Thirty years ago there appeared in the “Quarterly Review” a remarkable article on the Commissariat of London, from the pen of Dr. Andrew Wynter. In it we were told for how many miles the beasts brought annually to the metropolis would stretch, if ranged ten abreast in a seemingly interminable column. In order to convey some notion of the stupendous quantities of ale, beer, and porter consumed, Dr. Wynter fixed upon Hyde Park as his exhibition ground, and piled together all the barrels containing the malt liquor drunk by what, in 1854, was a population of two million and a half souls. He came to the conclusion that these barrels would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular height. And among other statistics, Dr. Wynter calculated that there were at that time about twenty thousand cows in the metropolitan and suburban dairies, some of which establishments contained five hundred cows apiece. He also noticed that, the London and suburban dairies could not alone supply the population of the metropolis, seeing that twenty thousand cows, giving on an average twelve quarts each per diem, would not yield more than two hundred and forty thousand quarts. If we suppose this quantity increased by the iron-tailed cow to three hundred thousand quarts, the allowance to each of the two millions and a half of human beings then living within the Bills of Mortality would be about a quarter of a pint per head. The “Quarterly” Reviewer, therefore, assumed that, to meet the existing demands of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, half as much again as three hundred thousand quarts was consumed annually in London. For this excess he looked to the country to supplement the efforts of the metropolis and of its suburbs as suppliers of milk, and noticed that the precious white liquid was brought daily to London from farms lying as far away as eighty miles from the metropolitan railway stations to which it was consigned.
Nothing can be more instructive and entertaining than to turn back in 1884 to facts, figures, calculations, estimates, and inferences which fitted the London of 1854. Instead of two millions and a half, the population resident at this moment within the metropolitan and city police districts amounts at least to four millions and three-quarters. The area already covered by the mighty town, which adds another big town to its entirety each successive year, is about four hundred and fifty thousand square acres, and there are more than seven hundred thousand houses to be provided for, of which it may be presumed that few can do without at least a pint of milk per diem. Assuming, however, that each member of this enormous population consumed no more than a quarter of a pint of milk—that is to say, a small tumblerful—per diem, we come to the astounding conclusion that nearly six hundred thousand quarts are wanted every day, nearly four million two hundred thousand quarts every week, and nearly two hundred and seventeen million quarts every year, to meet the demands of London. Few of us are able to fathom the meaning of two hundred million quarts of liquid until we are told what an immense reservoir, ten feet deep, it would take to hold such an amount. More intelligible are the calculations which tell us that, assuming a cow to yield ten—not twelve—quarts of milk daily, it would require nearly sixty thousand milch cows to maintain this supply from year’s end to year’s end. If these patient and valuable milkers are estimated as being worth no more than twenty-pounds apiece, they would represent in their aggregate a capital of little less than one million four hundred thousand pounds. Pure milk of a reliable character, costs five-pence per quart, and therefore, on the above basis, there is spent on milk, in the metropolis and its circumjacent districts, twelve thousand four hundred pounds per day, nearly eighty-seven thousand pounds per week, and considerably more than four and a half million pounds per annum. There are States which have made a considerable noise in the world, whose total revenue does not reach what London spends annually in milk alone. As for the distribution of this inconceivable amount of liquid, which is delivered every morning and afternoon in small quantities all over the enormous area of bricks-and-mortar to which we have referred, it would utterly baffle the most marvellous organiser and administrator that ever existed upon earth, to extemporise human machinery for carrying on so minute and yet so gigantic a trade. Nevertheless, how smoothly and imperceptibly, not only in this one small detail, but throughout the whole of its vast and endless complications and ramifications, does the commissariat of London work! We are told, for instance, that to distribute every sixteen gallons of milk one person is necessary, and that, without counting managers, clerks, shopmen and shopwomen, nearly five thousand human beings, assisted by more than fifteen hundred horses and mules, are needed to furnish London with milk every twenty-four hours. More than a quarter of a million pounds go yearly in wages to milkmen and milkwomen with whom we are all so familiar, and who will doubtless, acquire additional importance in the eyes of those who reflect that these humble servitors are but, in Pope’s words, “parts of that stupendous whole” without whose useful, patient, and unintermitted labours the faultless machinery of the grandest camp of men that ever yet existed would instantly stand still.
Then it must not be forgotten that the milk trade exacts constant and unintermitted work from its employés—work from which neither Sundays nor holidays bring any relief—and demanding very early rising in the morning, to say nothing of the greatest personal cleanliness, and of an immense array of cans, varying from those capable of holding many gallons down to those which contain no more than half-a-pint—the milk-pail and its daily history might well attract notice from writers not inferior in grasp and imagination to Defoe or Dickens. In 1854 Dr. Wynter calculated that, as regards distribution, the commissariat of London was carried on by an army of one hundred thousand persons. In thirty years the population has all but doubled, and the machinery of distribution has been so improved that its working at present approaches very nearly to perfection. This perfection is due solely to freedom of trade and to universal competition, which so nicely adjust all the varying conditions of life, that, in serving themselves, they accomplish more than all the Governments on earth could effect by the most ingenious system of centralisation that human wit could devise.
| Attic Poet:—“There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only Poets know.” |
In our neighbourhood, which, as the lodging-house-keepers advertise in The Kingsland and Shacklewell Slopbasin, and The Dalston Dusthole, is situate close to “Bus, Tram, and Rail,” we have a milkman who is given to Poetry! and he circulates his “verses” pretty freely in the areas and letter-boxes about once a month.—
Glorious News! Glorious News!
