HOW COSTERS MADE FORTUNES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 7

HOW COSTERS MADE FORTUNES.

BUSINESSES THAT TRADESMEN MIGHT ENVY. “Apple Mary,” the popular fruit and cake-stall woman of Chicago, died recently worth £12,000. It seems almost incredible how such, a large sum can be made out of selling fruit and cakes, but part of the fortune of . “Apple Mary” was due to the generous tips given to her by her patrons. The value of stall pitches in London runs very often into hundreds of pounds. 'Rent, in some form or other, is generally paid. A few years ago the magistrate at Old Street Police Court had before him an old coster who was charged with obstruction. • The police inspector told the magistrate that this old coster used to set out a row of stalls, extending for over ninety feet along the kerb, at five . o’clock every morning. Later in the day the stalls were let to other costers at an average rent of a shilling.. He invariably managed to let all his stalls, and made an excellent income out of them. OWNER OF A THOUSAND STALLS. Another coster has now become a very wealthy man. He used to hawk fish in his earlier days, but lie gradually extended his operations, employed other costers to work for him, and is now dealing in thousands of pounds’ ■worth of fish every week. He buys his fish at Bilingagate by the. ton, dealing only in one kind. He is thus able to sell to the British public ,at a? very much cheaper rate than the ordinary fishmonger. So well is this old coster doing that he thinks' nothing of buying £SOO worth of fish irf; one morning. Without office, warehouse, or shop, he does a business that many a tradesman would envy. The saloon bar of a well-1 known public-house in Clerkenwed is his customary settling-up place. Over a thousand stalls are owned by another coster king. These stalls are distributed all over London, and he reckons his weekly turnover is some thousands of pounds. He has over a hundred centres from which his stalls are supplied every day. CHEAP EYEGLASS MERCHANT. A well-known firm of wholesale drubgists in London are very proud of one of their customers. She is a woman pill vendor, who buys her materials by the hundredweight, and mixes them with the help of several assistants. She has been over thirty years in the business, and it is one of her boasts that she has never sold a box of pills at a greater price than one penny. She is very well off. Another curious business of the gutter that pays well is the selling of cheap eyegi asses. One gutter opticio.ii sells as many as eighty to a hundred gross between Monday and Saturday A very good pair, of so-called pebbic glasses—the sort that you pay half. <i guinea for in many big shops—can i>2 obtained for anything from one-and-six to half a crown. A coffee-stall keeper, who plies I.lls trade not far from Westminster Bridge, is the owner of a. row of houses in the suburbs. He was rich enough to have retired some ago, but the fascination of ttlie life proved to be too strong. Night after night, wet or fine, he is .to be seen serving his customers until steaming liot coffee, and adding more to the little pile he has .already acquired.

VALUABLE PITCHES. . . The goodwill of pitches is extremely valuable in some cases. A coster who retired a shout time ago parted mth his goodwill for £4O, and the coster who got tiie pitch thought he was making a good bargain. Many of these, gutter merchants think nothing of taking £ls to £2O on a Saturday. The best pitches are to be found outside butchers shops for people who come to buv their meat purchase their fruit and vegetables as they are leaving.