Daily AncestorCostermonger
A costermonger sold fruit and vegetables in the street from a barrow or cart, a word used mainly in Britain and Ireland.
The word joins costard, a medieval apple, with monger, seller, so the first costermongers sold apples. It later came to mean street sellers of fresh produce in general. In London they carried produce from wholesale markets such as Spitalfields to working-class streets.
Some historians describe a pecking order in which the costermonger sold from a cart while the lower hawker carried goods in a basket. Victorian times saw a peak in their numbers.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1900 census
Jas. Pottle, 34, Costermonger, England
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Daily Ancestor. "Costermonger." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/costermonger. Last checked 2026-10-12.