2-798-750 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Pine-Apples, a penny a slice, 1845. Londoners buying fruit from a barrow: '...the mode of retailing them in the streets of the metropolis - just as cherries have been cried and sold some 200 years since...The attempt made last year to import into this country Pine-apples, from the West Indies, was attended with such success as to induce speculators to improve the culture. This was, indeed, requisite; for some of the specimens were acrid enough to set the teeth on edge...the Pine trade has already become permanently established: in one week upwards of 11,000 pine apples have been sold by one house !, averaging from 1s. [1 shilling] to 3s. each; and the same brokers have sold 100,000 this season. Meanwhile, they have been cried by cartloads and barrowfulls through the streets for sale!'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.