[15] THE FISH SUPPLY OF LONDON. 657 



ten trips in an hour, and can take from seventy to ninety costermongers 

 barrows at a time. 



4. As regards the access to the market by laud the streets and roads 

 leading to the selected site at Shadwell are wide, unencumbered by or- 

 dinary traffic, and of easy gradients. Out of the eight acres acquired 

 the market proper will occupy 75,000 square feet, or one acre and three- 

 quarters, and the rest of the property will be laid out in ample ap- 

 proaches and in "lay byes " for carts and barrows, and also in the erec- 

 tion of the necessary shops, warehouses, and buildings connected with 

 the market. 



5. On the three land sides of the market there will be a broad street, 

 so that four-and-twenty vans can lie side by side and unload simulta- 

 neously. Not a single fishmonger's cart or costermonger's barrow will 

 be more than 150 yards away from the center of the market, so that the 

 porterage will be reduced to a minimum and no time will be wasted. 

 The market will be open all day, and accessible from a very early hour 

 in the morning until late at night to ships approaching it by water and 

 to costermongers api^roaching it by land. The maximum tolls fixed by 

 the bill are very much lower than those charged at Billingsgate. 



It will thus be seen that the Shadwell site fulfills all the conditions 

 required by the reports of the corporation committee and of Mr. Wal- 

 pole, who, having examined the spot, gave evidence in its favor before 

 the House of Commons' committee. It should also be mentioned that 

 no steps were taken by the promoters of this bill to get permission from 

 i:)arliament to make a new fish market at Shadwell until the corporation 

 of London and the metropolitan board of works had been repeatedly 

 urged, but in vain, to take the matter up. The want of additional mar- 

 ket accomodations being admitted on all hands, what, it may be asked, 

 is the corporation of London doing to supply it ? With the exception 

 of attempting to convert the fruit market at Farringdon into a fish 

 market nothing has been or will be done ; and it is admitted ou all 

 hands that an inland market of this kind will do little towards cheap- 

 ening and making more abundant the coarser kinds of fish, which do 

 not come to London by costly railway carriage but can only be brought 

 by river. 



These details can hardly be deemed uninteresting when we remem- 

 ber the stake at issue and the degree to which they afi'ect it. There is 

 and has long been a popular impression that many of our sea-fisheries 

 are less fecund than of yore, and that the ocean is growing more and 

 more to deserve the epithet of "barren." which Homer was so fond of 

 applying to it. How far this is from being the case let the following 

 passage from Mr. Walpole's speech, delivered before the Society of Arts 

 upon the 10th of last IVIay, suffice to attest : 



"You are all acquainted," he said, "with the North Sea. You know 

 that it is a comparatively small sea. It is fished by English, Scotch, 

 Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Belgian, and French fish- 

 S. Mis. 110 42 



