cigarette card

Cigarette card with a colour image of a lady selling lemons, posing with a basket of lemons balanced on her head and holding a basket of oranges entitled 'Fair Lemons and Oranges.' Text on reverse reads: 'Oranges and lemons see to have come into general use in England by the beginning of the seventeenth century, for we find the orange sellers notorious for the loudness of their cries as early as the reign of James I. The rhyming cry of that period was as follows: Fine Sevil oranges, fine lemons, fine; Round, sound, and tender, Inside and rine. “By the end of the 18th century the seller of lemons and oranges had become a barrowwoman, very like the costermonger of today.' Number 4 in a set of 25 cigarette cards entitled 'Cries of London'. Issued by John Player & Sons, a branch of the Imperial Tobacco Co. Ltd.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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