648 



REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



[6] 



at a glaDce that Hiingerford Stairs are not easily accessible to coster- 

 mongers engaged in supplying the dense masses of poor people who 

 dwell at the the East end. The second attempt to supplement Billings- 

 gate was due to the generosity of Lady Burdett Coutts, who caused a 

 superb building to be constructed iu East London, and gave it the 

 name of Columbia Fish Market. It had a still shorter lease of life than 

 its predecessor at Hungerford, the consequence being that the ancient 

 tyrant flourished with greater vigor than ever. As time advanced the 

 inconveniences of Billingsgate, always considerable, were enhanced by 

 the increasing magnitude of the trade and by the altered conditions 

 under which it was conducted. The railway soon began to supersede 

 the river, and fish, instead of coming to London by water, found its 

 road there iu fast trains. It was bad enough for smacks, cutters, and 

 steamers to thread their tortuous way to the metropolitan fish market 

 along a river which is always choked with traffic, and through the 

 mazes and intricacies of the " Upper Pool;" yet, while the market could 

 be reached somehow or other by water, it had become almost unap- 

 proachable by land, and it was by land that two-thirds of the fish sup- 

 ply of London now came to Billingsgate. 



The following table of the quantity of fish delivered at Billingsgate 

 market, or its immediate vicinity, between the years 1875 and 1880 will 

 show the proportions of railway-borne to water-borne fish, and we shall 

 have something to say presently as to the comparative cost of the two 

 modes of carriage : 



How bad the land approaches to Billingsgate have always been we 

 have already shown, but their badness was of comparatively slight im- 

 portance so long as the bulk of the fish was brought thither by water. 

 When, however, it became necessary to deal each year with some 90,000 

 tons of railway-borne fish, and to deliver them at Billingsgate through 

 choked streets and narrow lafies which would disgrace a town of 50,000 

 inhabitants, the difiiculties were so augmented that fish vans sometimes 

 took eight hours to get from the Great Eastern or Great Northern Rail- 

 way terminus to the market where they had to uilload. Each succeed- 

 ing year the block increased ; and, moreover, it was still further aggra- 

 vated by the development of the trade in dried and fresh fruits. The 

 fruit salesmen, says Mr. Walpole, like the fish salesmen, naturally con- 

 gregated at the riverside. The fruit arriving in the docks were landed 

 and carried through Thames street to Pudding Lane, where most of the 



