If our spectator will now descend from his giddy height, and will accompany us among the busy haunts of men, we will attempt to point out to him whence those innumerable commodities, which he has seen pouring into the town, have been obtained, the chief marts to which they are consigned, and the manner in which they are distributed from house to house. Had London like Paris its octroi, the difficulty of our task would be limited to the mere display of official figures, but, thanks to a free policy, we have no such means of getting at strictly accurate estimates, and must therefore content ourselves with the results of patient inquiry among the foremost carriers—the railway companies—aided by such other information as we have been able to procure. For the sake of convenience, and of sequence, let us imagine that the principal daily meal is proceeding, and, according to the order of the courses, we will endeavour to trace the various edibles to their source—the fish to its sea—the beast to its pasture—the wild animal to its lair—the game to its cover—and the fruit to its orchard; to point out how they are netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed to their ultimate destination—the great red lane of London humanity. Let us begin with fish, and that unrivalled fish-market which all the world is aware rears its head by London Bridge.
Those who remember old Billingsgate, with its tumble-down wharf, and dock half choked with corruption and oyster-shells—a dirty remnant of the days of Elizabeth—will enter with pleasure Mr. Bunning’s new market. Through its Italian colonnade are seen the masts of the fishing smacks, and the brown wharves of the opposite side—a pleasing picture, which instantly fixes the artistic eye. The busy scene within the market between the hours of five and seven in the morning, is one of the marvels of the metropolis. Billingsgate is the only wholesale fish-market in London, and it may therefore be imagined how great must be the business transacted within its walls. Of old, nine-tenths of the supply came by way of the river, the little that came by land being conveyed from the coast, at great expense, in four-horse vans. Now the railways are day by day supplanting smacks, and in many cases steamers; for by means of its iron arms, London, whilst its millions slumber, grasps the produce of every sea that beats against our island coast, and ere they have uprisen it is drawn to a focus in this central mart. Thus every night in the season the hardy fishermen of Yarmouth catch a hundred tons (12,081 yearly), principally herring, which, by means of the Eastern Counties Railway, are next morning at Billingsgate. The South-Western Railway sends up annually, with the same speed, 4,000 tons of mackerel and other fish, the gatherings of the south coast. The North Western collects over night the “catch” from Ireland, Scotland, and the north-east coast of England, and adds to the Thames-street mart 3,578 tons, principally of salmon, whilst the Great Northern delivers to the early morning market, or sometimes later in the day, 3,248 tons of like sea produce. The Great Western brings up the harvest of the Cornish and Devonshire coasts, chiefly mackerel and pilchards, to the amount of 1,560 tons in the year; and the Brighton and South Coast conveys the incredible number of 15,000 bushels of oysters, besides 4,000 tons of other fish. Nearly one-half in fact of the fish-supply of London, instead of following as of old the tedious route of the coast, is hurried in the dead of night across the length and breadth of the land to Billingsgate, and, before the large consumers in Tyburnia and Belgravia have left their beds, may be seen either lying on the marble slabs of the fishmongers, or penetrating on the peripatetic barrow of the costermonger into the dismal lanes and alleys inhabited by “London Labour and the London Poor.” These prodigious gleanings from what Goldsmith might well call the “finny deep,” are conveyed from the termini in spring-vans, drawn by two and occasionally by four horses. Salmon comes in boxes, herrings in barrels, and all other kinds of fish in baskets. Sometimes as many as sixty of these vans will arrive in the narrow street leading to the market in the course of two or three hours, and the scene of confusion occasioned by their rushing among the fishmongers’ carts and the costermongers’ barrows, the latter often amounting to more than a thousand, is almost as great as that at Smithfield; for the fish, like the live-stock trade, has long outgrown its mart: and Billingsgate, as much as Smithfield, is choked for want of space. Let the visitor beware