17] THE FISH SUPPLY OF LONDON. 649 



fruit salesmcu took premises ; and the unfortunate street, which was 

 <i,ltogether too small for the fish trade alone, was required to accommo- 

 date the fruit trade also. 



It must not be supposed that the citj'^ fathers were blind to the grow- 

 ing inconveniences of their solitary fish market. Without going back 

 further than twenty years we may notice that in 1802 Mr. Horace Jones, 

 the city architect, suggested the only practicable scheme for making 

 Billingsgate more accessible by land that has yet been laid before tbe 

 common council. At an estimated cost of £88,000 he proposed to con- 

 struct a new street from the corner of East-cheap and Fish Street Hill 

 to Thames street. The common council approved, but allowed. the 

 proposition to lie on the table; and when, twelve years later, the im- 

 provement committee of the city of London sought to give effect to 

 the city architect's plan it was found that in the interval between 18C2 

 and 1874 the estimated cost had risen from £88,000 to £525,000. 



Time went on, and matters at Billingsgate proceeded from bad to 

 worse. At length, in lb78, Colonel Fraser, the chief commissioner of 

 city police, reported to court of common council that, in the phrase so 

 much dreaded by Lord Melbourne, " something must be done." Colonel 

 Fraser i^rotested emphatically that " the commerce had far outgrown 

 the capacity of the streets for carrying it;" adding that "an overgrown 

 business is carried on in thoroughfares or rather in lanes not wide enough 

 to admit more than two lines of traffic," the consequence being " that 

 the stoppage of one vehicle for any purpose brings the rest to a stand- 

 still." The only efi'ect produced by his energetic remonstrance was that 

 Monument Yard was paved as a street, so that many of Ihe fruit vans 

 and some of the fish vans were able to find standing room there. 



Nothing else of a material nature was done or attempted with a view 

 to improving the apj)roaches until, in 1881, the corporation of the city 

 of London resorted, not for the first time, to the evasive measure which 

 is invariably adopted by the House of Commons when in perplexity. 

 They appointed a committee to inquire into the fish-sui)ply question, 

 and about six months later the home secretary instructed Mr. Spencer 

 Walpole to report upon the handling anddistribution of fish at Billings- 

 gate. Both reports are now before us, and between them there is sub- 

 stantially no diiierence, although Mr. Walpole's is the abler and more 

 searching of the two. Both agree in stating that Billingsgate is far too 

 small and too difficult of approach by land to fulfill the duties imposed 

 upon it as the sole wholesale and retail market for supplying fish to a 

 population of from five to six millions, resident within 7 miles of the 

 Royal Exchange — that is t/O say, upon an area which embraces about 150 

 square miles of ground. 



A few brief extracts from each of these important documents will be 

 of service in elucidating the bearings of the question. From the report 

 of the corporation's fish supply committee let us select the following 

 passage : 



«' We now come to the question which directly aflfects the corporation 



