as faintly comic support acts, Tavener provides something that goes beyond individual characters. As he puts it: ‘The history of hawkers offers a ground-level, centuries-long view on London’s expansion.’

These street sellers occupied a unique place in society. Though their work was unregulated and usually poorly remunerated, they nevertheless drove London’s social and economic change.