Licensing the Informal Economy in Early Modern Europe: Food Hawkers in London and Naples

Abstract

Food hawkers filled the streets of early modern London and Naples but had an ambiguous relationship with urban governors. By comparing how hawkers were regulated in the two capitals between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, this article extends our knowledge of irregular work to two of the period’s largest cities and argues that historians should consider informality as a social process, rather than a fixed economic category. It examines, in turn, how food hawkers were hard to distinguish from other rule-breaking retailers, how governors issued food-selling licences, and how hawker regulation also involved managing public space and related to gender and social status. Instead of clamping down completely, London aldermen and Neapolitan eletti gave licence to food hawking when it was useful and stayed within standards of behaviour. Deciding who was allowed to sell food and how were finely balanced questions of governance in the expanding early modern metropolis.