HEN a foot passenger crossing London Bridge looks down the river to the left, he cannot help noticing a little cluster of masts tapering upward from a series of small hulks and craft which lie quite near to each other, in the shadow of a long building of part brick and stone, the river side of which is open and crowded with people of both sexes from an early hour of the morning.
This is the famous Billingsgate Fish Market, which has given or originated a synonym for blackguardism and low abuse all the world over.
The market for many years consisted of a collection of wooden pent houses, rude sheds, and benches, and the business formerly commenced at three o'clock in the summer and at five in winter. In the latter season it was a strange scene, its large, flaming lamps of oil, showing a crowd of fish venders and fish buyers struggling amid a Babel din of vulgar tongues, which has rendered Billingsgate a by-word for abuse and foul-mouthed language. Addison has referred to the Billingsgate fish-wives and to their quarrels as "the debates which frequently arise among ladies of the British fishery."
PROFIT ON FISH.
The old style Billingsgate fish-woman wore a strong, stiff gown tucked up, with a large quilted petticoat; her hair, cap and bonnet flattened into a mass from carrying fish baskets upon her head; her coarse cracked voice, her bloated face and her large brawny limbs completing the picture of the old Billingsgate "fish fag."
This virago has disappeared and a new market building was erected in 1849. A stone river-wall was constructed where an old mud bank formerly existed and the surface was filled in and levelled to equalize the grade in Thames street on which the market has its frontage. Within, the ground was excavated and formed into a lower market, which has two subterranean openings on the river, for the sale of shell-fish, oysters, muscles, prawns, periwinkles, and whelks. These shell-fish are kept in large half puncheons bound with iron hoops. The market has a superficial area of 2,700 feet, but the drainage in the lower market is very bad as it is below the level of the river. The upper market is open to the public through two large arched apertures, 400 feet wide, and below it is bounded by eighteen dark arches which are used by the salesmen as depositories for their goods. These arches are entirely without ventilation and even the market itself, thronged as it is for twelve hours of the day, receives no air but that which comes in a chance way from the already vitiated atmosphere of the neighborhood. The market is covered on the side next to London Bridge by a roof of rough glass. The light iron columns which serve to support the roof, also serve to divide the market into a series of narrow gangways, and within these gangways the dealers take their stand to vend and auction the fish every morning, book and pencil in hand, and their aprons hanging from their chests to their knees. There is a clock tower on the building and a bell which is rung at five o'clock every morning to announce the opening of the market, and then is witnessed a general rush like the retreat of an army. The railways alone carry to this market annually, 15,000 tons of fish, besides the amount which is brought by water.
Five hundred years ago this market produced a rental of forty-six pounds per annum; to-day there is a firm which has a small stall whose profits on fish amount to £10,000 a year, and the good-will of one fish merchant in the market, I believe, was purchased last year for the large sum of £30,000. About the same time that the market rental was forty-six pounds a year, the best soles sold for three pence per dozen, the best turbot for six pence each, the best mackerel one penny each, the best pickled herrings one penny the score; fresh oysters two pennies a gallon, and the best eels two pennies per quarter of a hundred. William Wallace, the Scottish hero, was then a prisoner in the Tower, and Bannockburn had not been won by Bruce, and the ink on the Magna Charta was hardly dry.
In 1548, although the king of England was a Protestant, and the government a Protestant one, yet an act was passed which imposed a penalty on those who ate flesh on fish days. This was to protect the trade in the fisheries, however, and not to interfere with the private religious opinions of the people. The consumption of fish in the household of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the year 1314, was 6,800 stock fish, consisting of ling, haberdine, &c., besides six barrels of sturgeon, the whole valued at £60 of the money of that period.
It is four o'clock of a summer morning at Billingsgate market and all London is as yet solitary, and the streets are unpeopled by traffic or pedestrians. The sight from London Bridge is magnificent on such a morning. In the words of the poet who looked upon this same scene:
"This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie,
Open unto the fields and to the sky
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at its own sweet will;
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is still."