how he enters it in a good coat, for, as sure as he goes in in broad cloth, he will come out in scale armour. They are not polite at Billingsgate, as all the world knows, and “by your leave” is only a preliminary to your hat being knocked off your head by a bushel of oysters or a basket of crabs. In the early part of the morning, the traffic is carried on in comparative quiet, for the regular fishmongers, who have the first of the market, conduct their business with little disturbance, but it would gladden the heart of a Dutch painter to see the piled produce of a dozen different seas glittering with silver and brilliant with colour. Gigantic salmon, fresh caught from the firths and bays of Scotland, or from the productive Irish seas, flounder about, as the boxes in which they have travelled disgorge them upon the board. Quantities of delicate red mullet, that have been hurried up by the Great Western, all the way from Cornwall, for the purpose of being furnished fresh to the fastidious palates at the West End; smelts brought by the Dutch boats, their delicate skins varying in hue like an opal as you pass; pyramids of lobsters, a moving mass of spiteful claws and restless feelers, savage at their late abduction from some Norwegian fiord; great heaps of pinky shrimps; turbots, that lately fattened upon the Doggerbank, with their white bellies bent as for some tremendous leap; and humbler plaice and dabs, from our own craft—all this bountiful accumulation forms a mingled scene of strange forms and vivid colours, that no one with an eye for the picturesque can contemplate without interest. Neither is the scene always one of still life, for it is no rare occurrence for the visitor to behold a yelling knot of men dragging with ropes through the excited crowd a royal sturgeon, nine feet in length. If the spectator now peeps down the large square opening into the dismal space below, which appears like the hold of a ship lately recovered from the deep, he will see the shell-fish market, where piles of blue-black muscles, whelks, and grey cockles turned up with yellow, give the place a repulsive aspect of dirt and slop. There are but few buyers seen here, and they are generally women belonging to the costermonger class, for the men rather disdain the shell-fish trade. These female itinerants may be noticed wandering about from basket to basket, occasionally gouging out a whelk from the shell with the thumb, to test the lot, and then passing on to the next.
Busiest among the busy is seen the “Bommeree,” or middleman—sometimes called the forestaller. The province of this individual is to purchase the fish as it comes into the market, and divide it into lots to suit large and small buyers, separating the qualities according as they are designed for St. James’s or St. Giles’s. These worthies used at one time to forestal the market extensively, when they felt certain, from the state of the tide, that no fish supplies could be poured in for the day, but now the railway defeats their tactics, and the utter uncertainty of the arrivals has done away with this branch of their business. After the “trade” has been supplied, and the serge-aproned “regulars” have loaded their light spring carts, there comes, especially in certain fish seasons, an eruption of purchasers of a totally different character—the costermongers of streets. This nomade tribe, which wanders in thousands from market to market, performs a most important part in the distribution of food. They are for the greater part the tradesmen of the poor, and by their energy and enterprise secure to our working-classes many of the fruits of both sea and land, which they would never taste but for them. About seven o’clock the army of street-vendors, foot and “donkey,” for the greater number rattle up in barrows drawn by that useful animal, begin visibly to change the whole hue and appearance of the place. Young fellows in fustian coats and Belcher handkerchiefs throng the market, and board the smacks, “chaffing,” higgling, joking, and swearing—but never fighting, for the costermonger has too much to do at present to make physical demonstrations. Among the most eager of the itinerant salesmen the visitor speedily distinguishes the Judaic nose. The Hebrews, who are in great force about this neighbourhood on account of the dried-fruit trade, which is mainly in their hands, deal largely also in fish. The poorer members of the fraternity purchase the bigger portion of the fresh-water supply, such as plaice, roach, dace, &c., in fact, nearly everything caught by the Wandsworth fisherman, whose picturesque “bawley” boats, which often contain both his