“At present, large numbers of these patients are sent to licensed houses far from their homes, to distances (sometimes exceeding, and often scarcely less than, 100 miles) which their relations and friends are unable to travel. The savings of the labouring poor are quite insufficient, in most cases, to defray the expense of such journeys, and their time (constituting their means of existence) cannot be spared for that purpose. The consequence has been, that the poor borough lunatic has been left too often to pass a considerable portion of his life,and in some cases to die, far from his home, and without any of his nearest connexions having been able to comfort him by their occasional presence. The visits of his parish officers are necessarily cursory and unfrequent, and he is, in fact, cast upon the humanity of strangers, whose prosperity depends upon the profits which they derive from maintaining him and others of his class.”
“At present, large numbers of these patients are sent to licensed houses far from their homes, to distances (sometimes exceeding, and often scarcely less than, 100 miles) which their relations and friends are unable to travel. The savings of the labouring poor are quite insufficient, in most cases, to defray the expense of such journeys, and their time (constituting their means of existence) cannot be spared for that purpose. The consequence has been, that the poor borough lunatic has been left too often to pass a considerable portion of his life,and in some cases to die, far from his home, and without any of his nearest connexions having been able to comfort him by their occasional presence. The visits of his parish officers are necessarily cursory and unfrequent, and he is, in fact, cast upon the humanity of strangers, whose prosperity depends upon the profits which they derive from maintaining him and others of his class.”
This is a system which we are confident is as illegal as it is heartless, and we are astonished that bodies of Englishmen should dare to insult the miseries of lunatics by thus punishing them and their friends for their affliction. There were not long since twenty-five insane paupers at Camberwell House, London, who had been sent from Southampton, a distance of eighty miles, though the Hants County Asylum is situated within sixteen miles of the borough. Seventeen persons were in like manner banished from Great Yarmouth to Highbridge House, near London, and their relations, who had to travel 146 miles to see them, passed, in the course of their journey, the Norfolk and Essex County Asylums, both of which establishments had many vacancies and would willingly have received them. The pauper lunatics of Ipswich, King’s Lynn, Dover, Canterbury, Portsmouth, and various other boroughs, are in the same way transferred by the local authorities to some of the metropolitan licensed houses.
The feelings of the poor for their afflicted relatives are often of the deepest kind, and the utmost distress is entailed upon them by these cruel separations from those they love. In onecase, a native of Ipswich, too poor to go by the railway, walked to London and back on foot, a distance of 140 miles, for the sole purpose of visiting his wife, who had been wickedly banished to Peckham House, London. In other cases parents have pleaded so piteously to be conveyed to their children, that the commissioners have suggested that the expenses should be paid out of the parish funds, but the authorities who had contrived the original proceeding in order to save two or three shillings a head, could not of course be induced to furnish money for so sentimental a purpose. The commissioners have resolutely refused their sanction to such disgraceful transactions whenever they have come within their knowledge and jurisdiction—one instance out of many which prove that, however much the borough authorities may denounce them as a centralized power, they have done excellent service in checking local ignorance, selfishness, and inhumanity.
If we now turn to consider the condition of private asylums, we shall find much in them to praise as well as to condemn. When men of reputation, acknowledged skill, and character—such as Drs. Conolly, Forbes Winslow, Sutherland, and Munro, of London; Drs. Hitch, Noble, Newington, Fox, in the provinces, have the management of private asylums, the public need be under no apprehension of patients being improperly received, illegally detained, or cruelly and unscientifically treated. The licensed houses in the metropolitan district directly under the control of the Lunacy commissioners, amounting to forty-one in number, represent, without doubt, the fairest specimens of these establishments. Liable as they are at any moment to the inspection of the commissioners, and presided over as many of them are by the most eminent members of the profession, they are generally maintained in a high state of efficiency. They are principally devoted to the care of the higher classes of the community, and afford perhaps the nearest approach yet made to a perfect method of treatment, being conducted in most cases on the principle of a private family. The bolts, bars, high walls, and dismal airing-courtsof the public asylum are either unknown, or so hidden as no longer to irritate the susceptible mind of the lunatic. The unwise division of the sexes is not as a rule adopted. Scrupulous attention to dress and all the forms of polite society are enjoined alike for their own sake, and as a method of interesting patients in the daily life of the community. When we partook of the hospitalities of one of these establishments, we could detect nothing in the countenances or the appearance of the guests which was characteristic of their condition: the restless eye, the incoherent conversation, the sudden movement of the peculiarly formed head, which our preconceived notions led us to expect, were none of them observable. One individual indeed there was whom we mentally concluded to be certainly mad. Yet, singular to say, this gentleman was the only sane individual in the room, besides ourselves and the medical superintendent; and on further acquaintance, having told our ill-placed suspicions, he frankly confessed that he had in his own mind paid ourselves a similar compliment. The eager glance of curiosity natural to inquisitive strangers was the nearest approach in this lunatic party to the outward appearance of lunacy. So much for the “unmistakeable” countenance of the insane! It is not to be supposed that the more violent can be allowed this social freedom even in private establishments, or that madness is different in a metropolitan licensed house from what it is in a public asylum; but we unhesitatingly assert that in the vast majority of cases the large amount of freedom and the absence of any prison-like characteristics have an undoubted effect, not only in calming the mind of the patient, but in expediting his recovery. Hence the per-centage of cures in a high-class private asylum are immeasurably beyond those of any public establishment. The pleasure-ground, out-of-door games, carriage and riding parties, billiards, whist and evening parties, all contribute their aid in restoring the unhinged mind. We have seen four or five patients leave the doors of one of these licensed metropolitan houses (the establishment of Dr. Forbes Winslow, “Sussex House,” Hammersmith), and remain out for hours without any attendant,their word ofhonourbeing the only tie existing between them and the asylum.[18]
The condition of a few of the provincial licensed houses isstill glaringly bad, and shows that old ideas, with respect to insanity, are not entirely obsolete. The Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy for 1856, relates circumstances which lead us back to the old days of Bedlam. Thus at Hanbury House the Commissioners found “one young lady fastened by webbing wristbands to a leathern belt; she was also tied down to her chair by a rope.” Again, they found on their last visit to the Sandford Asylum, in December, 1855, “a patient just dead, his body exhibiting sores and extensive sloughs, arising necessarily, we think, from want of water-pillows or other proper precautions. The room has a stone or plaster floor, and is without a fire.” It is, however, encouraging to find that, as far as personal restraint goes, the very worst of our private asylums are far superior to some of the best of the public asylums of France. Dr. Webster, our great authority on this point, gives in Dr. Winslow’s Psychological Journal, the results gleaned in his visits to these establishments in the August and September of 1850:—
“Forty male lunatics out of 1464 then resident were incamisole(strait-waistcoats), some being also otherwise restrained, thereby giving an individual in restraint to every 33¼ male inmates, or three per hundred. Amongst the female lunatics, again, the proportion was somewhat larger, 72 persons of that sex, out of the total 1902 resident patients, being under medical coercion; thus making one female in restraint to every 26⅓ inmates, or at the rate of 3·78 per cent. In contrast with this report respecting the above-named French provincial asylums, I would now place an official statement of the practice pursued at Bethlehem Hospital during the same period. At this establishment, where formerly the strait-waistcoat, with various kinds of personal coercion, were even in greater use than on the other side of the Channel,not oneinsane patient, among an average population of 391 lunatics, was under constraint of any description during the five weeks ending the 25th of September, when I first visited that institution after my return from the Continent, and which embraced the whole time referred to in this memorandum.”
