Mr. Giblett, the noted butcher, late of Bond Street, calculates that the amount of meat brought by the railways into Newgate is three times that supplied by the London carcase butchers, who annually send 52,000 oxen, 156,000 sheep, 10,400 calves, and 10,400 pigs. Taking this estimate, and applying it also to the Leadenhall market, we shall have at
This we are convinced is still below the truth, for we have notincluded the country-killed meat sold at Farringdon and Whitechapel markets.[24]The total value of this enormous supply of flesh cannot be much less than fourteen millions annually.
These figures demonstrate that the falling off of sheep sent to London is solely because they now come to town in the form of mutton. It is sent to a much greater extent than beef, in consequence of its arriving in finer condition, being more easily carried, and better worth the cost of conveyance on account of the larger proportion of prime joints. Indeed, the entire carcase of the oxen never comes, since the coarse boiling-pieces would have to pay the same carriage as the picked “roastings.” Newgate, be it remembered, is eminently a West End market, and fully two-thirds of its meat find its way to that quarter of the town. Accordingly, most of the beef “pitched” here consists of sirloins and ribs; and, in addition to whole carcases of sheep, there are numerous separate legs and saddles of mutton. This accounts for a fact that has puzzled many, namely, how London manages to get such myriads of chops. Go into any part of the metropolis, and look into the windows of the thousand eating-houses and coffee-shops in the great thoroughfares, and in every one of them there is the invariable blue dish with half a dozen juicy, well-trimmed chops, crowned with a sprig of parsley. To justify such a number, either fourfold the supply of sheep must come to London that we have any account of, or in lieu of the ordinary number of vertebræ they must possess as many as the great boa. When the prodigious store of saddles which the country spares the town have once been seen the wonder ceases. “Sometimes I cut 100 saddles into mutton-chops to supply the eating-houses,” says Mr. Banister, of Threadneedle Street.
The weather preserves a most delicate balance betweenNewgate and Smithfield. Winter is the busy time at the former market, when meat can be carried any distance without fear of taint. As soon as summer sets in, Smithfield takes its turn; for butchers then prefer to purchase live stock, in order that they may kill them the exact moment they are required. Sometimes as many as 1,200 beasts and from 12,000 to 15,000 sheep are slaughtered in hot weather on a Friday night, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, for Saturday’s market. Every precaution is taken on the railways to keep the meat sweet. The Eastern Counties Company provide “peds,” or cloths cut to the shape of the carcase or joint, for the use of their customers, and sometimes it is conveyed from the north in boxes. When, in spite of care, it turns out to be tainted, the salesman to whom it is consigned calls the officer of the market, by whom it is forthwith sent to Cow Cross, and there burnt in the nacker’s yard. According, however, to a competent witness—Mr. Harper—bad meat in any quantity can be disposed of in the metropolis to butchers living in low neighbourhoods, who impose it upon the poor at night. “There is one shop, I believe,” he says, “doing 500l.per week in diseased meat. This firm has a large foreign trade. The trade in diseased meat is very alarming, and anything in the shape of flesh can be sold at about 1d.per pound or 8d.per stone.”
If the reader is not already surfeited with the mountains of meat we have piled before his eyes, let us beg his attention for a few minutes to game and poultry, which we bring on in their proper course. Leadenhall and Newgate, as all the world knows, are the great metropolitan depôts for this class of food, especially the former, which receives perhaps two-thirds of the entire supply. The quantities of game and wild birds consigned to some of the large salesmen almost exceeds belief. After a few successful battues in the Highlands, it is not at all unusual for one firm to receive 5,000 head of game, and as many as 20,000 to 30,000 larks are often sent up to market together. All other kinds of the feathered tribe which are reputed good for food are received in proportionate abundance. If it were not for the great salesmen, many a merry dinner would bemarred, for the retail poulterers would be totally incapable of executing the constant and sudden orders for the banquets which are always proceeding. The good people at the Crystal Palace have already learned to consume, besides unnumbered other items, 600 chickens daily; and from this we may guess how vast the wants of the entire metropolis. The sources from which game and poultry are derived are fewer than might be imagined. The Highlands and Yorkshire send up nearly all the grouse; and scores of noblemen, members of Parliament, and other wealthy or enthusiastic sportsmen, who are at this present moment beating over the moors, and walking for their pleasure twenty-five miles a day, assist to furnish this delicacy to the London public at a moderate rate.
Pheasants and partridges mainly come from Norfolk and Suffolk; snipes from the marshy lowlands of Holland, which also provides our entire supply of teal, widgeon, and other kinds of wild fowl, with the exception of those caught in the “decoys” of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. From Ostend there are annually transmitted to London 600,000 tame rabbits, which are reared for the purpose on the neighbouring sand dunes. We are indebted to Ireland for flocks of plovers, and quails are brought from Egypt and the south of Europe. In most of our poulterers’ windows may be seen the long wooden boxes, with a narrow slit, in which these latter birds are kept until required for the spit. Not long since upwards of 17,000 came to LondonviâLiverpool, whither they had been brought from the Campagna, near Rome. Of the 2,000,000 of fowls that every year find a resting-placevis-à-visto boiled tongues on our London tables, by far the greatest quantity are drawn from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, where the Dorking breed is in favour. Ireland also sends much poultry. No less than 1,400 tons of chickens, geese, and ducks are brought to town annually by the Great Western Railway, most of which are from the neighbourhood of Cork and Waterford, whence they are shipped to Bristol. Londoners are accustomed to see shops of late years which profess to sell “West of England produce,” such as young pork, poultry, butter, and clouted cream. All these delicacies arebrought by the Great Western Railway, and are principally the contributions of Somersetshire and Devonshire. The bulk of the geese, ducks, and turkeys, however, come from Norfolk, Cambridge, Essex, and Suffolk—four fat counties, which do much to supply the London commissariat, the Eastern Counties Railway alone having brought thence last year 22,462 tons of fish, flesh, fowl, and good red herrings.
For pigeons we are indebted to “our fair enemy France,” as Sir Philip Sydney calls her, but now we trust our fast friend. They proceed principally from the interior, and are shipped for our market from Boulogne and Calais. How many eggs we get from across the Channel we scarcely like to say. Mr. M’Culloch considers that the capital receives from 70,000,000 to 75,000,000—a number which we think must be much below the mark, seeing that the Brighton and South Coast line brings annually 2,600 tons, the produce of Belgium and France. At Bastoign, in the latter country, there is a farm of 200 acres entirely devoted to the rearing of poultry and the production of eggs for the supply of London.