family and fortune, may generally be seen moored in the stream between Battersea reach and Kew bridge, a mass of brown nets and umber canopies lit up by the brilliant red caps of their owners, just such as Constable loved to paint in the foregrounds of his landscapes. These fish, if not alive, must at least retain the spasmodic quivering of the flesh which remains immediately after death, or the Jews will not buy, for reasons we suppose connected with their religion, since their chief trade is among the rich and poor of their own people. The Wandsworth fishermen also supply all the white-bait that is consumed at Greenwich and Blackwall: it is caught generally between the latter place and Woolwich at night, and it is singular that a fish which is among the most delicate we have, should flourish in one of the foulest parts of the foulest river in Europe. The area of the market, as soon as the costermongers appear, speedily becomes broken up into numbers of little circles, strictly intent upon the eye of individuals who take up a position high over their heads upon the boards or stands. These are the salesmen, disposing by auction of the fish consigned to them. Some of the dealers are moneyed men, and will lay out their fifty pounds of a morning, re-selling to their fellows again at a profit. The smaller capitalists combine in threes and fours, and thus manage to get their commodities at wholesale prices. The activity of the market mainly depends upon the season of the year and the amount of fish. The energy of these peripatetics is surprising: they look in at Billingsgate, and if the supply runs short they are off again immediately to Covent Garden, for they deal in everything, and the barrow that one morning you see filled with fresh herrings, the next is blooming with plums. If, on the contrary, a large cargo of sprats comes suddenly into London, or if soles should be unusually plentiful, it is known in an incredibly short space of time all over the town, and they flock to the market in thousands; as many as five thousand is the usual attendance on such occasions. These costermongers absorb more than a third of the whole Billingsgate supply; of sprats and fresh herrings they take fully two-thirds. Turbot and all the costlier fish they purchase sparingly, but they buy largely when it chances to be cheap, as in the cholera year of 1849, when prime salmon went a-begging at four-pence a pound! If the market is dull, and prices are high, the fact is speedily known, and the cry of “No smacks at the Gate,” is sufficient to turn the current immediately in the direction of the “Garden.”
Steam, as we have already intimated, has revolutionized the fish-trade, and is rapidly sweeping away the whole fleet of smacks propelled by sails, as ruthlessly as the rail did stagecoaches. A few years ago all the oysters were brought by water to Billingsgate; but a short time since a great natural bed, called the Mid Channel Bed, which stretches for forty miles between the ports of Shoreham and Havre, was discovered, and, the dredging-ground being free to all comers, a vast field of wealth has been opened to fishermen, especially as from the proximity of the Brighton and South Coast Railway the produce can be sent immediately to town, and escape the dues of metage and other tolls to which all fish landed at the market is liable. Seaborne oysters are thus placed at a great disadvantage, and the different companies owning them justly complain at a city exaction which takes a large sum annually out of their pockets, besides the charge for porterage it entails upon the purchasers. Mr. Alston, who is, without doubt, the largest oyster-fisher in the world, sent up in one year between 40,000 and 50,000 bushels from his fishery, Cheyney Rock, near Sheerness, and paid 800l. for metage. The whole trade paid no less than 3,000l., and this for services which their own men could do as well as themselves, were it not for a custom which enforces idleness upon the smack people.[21]
