Street cries
Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. The custom of hawking led many vendors to create custom melodic phrases. During the 18th and 19th century, the street cries of major urban centers became one of the distinctive features of city life. Street cries became popular subject matter for poets, musicians, artists and writers of the period. Many of these street cries were catalogued in large collections or incorporated into larger musical works, preserving them from oblivion. History. Street vendors and their cries were known in the medieval  period. However, the numbers of street vendors working in urban areas increased markedly from the 17th century. In London, street vendors began to fill the streets in the decades following the Great Fire when a major rebuilding programme led to the removal of London's main produce market, Stocks Market, in 1773. The displacement of the open market prompted large numbers of street vendors and itinerant traders to fill the gap in food distribution by providing inexpensive produce in small quantities to the working classes, who for their part, worked long hours in arduous occupations leaving them no time to  attend markets situated away from the city centre. This led to a large increase in the informal and unregulated trade carried out by street vendors. The number of street vendors increased again in the early 18th century, following the industrial revolution, as many dislocated workers gravitated to the larger urban centres in search of work. As the city population increased, the number of street vendors also increased. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the streets of London filled with street vendors, stimulating intense competition between them. To stand out amid the crowd, street vendors began to develop distinctive, melodic cries . Around the same time, these criers or street vendors filled the streets of other European cities including Paris, Bologna and Cologne. The 19th century social commentator Henry Mayhew describes a Saturday night in the New Cut, a street in Lambeth, south of the river; Lit by a host of lights … the Cut was packed from wall to wall… The hubbub was deafening, the traders all crying their wares with the full force of their lungs against the background din of a horde of street musicians. Each trade developed its own unique type of street cry; a distinctive set of words  or a unique tune. This operated as a means of identifying each type of seller and the goods sold, giving each trade its own "verbal and aural space". During the 19th century, street traders came under increasing attack from the clergy and the authorities who wanted to rid the streets of the unruly and unregulated street trade. Initiatives to eradicate street trading had occurred intermittently in the past; various attempts to curtail street-based trading had been known during the reigns of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and Charles I (1625–1649). These constant attacks contributed to a sense of group identity amongst  vendors and inculcated an air of open defiance. Street traders composed their own broadsides in which they asserted their own political identity in songs. Historians have argued that the cries of the city were far from annoying, rather they were an essential form of transmitting important information prior to the modern period of mass communications. The term, "Street Cries," is written with a capital "C" to distinguish the vendors' melodic sounds from the general noise of the street. Street Cries began to disappear from the mid-20th century as permanent markets supplanted the informal and itinerant street trade. In literature, music  and art. The "Street Cries" of major cities such as London and Paris became such an iconic feature of street life that the subject stimulated the interest of poets, writers, musicians and artists. One of the earliest literary works inspired by street cries is Guillaume de la Villeneuve's thirteenth-century poem, "Les Crieries de Paris" (Street Cries of Paris). In 1409, an English monk, John Lydgate, composed a ballad, "London Lyckpeny" which refers many street cries, including the often quoted "Strawpery ripe, and cherrys in the ryse". The ballad, is a satire that recounts the tale of a country  person visiting London to seek legal remedies after having been defrauded. However, he finds that he cannot afford justice, and is soon relieved of his money through his dealings with street sellers, retailers, tavern-keepers and others. A "lyckpeny" (or "lickpenny") is an archaic term for anything that soaks up money. Lydgate's ballad prompted generations of composers to write songs about the distinctive cries of street vendors. As early as the 13th century, musicians included street cries into their compositions. A tune known as "On Parole/ a Paris/ Frese Nouvelle", dating to the 13th century features a Parisian  vendor's cry, 'Frèse nouvele! Muere france!' ('Fresh strawberries! Wild blackberries!'). From around 1600 English composers wrote tunes in which the text and probably the music incorporated street vendors' cries: Weelkes, Gibbons and Deering composed tunes that consisted almost entirely of street vendors' cries. Such tunes became very popular in the 17th century. It has been suggested that street cries may have been one of the earliest forms of popular music. The 19th century folk song, Molly Malone, is an example of a tune based on street cries that has survived into the modern era. The lyrics show the fish  vendor, Molly Malone, chanting "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh". The tune may have been based on an earlier 17th or 18th century song. The tune, "El Manisero" (translated as the "Peanut Vendor"), inspired by a Cuban peanut vendor's cries, was a popular hit in the 1930s and 1940s and was largely responsible for popularising Latin music and the rhumba with American audiences. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, a number of non-fiction works were devoted to the theme of "Street Cries" to such an extent that these works have been described as a distinct "genre". Most of  these works were pictorial in character, with minimal text and adorned with cheaply produced engravings or etchings depicting the exuberance of street life in which street vendors were prominently featured. Individual artworks were frequently named after the street cry that typified different types of street vendor. A series of prints in this genre was found in the personal library of Samuel Pepys. It was a mid to late 16th century series of woodcuts, illustrating a book which Pepys had catalogued as "Cryes consisting of Several Setts thereof, Antient and Moderne: with the differ Stiles us'd therein by the Cryers." One  of the earliest of publications in "The Cries" genre was Franz Hogenberg's series of street vendors in Cologne produced in 1589. One of the first English publications of the genre was John Overton's "The Common Cryes of London" published in 1667. This was followed by a French publication, "Etudes Prises Dans let Bas Peuple, Ou Les Cris de Paris" (1737) (roughly translated as "Studies Taken of the Lower People, Or The Cries of Paris"); a title which became highly popular. There followed a plethora of similar publications across Europe: "The Cries of London Calculated to Entertain the Minds  of Old and Young" was published (1760). and followed by "Cries of London" (1775) and "The Cries of London, as they are daily exhibited in the streets: with an epigram in verse, adapted to each. Embellished with sixty-two elegant cuts" (1775); a highly popular publication with a new edition published in 1791 and in its tenth edition by 1806. Other 18th century titles included: "The Cries of London: for the Instruction of Good Children", (1795). As the number of street vendors burgeoned in the early 19th century, many similar titles appeared, with many titles targeting specific audiences such as  children or country folk. Some of these titles include: "The New Cries of London; with characteristic engravings" (1804); "The Cries of London; embellished with twelve engravings", "The Cries of Famous London Town: as they are exhibited in the streets of the metropolis: with twenty humorous prints of the most eccentric characters"; "The Cries of London: shewing how to get a penny for a rainy day", (1820) Lord Thomas Busby's "The Cries of London: drawn from life; with descriptive letter-press, in verse and prose" (1823); James Bishop's "The Cries of London: for the information of little country folks ; embellished with sixteen neatly-coloured engravings", (1847); "The London Cries in London Street: embellished with pretty cuts, for the use of good little boys and girls, and a copy of verses" (1833). and Charles Hindley's "A History of the Cries of London: Ancient and Modern", (1881). The "Cries of London" was also a recurring theme in European painting. In the mid 1700s, the English water-colourist, Paul Sandby created a series entitled "London Cries" depicting English shopkeepers, stall-holders and itinerant street vendors. The Dutch engraver, Marcellus Laroon began working in London in the mid-1700s where he produced his  most famous work, the series, "The Cryes of London". William Hogarth's "The Enraged Musician" depicts a musician driven to despair by the cries of street vendors. The Flemish engraver and printmaker, Anthony Cardon, spent time in England in the 1790s where he produced a series of engravings of London's street sellers, known as the "Cries of London". Francis Wheatley, the English painter, who had been born in Covent Garden and was well acquainted with London's street life, exhibited a series of artworks, also entitled "Cries of London", between 1792 and 1795. Augustus Edwin Mulready, made his reputation  by painting scenes of Victorian life which included street sellers, urchins and flower sellers. By the 18th century, card sets were being decorated with coloured woodcuts in the "Street Cries" genre and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the images of "Cries" were being used on cigarette cards and other advertising cards. For example, John Players' cigarettes produced two series of advertising cards entitled "Cries of London" in 1913 (1st series) and 1916 (2nd series). Grenadier cigarettes also produced a two sets entitled "Street Cries", one in 1902 and another in the post-war period. Selected engravings from  popular books written on the subject of street cries published in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries