THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 57 



must pay, therefore, must be sufficient to cover this loss, 

 and the retail price of fish must exceed and largely exceed 

 the price received for it by the fishermen on the coasts. 



It may perhaps be possible to place approximately this 

 excess of cost in figures. The charges on the coast, for 

 selling and packing the fish and for ice, may probably be 

 placed at about £\ a ton, the cost of conveyance to London 

 at £2 lO-f. to ;^3 a ton, the carriage to the market, porterage 

 and market dues and the salesman's commission at another 

 ^i. The initial price, therefore, on the coast is raised from 

 an average oi £20 to an average oi £2Af. \os., or £2^ before 

 the fish leaves the wholesale market. If the retailer's 

 profits and his labour in going to and in carrying the fish 

 from Billingsgate be placed at 25 per cent., the price 

 will further be raised to £l i ^s., and if a further 1 5^^. be 

 added to cover the cost of fish which either decays, or 

 which is sold at a nominal price to prevent its decay, the 

 average retail price will be raised from i^20, the value of 

 the fish on the coast, to £^2, its price to the consumer. 



This additional price, it must be recollected, would be 

 much more serious in the case of the cheap fish which the 

 trade, by a most unlucky name, calls " off"al," * than with 

 respect to the dear fish which are technically known as 

 " prime." The transit charges, the market dues, the sales- 

 men's commissions, and the expenses and a portion of the 

 profits of the retailer would, in every case, have to be borne 

 before the fish reached the consumer. If these charges 

 reached on an average ^10 or ;^ii a ton, they would repre- 



* "Trawled fish is divided for market purposes into two classes, 

 distinguished by the names of ' prime ' and ' offal ' ; the former con- 

 sisting of turbot, brill, soles, and dorys, and the latter of haddock, 

 plaice, and other kinds of inferior fish "— Holdsworth's " Deep Sea 

 Fishery," p. 15. 



