FOUL FISH AND FILTH FEVERS. 323 



ports, piers, beaches, and other districts where fish is landed, are frilly as offensive as 

 most private slaughter-houses, it is only fair that on landing all such fish should be 

 inspected previous to being sold or offered for sale as food in their special localities of 

 arrival or else forwarded for sale as food to distant markets. 



There appears to be considerable confusion as to the duties of the port sanitary 

 authorities as to their on the spot seizing, condemning, and destroying fish unfit for 

 the food of man. It is evident that no bad fish should be allowed to be sold locally, 

 or offered for sale for the purpose of food, or forwarded by rail, etc. 



As the delivering of bad fish on land is an offensive nuisance, dangerous to pub- 

 lic health, all bad fish on landing, after inspection, should be destroyed in suitably con- 

 structed furnaces. 



Abundant evidence that fish is already rotting when dispatched from the fishing 

 ports is to be found in the corporation fish and Billingsgate inquiries of 1868 to 

 1870 and in the 1881 reports, as well as in the evidence before the House of Commons 

 in 1882 on the Shadwell fish-market inquiry. 



George Stevenson, a fish salesman and auctioneer and a member of the corpora- 

 tion markets committee, recorded the following evidence: 



I have been in Billingsgate Market tor sixty years, where I did the most mighty business in Lon- 

 don. The corporation absolutely made the basement of Billingsgate 25 to 30 feet below the water- 

 way. We spent something like £50,000 to £70,000 to clean out cart loads of human excrement from 

 that basement. Billingsgate is an abortion above and a cesspool below. At Billingsgate the diseased 

 fish is sold very cheap, where the filth fetches a very low price. 



Other witnesses swore that the railway fish muck came in a half-stinking state to 

 Billingsgate. 



Another smack-owner declared that he loaded his fish in railway bullock trucks 

 with the muck or manure not cleaned out. 



Another witness swore that the railway fish barrels, when delivered from the 

 trucks, were so filthy from adhering manure that he had to wash the fish before taking 

 them on his back. 



Again, another swore that the great bulk of fish condemned in Billingsgate ought 

 never to have got there. Fish meters or inspectors of the Fishmongers' Company 

 have also stated that the fish was bad before it started from the railway station at. the 

 fishing port. 



Another fishmonger stated that he had sold stinking fish. 



Further, another of the fish meters or inspectors of the Fishmongers' Company, 

 with whom he had been for ten years, stated: 



After we (the Fishmongers' Company) have condemned the tish, even if it stinks so badly that 

 you can hardly go near it, nevertheless we have plenty of poor people who take away whole baskets 

 full. They wash it, clean it. and eat it. I know this as a fact from my own personal experience. 



A Billingsgate fish salesman said : 



I know for a fact that the refuse of the fish all comes to Billingsgate. Hull and Grimsby furnish 

 much inferior quality of fish. Hence on the coast I have heard the remark "anything will do for 

 London.'' 



A fish meter stated: 



The jurisdiction of the Fishmongers' Company extends 12 miles round, but the farthest place I 

 have ever been to is about a mile and a half from Billingsgate. 



