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
Paper and envelopes
Brushes and combs
Books (probably secondhand ones)
Fruit and veg (often, cherries were a local gipsy speciality)
Postcards
Sheet music
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.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this information for local history purposes with credit to this blog.
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