No perfectly accurate account can be given of the number per annum of poultry, game, and wild birds which enter Leadenhall and Newgate markets; but the following estimate was handed to us by a dealer who turns over 100,000l.a year in this trade. As the list takes no account of the quantity which goes direct to the retailer, nor of the thousands sent as presents, it must fall short of the actual consumption:—
In addition to its dead game and wild fowl, Leadenhall market is quite a Noah’s ark of live animals. Geese, ducks, swans, pigeons, and cocks, bewilder you with their noise. Intermingled with these birds of a feather are hawks, ferrets, dogs and cats, moving about in their wicker cages, and almost aggravated to madness by the proximity of their prey. The major portion of the live stock is designed either for sporting purposes or for “petting” and breeding, and do not belong to the commissariat department. Of the dead game and poultry, the seven railways bring to London about 7,871 tons weight in the course of the year.
In taking leave of the poultry-yard we are reminded of the dairy, and of the large establishments required to fill the milk-jugs of London. There are at the present moment, as near as we can learn, 20,000 cows in the metropolitan and suburban dairies, some of which number 500 cows apiece. Even these gigantic establishments have been occasionally exceeded, and one individual, several years ago, possessed 1,500 milkers—a fact fatal to the popular superstition, that notwithstanding many attempts, no dairyman could ever muster more than 999. The terrible ravages of pleuro-pneumonia, which many believe to be a contagious disease, have cured the passion for such extensive herds. The larger dairies of the metropolis are on the whole admirably managed, and the cows luxuriate in airy outhouses, but the smaller owners are often confined for space, and the animals are sometimes cooped in sheds, placed in tiers one above another. The country dairymaid laughs at the ignorance which the Londoner betrays of rural matters when on a visit to her master, but she would be perplexed in her turn if told that in the capital they fed the cows chiefly upon brewers’ grains, and milked them on thesecond story? A fewyears since Mr. Rugg appalled the town, which had forgotten Matthew Bramble, Esq., and the “New Bath Guide,” by detailing a nauseous process which he affirmed was in use among cunning milkmen for the adulteration of their milk. There was, however, a great deal of exaggeration in the account, and Dr. Hassell, whose analysis of various articles of food in theLancetare widely known, states that the “iron-tailed cow” is the main agent employed in the fraud, and that the only colouring matter he has been enabled to discover is annatto. Nearly all the cream goes to the West-End; and one dairyman living at Islington informed us that he made 1,200l.a year by the trade he carried on in that single article with the fashionable part of the town. It must be evident, upon the least consideration, that the London and suburban dairies alone could not supply the metropolis. If each of the 20,000 cows give on the average twelve quarts a day, the sum total would only be 240,000 quarts. If we suppose this quantity to be increased by the exhaustless “iron-tailed cow,” of which Dr. Hassell speaks, to 300,000 quarts, the allowance to each individual of the two millions and a quarter of population would be little more than a quarter of a pint. This is clearly below the exigencies of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, and we do not think we shall make an overestimate if we assume that half as much again is daily consumed. Here again the railway, which in some cases brings milk from as far as eighty miles, makes up the deficiency. The Eastern Counties line conveyed in 1853 to London, 3,174,179 quarts, the North-Western 144,000 quarts, the Great Western 23,400 quarts, the Brighton and South Coast 100 tons, and the Great Northern as much perhaps as the North-Western. The milk is collected from the farmers by agents in the country, who sell it to the milkmen, of whom there are 1,347, to distribute it over the town. In course of time it is possible that town dairies may entirely disappear. Cowsheds, often narrow and low, in thickly-populated localities, cannot be as healthy for the animals as a purer atmosphere; and though experiment has shown that they thrive admirablywhen stalled, the food they get in these urban prisons can hardly be as wholesome as that provided by the verdant pastures of the farm. The milk which comes by railway has, however, this disadvantage, that it will not keep nearly so long as the indigenous produce of the metropolitan dairies. The different companies have constructed waggons lightly hung on springs, but the churning effect of sudden joltings cannot be altogether got rid of.
Of the vegetables and fruit that are brought into the various markets of the capital, but especially to Covent Garden, a very large quantity is grown in the immediate neighbourhood. From whatever quarter the railway traveller approaches London, he perceives that the cultivation of the land gradually heightens, until he arrives at those suburban residences which form the advanced guards of the metropolis. The fields give place to hedgeless gardens, in which, to use a phrase of Washington Irving, “the furrows seem finished rather with the pencil than the plough.” Acre after acre flashes with hand-glasses, streaks of verdure are ruled in close parallel lines across the soil with mathematical precision, interspersed here and there with patches as sharp cut at the edges as though they were pieces of green baize—these are the far-famed market-gardens. They are principally situated in the long level tracts of land that must once have been overflowed by the Thames—such as the flat alluvial soil known as the Jerusalem Level, extending between London Bridge and Greenwich—and the grounds about Fulham, Battersea, Chelsea, Putney, and Brentford. Mr. Cuthill, who is perhaps the best authority on this subject, estimates that there are 12,000 acres under cultivation for the supply of vegetables and 5,000 for fruit-trees. This seems an insufficient area for the supply of so many mouths, but manure and active spade husbandry compensate for lack of space. By these agencies four and sometimes five crops are extracted from the land in the course of the year. The old-fashioned farmer, accustomed to the restrictions of old-fashioned leases, would stare at such a statement, and ask how long it would last. But his surprise would bestill greater at being told that after every clearance the ground is deeply trenched, and its powers restored with a load of manure to every thirty square feet of ground. This is the secret of the splendid return, and it could be effected nowhere but in the neighbourhood of such cities as London, where the produce of the fertilizer is sufficiently great to keep down its price. And here we have a striking example of town and country reciprocation. The same waggon that in the morning brings a load of cabbages, is seen returning a few hours later filled with dung. An exact balance as far as it goes is thus kept up, and the manure, instead of remaining to fester among human beings, is carted away to make vegetables. What a pity we cannot extend the system, and turn the whole sewerage by drain-pipes entirely into the rural districts, to feed the land, instead of allowing it, as we do, to run into the Thames and pollute the water to be used in our dwellings.
The care and attention bestowed by the market-gardeners is incredible to those who have not witnessed it; every inch of ground is taken advantage of—cultivation runs between the fruit-trees; storming-parties of cabbages and cauliflowers swarm up to the very trunks of apple-trees; raspberry-bushes are surrounded and cut off by young seedlings. If you see an acre of celery growing in ridges, be sure that, on a narrow inspection, you will find long files of young peas picking their way along the furrows. Everything flourishes here except weeds, and you may go over a 150-acre piece of ground without discovering a single one. Quality, even more than quantity, is attended to by the best growers; and they nurse their plants as they would children. The visitor will sometimes see “the heads” of an acre of cauliflowers one by one folded up in their own leaves as carefully as an anxious wife wraps up an asthmatic husband on a November night; and if rain should fall, attendants run to cover them up, as quickly as they cover up the zoological specimens at the Crystal Palace when the watering-pots are set to work.
Insects and blight are also banished as strictly as from the court of Oberon. To such a pitch is vigilance carried, that,according to a writer inHousehold Words, blight and fungi are searched after with a microscope, woodlice exterminated by bantems dressed in socks to prevent too much scratching, and other destructive insects despatched by the aid of batches of toads, purchased at the rate of six shillings a dozen!
The continual extension of London is, however, rapidly encroaching upon all the old market-gardens, and they are obliged to move farther a-field: thus high cultivation, like a green fairy-ring, is gradually widening and enlarging its circle round the metropolis. The coarser kinds of vegetables are but sparingly grown in these valuable grounds, but come up in large quantities from all parts of the country; and some of the choice kinds are now reared far away in Devonshire and Cornwall, where they are favoured by the climate. It would be interesting to get an authentic statement of the acreage dedicated to fruit and vegetables for the London market, but we find the information unattainable. Mr. Cuthill calculates that there are 200 acres employed around the metropolis in the growth of strawberries, and 5 acres planted as mushroom-beds. Cucumbers were once very largely cultivated. He has seen as many as 14 acres under hand-glasses in a single domain, and has known 200,000 gherkins cut in a morning for the pickle-merchants. Strangely enough, they have refused to grow well around London ever since the outbreak of the potato disease. The disastrous epidemic of 1849, we have little doubt, had much to do with the diminished supply, for the cholera soon brought about the result desired by Mrs. Gamp, “when cowcumbers is three for twopence,” prices quite explanatory of the indisposition of the land to produce them. The very high state of cultivation in the metropolitan market-gardens necessitates the employment of a large amount of labour; and it is supposed that no less than 35,000 persons are engaged in the service of filling the vegetable and dessert-dishes of the metropolis. This estimate leaves out those in the provinces and on the Continent, which would, we doubt not, nearly double the calculation, and show a troop of men and women as large as the entire British army. There are five marts in Londondevoted to the sale of fruit—Covent Garden, Spitalfields, the Borough, Farringdon, and Portman-markets,—besides a vast number of street offsets, such as Clare-market, in which hawkers generally stand with their barrows. Covent Garden is not only their type, but it does nearly as much business as all of them put together, and for that reason we shall dwell upon it to the exclusion of the others.
At the first dawn of morning in the midst of squalid London, sweet country odours greet the early-riser, and cool orchards and green strawberry slopes seem ever present to the mind.
If those who seek pleasure in gaiety have never visited the market in its prime, let them journey thither some summer morning, and note how fresh will seem the air, and how full of life the people, after the languid waltz in Grosvenor Square. The central alley of the “Garden,” as it is called by the costermongers, is one of the prettiest lounges in town; and, whether by chance or design, it exhibits, in its arrangement from east to west, a complete march of the seasons. At the western entrance the visitor is greeted with the breath of flowers; and there they show in smiling banks piled upon the stalls, or sorted with frilled edges into ladies’ bouquets. As he proceeds, he comes upon the more delicate spring vegetables—pink shafts of the oriental-looking rhubarb, delicate cos lettuce, &c.; still further along the arcade, the plate-glass windows on either side display delicate fruits, done up in dainty boxes, and set off with tinted paper shreds. Behind these windows also might be seen those rarities which it is the pride of London market-gardeners to provide, and in producing which they all struggle to steal the longest march upon time—a sieve-full of early potatoes, each as small and costly as the egg of a Cochin-China fowl—a basin-full of peas, at a guinea a pint—a cucumber marked 5s., and strawberries 18s.the ounce.
The market-gardeners of Penzance are beginning to send up many of these early vegetables, the mildness of the south-western extremity of Cornwall giving them a wonderful advantage over every other part of the kingdom. Gentlemen’s gardeners also contribute somewhat, by sending to the salesmen such of theproduce of their glazed houses as is not consumed in the family, and receive articles in return of which they happen to have an insufficient quantity themselves. These forced vegetables give way, it is true, as the season advances; but when in, they are always most to be found at that end of the walk nearest the rising sun. As the year proceeds, the lustier and more natural fruits are displayed—peaches that have ripened with blushing cheek to the wind, gigantic strawberries, raspberries, nectarines, or blooming plums. Feathery pines add their mellow hue; and when these fail, the colour deepens into amber piles of oranges, umber filberts, and the rich brown of Spanish chestnuts, the produce of the waning year.
To leave, however, our fancied procession of the seasons, and to return to the actual business of the market. As early as two o’clock in the morning, a person looking down the dip of Piccadilly will perceive the first influx of the daily supply of vegetables and fruit to Covent Garden market: waggons of cabbages, built up and regularly faced, with the art rather of the mason than the market-gardener; light spring-vans fragrant with strawberries; and milk-white loads of turnips which slowly roll along the great-western road, and bring the produce of the fertile alluvial shores of the Thames to the great west-end mart. The pedestrian proceeding along the southern and eastern roads sees the like stream of vegetable food quietly converging to the same spot. From this hour, especially upon a Saturday morning, until nine o’clock, the scene at the market itself is of the most exciting description.
Without some organization it would be impossible to receive and display to the advantage of the buyer and seller the varied products that in the grey of the morning pours into so limited a space. Accordingly, different portions of it are dedicated to distinct classes of vegetables and fruits. The finest of the delicate soft fruit, such as strawberries, peaches, &c., are lodged, as we have mentioned, in the central alley of the market—the inmost leaf of the rose. On the large covered space to the north of this central alley is the wholesale fruit-station, fragrant with apples, pears, greengages, or whatever is in season. Thesouthern open space is dedicated to cabbages and other vegetables; and the extreme south front is wholly occupied by potato-salesmen. Around the whole quadrangle, during a busy morning, there is a party-coloured fringe of waggons backed in towards the central space, in which the light green of cabbages forms the prevailing colour, interrupted here and there with the white of turnips, or the deep orange of digit-like carrots; and as the spectator watches, the whole mass is gradually absorbed into the centre of the market. Meanwhile the space dedicated to wholesale fruit sales is all alive. Columns of empty baskets twelve feet high seem progressing through the crowd “of their own motion.” The vans have arrived from the railways, and rural England, side by side with the Continent, pours in its supplies from many a sheltered mossy nook. It is very easy to discover by a glance which are the home-grown, which the foreign contributions. There stand the English baskets and sieves, solid and stout as Harry the Eighth, amidst little hampers, as delicate as French ladies, and seemingly as incapable of withstanding hard usage. Yet some of these have come from Algiers, others from the south of France with greengages, and the majority from Normandy. France is beginning to send large quantities of peaches and nectarines, carefully packed with paper-shavings in small boxes; and even strawberries this summer have found their way here from the same quarter. The frosts which sometimes occur in the early part of the year, destroy nearly all the fruit-crops in the neighbourhood of London; and were it not for the bountiful stores which are brought from abroad, Covent Garden would be little better than a desert.
The repeal of the high duty upon foreign fruit has so far widened the field of supply that it can no longer be destroyed by an unusual fall of the mercury. By means of the telegraph, the steamboat, and the railroad, we annul the effects of frost, obliterate the sea, and command, at a few hours’ notice, the produce of the Continent. When there is a dearth in this country the fact is immediately noticed by the great fruit-dealers in the City: the telegraph forthwith conveys theinformation to Holland, France, and Belgium; and within forty hours steamers from one or other of these countries will be seen making towards the Downs and adjoining coasts, and in another six their cargoes, fresh plucked from the neighbourhoods of old Norman abbeys and quaint Flemish stadthouses, are blooming in Covent Garden. Fruit that will bear delay comes up the Thames by boat, and is discharged at the wharfs near London Bridge, but the major part eventually finds its way to the “Garden.” The South-Western and South-Eastern are the two principal lines for foreign fruit: the former brings large quantities of Spanish and Portuguese produce—such as oranges, grapes, melons, nuts, &c.; the latter conveys apples, pears, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, &c., from Dover, to which place they are brought by steamers. To show how enormous is the supply from abroad, we give, on the authority of the goods-manager of the South-Eastern line, the amount brought by them in one night:—
In all 195 tons; out of which 135 were from across the water. The Brighton and South Coast transmit the produce of Jersey and Dieppe—apples, pears, and plums—to the extent last year of about 300 tons. Of vegetables the Great Northern is the principal carrier; last year they brought to town the enormous quantity of 45,819 tons of potatoes, besides 1,940 tons of other vegetables. The potatoes mainly proceed from the fen country. Walnuts generally come by the Antwerp boats, which sometimes carry cargoes of between 400 and 500 tons. Everybody who has travelled in the Low Countries remembers the magnificent walnut-trees which grow along the sides of the canals as commonly as elms in our own country. These eke out our scantier native stores, and help to make cosier the after-dinner chat over the glass of port. During two mornings that we visited Covent Garden we saw 613 bushel-baskets ofstrawberries that had just come from Honfleur, and upwards of 1,000 baskets of greengages arrived from the same neighbourhood during the week. As we gazed, on one of these occasions upon the solid walls of baskets extending down the market, crowned with parapets of peach and nectarine boxes, we wondered in our own minds whether it would ever be all sold, and the wonder increased as waggon after waggon arrived, piled up as high as the second-floor windows of the piazza. Venturing to express this doubt to a lazy-looking man who was plaiting the strands of a whip, “Blessee, sir,” he replied without looking up from his work, “the main part on ’em will be at Brummagem by dinner-time.” True enough, while we had been guessing and wondering, a nimble fellow had run to the telegraph and inquired of Birmingham and a few distant towns whether they were in want of certain fruits that morning. The answer being in the affirmative, the vans turned round, rattled off to the North-Western station, and in another hour the superfluity of Covent Garden was rushing on its way to fill up the deficiency of the midland counties. Thus the wire and steam, both at home and abroad, cause the supply to respond instantly to the demand, however wide apart the two principles may be working.
The strawberry trade of Covent Garden is not likely, however, at present to fall into the hands of foreigners. The London market-gardeners have long looked with justice upon this fruit as particularly their own. By the skill they have bestowed upon its culture it has advanced enormously, both in flavour and size, from the old standard “hautboy” of our fathers, and which foreigners mainly cultivate to the present day. Mr. Miatt, of Deptford, is the great grower; by judicious grafting he has produced from the old stock half-a-dozen different kinds, the most celebrated being the “British Queen,” which attains a prodigious size. Large quantities of strawberries are sent to the market in light spring-vans. They are placed in 1 lb. punnets or round willow baskets, or they are carefully piled in pottles, and the process of “topping-up,” as it is called, is considered quite an art in the trade. The rarestand ripest fruit, which goes direct to the pastrycooks, is still more deftly treated. Lest it should be injured by jolting, horse is exchanged for human carriage. A procession of eight or ten stout women, carrying baskets full of strawberry-pottles upon their heads, may often be seen streaming in hot haste up Piccadilly, preceded by a man, like so many sheep by a bell-wether. It is probable that they have trudged all the way from Isleworth with the fruit, and, as they frequently make two journeys in the day, the distance traversed is not less than twenty-six miles.
After strawberries, perhaps peas are the most important article produced by the market-gardeners. Dealers, in order to consult the convenience of hotel-keepers and such as require suddenly a large supply for the table, keep them ready for the saucepan; and not the least curious feature of Covent Garden, about midday, is to see a dense mass of women—generally old—seated in rows at the corner of the market, engaged in shelling them. One salesman often employs as many as 400 persons in this occupation. The major part of these auxiliaries belong to the poor-houses around; they obtain permission to go out for this purpose, and the shilling or eighteen pence a-day earned by some of the more expert is gladly exchanged for the monotonous rations of the parish. In the autumn, again, there will be a row of poor creatures, extending along the whole north side of the square, shelling walnuts, each person having two baskets, one for the nuts, another for the shells, which are bought by the catsup-makers. The poor flock from all parts of the town directly a job of the kind is to be had. If a fog happens in November, thousands of link-boys and men spring up with ready-made torches; if a frost occurs, hundreds of men are to be found on the Serpentine and other park waters, to sweep the ice or to put on your skates: there are, in the busy part of the town half-a-dozen fellows ready of a wet day to rush simultaneously to call a cab “for your honour;” and every crossing when it grows muddy almost instantly has its man and broom. A sad comment this upon the large floating population of starving labour always to be found in the streets of London.
The busiest time at the market is about six o’clock, when the costermongers surround Covent Garden with their barrows, and hundreds of street hawkers, with their hand-baskets and trays, come for their day’s supply. The same system of purchase is pursued here as at Billingsgate—the rich dealers buy largely and sell again, and the poorer club their means and divide the produce. The regular street vender who keeps his barrow, drawn by a donkey or a pony, looks down with a certain contempt upon the inferior hawkers, principally Irish. They only deal in a certain class of vegetables, such as peas, young potatoes, broccoli, or cauliflowers, and have nothing to do withmere greens. Another class of purchasers are the little girls who vend watercresses. Such is the demand for cresses, that they are now largely cultivated for the market, the spontaneous growth proving quite inadequate to the demand. They are produced principally at “Spring Head,” at Walthamstow, in Essex, and at Cookham, Shrivenham, and Faringdon, on the line of the Great Western, which brings to town no less than a ton a week of this wholesome breakfast salad. The best, however, come from Camden Town. Most people fancy that clear purling streams are necessary for their production; but the Camden Town beds are planted in an old brick-field, watered by the Fleet Ditch; and though the stream at this point is comparatively pure, they owe their unusually luxuriant appearance to a certain admixture of the sewerage. A great many hundreds of bunches are sold every morning in Covent Garden; but the largest share goes to Farringdon Market. The entire supply to the various metropolitan markets cannot be less than three tons weekly. Rhubarb is almost wholly furnished by the London market-gardeners. It was first introduced by Mr. Miatt forty years ago, who sent his two sons to the Borough Market with five bunches, of which they only sold three. From this time he continued its cultivation, notwithstanding the sneers at what were called his “physic pies.” As he predicted, it soon became a favourite, and now hundreds of tons weight are sold in Covent Garden in the course of the year. It would be impossible to give any precise account of the fruit and vegetable produce that is poured day by day into London; for theauthorities themselves only know how many baskets arrive, not how much they contain. The railway returns give us the quantity brought from a distance, and we find that the seven lines transmit annually somewhere about 70,000 tons of vegetables and soft green fruit. This is irrespective of dried fruit, oranges, &c.—a business of itself, involving great interests, and employing an immense capital, and of which we will say a few words.
The foreign-fruit trade has its head-quarters in the city. The pedestrian who walks down Fish Street Hill would assuredly never surmise that at certain seasons a regular fruit exhibition is kept up within those dull brick houses, before which the tall column lifts its head. All the world knows the Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, whose effigies seem to stand, in the public eye, upon a vast pyramid of pine-apples. This firm hold sales of various kinds of fruit in their auction-rooms in Monument Yard. On these occasions the long apartments make a show, before which, for quantity at least, that of Chiswick pales. Pine-apples by thousands, melons, forbidden fruit, and mangoes, fill the room from end to end; so famous indeed is the display, that there are lithographic engravings of it, in which the salesmen are seen walking about as perplexed, apparently by the luscious luxuriance around them, as Adam might have been in his own happy garden. The pine-apple market is of modern date. The first cargo was brought over about twenty years ago, and since that time the traffic has rapidly increased, and at the present moment 300,000 pines come yearly into the port of London, of which nine-tenths are consigned to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, the original importers. They are principally from the Bahamas, in the West Indies, where they grow almost spontaneously; but of late years they have been more carefully cultivated, and grafts of our best hothouse pines have been taken out to improve their quality. There is a fleet of clippers appropriated to the carriage across the sea of this single fruit. The melons come from Spain, Portugal, and Holland. Spain is known to abound in melons, for Murillo’s beggar-boys are perpetually eating them; but we believe it will be news to most Englishmen that the land of dykes supplies London with fragrant cargoes of an almost tropical fruit. The largest foreign-fruittrade, however, by far, is that in oranges. We shall perhaps astonish our readers when we tell them that upwards of 60,000,000 are imported for the use of London alone, accompanied by not less than 15,000,000 lemons. Any time between December and May the orange clippers from the Azores and Lisbon may be seen unloading their cargoes in the neighbourhood of the great stores in Pudding and Botolph Lanes. There are 240 of these fast-sailing vessels engaged in the entire trade, and of this fleet seventy at least are employed in supplying the windows of the fruiterers and the apple-stalls of London. All these fruits, together with nuts and walnuts, apples, plums, pears, and some peaches, &c., are disposed of weekly at the auction sales in Monument Yard to the general dealers, the majority of whom are located in Duke’s Place, close at hand, and are mostly Jews. Indeed we are informed that many of them are the identical boys grown up to manhood that used some twenty-five years ago to sell oranges about the streets, and whose old place has gradually been taken by the Irish. They act as middlemen between the importers and the tribe of peripatetics who, at certain times of the day, resort hither to fill their baskets and barrows. Covent Garden also supplies retailers with oranges and nuts, especially on Sunday mornings, when the place is sometimes crowded like a fair. The following bill of quantities, drawn up by Mr. Keeling, is derived, we believe, from the Custom House returns:—
Of the amount of bread consumed in London we have no specific information, but there are data which enable us to approximate to the truth. Porter, in his “Progress of the Nation,” gives us the returns of eight schools, families, and institutions, containing 1,902 men, women, and children, each of whom ate on the average 3311⁄16lbs. of bread per annum. Now if we multiply this quantity by the number of the inhabitants of the metropolis—2,500,000, or thereabouts—we have a total of 413,700,000 half-quartern loaves of 2 lbs. weight each. The flour used in puddings, pies, &c., we throw in as a kind of offset against the London babies under one year old. Some of this bread is a contribution from the country, and one Railway—the Eastern Counties—brought last year 237 tons 12 cwts. to town.
Now let us see how much sack goes to all this quantity of bread—with what rivers of stout, &c., we wash down such mountains of flesh. According to the excise returns, there were 747,050 quarters of malt consumed in London in the year 1853 by the seventeen great brewers. As each quarter of malt, with its proportionate allowance of hops, produces three and a half barrels of beer, we get at the total brew of last year 1,614,675, or pretty nearly a thousand million tumblers of ale and porter. On countless sign-boards of the metropolis this last is advertised by the title of “entire,” and it is thus that the liquid and its name arose. Prior to the year 1730, publicans were in the habit of selling ale, beer, and twopenny, and the “thirsty souls” of that day were accustomed to combine either of these in a drink called half-and-half. From this they proceeded to spin “three threads,” as they called it, or to have their glass filled from each of the three taps. In the year 1730, however, a certain publican, named Horwood, to save himself the trouble of making the triune mixture, brewed a liquor intended to imitate the taste of the “three threads,” and to this he applied the term “entire.” His concoction was approved, and, being puffed as good porters’ drink, it speedily came to be called porter itself. Of the seventeen great London breweries, the house of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co.stood in 1853 at the top of the list, having consumed 140,000 quarters of malt, and paid to the excise 180,000l., or enough to build two ninety-gun ships, at the usual cost of a thousand pounds per gun. The visitor in proceeding through this establishment realizes, perhaps better than in any other place, the enormous scale on which certain creature-comforts for the use of the town are produced. As he walks between the huge boilers in which 1,600 barrels are brewed nearly every day, or makes the circuit of the four great vats, each containing 80,000 gallons of liquor, or loses himself amid the labyrinth of 135 enormous reservoirs, which altogether hold 3,500,000 gallons—he begins to fancy himself an inhabitant of Lilliput, who has gone astray in a Brobdignagian cellar. There is a popular notion that the far-famed London stout owes its flavour to the Thames water: this, however, is a “vulgar error.” Not even the Messrs. Barclay, who are upon the stream, draw any of their supply from that source, but it is got entirely from wells, and those sunk so deep, that they and the Messrs. Calvert, whose brewery is half a mile distant upon the opposite side of the river, find they are rivals for the same spring. When one brewery pumps, it drains the wells of the other, and the firms are obliged to obtain their water on alternate days. Whether it is owing to the increase of the great breweries and of other manufactories, which alone consume millions of barrels of water yearly, we know not, but it is an ascertained fact, that the depth of water in the London wells has for the last twenty-five years been diminishing at the rate of a foot a year. “It is comforting to reflect,” said one of the great brewers, “that the reason simply is, because the water which used to be buried underground is now brought up to fill the bodies, wash the faces, and turn the wheels of two millions and a half of people.”
