buttermen

The lighting of a match may cause a conflagration which shall "bring down" an extensive firm, some of whose dependants, in the retail trade, will go down along with it, and cause widespreading distress, if not ruin, among a whole army of greengrocers, buttermen, and other small fry.

Post Haste 1859

For this purpose, he sends to all the buttermen in the town moulds on which his name, title, and the hour of his performance are engraved, begging them to imprint his stamp on their butter-pats, in lieu of the cow ordinarily represented.

Memoirs of Robert-Houdin Houdin, Robert 1858

In like sort, since the number of buttermen have so much increased, and since they travel in such wise that they come to men's houses for their butter faster than they can make it, it is almost incredible to see how the price of butter is augmented: whereas when the owners were enforced to bring it to the market towns, and fewer of these butter buyers were stirring, our butter was scarcely worth eighteen pence the gallon that now is worth three shillings fourpence and perhaps five shillings.

Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) Thomas Malory Jean Froissart

In like sort, since the number of buttermen have so much increased, and since they travel in such wise that they come to men’s houses for their butter faster than they can make it, it is almost incredible to see how the price of butter is augmented: whereas when the owners were enforced to bring it to the market towns, and fewer of these butter buyers were stirring, our butter was scarcely worth eighteen pence the gallon that now is worth three shillings fourpence and perhaps five shillings.

Of Fairs and Markets. Chapter IV. [1577, Book II., Chapter 2; 1587, Book II., Chapter 18 1909