30 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK. 
peculiar fashion, which industry employs many hands at fair 
wages. The “Yarmouth bloater” is known all over the 
world. The story of the “invention,” or rather discovery, 
of this mode of cure has been told by Mr. De Caux, in his 
little work on ‘The Herring and the Herring Fishery.’ 
We venture to abridge it for the information of our readers, 
without, however, entering into any details of the pro- 
cess of the cure; suffice it to say that a bloater is a fresh 
herring slightly salted and smoked, but not gutted ; it will 
not keep beyond three or four days, and should there- 
fore be eaten promptly. The mode of making bloaters 
was discovered by Mr. Bishop, a herring-curer of Yarmouth, 
about the year 1835, but the precise date at which it took 
place is unknown. The following account of the dis- 
covery is, we believe, correct: “One night, after his 
fish-house hands had left the place, Mr. Bishop found 
a small quantity of a prime parcel of fresh herrings which 
he thought had by some mischance been overlooked. 
To prevent the fish from being spoiled, he sprinkled 
them with salt, spitted them, and then hung them up in 
a ‘smoke house,’ in which oak billet was then being 
burned; and the next morning he was both astonished and 
delighted at their appearance, as well as with their aroma 
and flavour. Henceforth he made the cure of bloaters a 
special pursuit, and, as other curers speedily followed his 
example, in a very short time the ‘Yarmouth bloater’ 
became known far and wide.” “Newcastle kippers ” denote 
another mode of curing the herring, which affords employ- 
ment to a large number of the women folk of Yarmouth. 
This branch of the fishery business we are told was intro- 
duced by Mr. John Woodger, formerly of Newcastle ; and the 
late Mr. Buckland learned that as many as 1500 lasts of 
herrings were prepared in this manner (13,200 fish to the 