If the underground stock of water is shrinking, it has increased vastly on the surface. The seven companies which supply the metropolis bring in between them 44,000,000 gallons daily—a quantity which, large as it is, could be delivered in twenty-four hours by a brook nine feet wide and three feetdeep, running at the rate of three feet per second, or a little more than two miles per hour.
The inability of figures to convey an adequate impression to the mind of the series of units of which the sums are composed renders it impossible to give more than a faint idea of the enormous supplies of food required to victual the capital for a single year. But the conception may be somewhat assisted by varying the process. Country papers now and then astonish their readers by calculations to show how many times the steel pens manufactured in England would form a necklace round their own little town, or how many thousand miles the matches of their local factory would extend if laid in a straight line from the centre of their market-place. Let us try our hand on the same sort of picture, and endeavour to fill the eye with a prospect that would satisfy the appetite of the far-famed Dragon of Wantley himself.
If we fix upon Hyde Park as our exhibition-ground, and pile together all the barrels of beer consumed in London, they would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular height.
Let us imagine ourselves on the top of this tower, and we shall have a look-out worthy of the feast we are about to summon to our feet. Herefrom we might discover the Great Northern road stretching far away into the length and breadth of the land. Lo! as we look, a mighty herd of oxen, with loud bellowing, are beheld approaching from the north. For miles and miles the mass of horns is conspicuous winding along the road, ten abreast, and even thus the last animal of the herd would be 72 miles away, and the drover goading his shrinking flank considerably beyond Peterborough. On the other side of the park, as the clouds of dust clear away, we see the great Western road, as far as the eye can reach, thronged with a bleating mass of wool, and the shepherd at the end of the flock (ten abreast) and the dog that is worrying the last sheep are just leaving the environs of Bristol, 121 miles from our beer-built pillar. Along Piccadily, Regent-street, theStrand, Fleet-street, Cheapside, and the eastward Mile-end road line, for 7½ miles, street and causeway are thronged with calves, still ten abreast; and in the great parallel thoroughfares of Bayswater-road, Oxford-street, and Holborn, we see nothing for nine long miles but a slowly-pacing, deeply-grunting herd of swine. As we watch this moving mass approaching from all points of the horizon, the air suddenly becomes dark—a black pall seems drawn over the sky—it is the great flock of birds—game, poultry, and wild-fowl, that, like Mrs. Bond’s ducks, are come up to be killed: as they fly wing to wing and tail to beak they form a square whose superficies is not much less than the whole enclosed portion of St. James’s Park, or 51 acres. No sooner does this huge flight clear away than we behold the park at our feet inundated with hares and rabbits.
Feeding 2,000 abreast, they extend from the marble arch to the round pond in Kensington Gardens—at least a mile. Let us now pile up all the half-quartern loaves consumed in the metropolis in the year, and we shall find they form a pyramid which measures 200 square feet at its base, and extends into the air a height of 1,293 feet, or nearly three times that of St. Paul’s. Turning now towards the sound of rushing waters, we find that the seven companies are filling the mains for the day. If they were allowed to flow into the area of the adjacent St. James’s Park, they would in the course of the 24 hours flood its entire space with a depth of 30 inches of water, and the whole annual supply would be quite sufficient to submerge the city (one mile square) ninety feet. Of the fish we confess we are able to say nothing: when numbers mount to billions, the calculations become too trying to our patience. We have little doubt, however, that they would be quite sufficient to make the Serpentine one solid mass. Of ham and bacon again, preserved meats, and all the countless comestibles we have taken no account, and in truth they are little more to the great mass than the ducks and geese were to Sancho Panza’s celebrated mess—“the skimmings of the pot.”
Such, then, is a slight sketch of the great London larder.It may be imagined that many of these stores come to the metropolis only as to a centre for redistribution, and are again scattered over the length and breadth of the land. This, however, is not the case. The only line that takes food in any quantities out of London is the North-Western. This railway speeds into the midland counties, but especially to Birmingham, 350 tons of fish consigned to the country dealers, and to the nobility and gentry. As we have before seen, van-loads of fruit are often despatched in the same direction. The South-Eastern conveys large quantities of grain down the line, and the London and Brighton and South Coast takes annually to Brighton twenty-six tons of meat and 1,100 cattle; and here all the food carriedoutof London in bulk ends. A constant dribble of edibles, it is true, is continually escaping by the passenger trains, of which the railways take no notice in their goods-department traffic; but it must be remembered that a much larger quantity is perpetually flowing unheeded into the London commissariat through the same channels. Of the stout and porter brewed in the metropolis by the great houses, again, one-seventh perhaps finds its way abroad—a drop in comparison to that which must be contributed by the 2,482 smaller brewers of the town, and the great contingent supplied by Guinness, Allsopp, and other pale-ale brewers. This simple statement will suffice to make it evident that in the foregoing picture we have given anything but “heaped measure.”
The railways having poured this enormous amount of food into the metropolis, as the main arteries feed the human body, it is distributed by the various dealers into every quarter of the town, first into the wholesale markets, or great centres, then into the sub-centres, or retail tradesmen’s shops, and lastly into the moving centres, or barrows of the hawkers, by which means nourishment is poured into every corner of the town, and the community at large is supplied as effectually as are the countless tissues of the human body by the infinitely divided network of capillary vessels. According to the census of1851, these food-distributors are classified in the following manner:—
If to this total of 71,254 we add the wandering tribe of costermongers, hawkers, and stall-keepers, estimated at 30,000 persons, we shall have an army exceeding 100,000 persons; and, as indirectly there must be quadruple this number of persons employed, the merest pauper among the population has hundreds of invisible hands held out to provide him with the necessaries and comforts of life. The smooth working of this great distributive machine is due to the principle of competition—that spring which so nicely adjusts all the varying conditions of life, and which, in serving itself, does the best possible service to the community at large, and accomplishes more than the cleverest system of centralization which any individual mind could devise.
In the year 1716 the brass guns which Marlborough had taken from the French were being recast in the royal gun foundry in Moorfields, when a young Swiss named Andrew Schalch, who was accidentally present, remarking the dampness of the moulds and foreseeing the inevitable result, warned Colonel Armstrong the then Surveyor-General, against being too close a spectator of the operation. As Schalch foretold, an explosion took place, and many workmen were killed. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” says the old proverb, and the bursting of the gun was the making of the young foreigner’s fortune; for in a few days an advertisement appeared in one of the public papers requesting him to call upon Colonel Andrews, “as the interview may be for his advantage.” Andrew Schalch attended accordingly, and was at once intrusted with the duty of seeking out a better locality for the casting of the royal ordnance. He selected a rabbit-warren at Woolwich, as the best site within twelve miles of the metropolis, for the threefold reason that it was dry, near to the river, and in the immediate neighbourhood of loam for the moulds. Strangely enough, it has since been proved that the great nation of antiquity with whom the British possess so many qualities in common, had been here before. The Romans, whose second station on the Watling Street out of London is supposed to have been at Hanging Wood, close at hand, seem to have appropriated the sloping ground on which the original gun factory stands for the purposes of a cemetery, for on digging the foundations of some new buildings urns of their manufacture were discovered in large quantities, and a very beautifulsepulchral vase, which is now in the museum of the Royal Artillery Institution. Thus, where the conquerors of the old world lay down to their last rest, we, the Romans of the present age, forge the arms which make us masters of an empire beyond the dreams of the imperial Cæsars.