“Forty male lunatics out of 1464 then resident were incamisole(strait-waistcoats), some being also otherwise restrained, thereby giving an individual in restraint to every 33¼ male inmates, or three per hundred. Amongst the female lunatics, again, the proportion was somewhat larger, 72 persons of that sex, out of the total 1902 resident patients, being under medical coercion; thus making one female in restraint to every 26⅓ inmates, or at the rate of 3·78 per cent. In contrast with this report respecting the above-named French provincial asylums, I would now place an official statement of the practice pursued at Bethlehem Hospital during the same period. At this establishment, where formerly the strait-waistcoat, with various kinds of personal coercion, were even in greater use than on the other side of the Channel,not oneinsane patient, among an average population of 391 lunatics, was under constraint of any description during the five weeks ending the 25th of September, when I first visited that institution after my return from the Continent, and which embraced the whole time referred to in this memorandum.”
From these curious facts it will be seen that we are far in advance of our French, and, we may also add, of our other continental neighbours.[19]When the beneficent thought struck the great Pinel to knock off the fetters of the English captain,he sounded a note which reverberated through Europe, and the poor insane captives issued from their dungeons in which they had been so long immured as the prisoners emerge from their prison to the divine strains of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” But when this vast step was accomplished there still remained an immense amount of coercion scarcely less injurious than the old darkness and chains, and to Englishmen is mainly due the credit of abolishing it. Nor shall we rest where we are. It is our belief as well as our hope that, before another generation has gone by, the last vestige of restraint, in the shape of dismal airing-courts, and outside walls, which serve to wound the spirit rather than to enslave the limbs, will pass for ever among us, and only be remembered with the hobbles and the manacles of the past.
It has been asserted by some psychologists that lunacy is on the increase, and that its rapid development of late years has been consequent upon the increased activity of the national mind. This statement is certainly startling and calculated to arrest the attention of all thoughtful men. Is it true that civilisation has called to life a monster such as that which appalled Frankenstein? Is it a necessity of progress that it shall ever be accompanied by that fearful black rider which, like Despair, sits behind it? Does mental development mean increased mental decay? If these questions were truly answered in the affirmative, we might indeed sigh for the golden time when
“Wild in woods the noble savage ran,”
for it would be clear that the nearer humanity strove to attain towards divine perfection, the more it was retrograding towards a state inferior to that of the brute creation. A patient examination, however, of the question entirely negatives such a conclusion. Dr. Ray, of the United States, in taking the opposite view of the case, says:—
“If we duly consider the characteristics of our times, we shall there find abundant reason for the fact that insanity has been increasing at a rate unparalleled in any former period. In every successive step that has led to a higher degree of civilisation; in all the means and appliances fordeveloping the mental resources of the race; in the ever-widening circle of objects calculated to influence desire, and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together, and leads to an harmonious result. The press and the rostrum, the railway and the spinning-jenny, the steam engine and the telegraph, republican institutions and social organizations, are agencies more potent in preparing the mind for insanity than any or all of those vices and casualties which exert a more immediate and striking effect.”
“If we duly consider the characteristics of our times, we shall there find abundant reason for the fact that insanity has been increasing at a rate unparalleled in any former period. In every successive step that has led to a higher degree of civilisation; in all the means and appliances fordeveloping the mental resources of the race; in the ever-widening circle of objects calculated to influence desire, and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together, and leads to an harmonious result. The press and the rostrum, the railway and the spinning-jenny, the steam engine and the telegraph, republican institutions and social organizations, are agencies more potent in preparing the mind for insanity than any or all of those vices and casualties which exert a more immediate and striking effect.”
Such is the burthen of the story of all those psychologists who believe that insanity is fast gaining upon us; but if “in the ever-widening circle of objects calculated to influence desire and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together,” it should appear that those classes of society which are in the van of civilization should be the chief sufferers. Bankers, great speculators, merchants, engineers, statesmen, philosophers and men of letters—those who work with the brain rather than with their hands,—should afford the largest proportion to the alleged increase of insanity. How does the matter really stand? In the Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for the year 1847 we find the total number of private patients of the middle and upper classes then under confinement in private asylums, amounted to 4,649. Now, if we skip eight years, and refer to the Report of 1855, we find that there were only 4,557 patients under confinement, or about 96 less, notwithstanding the increase of population during that period. If we compare the number of pauper lunatics under confinement at these two different periods, we shall find a widely-different state of things; for in 1847 there were 9,654 in our public and private asylums, whilst in 1855 they numbered 15,822. In other words, our pauper lunatics wouldappearto have increased 6,170 in eight years, or upwards of 64 per cent. It is this extraordinary increase of pauper lunatics in the county asylums which has frightened some psychologists from their propriety, and led them to believe that insanity is running a winning race with the healthy intellect. But these figures, if they mean anything, prove that it is not the intellect of the country thatbreeds insanity, but its ignorance, as it cannot be for one moment contended that the grent movements now taking place in the world originate with the labouring classes. We shall be told, we know, that there is a constant descent of patients from private asylums to the public asylums; that the professional man and the tradesman, after expending the means of his friends and family for a year or two, in the vain hope of a speedy cure, becomes necessarily in the end a pauper lunatic, and that this stream aids to swell the numbers in the county institution. Allowing its due weight to this explanation—and those who know public asylums are well aware how small, comparatively speaking, is the educated element—yet as the same disturbing element in the calculation obtained at both periods, we may safely conclude that the figures are not thereby essentially altered.
A still more convincing proof that mental ruin springs rather from mental torpidity than from mental stimulation, is to be found by comparing the proportion of lunatics to the population in the rural and the manufacturing districts. Sir Andrew Halliday, who worked out this interesting problem in 1828,[20]selected as his twelve non-agricultural counties—Cornwall, Cheshire, Derby, Durham, Gloucester, Lancaster, Northumberland, Stafford, Somerset, York (West Riding), and Warwick, which contained a population at that time of 4,493,194, and a total number of 3,910 insane persons, or one to every 1,200. His twelve agricultural counties were Bedford, Berkshire, Bucks, Cambridge, Hereford, Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, Oxford, Rutland, Suffolk, and Wilts, the total population of which were 2,012,979, and the total number of insane persons 2,526—a proportion of 1 lunatic to every 820 sane. Another significant fact elicited was, that whilst in the manufacturing counties the idiots were considerably less than the lunatics, in the rural counties the idiots were to the lunatics as 7 to 5! Thus the Hodges of Englandwho know nothing of the march of intellect, who are entirely guiltless of speculations of any kind, contribute far more inmates to the public lunatic asylums than the toil-worn artisans of Manchester or Liverpool, who live in the great eye of the world, and keep step with the march of civilization, even if they do but bring up its rear. Isolation is a greater cause of mental ruin than aggregation—our English fields can affordcrétinsas plentifully as the upland valleys of the mountain range, seldom visited by the foot of the traveller; whilst, on the other hand, in the workshop and the public assembly, “As iron weareth iron, so man sharpeneth the face of his friend.”
If we required further proof of the groundless nature of the alarm that mental activity was destroying the national mind, we should find it in the well-ascertained fact that the proportion of lunatics is greater among females than males. It may also be urged that Quakers, who pride themselves on the sedateness of their conduct, furnish much more than their share; but for this singular result their system of intermarriage is doubtless much to blame. Still the fact remains, that within a period of eight years, extending from 1847 to 1855, an increase of 64 per cent. took place in our pauper lunatic asylums. These figures, however, afford no more proof of the increase of pauper lunatics than the increase of criminal convictions since the introduction of a milder code of laws and the appointment of the new police afford a proof of increased crime. As the commissioners very justly observe, medical practitioners of late years have taken a far more comprehensive as well as scientific view of insanity than formerly; and many forms of the disease now fall under their care that were previously overlooked, when no man was considered mad unless he raved, or was an idiot. But the great cause of the increase of lunatics in our asylums is to be ascribed to the erection of the asylums themselves. With the exception of three or four Welsh counties, and two or three in the north of England, there is not a shire in England which does not possess some palatial building. These establishments, in which restraint, speaking in the ordinary acceptance of the term, is unknown, and in which the inmates are always treated withhumanity, have drained the land of a lunatic population which before was scattered among villages or workhouses, amounting, according to the computation of the commissioners, to upwards of 10,500—just as the deep wells of the metropolitan brewers have drained for miles around the shallow wells of the neighbourhood in which they are situated. For the same reason the number of lunatic paupers has declined in registered hospitals since 1847 from 384 to 185, and in “licensed houses” from 3,996 to 2,313. Upon the whole, we may safely predict that, when these disturbing causes have ceased to act, the annual returns of the commissioners will show that, as the treatment of insanity is every day better understood, so the pauper lunatics in our public asylums, instead of increasing in a ratio for beyond that of the general population, show a diminished proportion. Already there are symptoms that the flood is returning to its proper level; for while the lunatics of all classes in the public asylums, licensed houses, and in the Royal Hospital at Haslar, were 20,493 in 1855, they had only advanced in 1856 to 20,764, which is an increase in the twelvemonth of but 271.
If, early on a summer morning before the smoke of countless fires had narrowed the horizon of the metropolis, a spectator were to ascend to the top of St. Paul’s, and take his stand upon the balcony, that with gilded rail flashes like a fringe of fire upon the summit of the dome, he would see sleeping beneath his feet the greatest camp of men upon which the sun has ever risen. As far as he could distinguish by the morning light he would behold stretched before him the mighty map of the metropolis; and could he ascend still higher, he would note the stream of life overflowing the brim of hills which enclose the basin in which it stands.
In the space swept by his vision would lie the congregated habitations of two millions and a half of his species—but how vain are figures to convey an idea of so immense a multitude. If Norway, stretching from the Frozen Ocean down to the southern extremity of the North Sea, were to summon all its people to one vast conclave, they would number little more than half the souls within the London bills of mortality. Switzerland, in her thousand valleys, could not muster such an army; and even busy Holland, within her mast-thronged harbours, humming cities, and populous plains, could barely overmatch the close-packed millions within sound of the great bell at his feet. As the spectator gazed upon this extraordinary prospect, the first stir of the awakening city would gradually steal upon his ear. The rumbling of wheels, the clang of hammers, the clear call of the human voice, all deepening by degrees into a confused hum, would proclaim that themighty city was once more rousing to the labour of the day, and the blue columns of smoke climbing up to heaven that the morning meal was at hand. At such a moment the thought would naturally arise in his mind,—In what manner is such an assemblage victualled? By what complicated wheels does all the machinery move by which two millions and a half of human beings sit down day by day to their meals as regularly and quietly as though they only formed a sung little party at Lovegrove’s on a summer’s afternoon? As thus he mused respecting the means by which the supply and demand of so vast a multitude is brought to agree, so that every one is enabled to procure exactly what he wants, at the exact time without loss to himself or injury to the community, thin lines of steam, sharply marked for the moment, as they advanced one after another from the horizon and converged towards him would indicate the arrival of the great commissariat trains, stored with produce from all parts of these isles and from the adjacent continent. Could his eye distinguish in addition the fine threads of that far-spreading web which makes London the most sensitive spot on the earth, he would be enabled to take in at a glance the two agents—steam and electricity—which keep the balance true between the wants and the supply of London.
If our spectator will now descend from his giddy height, and will accompany us among the busy haunts of men, we will attempt to point out to him whence those innumerable commodities, which he has seen pouring into the town, have been obtained, the chief marts to which they are consigned, and the manner in which they are distributed from house to house. Had London like Paris itsoctroi, the difficulty of our task would be limited to the mere display of official figures, but, thanks to a free policy, we have no such means of getting at strictly accurate estimates, and must therefore content ourselves with the results of patient inquiry among the foremost carriers—the railway companies—aided by such other information as we have been able to procure. For the sake of convenience, and of sequence, let us imagine that the principal daily meal isproceeding, and, according to the order of the courses, we will endeavour to trace the various edibles to their source—the fish to its sea—the beast to its pasture—the wild animal to its lair—the game to its cover—and the fruit to its orchard; to point out how they are netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed to their ultimate destination—thegreat red laneof London humanity. Let us begin with fish, and that unrivalled fish-market which all the world is aware rears its head by London Bridge.
Those who remember old Billingsgate, with its tumble-down wharf, and dock half choked with corruption and oyster-shells—a dirty remnant of the days of Elizabeth—will enter with pleasure Mr. Bunning’s new market. Through its Italian colonnade are seen the masts of the fishing smacks, and the brown wharves of the opposite side—a pleasing picture, which instantly fixes the artistic eye. The busy scene within the market between the hours of five and seven in the morning, is one of the marvels of the metropolis. Billingsgate is the only wholesale fish-market in London, and it may therefore be imagined how great must be the business transacted within its walls. Of old, nine-tenths of the supply came by way of the river, the little that came by land being conveyed from the coast, at great expense, in four-horse vans. Now the railways are day by day supplanting smacks, and in many cases steamers; for by means of its iron arms, London, whilst its millions slumber, grasps the produce of every sea that beats against our island coast, and ere they have uprisen it is drawn to a focus in this central mart. Thus every night in the season the hardy fishermen of Yarmouth catch a hundred tons (12,081 yearly), principally herring, which, by means of the Eastern Counties Railway, are next morning at Billingsgate. The South-Western Railway sends up annually, with the same speed, 4,000 tons of mackerel and other fish, the gatherings of the south coast. The North Western collects over night the “catch” from Ireland, Scotland, and the north-east coast of England, and adds to the Thames-street mart 3,578 tons, principally of salmon, whilst the Great Northern delivers to the early morning market, or sometimes later inthe day, 3,248 tons of like sea produce. The Great Western brings up the harvest of the Cornish and Devonshire coasts, chiefly mackerel and pilchards, to the amount of 1,560 tons in the year; and the Brighton and South Coast conveys the incredible number of 15,000 bushels of oysters, besides 4,000 tons of other fish. Nearly one-half in fact of the fish-supply of London, instead of following as of old the tedious route of the coast, is hurried in the dead of night across the length and breadth of the land to Billingsgate, and, before the large consumers in Tyburnia and Belgravia have left their beds, may be seen either lying on the marble slabs of the fishmongers, or penetrating on the peripatetic barrow of the costermonger into the dismal lanes and alleys inhabited by “London Labour and the London Poor.” These prodigious gleanings from what Goldsmith might well call the “finny deep,” are conveyed from the termini in spring-vans, drawn by two and occasionally by four horses. Salmon comes in boxes, herrings in barrels, and all other kinds of fish in baskets. Sometimes as many as sixty of these vans will arrive in the narrow street leading to the market in the course of two or three hours, and the scene of confusion occasioned by their rushing among the fishmongers’ carts and the costermongers’ barrows, the latter often amounting to more than a thousand, is almost as great as that at Smithfield; for the fish, like the live-stock trade, has long outgrown its mart: and Billingsgate, as much as Smithfield, is choked for want of space. Let the visitor beware how he enters it in a good coat, for, as sure as he goes in in broad cloth, he will come out inscalearmour. They are not polite at Billingsgate, as all the world knows, and “by your leave” is only a preliminary to your hat being knocked off your head by a bushel of oysters or a basket of crabs. In the early part of the morning, the traffic is carried on in comparative quiet, for the regular fishmongers, who have the first of the market, conduct their business with little disturbance, but it would gladden the heart of a Dutch painter to see the piled produce of a dozen different seas glittering with silver and brilliant with colour. Gigantic salmon, fresh caught from the firths and bays of Scotland, or from the productiveIrish seas, flounder about, as the boxes in which they have travelled disgorge them upon the board. Quantities of delicate red mullet, that have been hurried up by the Great Western, all the way from Cornwall, for the purpose of being furnished fresh to the fastidious palates at the West End; smelts brought by the Dutch boats, their delicate skins varying in hue like an opal as you pass; pyramids of lobsters, a moving mass of spiteful claws and restless feelers, savage at their late abduction from some Norwegian fiord; great heaps of pinky shrimps; turbots, that lately fattened upon the Doggerbank, with their white bellies bent as for some tremendous leap; and humbler plaice and dabs, from our own craft—all this bountiful accumulation forms a mingled scene of strange forms and vivid colours, that no one with an eye for the picturesque can contemplate without interest. Neither is the scene always one of still life, for it is no rare occurrence for the visitor to behold a yelling knot of men dragging with ropes through the excited crowd a royal sturgeon, nine feet in length. If the spectator now peeps down the large square opening into the dismal space below, which appears like the hold of a ship lately recovered from the deep, he will see the shell-fish market, where piles of blue-black muscles, whelks, and grey cockles turned up with yellow, give the place a repulsive aspect of dirt and slop. There are but few buyers seen here, and they are generally women belonging to the costermonger class, for the men rather disdain the shell-fish trade. These female itinerants may be noticed wandering about from basket to basket, occasionally gouging out a whelk from the shell with the thumb, to test the lot, and then passing on to the next.
Busiest among the busy is seen the “Bommeree,” or middleman—sometimes called the forestaller. The province of this individual is to purchase the fish as it comes into the market, and divide it into lots to suit large and small buyers, separating the qualities according as they are designed for St. James’s or St. Giles’s. These worthies used at one time to forestal the market extensively, when they felt certain, from the stateof the tide, that no fish supplies could be poured in for the day, but now the railway defeats their tactics, and the utter uncertainty of the arrivals has done away with this branch of their business. After the “trade” has been supplied, and the serge-aproned “regulars” have loaded their light spring carts, there comes, especially in certain fish seasons, an eruption of purchasers of a totally different character—the costermongers of streets. This nomade tribe, which wanders in thousands from market to market, performs a most important part in the distribution of food. They are for the greater part the tradesmen of the poor, and by their energy and enterprise secure to our working-classes many of the fruits of both sea and land, which they would never taste but for them. About seven o’clock the army of street-vendors, foot and “donkey,” for the greater number rattle up in barrows drawn by that useful animal, begin visibly to change the whole hue and appearance of the place. Young fellows in fustian coats and Belcher handkerchiefs throng the market, and board the smacks, “chaffing,” higgling, joking, and swearing—but never fighting, for the costermonger has too much to do at present to make physical demonstrations. Among the most eager of the itinerant salesmen the visitor speedily distinguishes the Judaic nose. The Hebrews, who are in great force about this neighbourhood on account of the dried-fruit trade, which is mainly in their hands, deal largely also in fish. The poorer members of the fraternity purchase the bigger portion of the fresh-water supply, such as plaice, roach, dace, &c., in fact, nearly everything caught by the Wandsworth fisherman, whose picturesque “bawley” boats, which often contain both his family and fortune, may generally be seen moored in the stream between Battersea reach and Kew bridge, a mass of brown nets and umber canopies lit up by the brilliant red caps of their owners, just such as Constable loved to paint in the foregrounds of his landscapes. These fish, if not alive, must at least retain the spasmodic quivering of the flesh which remains immediately after death, or the Jews will not buy, for reasons we suppose connected with their religion, since their chief trade is amongthe rich and poor of their own people. The Wandsworth fishermen also supply all the white-bait that is consumed at Greenwich and Blackwall: it is caught generally between the latter place and Woolwich at night, and it is singular that a fish which is among the most delicate we have, should flourish in one of the foulest parts of the foulest river in Europe. The area of the market, as soon as the costermongers appear, speedily becomes broken up into numbers of little circles, strictly intent upon the eye of individuals who take up a position high over their heads upon the boards or stands. These are the salesmen, disposing by auction of the fish consigned to them. Some of the dealers are moneyed men, and will lay out their fifty pounds of a morning, re-selling to their fellows again at a profit. The smaller capitalists combine in threes and fours, and thus manage to get their commodities at wholesale prices. The activity of the market mainly depends upon the season of the year and the amount of fish. The energy of these peripatetics is surprising: they look in at Billingsgate, and if the supply runs short they are off again immediately to Covent Garden, for they deal in everything, and the barrow that one morning you see filled with fresh herrings, the next is blooming with plums. If, on the contrary, a large cargo of sprats comes suddenly into London, or if soles should be unusually plentiful, it is known in an incredibly short space of time all over the town, and they flock to the market in thousands; as many as five thousand is the usual attendance on such occasions. These costermongers absorb more than a third of the whole Billingsgate supply; of sprats and fresh herrings they take fully two-thirds. Turbot and all the costlier fish they purchase sparingly, but they buy largely when it chances to be cheap, as in the cholera year of 1849, when prime salmon went a-begging at four-pence a pound! If the market is dull, and prices are high, the fact is speedily known, and the cry of “No smacks at the Gate,” is sufficient to turn the current immediately in the direction of the “Garden.”
Steam, as we have already intimated, has revolutionized thefish-trade, and is rapidly sweeping away the whole fleet of smacks propelled by sails, as ruthlessly as the rail did stagecoaches. A few years ago all the oysters were brought by water to Billingsgate; but a short time since a great natural bed, called the Mid Channel Bed, which stretches for forty miles between the ports of Shoreham and Havre, was discovered, and, the dredging-ground being free to all comers, a vast field of wealth has been opened to fishermen, especially as from the proximity of the Brighton and South Coast Railway the produce can be sent immediately to town, and escape the dues of metage and other tolls to which all fish landed at the market is liable. Seaborne oysters are thus placed at a great disadvantage, and the different companies owning them justly complain at a city exaction which takes a large sum annually out of their pockets, besides the charge for porterage it entails upon the purchasers. Mr. Alston, who is, without doubt, the largest oyster-fisher in the world, sent up in one year between 40,000 and 50,000 bushels from his fishery, Cheyney Rock, near Sheerness, and paid 800l.for metage. The whole trade paid no less than 3,000l., and this for services which their own men could do as well as themselves, were it not for a custom which enforces idleness upon the smack people.[21]
The “scuttle-mouths,” as they are termed from their huge shell, pay no attention to season, and consequently oyster-day has now in a great degree lost its significance. The 4th of August is still, it is true, the opening day at Billingsgate, but the supply from without has taken the wind out of its sails. Only those who have witnessed the crowds filling all the streetsleading to the market long before the hour of business—six o’clock in the morning—can understand the eagerness exhibited of old to obtain some of the first day’s oysters. All this is now gone. There were not more than eighteen smacks at the opening of the present year, and, few as were the arrivals, the buyers were not eager. The Mid-Channel oysters, which have thus disturbed the old trade, are of a large and by no means delicate kind, such as come from Tenby, Jersey, &c.—coarse fish, eaten by rough men—third-class oysters, in fact, which rarely penetrate to the West End, unless to make sauce. Real natives are greater aristocrats among their fellows than ever; the demand for them has for a long time far exceeded the supply, and the price has consequently risen. Of the birth, parentage and nurture of this delicate fish, a curious tale could be told. Designed for fastidious palates, much care and attention is bestowed upon its breeding. Thehabituéof the Opera, who strolls up the brilliantly lighted Haymarket towards midnight, and turns into any one of the fish supper-rooms that line its western side, little dreams of the organization at work to enable him to enjoy his native. Most of the oysters, with the exception of the Mid-Channel bed, are regularly cultivated by different companies, who rear and tend them at different parts of the south coast, and of the Thames at its mouth. Of these companies there are nine, in addition to individuals who possess and work what might be called sea-farms, several of which are miles in extent. In all the beds there is a certain space dedicated to natives. At Burnham, Essex, the “spat,” or fecundated sperm, is stored in large pits, and sold as native brood, which is afterwards “laid” in that portion of the different beds appropriated to privileged oysters. Here the young natives remain for three years, when they are generally brought to market. So far their education is left, in a certain degree, to nature; but once in the possession of the fish-shopkeepers, art steps in to perfect their condition. They are now stored in large shallow vats, being carefully laid with their proper sides uppermost, and supplied daily with oatmeal: a process which is calculated rather to fatten than to flavour, and there are manywho think that, like show cattle, they are none the better for over-feeding. “Natives,” packed in barrels, form one of the articles of food that is largely sent out of London into the country, as all persons know who travel much at Christmas time, and notice with astonishment the pyramids of oyster-barrels which crowd the platforms of all the termini of the metropolis.
The frying-pans of London are mainly supplied with soles all the year round by the trolling-boats of Barking, of which there are upwards of 150 belonging to different companies. They fish the North Sea off the coasts of Yorkshire and Holland, particularly the Silver and Brown banks. Of old the smacks used to carry their own catch to Billingsgate, but the loss of time was so great, that latterly fast-sailing cutters have been employed to attend upon the fishing-smacks and bring their produce to market packed in ice. Of this splendid craft, which can sail almost in the eye of the wind, there are forty; and the total number of seamen employed is not less than 2,000, the greater part of whom have been taken as boys from the workhouse, and trained by this capital service into first-rate seamen. It is curious to follow the small proceedings of the world into their ultimate results. The gastronome, smiling complacently as he withdraws the cover and reveals a well-browned pair of soles, would never guess that they and their kind are the immediate cause of a happy transmutation of parish burthens into the right arm of our strength. Eels are constantly imported to Billingsgate by the Dutch boats. The galliots never moor close alongside the wharf, as the wells in which they bring their fish alive cause them to draw too much water, but they anchor midway in the stream, by twos and threes—their brown sides, flat bows, with high cheek-bones, like their navigators, and bright verd-green rudders, adding to the picturesque appearance of the river. The great fat creatures brought by them mainly supply the eel-pie houses, and contribute largely, we are informed, to that oleaginous kind of soup which people too hungry to be curious mistake for veritable oxtail and calves’ head. The Dutch boats do not, however, confine themselves to eels. Theydeal in turbot, soles, and all kinds of flat-fish, such as frequent the Dogger Bank, much to the discredit of our native enterprise, neglecting, as we do, the splendid deep-sea fishing-ground off the south-west coast of Ireland, where cod and salmon are to be found in abundant quantities, whilst those who know the west coast well, declare there is turbot enough in Galway Bay “to supply the whole of Europe for the next hundred years.”
We believe, however, it is now in contemplation to go to work upon a large scale in those waters, having screw-steamers to collect the produce, and bring it to Milford Haven alive in wells, from which port it would come,viâthe South Wales and Great Western Railways, to Billingsgate, within twenty-four hours after it was caught. The value of screw steamers having capacious wells has been fully tested by Mr. Howard, of Manningtree, Essex, who fitted an engine and screw into one of his welled fishing-smacks. Scarcely a lobster, out of twenty thousand put alive into the boat, was lost, whilst large numbers of those brought in sailing smacks perish. Salmon, cod, and other fish, are brought alive with the same success in the welled steamers from the North Sea and the coast of Scotland. It is almost time that some new ground were found in place of the famous Dogger Bank, which has now been preyed upon by so many nations for centuries, and has supplied so many generations of Catholics and Protestants with fast and feast food. No better proof that its stores are failing could be given than the fact that, although the ground, counting the Long Bank and the north-west flat in its vicinity, covers 11,800 square miles, and that in fine weather it is fished by the London companies with from fifteen to twenty dozen of long lines, extending to ten or twelve miles, and containing from 9,000 to 12,000 hooks, it is yet not at all common to secure even as many as four score fish of a night—a poverty which can be better appreciated when we learn that 600 fish for 800 hooks is the catch for deep-sea fishing about Kinsale.
Towards the latter end of August the great herring season commences. Yarmouth is the chief seat of this branch of the piscatory trade. Every night when the weather is fine thefishermen of this old port “shoot” upwards of 300 square miles of net. Neptune in his ample arms never gave the ocean so magnificent an embrace. The produce of this wholesale sweeping of the sea is brought to town by the Eastern Counties Railway. They come up to Billingsgate packed in barrels and in bulk, and the number sold in the year seems almost fabulous, being upwards of abillion. Next to the herring fishery the sea-harvest of most importance to the poor of London is that of sprats, which come in about Lord Mayor’s Day, and it is a popular belief that the first dish is always sent to the chief magistrate of the city. If a telegraph were to be laid down to all the alleys and courts, the fact of a large arrival of these little creatures at Billingsgate would not be sooner made known to the lower orders than, by some mysterious process, it is at present. Mr. Goldham, the clerk of the market, accustomed as he is to the sudden invasions of the costermongers, informs us that the scene on board the smacks laden with sprats is really frightful. The people hang thick as sea-weed from the rigging, throng the decks, and swarm on every available inch of plank, until the wonder is that the whole of the puny fleet does not capsize with the weight. The cause of the scramble is that the street sellers will not buy until they have seen the sample, and every one consequently tries to gain the highest point, that he may look down into the hold, whilst a man tumbles about the sprats with a shovel, in silver showers. The plaice season succeeds to that of sprats, with the interval of mackerel, which continues until the end of May, when Scotland and Ireland begin to pass down their salmon into the market. But where do all the lobsters come from? The lovers of this most delicious of the crustaceæ tribe will probably be astonished to learn that they are mainly brought from Norway. France and the Channel Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, do, it is true, contribute a few to the metropolitan market, but full two-thirds are reluctantly, and with much pinching and twisting, dragged out of the thousand rock-bound inlets which indent the Norwegian coast. They are conveyed alive in a screw-steamer and by smacks, in baskets, sometimes to the extent of 20,000 of a night,to Great Grimsby, and are thence forwarded to town by the Great Northern Railway—another 10,000 arriving perhaps from points on our own and the French coast. The fighting, twisting, blue-black masses are taken as soon as purchased to what are termed the “boiling-houses,” of which there are four, situated in Duck and Love Lanes, close to the market; and here, for a trifling sum per score, they change their dark for scarlet uniforms. They are plunged into the boiling cauldron, basket and all, and in twenty minutes they are done. Crabs are cooked in the same establishments, but their nervous systems are so acute, that they dash off their claws in convulsive agony if placed alive in hot water. To prevent this mutilation, which would spoil their sale, they are first killed by the insertion of a needle through the head. The lobster trade is mostly in the hands of one salesman, Mr. Saunders, of Thames Street, who often has upwards of 15,000 consigned to him of a morning, and who causes no less than 15,000l.a year to flow into the fishy palms of Norwegians for this single article of commerce. As to the total supply of fish to the London market, we borrow the following estimate from Mr. Mayhew’s very clever book on “London Labour and the London Poor.” The figures seemed to us at first sight so enormous, that we hesitatingly submitted the table to one of the largest salesmen who assured us that it was no over-statement:—
And now for thepièce de résistance.
London has always been celebrated for the excellence of its meat, and her sons do justice to it; at least it has become the universal impression that they consume more, man for man, than any other town population in the world. It was a sirloin, fresh and ruddy, hanging at the door of some Giblett or Slater in a former century, that inspired, we suspect, the song which ever since has stirred Englishmen in a foreign land, “The Roast Beef of Old England.” The visitor accustomed to the markets of our large provincial towns would doubtless expect to find the emporium of the live-stock trade for so vast a population of an imposing size. The foreigner, after seeing the magnificence of our docks—the solidity and span of our bridges—might naturally look for a national exposition of our greatness in thechief market dedicated to that British beef which is the boast of John Bull. What they do see in reality, if they have courage to wend their way along any of the narrow tumble-down streets approaching to Smithfield, which the great fire unfortunately spared, is an irregular space bounded by dirty houses and the ragged party-walls of demolished habitations, which give it the appearance of the site of a recent conflagration—the whole space comprising just six acres, fifteen perches, roads and public thoroughfares included. Into this narrow area, surrounded with slaughter-houses, triperies, bone-boiling houses, gut-scraperies, &c., the mutton-chops, scrags, saddles, legs, sirloins, and rounds, which grace the smiling boards of our noble imperial capital throughout the year, have, for the major part, been goaded and contused for the benefit of the civic corporation installed at Guildhall.[22]The best time is early in the morning—say one or two o’clock of the “great day,” as the last market before Christmas-day is called. On this occasion, not only the space—calculated to hold 4,100 oxen and 30,000 sheep, besides calves and pigs—is crammed, but the approaches around it overflow with live stock for many hundred feet, and sometimes the cattle are seen blocking up the passage as far as St. Sepulchre’s church. If the stranger can make his way through the crowd, and by means of some vantage-ground or door-step can manage to raise himself a few feet above the general level, he sees before him in one direction, by the dim red light of hundreds of torches, a writhing party-coloured mass, surmounted by twisting horns, some in rows, tied to rails which run along the whole length of the open space, some gathered together in one struggling knot. In another quarter, the moving torches reveal to him now and then, through the misty light, a couple of acres of living wool, or roods of pigs’ skins. If he ventures into this closely wedged and labouring mass, he is enabled to watch more narrowly the reason of the universal ferment among the beasts.
The drover with his goad is forcing the cattle into thesmallest possible compass, and a little further on half a dozen men are making desperate efforts to drag refractory oxen up to the rails with ropes. In the scuffle which ensues the slipping of the ropes often snaps the fingers of the persons who are conducting the operation, and there is scarce a drover in the market who has not had some of his digits broken. The sheep, squeezed into hurdles like figs into a drum, lie down upon each other, “and make no sign;” the pigs, on the other hand, cry out before they are hurt. This scene, which has more the appearance of a hideous nightmare than a weekly exhibition in a civilised country, is accompanied by the barking of dogs, the bellowing of cattle, the cursing of men, and the dull blows of sticks—a charivari of sound that must be heard to be appreciated. The hubbub gradually abates from twelve o’clock at night, the time of opening, to its close at 3P.M.next day; although during the whole period, as fresh lots are “headed up,” individual acts of cruelty continue. Can it excite surprise that a state of things, the worst details of which we have suppressed, because of the pain which such horrors excite, sometimes so injures the stock that, to quote the words of one of the witnesses before the Smithfield Commission, “a grazier will not know his own beast four days after it has left him?” The meat itself suffers in quality; for anything like fright or passion is well known to affect the blood, and consequently the flesh. Beasts subjected to such disturbances will often turn green within twenty-four hours after death. Mr. Slater, the well-known butcher of Kensington and Jermyn-street, states that mutton is often so disfigured by blows and the goad, that it cannot be sold for the West-end tables. Many of the drovers we doubt not are ruffians, but we believe the greater part of this cruelty is to be ascribed to the market-place itself, which, considering the immense amount of business to be got through on Mondays and Fridays, is absurdly and disgracefully confined. According to the official account, the number of live stock exhibited in 1853 was—
But this is far from giving a true idea of the whole amount brought into London. Much stock arrives in the capital which never enters the great mart. For example, Mr. Slater, who kills per week, on the average, 200 sheep and from 20 to 25 oxen, says, in his evidence before the Smithfield Commission, that he buys a great deal of his stock from the graziers in Norfolk and Essex. Again, “town” pigs are slaughtered and sent direct to the meat market, while many sheep are bought from the parks, where they have been temporarily placed till they find a purchaser. A much more correct estimate of the flocks and herds which are annually consumed in London may be gathered from a report of the numbers transmitted by the different lines of railway, compiled from official sources by Mr. Ormandy, the cattle-traffic manager of the North-Western Railway. From this able pamphlet we extract the following table:—
These numbers show at a glance what a part the railway plays in supplying animal food to the metropolis, and how trifling in comparison is the amount that travels up on foot. The Eastern Counties lines, penetrating and monopolizing the rich breeding and fattening districts of Norfolk and Essex, bring up the largest share. Many of the little black cattle, that tourists see in Scotland climbing the hills like cats, come directly from these counties, having some months before beensent thither from their native north to clothe their bones with English substance. By the same line we receive a fair portion of that great foreign contribution to our larders, the mere shadow of which so frightened our graziers some years ago, principally Danish stock, which finds its way from Tonning to Lowestoff, a route newly opened up by the North of Europe Steam-ship Company. The North-Western is next in rank as a carrier of live stock. This line takes in the contributions from the Midland Counties, and, by way of Liverpool, abundance of Irish and Scotch cattle. The Great Northern is perhaps destined to surpass both in the quantities of food it will eventually pour into London, running as it does through the northern breeding districts, and receiving at its extremity the herds which come from Aberdeen and its neighbourhood.
The foreign supply last year of cattle, sheep, pigs, and calves, was more than a seventh of the entire number sent to London. The daily bills of entries at the Custom House furnishes us with a valuable indication of the fields from which we have already received, and may in future expect to receive still further additions of what Englishmen greatly covet—good beef and mutton at a moderate price. The arrivals by steam in the port of London in 1853 were as follows:—
Holland, Denmark, and the Hanseatic Towns, it will be seen, were the principal contributors. A more striking example of the influence of the legislation of one country in modifying theoccupations of the people of another could not be cited, than the manner in which Sir Robert Peel’s tariff revolutionized the character of Danish and Dutch farming. Before 1844 the pastures of the two countries, more especially the rich marshes of Holland, were almost exclusively devoted to dairy purposes: the abolition of the duty on live stock in that year quickly introduced a new state of things. The farmers began to breed stock, and consequently turnips and mangel-wurzel have been creeping over fields, where once the dairy-maid carried the milking-pail, as gradually as one landscape succeeds another in the Polytechnic dissolving views. We get now from both countries excellent beef, especially from Jutland, whose lowing herds used formerly to go to Hamburg—and who has not heard of the famous Hambro’ beef? We may expect in time to receive still finer meat from this quarter, for the Danes have been sedulously improving their breed, and agriculturists, who saw the beasts which were sent over to the last Baker-street show, admitted that they were in every respect equal to our own short-horns. It is gratifying to note how ready the world is to follow our lead in the matter of stock-breeding. Bulls are bought up at fabulous prices by foreigners, and especially by our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, for the purpose of raising the indigenous cattle to the British standard. An American, for instance, purchased, for 1,000l., a celebrated bull bred by Earl Ducie, though unfortunately the animal broke his neck on his passage out. Another noble specimen was secured, we have heard, for the same quarter, for 600l.
The supply of sheep and lambs has, during the last twenty years, stood nearly still; for in 1828 there were brought to market 1,412,032, and in 1849 but 1,417,000, or only an extra 4,000 for the 500,000 mouths which have been added to the metropolis between these two periods. That London has of late years abjured mutton, as our immediate ancestors appear to have done pork, the evidence of our senses denies. How, then, are we to explain this stagnation in the Smithfield returns? By the fact that a new channel has been found in the rapid rise of Newgate market, the great receptacle ofcountry-killed meat brought up to town by the railways. Those who remember the place forty years ago state that there were not then twenty salesmen, and now there are two hundred. This enormous development is due to steam, which bids fair to give Newgate, in the cold season at least, the lead over Smithfield. The new agent has more than quadrupled the area from which London draws its meat. Twenty years ago eighty miles was the farthest distance from which carcases ever came; now the Great Northern and North-Western railways, during the winter months, bring hundreds of tons from as far north as Aberdeen, whilst some are fetched from Hamburgh and Ostend. Country slaughtering will in time, we have little doubt, deliver the capital from the nuisances which grow out of this horrible trade. Aberdeen is in fact becoming little else than a Londonabattoir. The style in which the butchers of that place dress and pack the carcases leaves nothing to be desired, and in the course of the year mountains of beef, mutton, pork, and veal arrive the night after it is slaughtered in perfect condition. According to returns obligingly forwarded to us by the different railway companies, we find that the following was the weight of country-killed meat by the undermentioned lines:—
Thus no less than 36,487 tons of meat are annually “pitched” at Newgate and Leadenhall markets. As the Scotch boats convey about 700 tons more, we have at least 37,187 tons of country-killed meat brought into London by steam, and these immense contributions are totally independent of the amount slaughtered at Smithfield, which is estimated to average weekly 1,000 oxen, 3,000 sheep and lambs, and 400 calves and pigs. We havegiven the average supply; but on some occasions the quantity is enormously increased. The Eastern Counties line during one Christmas week deposited at Newgate about 1,000 tons of meat; and the weight sent by other companies on the same day would be proportionately large. No less than forty waggons were waiting on one occasion to discharge their beef and mutton into the market. And what does our reader imagine may be the area in which nine-tenths of this mass of meat are sold? Just 2 roods 45 perches, having one carriage entrance, which varies from 14 to 18 feet in width, and four foot entrances, the widest of which is only 16 feet 6 inches, and the narrowest 5 feet 8 inches. No wonder that, as we are informed by more than one of the witnesses before the Smithfield Inquiry Commission, there is often not sufficient space to expose the meat for sale, and it becomes putrid in consequence. Though we have acquired the fame of being a practical people, it must be confessed that we conduct many of our every-day transactions in a blundering manner, when we cannot provide commodious markets for perishable commodities, or even turn out an omnibus that can be mounted without an effort of agility and daring.