FISHERMEN AND FISHERIES. 241 



to market, or to dissuade persons from bringing their 

 goods there, or to enhance the price of goods when they 

 arrive, it will be perceived how far the object has been 

 attained. At that time the " East End of London " did not 

 exist, as a reference to Rocque's map* of 1745 may inferen- 

 tially show. London ended where the Great Eastern 

 Railway Station, the present chief fish-traffic terminus of 

 our railway system now stands, f Kingsland and Finsbury 

 were fields, Bethnal-green was in reality verdant, and along 

 the Thames, east of Billingsgate, the population was meagre 

 and scattered. In 1761 Parliament perceived that an 

 article of food which might readily be rendered cheap, was 

 denied to hundreds of the starving poor because " fore- 

 stalling " and artificial expenses removed it from their con- 

 sumption. Parliament, in 1883, is none the less alive to the 

 claims for a cheap fish supply which may be advanced now 

 by the poor, not in their hundreds but in their thousands. 

 It is to be hoped that in the future a prudent consideration 

 of the best means to be adopted in order to ensure success 

 will occasion the only delay in acceding to the urgent 

 demand for a cheap supply of fish. That portion of the 

 eighteenth century Fish Supply Act which gives facilities 

 to the transit of fish, as by permitting fish-carriages to 

 travel to and from the markets on Sundays and holidays, 

 was left intact in 1868. The remainder, including the en- 

 actments which exempted fishermen from impressment for 

 the navy, was repealed, whilst the abolition of press-gangs 



* Rocque's Map is referred to in an article in the ' Gentleman's 

 Magazine,' April, 1883. 



t Of 88,000 tons of land-borne fish as distinguished from water- 

 borne fish which arrives at Billingsgate brought to London in 1881, 

 no less than 57,000 tons were carried by two railway lines alone the 

 Great Northern and the Great Eastern. 



VOL. IX. E. 7. R 



