_Dry Fish._ 525,000 lbs. barrelled cod, at 1-1/2_d._ 3,000 500,000 lbs. dried salt cod, at 2_d._ 4,000 4,875,000 smoked haddock, at 1_d._ 20,000 36,750,000 bloaters, at 2 for 1_d._ 75,000 25,000,000 red herrings, at 4 for 1_d._ 25,000 ------- Sum total expended yearly in dry fish 127,000
_Shell Fish._ 124,000,000 oysters, at 4 a penny 125,000 60,000 lobsters, at 3_d._ 750 50,000 crabs, at 2_d._ 400 770,000 pints of shrimps, at 2_d._ 6,000 1,000,000 quarts of mussels, at 1_d._ 4,000 750,000 quarts of cockles, at 1_d._ 3,000 4,950,000 whelks, at 8 for 1_d._ 2,500 3,600,000 pints of periwinkles, at 1_d._ 15,000 ------- Sum total expended yearly in shell-fish 156,650
Adding together the above totals, we have the following result as to the gross money value of the fish purchased yearly in the London streets:
£ Wet fish 1,177,200 Dry fish 127,000 Shell fish 156,650 --------- Total £1,460,850
Hence we find that there is nearly a million and a half of money annually spent by the poorer classes of the metropolis in fish; a sum so prodigious as almost to discredit every statement of want, even if the amount said to be so expended be believed. The returns from which the above account is made out have been obtained, however, from such unquestionable sources--not from one salesman alone, but checked and corrected by many gentlemen who can have no conceivable motive for exaggeration either one way or the other--that, sceptical as our utter ignorance of the subject must necessarily make us, still if we will but examine for ourselves, we shall find there is no gainsaying the facts.
Moreover as to the enormity of the amount dispelling all ideas of privation among the industrious portion of the community, we shall also find on examination that assuming the working-men of the metropolis to be 500,000 in number (the Occupation Abstract of 1841, gives 773,560 individuals following _some_ employment in London, but these include merchants, employers, shopkeepers, Government-officers and others), and that they, with their wives and children, make up one million individuals, it follows that the sum per head, expended in fish by the poorer classes every week, is a fraction more than 6-3/4_d._, or, in other words not quite one penny a day.