Old London Street Cries and the Cries of Today

Old London Street Cries.

DATES, unless in the form of the luscious fruit of Smyrna, are generally dry. It is enough therefore to state that the earliest mention of London Cries is found in a quaint old ballad entitled “London Lyckpenny,” or Lack penny, by that prolific writer, John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth century.

These cries are particularly quaint, and especially valuable as a record of the daily life of the time.