The “scuttle-mouths,” as they are termed from their huge shell, pay no attention to season, and consequently oyster-day has now in a great degree lost its significance. The 4th of August is still, it is true, the opening day at Billingsgate, but the supply from without has taken the wind out of its sails. Only those who have witnessed the crowds filling all the streets leading to the market long before the hour of business—six o’clock in the morning—can understand the eagerness exhibited of old to obtain some of the first day’s oysters. All this is now gone. There were not more than eighteen smacks at the opening of the present year, and, few as were the arrivals, the buyers were not eager. The Mid-Channel oysters, which have thus disturbed the old trade, are of a large and by no means delicate kind, such as come from Tenby, Jersey, &c.—coarse fish, eaten by rough men—third-class oysters, in fact, which rarely penetrate to the West End, unless to make sauce. Real natives are greater aristocrats among their fellows than ever; the demand for them has for a long time far exceeded the supply, and the price has consequently risen. Of the birth, parentage and nurture of this delicate fish, a curious tale could be told. Designed for fastidious palates, much care and attention is bestowed upon its breeding. The habitué of the Opera, who strolls up the brilliantly lighted Haymarket towards midnight, and turns into any one of the fish supper-rooms that line its western side, little dreams of the organization at work to enable him to enjoy his native. Most of the oysters, with the exception of the Mid-Channel bed, are regularly cultivated by different companies, who rear and tend them at different parts of the south coast, and of the Thames at its mouth. Of these companies there are nine, in addition to individuals who possess and work what might be called sea-farms, several of which are miles in extent. In all the beds there is a certain space dedicated to natives. At Burnham, Essex, the “spat,” or fecundated sperm, is stored in large pits, and sold as native brood, which is afterwards “laid” in that portion of the different beds appropriated to privileged oysters. Here the young natives remain for three years, when they are generally brought to market. So far their education is left, in a certain degree, to nature; but once in the possession of the fish-shopkeepers, art steps in to perfect their condition. They are now stored in large shallow vats, being carefully laid with their proper sides uppermost, and supplied daily with oatmeal: a process which is calculated rather to fatten than to flavour, and there are many who think that, like show cattle, they are none the better for over-feeding. “Natives,” packed in barrels, form one of the articles of food that is largely sent out of London into the country, as all persons know who travel much at Christmas time, and notice with astonishment the pyramids of oyster-barrels which crowd the platforms of all the termini of the metropolis.
The frying-pans of London are mainly supplied with soles all the year round by the trolling-boats of Barking, of which there are upwards of 150 belonging to different companies. They fish the North Sea off the coasts of Yorkshire and Holland, particularly the Silver and Brown banks. Of old the smacks used to carry their own catch to Billingsgate, but the loss of time was so great, that latterly fast-sailing cutters have been employed to attend upon the fishing-smacks and bring their produce to market packed in ice. Of this splendid craft, which can sail almost in the eye of the wind, there are forty; and the total number of seamen employed is not less than 2,000, the greater part of whom have been taken as boys from the workhouse, and trained by this capital service into first-rate seamen. It is curious to follow the small proceedings of the world into their ultimate results. The gastronome, smiling complacently as he withdraws the cover and reveals a well-browned pair of soles, would never guess that they and their kind are the immediate cause of a happy transmutation of parish burthens into the right arm of our strength. Eels are constantly imported to Billingsgate by the Dutch boats. The galliots never moor close alongside the wharf, as the wells in which they bring their fish alive cause them to draw too much water, but they anchor midway in the stream, by twos and threes—their brown sides, flat bows, with high cheek-bones, like their navigators, and bright verd-green rudders, adding to the picturesque appearance of the river. The great fat creatures brought by them mainly supply the eel-pie houses, and contribute largely, we are informed, to that oleaginous kind of soup which people too hungry to be curious mistake for veritable oxtail and calves’ head. The Dutch boats do not, however, confine themselves to eels. They deal in turbot, soles, and all kinds of flat-fish, such as frequent the Dogger Bank, much to the discredit of our native enterprise, neglecting, as we do, the splendid deep-sea fishing-ground off the south-west coast of Ireland, where cod and salmon are to be found in abundant quantities, whilst those who know the west coast well, declare there is turbot enough in Galway Bay “to supply the whole of Europe for the next hundred years.”