As the visitor enters the great gate of the Arsenal he finds no difficulty in tracing the whereabouts of the labours of Andrew, for straight before him, with a stately solemnity which marked the conceptions of its builder, Vanbrugh, stands the picturesque gun factory, with its high-pitched roof, red brickwork, and carved porch, looking like a fine old gentleman amid the factory ranges which within these few years have sprung up around. It is impossible to contemplate this building without respect, for forth from its portals have issued that victorious ordnance which since the days of George II. has swept the battle grounds of the old and the new world. Up to as late a date as the year 1842 the machinery within these stately old edifices was almost as antiquated in character as themselves. The three great boring-mills, moved by horses, which had been imported in 1780 as astonishing wonders from the Hague, were the only engines used in England in making her Majesty’s ordnance till eighteen years ago. Such was the state of efficiency of the oldest of the three great manufacturing departments of the Arsenal! The more modern departments, known as the Royal Carriage Factory and the Laboratory, have flourished during the present century in an unequal degree. For fifty years the former of these branches of the Arsenal has been more or less in a high state of efficiency, through the introduction of machinery from the workshops of Messrs. Bramah and Maudslay, and of the contrivances of Bentham and Sir I. Brunei. The improvements which were due to their inventive genius rendered this department highly efficient during the French war, on the conclusion of which a long period of inactivity followed; and it was not until 1847 that symptoms were manifested of renewed life under the able superintendence of General Gordon, and still later of Colonel Colquhoun. The Laboratory during the same period appears to have remained entirely stationary, and up to the year 1853 was far inferior tothat of any third-rate power. The backward condition of the sole arsenal of England during the long interval of peace seems at first sight remarkable, when we consider the amount of mechanical ingenuity which had penetrated into every factory in the kingdom; but when we remember that the instruments and munitions of war are special articles, wanted only for special periods, occurring at uncertain intervals of time, the wonder ceases. Private manufacturers had no interest in forging instruments of destruction, and the State having conquered “a lasting peace,” Vulcan was allowed to fall into a profound sleep—a sleep so unbroken, that the nation listened for a moment to the voice of those Manchester charmers who would fain have persuaded us the time was come when our swords could with safety be turned into pruning-hooks. In the midst of this amiable delusion the Northern Eagle attempted to seize upon the sick man, and Britain instinctively flew to arms. This sudden spasm of war following upon a forty years’ peace at once disclosed the fact that we were totally unprepared to wage it. There were not shells enough in the Arsenal to furnish forth the first battering-train that went to the East, and the fuses in store were of the date of Waterloo. A fourth part of the money which we joyfully expended when the wolf was at the door would have been thought the demand of a madman, when Europe was supposed to be one big sheepfold. Economy prevented efficient progress; and though the authorities had latterly originated reforms, their exertions were limited by their scanty resources. As the war proceeded, the Ordnance were at their wits’ end for coarse-grained gunpowder, which, as it was not an article of commerce, had to be specially made for them. Small arms were wanted in haste, and could only be constructed at leisure. In these straits the private manufacturers of the country were applied to; but in many cases they had to learn a new art. Do what they would, with the power of charging fabulous prices for shot and shell, ammunition, and small arms, their powers of production were totally inadequate to meet the strain of the great siege, the proportions of which grew larger day by day. All the mills in England could not make powder at the rate at whichit was shot away—a rate which consumed 100,000 barrels before Sevastopol was taken; nor could all the armouries of London and Birmingham make rifled muskets and sabres fast enough for our men; consequently we were obliged to go to Liége for 44,000 Minié guns, 3,000 cavalry swords, and 12,000 barrels of powder, and to the United States for 20,000 barrels more.
It may seem passing strange that England, whose manufacturing power is so enormous, should have to resort to foreign manufacturers for the arms wherewith to fight. Money in such a country, it is often said, can procure anything, and money in this case was no object. The want of suitable machinery was the cause of the difficulty. The manufacturers could only make the articles demanded of them by skilled labour, which is a thing that must be acquired before it can be hired. Old machines can be put to extra duty; fresh machines can be readily supplied; but skilled labour is a fixed capital which cannot be suddenly increased. The result was a lamentable slowness of production and an extraordinary dearness of price—the munitions of war in some cases more than doubled in value. It is calculated that the shells for the Baltic fleet alone, which were fabricated entirely by private manufacturers, cost upwards of £100,000 more than they would have done had they been made by the new machinery lately introduced into the Arsenal. A still stronger case, to show the extraordinary prices which the Government had to pay contractors when the demand was imperative and supply confined to two or three houses, was that of the six-pounder diaphragm shells. They were charged by the contractors at 73l.per ton, whilst the very same article is now made in the Royal Laboratory at 14l.19s.2d.per ton. These exorbitant demands and the rapid drain of the stores led the War Department to consider whether it would not be better to organize a government establishment on the most extensive scale, and on the most improved system; and it was ultimately determined to adopt a plan by which it would be possible to expand or contract the productive power, according to the exigencies of the service, by means of machines which could be tended by untutored labourers and boys. Accordingly, a verylarge number of the most ingenious machines were procured from the United States, where the Springfield and Harper Ferry Arsenals have long been famous for their admirable contrivances to save human skill; while others were procured from the Continent and at home by Mr. Anderson, the superintendent of machinery. In a very short time a powerful factory of the munitions of war sprung into life, verifying, for the ten-thousandth time, the truth of the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention, or at least, as in this case, of improvement.
The introduction of machinery on a large scale put to flight the old traditions of the Arsenal, and the manufacturing spirit had to be substituted for the military organization under which the establishment had been conducted before. Such was the energy and rapidity with which the old Arsenal reformed itself, that we question if any private factory in the kingdom is conducted upon a better system than is already at work there. Within these three years factories have sprung up on every side, and the whir of wheels, and the measured stroke of the steam-engine, can now be heard over the whole of its immense area.
