University of Virginia Library

OF THE KIND AND QUANTITIES OF FISH
SOLD BY THE LONDON COSTERMONGERS.

Having now given the reader a general view of
the numbers, characters, habits, tastes, amuse-
ments, language, opinions, earnings, and vicissi-
tudes of the London costermongers, — having de-
scribed their usual style of dress, diet, homes,
conveyances, and street-markets, — having ex-
plained where their donkeys are bought, or
the terms on which they borrow them, their
barrows, their stock-money, and occasionally
their stock itself, — having shown their ordinary
mode of dealing, either in person or by deputy,

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either at half-profits or by means of boys, —
where they go and how they manage on their
rounds in town and in the country, — what are
the laws affecting them, as well as the operation
of those laws upon the rest of the community, —
having done all this by way of giving the reader
a general knowledge of the street-sellers of fish,
fruit, and vegetables, — I now proceed to treat
more particularly of each of these classes
seriatim. Beginning with the street-fishmongers,
I shall describe, in due order, the season when,
the market where, and the classes of people by
whom, the wet-fish, the dry-fish, and the shell-
fish are severally sold and purchased in the
London streets, together with all other con-
comitant circumstances.

The facilities of railway conveyance, by
means of which fish can be sent from the coast
to the capital with much greater rapidity, and
therefore be received much fresher than was
formerly the case, have brought large supplies
to London from places that before contributed
no quantity to the market, and so induced, as I
heard in all quarters at Billingsgate, an extra-
ordinary lowness of price in this species of diet.
This cheap food, through the agency of the
costermongers, is conveyed to every poor man's
door, both in the thickly-crowded streets where
the poor reside — a family at least in a room
— in the vicinity of Drury-lane and of White-
chapel, in Westminster, Bethnal-green, and St.
Giles's, and through the long miles of the
suburbs. For all low-priced fish the poor are the
costermongers' best customers, and a fish diet
seems becoming almost as common among the
ill-paid classes of London, as is a potato diet
among the peasants of Ireland. Indeed, now,
the fish season of the poor never, or rarely, knows
an interruption. If fresh herrings are not in the
market, there are sprats; and if not sprats, there
are soles, or whitings, or mackarel, or plaice.

The rooms of the very neediest of our needy
metropolitan population, always smell of fish;
most frequently of herrings. So much so,
indeed, that to those who, like myself, have
been in the habit of visiting their dwellings, the
smell of herrings, even in comfortable homes,
savours from association, so strongly of squalor
and wretchedness, as to be often most oppres-
sive. The volatile oil of the fish seems to
hang about the walls and beams of the rooms
for ever. Those who have experienced the smell
of fish only in a well-ordered kitchen, can form
no adequate notion of this stench, in perhaps a
dilapidated and ill-drained house, and in a
rarely-cleaned room; and I have many a time
heard both husband and wife — one couple espe-
cially, who were "sweating" for a gorgeous
clothes' emporium — say that they had not time
to be clean.

The costermonger supplies the poor with
every kind of fish, for he deals, usually, in
every kind when it is cheap. Some confine
their dealings to such things as shrimps, or
periwinkles, but the adhering to one particular
article is the exception and not the rule; while
shrimps, lobsters, &c., are rarely bought by the
very poor. Of the entire quantity of fish sent
to Billingsgate-market, the costermongers, sta-
tionary and itinerant, may be said to sell one-
third, taking one kind with another.

The fish sent to London is known to Billings-
gate salesmen as "red" and "white" fish. The
red fish is, as regards the metropolitan mart,
confined to the salmon. The other descrip-
tions are known as "white." The coster-
mongers classify the fish they vend as "wet"
and "dry." All fresh fish is "wet;" all
cured or salted fish, "dry." The fish which
is sold "pickled," is known by that appellation,
but its street sale is insignificant. The principal
fish-staple, so to speak of the street-fishmonger,
is soles, which are in supply all, or nearly all,
the year. The next are herrings, mackarel,
whitings, Dutch eels, and plaice. The trade in
plaice and sprats is almost entirely in the
hands of the costermongers; their sale of
shrimps is nearer a half than a third of the
entire quantity sent to Billingsgate; but their
purchase of cod, or of the best lobsters, or crabs,
is far below a third. The costermonger rarely
buys turbot, or brill, or even salmon, unless
he can retail it at 6d. the pound. When it
is at that price, a street salmon-seller told me
that the eagerness to buy it was extreme. He
had known persons, who appeared to him to
be very poor, buy a pound of salmon, "just for
a treat once in a way." His best, or rather
readiest customers — for at 6d. a pound all
classes of the community may be said to be his
purchasers — were the shopkeepers of the busier
parts, and the occupants of the smaller private
houses of the suburbs. During the past year
salmon was scarce and dear, and the coster-
mongers bought, comparatively, none of it. In
a tolerably cheap season they do not sell more
than from a fifteenth to a twentieth of the quan-
tity received at Billingsgate.

In order to be able to arrive at the quantity
or weight of the several kinds of fish sold by
the costermongers in the streets of London, it is
necessary that we should know the entire
amount sent to Billingsgate-market, for it is
only by estimating the proportion which the
street-sale bears to the whole, that we can
attain even an approximation to the truth.
The following Table gives the results of certain
information collected by myself for the first
time, I believe, in this country. The facts,
as well as the estimated proportions of each
kind of fish sold by the costermongers, have
been furnished me by the most eminent of the
Billingsgate salesmen — gentlemen to whom I
am under many obligations for their kindness,
consideration, and assistance, at all times and
seasons.