VIII.-THE FISH SUPPLY OF LONDON. 



[From the London Quarterly Review.*] 



1. Beport of Spencer Walpole, esq., Inspector of Fisheries to the Home Office, on the destruc- 



tion offish at Billingsgate, in consequence of the alleged inadequate accommodations at 

 Billingsgate Market. {Ordered hy House of Commons to he printed July 20, 1881.) 



2. Jleport to the Common Council from the Fish Supply Committee appointed by the Corpo- 



ration of the City of London. ( October 31, 1881. ) 



3. Minutes of evidence taken before Special Committees of the Lords and Commons upon the 



London Riverside Fish Market Bill. (Session of 1882.) 



Nearly thirty years have passed since the publication in our pages of 

 an article which produced no ordinary impression at the time of its ap- 

 pearance. In that article, having for its subject "The commissariat of 

 London," we ask our readers to imagine that the principal meal of the 

 day was proceeding in a well-to-do metropolitan home, and we endeav- 

 ored to trace to their sources the various edibles consecutively put upon 

 the table — the fish to its ocean-bed ; the flocks and herds to their downs 

 and pastures ; the wild animal to its lair ; the game to its covert ; the 

 fruit to its orchard ; the bread to its parent cornfield — in order to point 

 out how they are fattened, netted, trapped, captured, bagged, gathered, 

 harvested, and conveyed to their ultimate destination, " the great red 

 lane of London humanity." 



It was natural under these circumstances that we should begin with 

 fish. Alfhough we devoted no more than nine pages to chronicling the 

 operations then carried on in "Mr. Bunning's new market at Billings- 

 gate," it could hardly have escaped the notice of an intelligent reader 

 that " the harvest of the sea," being, as Mr. Spencer Walpole and Pro- 

 fessor Huxley assure us, " practically inexhaustible," could not be 

 thoroughly described, or, indeed, be more than glanced at within so 

 brief a compass. We told our readers what fish are ordinarily brought 

 to Billingsgate at that time; but of the fish which, were it not for the 

 limited area and inaccessibility of London's only market, might be 

 brought there, we said nothing. The total supply of fish sent annually 

 to Billingsgate about the year 1853, as given in Mr. Horace Mayhew's 

 "London Labor and the London Poor," seemed to us so enormous, 

 that we submitted the table to an undeniable authority, who assured 

 us that it was no over-statement. What would he now have said if 



* No. CCCVIII, October, 1882. pp. 231 to 242. 



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