The Pearlies of London
The Pearly Kings and Queens of London are one of the most distinctive and enduring traditions of London working-class culture — a tradition that combines the flamboyant display of pearl buttons sewn in elaborate patterns onto suits and dresses with a commitment to charitable fundraising that has its roots in the street trading culture of the Victorian East End. The tradition traces its origins to Henry Croft, a road sweeper who in the 1880s began sewing pearl buttons onto his suit in imitation of the costermongers — the street fruit and vegetable traders — who decorated their clothing with pearl buttons as a mark of status and identity.
The connection between this quintessentially East London tradition and the predominantly middle-class neighbourhood of Belsize Park is, at first sight, improbable. The costermongers who gave rise to the Pearly tradition were working-class traders whose social world was entirely different from the professional and intellectual community of NW3. The charity functions at which the Pearlies appear — the harvest festivals, the Easter parades, the various civic and charitable occasions at which their elaborate costumes provide a colourful punctuation to the formal proceedings — take place across London rather than in any single neighbourhood.
And yet the connection exists. The costermongers who sold fruit and vegetables in the streets of Victorian Belsize Park were part of the same trading tradition that gave rise to the Pearly Kings and Queens. The street markets of the neighbourhood — which have been discussed in an earlier article — provided the commercial context within which the costermonger culture operated in North London. And the charitable activities of the Pearlies, which extend across the whole of London rather than being confined to any single neighbourhood, have included events and collections in the Belsize Park area throughout the tradition's long history.
The Street Trading Culture
The street trading culture that gave rise to the Pearly tradition was a significant element of the social and economic life of Victorian London. The costermongers who sold fruit, vegetables, and other perishable goods from barrows and pitches in the streets were part of an informal economy that connected the wholesale markets of the city to the individual household, providing fresh food at prices that the fixed-premises greengrocer could not match. Their presence in the streets of Belsize Park — selling from barrows on Haverstock Hill and England's Lane, calling their wares in the residential streets of the developing suburb — was part of the texture of Victorian urban life.
The costermonger was a figure of considerable social complexity in Victorian culture — simultaneously celebrated as a figure of authentic working-class vitality and reviled as a disruptive presence in the respectable streets of the middle-class suburb. The ambivalence was partly a function of the social distance between the costermonger's working-class culture and the middle-class culture of the residential neighbourhood, and partly a function of the genuine disruption that street trading could cause to the domestic peace of the Victorian suburb. The regulation of street trading — through bylaws, licensing requirements, and the activities of the police — was a recurring issue in the governance of the neighbourhood throughout the Victorian period.
Charity and Community
The charitable dimension of the Pearly tradition — the commitment to fundraising for local causes that has been central to the tradition since Henry Croft's original activity — connects it to the broader tradition of philanthropic and charitable activity that has characterised Belsize Park and the surrounding neighbourhood throughout its history. The neighbourhood's tradition of charitable engagement — the settlement house movements, the hospital committees, the various welfare organisations that have been supported by the professional and intellectual community of NW3 — is part of the same broader cultural commitment to mutual aid and community support that the Pearly tradition expresses in its distinctive and colourful way.
The Pearlies who have appeared at events in the Belsize Park area over the decades — at harvest festivals in the local churches, at charity fairs and street parties, at various public events that have drawn on the tradition for its crowd-pleasing visual impact — have brought to a predominantly middle-class neighbourhood a vivid reminder of the working-class traditions that underlie much of London's cultural life. The pearl button suits, the feathered hats, the cheerful engagement with the public that characterises the best of the Pearly tradition are reminders that London's culture is made by all its people, not only by those whose contributions have been most formally celebrated.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London’s most remarkable neighbourhoods.*