Fish Pedlar (Live Fish Carrier)
Before refrigeration, some vendors specialized in selling live fish door-to-door. Fish pedlars carried water-filled barrels on their backs or carts, sloshing with wriggling eels, trout, or carp. They’d shout through neighborhoods like a seafood town crier, and customers had to pick and gut their own dinner on the spot.
The job was messy, smelly, and exhausting—especially in summer. Worse still, accidents often meant soaked shoes and flopping fish in the street. As fish markets and refrigeration took hold, this slippery career flopped into obscurity, remembered only in old folk songs and nostalgic sketches.
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