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Pecks, Bushels and Baskets

Saturday, December 27, 2025 11:33

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R. D. Blackmore’s novel Kit and Kitty published in 1890 is set in and around a market garden business near Sunbury-on-Thames. In the quote below, Blackmore gives us an interesting angle on the ‘good old days’ where being cheated by short measure was a feature of daily life.

Blackmore had an 11-acre market garden of his own where he specialised in fruit-growing, so he knew all about games regularly played by both buyer and seller.

THERE are ever so many kinds of baskets used in Covent Garden Market, some of good measure, and some of guess, and some of luck altogether, like a Railway’s charges. They come from every quarter of the globe; and the pensive public may be well pleased if it gets a quarter of its bargain. A bushel may hold a peck more or less, according to the last jump made upon it.

The basket-makers are by no means rogues, because the contents can make no difference to them. They turn out strong ware, at a very high price, so many inches in width, and so many in depth, according to tradition. Then they pat it, and pitch it down, and paint the name upon it; and their business ends, except to get their money. And of this they never fail; for the grower, as a rule, grows honesty as his chief, and often only crop. But after that basket’s virgin fill, how many meretricious uses does it undergo!

The poor grower, who has paid half a crown for it, never uses it again perhaps, until it is worn out, and comes back to him, with a shilling demanded for his name; when it has spent all its prime in half the shops and trucks of London. Here it has passed through a varied course of fundamental changes, alternately holding three pecks and five according to its use for sale or purchase.

At first it was gifted with a slightly incurved bottom, not such a deep “kick” as a Champagne-bottle has—which Napoleon III. vainly strove to abolish—but a moderate and decent inward tendency. Here the rogue spies his vantage ground. Before filling it for sale, he lays it flat upon its rim, mounts upon the concave eternal, and with a few heavy jumps of both heels produces a bold and lofty internal dome. Then he stuffs up the cavity round the side with a tidy lot of hay, or leaves, or paper, and lo you have three pecks as brave as any four! But is he going to buy by that measure? He lays it firmly upon its base, gets inside, and jumps with equal vigour. The accommodating bottom becomes concave, and he brings home five pecks running over into his bosom.

R. D. Blackmore – Kit and Kitty (1890)

Source: https://akhaart.blogspot.com/2025/12/pecks-bushels-and-baskets.html

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