We believe, however, it is now in contemplation to go to work upon a large scale in those waters, having screw-steamers to collect the produce, and bring it to Milford Haven alive in wells, from which port it would come, viâ the South Wales and Great Western Railways, to Billingsgate, within twenty-four hours after it was caught. The value of screw steamers having capacious wells has been fully tested by Mr. Howard, of Manningtree, Essex, who fitted an engine and screw into one of his welled fishing-smacks. Scarcely a lobster, out of twenty thousand put alive into the boat, was lost, whilst large numbers of those brought in sailing smacks perish. Salmon, cod, and other fish, are brought alive with the same success in the welled steamers from the North Sea and the coast of Scotland. It is almost time that some new ground were found in place of the famous Dogger Bank, which has now been preyed upon by so many nations for centuries, and has supplied so many generations of Catholics and Protestants with fast and feast food. No better proof that its stores are failing could be given than the fact that, although the ground, counting the Long Bank and the north-west flat in its vicinity, covers 11,800 square miles, and that in fine weather it is fished by the London companies with from fifteen to twenty dozen of long lines, extending to ten or twelve miles, and containing from 9,000 to 12,000 hooks, it is yet not at all common to secure even as many as four score fish of a night—a poverty which can be better appreciated when we learn that 600 fish for 800 hooks is the catch for deep-sea fishing about Kinsale.
Towards the latter end of August the great herring season commences. Yarmouth is the chief seat of this branch of the piscatory trade. Every night when the weather is fine the fishermen of this old port “shoot” upwards of 300 square miles of net. Neptune in his ample arms never gave the ocean so magnificent an embrace. The produce of this wholesale sweeping of the sea is brought to town by the Eastern Counties Railway. They come up to Billingsgate packed in barrels and in bulk, and the number sold in the year seems almost fabulous, being upwards of a billion. Next to the herring fishery the sea-harvest of most importance to the poor of London is that of sprats, which come in about Lord Mayor’s Day, and it is a popular belief that the first dish is always sent to the chief magistrate of the city. If a telegraph were to be laid down to all the alleys and courts, the fact of a large arrival of these little creatures at Billingsgate would not be sooner made known to the lower orders than, by some mysterious process, it is at present. Mr. Goldham, the clerk of the market, accustomed as he is to the sudden invasions of the costermongers, informs us that the scene on board the smacks laden with sprats is really frightful. The people hang thick as sea-weed from the rigging, throng the decks, and swarm on every available inch of plank, until the wonder is that the whole of the puny fleet does not capsize with the weight. The cause of the scramble is that the street sellers will not buy until they have seen the sample, and every one consequently tries to gain the highest point, that he may look down into the hold, whilst a man tumbles about the sprats with a shovel, in silver showers. The plaice season succeeds to that of sprats, with the interval of mackerel, which continues until the end of May, when Scotland and Ireland begin to pass down their salmon into the market. But where do all the lobsters come from? The lovers of this most delicious of the crustaceæ tribe will probably be astonished to learn that they are mainly brought from Norway. France and the Channel Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, do, it is true, contribute a few to the metropolitan market, but full two-thirds are reluctantly, and with much pinching and twisting, dragged out of the thousand rock-bound inlets which indent the Norwegian coast. They are conveyed alive in a screw-steamer and by smacks, in baskets, sometimes to the extent of 20,000 of a night, to Great Grimsby, and are thence forwarded to town by the Great Northern Railway—another 10,000 arriving perhaps from points on our own and the French coast. The fighting, twisting, blue-black masses are taken as soon as purchased to what are termed the “boiling-houses,” of which there are four, situated in Duck and Love Lanes, close to the market; and here, for a trifling sum per score, they change their dark for scarlet uniforms. They are plunged into the boiling cauldron, basket and all, and in twenty minutes they are done. Crabs are cooked in the same establishments, but their nervous systems are so acute, that they dash off their claws in convulsive agony if placed alive in hot water. To prevent this mutilation, which would spoil their sale, they are first killed by the insertion of a needle through the head. The lobster trade is mostly in the hands of one salesman, Mr. Saunders, of Thames Street, who often has upwards of 15,000 consigned to him of a morning, and who causes no less than 15,000l. a year to flow into the fishy palms of Norwegians for this single article of commerce. As to the total supply of fish to the London market, we borrow the following estimate from Mr. Mayhew’s very clever book on “London Labour and the London Poor.” The figures seemed to us at first sight so enormous, that we hesitatingly submitted the table to one of the largest salesmen who assured us that it was no over-statement:—
And now for the pièce de résistance.