There is an interesting, Europe-wide tradition of depicting street sellers of goods, food and services. The genre developed from the widespread practice of making pictures of general trade activities, but 'street cries' were especially popular and were collected in their own right.

In Britain 'street cries' first appeared in the early seventeenth century. The subjects were perceived as picturesque, eccentric, amusing, or alluring, and sometimes a combination of all of this attributes. The images of the sellers would often be accompanied with short texts or captions describing the cries that they called, or the wares that they sold. They would bring a pungent echo of street life into many a polite drawing room or library.

This gallery presents some of our finest historical images of street life and trade in London. To discover more, try searching or use the London Picture Map to focus on a location.

A particularly popular set came out in 1687, based on drawings by Dutch resident in London Marcellus Laroon. 'Cries' prints could be sold singly but were also collected together and sold in book form. Many show commodities or callings that would surprise or dumbfound modern city strollers, including chickweed sellers, saloop sellers and umbrella menders.

Production of 'Cries' prints was still going strong into the nineteenth century and twentieth century, sometimes in the form of facsimiles and items of ephemera like cigarette cards, often rather sentimental in character. In photography there has often been a documentary impulse with the work of John Thomson in the 1870s, up to more recent photographers such as Bob Pullen in the 1980s.

The prints can be sourced in the London Picture Archive by going to the subject tab for 'Trade and Industry' and then selecting 'Street Sellers'. They can also be usefully keyword searched and this may help as they do often cut across classifications. For example many prints depicting fairs or frost fairs will include street cries as do many eighteenth century street based satirical prints, and the engravings of William Hogarth.