London in the weeks before Christmas was a paradise of odd jobs. Extra hands were taken on at the Post Office, to cope with Christmas deliveries, at Covent Garden where there was a ‘second season’ in fresh fruit and flowers, at the railway stations and at the docks. The Christmas pantomime season gave temporary employment to a whole army of ‘extras’, scene shifters, stage hands, ballet girls and ‘supers’. Christmas was the height of the advertising season and men of the lodging house class were widely employed in delivery on tradesman’s hand bills… also hand bill distribution at the street corners and board carrying..
Raphael Samuel, Comers and Goers. Collected in John Merrick, Workshop of the World, Essays in People’s History (Verso 2024)
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