lickpenny

Updated: April 30, 2025

Lydgate's ballad of "London Lickpenny" helps one to imagine what such resorts must have been in the first part of the fifteenth century. It is almost permissible to infer that the street contained, in addition to the regular inns, an assortment of open counters, where the commodities on sale were cried aloud for the benefit of the passer-by; for he says:

William Carew Hazlitt - Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

In the Ave Mary Lane they saw a procession of milk men and maids carrying wreaths of flowers on wheelbarrows, the first of which held a large white pyramid which seemed to be a symbol of their calling. They were also begging. "It's a lickpenny place," said Jack. "Somebody's got to do some 'arnin' to pay fer all the foolin' eround," Solomon answered.

Irving Bacheller - In the Days of Poor Richard