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Great stuff, Kerry b! Thanks youngtug and all. From what Mayhew writes it's most likely that a tinware hawker would have sold the stuff from a stall at one of London's large markets, of which there were a couple in Southwark at the time. I don't remember him mentioning anything about such costermongers having licences. I don't think they would have bothered with such things. They didn't even bother getting married and often got together as young as 14 or 15.

Henry Mayhew writes about tinmen in his fascinating work: London Labour and the London Poor. It appears that some of them are indeed little more than hawkers who operated at the bottom end of a network of manufacturers and wholesalers. Maybe someone could copy some extracts here (I only have a phone).
This may explain why my gx3 grandfather calls himself a tinman, while according to his 'wife', whom he seems to have got together with at 15, and who is illiterate, he's a hawker.
I do wonder though why in one census he called himself a tin plate worker.

My great x 3 grandfather, James Day, lists himself variously as a tinplate worker and a tin man. His wife, however, describes him simply as a hawker in my great x 2 grandmother's birth certificate.
They lived in Southwark in 1851 and 61, and he says he was born in Hatfield, Herts. The plot thickens.