The Pearly Kings and Queens of St. Pancras

Although each Coster family traded independently, they remained loyal to other Costers, collecting for those that fell on hard times. Their philosophy to life was one of fate, some you win some you lose, when things went bad you just had to pick yourself up and start all over again.

Costers admired style and panache and with the typical Coster cheek they imitated the wealthy West End society, who  by the early 19th century  had developed a fashion for wearing pearls and parading in  their finery on Sundays in the fashionable London parks – the Costers took it one step further by sewing lines of pearl flashers on their battered hand -me down waist coats, caps and working trousers and started doing their own parade – the ‘Lambeth Walk’.

The transformation to the complete pearly costume as we know them today finally came in the 1880s when a road sweeper & rat catcher by the name of Henry Croft came across a discarded ship load of pearl buttons on the mud banks of the Thames. He set about completely smothering a worn out dress suit & top hat with the smoked pearl buttons 60,000 of them and incorporated patterns, symbols and slogans such as:

Henry was an orphan and was brought up in a rat infested workhouse. He was particularly influenced by the Costers outlook on life, of helping those less well off, even if you had little yourself. Henry caused such a stir in his pearly suit that when he joined the Costers on their hospital fund raising parades and carnivals his shimmering outfit delighted onlookers and worked wonders in raising funds for the charities.