Costermonger

Coster, costermonger, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables, in London and other British towns.

It would be interesting to know how a costermonger could have made all that money by the sale of apples, oranges, and greens.

I cannot tell, vertue is of ſo little regard in theſe coſtar-mongers times, that true valour is turnd berod […]

The Saint Monday Gemmen held their diversions on the 18th, near Clay-hill, which consisted of a pugilistic exhibition between G. Wilkie, a coster-monger, and Jeffery Smith, a professor, but little calculated to astonish the spectators at his professional skill. The battle was for ten guineas; and, after a contest of about forty minutes, in which the combatants were decently feaked, and the head of Jeffery was a good deal disfigured, he resigned the contest, and the coster-monger was carried to Westminster in triumph, [...]

We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt.

1889, Oscar Wilde, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” Chapter 1, in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer.

He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger’s donkey.

The twilight was still in the dusky skies; the walking took her nearly always over pieces of wrapping paper and banana peels, and the sawdust and detritus that fell from the costermongers’ stalls, lining all the roadways.

In more recent times it is recorded that among the London costermongers of the Victorian age a common oath, probably misunderstood or not understood at all, was, So help me testes!