The three manufacturing departments into which the Woolwich Arsenal is divided are as follows:—The Royal Gun Factory, the Royal Carriage Department, and the Royal Laboratory Department. Through these factories we will conduct our readers, and endeavour to give them an idea how human ingenuity has perfected the means to destroy human life. The gun factories, by right of age, take precedence, although in point of interest they present the least attractive features to the spectator. The fact which most strikes him as he threads his way amid the Cyclopean machinery is the slow, inevitable manner in which the different processes are carried on. Here you see a large lathe turning the outside of an eighteen-pounder, revolving as noiselessly and as readily as though it were only turning a brass candlestick—a fixed tool cutting off its thin shavings of metal with as much ease as if it were box-wood. In the next machine a gun is being bored, the drill twisting its way down the fixed mass, and a droppingshower of bright chips proving how resistlessly its tooth moves on towards its appointed goal. A third machine cuts off the “dead head” of a cannon. All guns are cast in the pits in a perpendicular position, breech downwards, and are made at least one-third longer than they are intended to be when finished. The reason for this is, that the superincumbent metal forming the “dead head” of the piece may by its weight condense the portion below it which is to form the true gun—the extraordinary pressure of the powder requiring the metal to be extremely close in order to withstand the strain. Besides these lathes, which do the more ordinary work of the factory, there are what are termed exceptional machines, to finish those parts of the gun which the lathe cannot touch, such as the projecting sight, the trunnions, and that portion of the barrel which lies between them. No increase has taken place in the size of the Brass Gun Factory, although, through the energetic action of Colonel Wilmot, its produce has been doubled since the breaking out of the war: fourteen pieces of brass ordnance—six, nine, and eighteen pounders—can be turned out weekly. Brass is used for field-pieces on account of its resisting power being greater than that of iron. Experiments which have lately been made, however, tend to show that steel is a far lighter and better material even than brass for this purpose. A German, named Krupp, has produced some steel pieces which bear an enormous charge; in fact, when well made, it is almost impossible to burst them. The Emperor of the French has already ordered 350 of these guns to be introduced into the service, and probably we shall have to follow suit.
The fine building[25]recently erected in connection with this department is intended for the manufacture of iron ordnance, which has hitherto been produced exclusively by private manufacturers. The experience of the late war, however, determined the Government to furnish at least a portion ofthese stores themselves. A thoroughly reliable gun must be worth any price that its efficient manufacture demands; for the failing of a single piece may lose a battle, and bring with it consequences which would be cheaply averted by a park of artillery cast in gold. In the late campaign we were prevented from striking a great blow through this very cause alone. At the bombardment of Sweaborg no less than seventeen of the thirteen-inch mortars were destroyed through a want of tenacity in the iron of which they were composed. Many of these ponderous engines split after a few rounds, and may now be seen on the wharf of the Arsenal cleft in twain as clean as Tell’s apple. Yet these mortars were made by the Carron and Low Moor Companies, the most celebrated private manufacturers of such articles in England. Had they stood the strain, we should have utterly destroyed the fortifications of this stronghold, instead of burning a few sheds, which made a great blaze without doing much mischief; and had we possessed a sufficient number of these formidable engines, the destruction of Cronstadt and Sevastopol would only have formed the work of a few days. Though ours is a land both of iron and manufactures, our guns are of inferior quality to those of other nations. The cannon captured at Sevastopol are of better iron than the cannon we brought against them. Several thousand tons weight of the guns dismounted from Cronstadt, in order to make way for pieces of heavier calibre, were bought, we understand, the other day by an English firm with the intention of converting them into cranks and boilers, which require the very best material. The Americans insist upon a tenacity of cast-iron for their ordnance equal to a pressure of 34,000 lbs. on the square inch, and sometimes obtain it equal to 45,000 lbs., whilst we, the greatest manufacturers of iron in the world, have hitherto seldom obtained it of a strength equal to 20,000 lbs. This great difficiency Government hope to remedy by the institution of a series of experiments on all classes of iron both foreign and indigenous. There is a curious machine in the Gun Factory specially invented for the purpose of testing the tenacity of each sample, its capacity of withstanding compression, itstransverse strength, and its power of resisting torsion. It is curious to see this iron-limbed Samson wrestling with mighty bars of metal, and twisting and tearing them across the grain like bits of stick. The fractured remnants of the specimens and of the guns rent in the testing process in the Marshes and at Shoeburyness are collected in a museum, the history of each specimen being minutely given. Thus a curious and instructive record is gradually being acquired, which will prove of infinite use in the manufacture of heavy ordnance. It has been already ascertained that guns are universally strengthened by having wrought iron rings put round them—a fact which was discovered during the course of experiments with the heavy cannon bored with an oval rifle to receive the Lancaster shell. Several of them having burst at the muzzle, this simple expedient was tried, and the guns so girded now bear the most extraordinary charges without flinching.
The new building for casting, boring, and finishing iron guns, is both externally and internally the most imposing-looking of all the structures erected to meet the exigencies of the Crimean war. These spacious factories present more the appearance of first-class railway termini than of ordinary workshops. They are lighted with what are termed saw-roof lights, having a northern aspect; for the Vulcans who can work all day in the burning blaze of furnaces do not, it appears, like to be distracted with the confusing rays of the sun! The number of turning, boring, finishing, planing, shaping, drilling, slotting, and punching machines that revolve, thump, and slide here in ponderous grandeur is prodigious, and there can be very little doubt that it will be the most perfect and powerful factory in the world of its kind. Travelling-cranes, which run upon railways poised in air overhead, command every inch of the factories, so that cannon of the heaviest calibre for both land and sea service—98-pounders weighing many tons can be slung from machine to machine with the greatest ease. When the machinery is completed, the foundry will be capable of turning out ten guns of the largest size per week.
The most interesting portion of the gun department is thefactory devoted to the construction of Lancaster shells. This odd-looking missile has a form very similar to a champagne bottle, and, unlike the ordinary shell, is made out of a single sheet of wrought iron. The slab of metal having been welded into a cylindrical form, is submitted to an ingenious lathe, which, acting upon it simultaneously with a dozen different tools inside and out, speedily reduces it to a given weight and a perfectly uniform thickness. The cylinder, about eighteen inches in length and ten in diameter, is then made red hot, and whilst in this state is placed in the grip of a powerful machine, which by a series of blows, equally distributed over every part, converts it into the likeness of a French bottle in less than five minutes, without the slightest sign of crumpling in any portion of the surface. The operation can only be compared to the manner in which a potter shapes a vessel upon the wheel. No less than forty machines are employed on this special manufacture, and upwards of a hundred shells can be turned out daily. The expense incurred in producing with extreme accuracy and speed these curious missiles for the first rifled gun adopted by the service, is an earnest of the determination of the authorities to carry the manufacture of artillery to the same perfection of finish as their small arms. Lancaster guns will in all probability play a very important part in the next war, if war there should ever unhappily be, as those in use in the Crimea made most splendid practice, firing with nearly the accuracy of a rifle, and attaining a range of 5,000 yards, or very nearly three miles. As these shells cost about 25s.each, the expense of “passing the bottle” to the enemy is rather a serious affair.