Here's a rundown of some of the items that could be bought on the door step or from wandering street sellers in Edwardian Great Marlow. To sell in this manner required a licence though plenty of pedlars did not have one. With the exception of fruit and veg sellers most would not have been Marlow residents but far ranging travellers who had a very hard life on the road. If caught trading without a license they were usually fined. This was often remitted if the pedlar agreed to leave the town immediately. Some "pedlars" were door to door beggars who carried a few items like pencils in their pocket for cover. These aren't included here. Unless otherwise stated all the sellers were males.
Edwardian pedlars sold the following:
Pencils
Chalk
Confetti
Paper and envelopes
Brushes and combs
Books (probably secondhand ones)
Fruit and veg (often, cherries were a local gipsy speciality in particular. The cherries themselves came from Flackwell Heath and Cookham Dean mostly)
Postcards
Sheet music (one of the most popular things to buy from pedlars in Edwardian England)
Toy windmills
Packets of lavender
Linoleum (female seller)
Services offered:
Mending mats (female mender).
Mending pans (traditionally a gypsy speciality but I cannot prove any of the pan menders who visited Marlow were gypsies in this era)
Compiled by Charlotte Day from court cases, postcards etc.
Posts related to other occupations and general Great Marlow history can be found in the index here
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this information for local history purposes with credit to this blog.
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