Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — BILLINGSGATE. [ARTICLE]

BILLINGSGATE.

A Description of the Most Famous Fish Market of London. Billingsgate fish market is the best abused institution in London, and yet its sturdy health is unimpaired. Hundreds of years have passed since this was first declared a free and open market. To-day 10,000,000 people are dependent on it for their fish supply, ana tho combined efforts of its enemies, from tho Itoyal Commission downward, do not seem to bo able to effect any radical change in its condition or conduct. Men of experience in tbefisb trade confidently declare that it can never be removed from its traditional home.

The average cost at Billingsgate of all exoept the rarest kind of fish is a fraction of over one penny a pound. It has gained in value ere it reaches the consumer 800 per cent. The process of this remarkable giowth is inexplicable, but the consumer has an obvious remedy. By tho grace of his deceased majesty King William 111. any person can visit Billingsgate and buy his own fish. Let us describe the process. The laggard sightseer who lets midday overtake him before he seeks the famous fish market will find it dirty, malodorous, foresaken to the scavengers, who sluice and swill its remotest corners in a vigorous way that bodes ill for trespassers. To see Billingsgate at ita best oue must be up betimes, while the streets are dim and silent.

At 5 o’olock the market opens, and from either side the steamships and the wagons bring thoir finny freight into Billingsgate, which at this moment presents a vivid pioture of industry. A thousand porters run to and fro, till the 200 rough stalls that fill the floor space begin to groan beneath the weight of turpot, brill,, soles, John Dory, mullet, plaice, haddock, cod, skate, roker, whiting, sturgeon, heke, dabs, thornback and gurnard, according to the season. The work of tho fish porters is extremely arduous, but well paid as such work goes. A porter earns as much as 10 shillings for his few hours’ toil. Fish porters are as a rule rough fellows and free drinkers. In round numbers 100,000 tons of fish pass through Billingsgate each year, about two-thirds of this aggregate arriving by land and oue-quarter by water. Tho chief source of tho fish supply is the North Sea, which specialists declare to be inexhaustible. The trado is carried on by boats or smnoks working in fleet* on the Dagger bank or off the German coast, und uiso by boats fishing singly nearer home, which return at short intervals to port, say to Grimsby or Yarmouth, whence their fish is conveyed by train to Billingsgate. Fish that arrives by land is usually consigned direct to commission agents. They in turn sell it by private contract to the “bommarecs” or middlemen, who break up the ninety pound packages into smaller lots to suit the needs of thoir customers, ranging from the Westend fishmonger to tho East-end coster. The socond channel of tho Billingsgate trade, the river, is different in its methods. The fleet that fish the North Sea are away from home for weekt and evon months tc gether. Fast steamships wait on them from time to time and bring their catch to London, the voyage out and homo taking about seven days. Two such steamships arrive in the Thames most mornings, the fish they bring being generally sold at auction by the appointed agents of the fishing companies. Round tho auctioneer and Ills clerk a thick ring of “bommarees 1 * presses. The rapid bidding is to a layman unintelligible, but apparently very clear to tho bommarees, who acquire all the fish up at auction in an incredibly short space of time, and then put it through the same process of retnilment as tne land borne fish. The rapidity by which sules by auction are effected may be gathered from the fact that u shipload of 3,000 trunks of fish is disposed of, generally by single trunks, in less than three hours, tho prioos recorded being the prices current of the wholo market. So fish comes to its ultimato consumer through five hands—those of the fisherman, the carrier, the salesman, the bommaree and the final retailer.—[Londo® Black and White.