Another costermonger gave me the following account:
“I’ve salted herrings, but the commonest way of salting is by the Jews about Whitechapel. They make real Yarmouth bloaters and all sorts of fish. When I salted herrings, I bought them out of the boats at Billingsgate by the hundred, which is 120 fish. We give them a bit of a clean--hardly anything--then chuck them into a tub of salt, and keep scattering salt over them, and let them lie a few minutes, or sometimes half an hour, and then hang them up to dry. They eat well enough, if they’re eaten in time, for they won’t keep. I’ve known three day’s old herrings salted, just because there was no sale for them. One Jew sends out six boys crying ‘real Yarmouth bloaters.’ People buy them in preference, they look so nice and clean and fresh-coloured. It’s quite a new trade among the Jews. They didn’t do much that way until two years back. I sometimes wish I was a Jew, because they help one another, and start one another with money, and so they thrive where Christians are ruined. I smoked mackerel, too, by thousands; that’s a new trade, and is done the same way as haddocks. Mackerel that won’t bring 1_d._ a piece fresh, bring 2_d._ smoked; they are very nice indeed. I make about 10_s._ or 11_s._ a week by dry fish in the winter months, and about as much by wet,--but I have a tidy connection. Perhaps I make 17_s._ or 18_s._ a week all the year round.”
The aggregate quantity of dry fish sold by the London costermongers throughout the year is as follows--the results being deduced from the table before given:
Wet salt cod 93,750 Dry do. 1,000,000 Smoked Haddocks 4,875,000 Bloaters 36,750,000 Red-herrings 25,000,000
GROSS VALUE OF THE SEVERAL KINDS OF FISH ANNUALLY SOLD IN THE STREETS OF LONDON.
It now but remains for me, in order to complete this account of the “street-sellers of fish,” to form an estimate of the amount of money annually expended by the labourers and the poorer classes of London upon the different kinds of wet, dry, and shell-fish. This, according to the best authorities, is as follows:
_Wet Fish._ £ 175,000 lbs. of salmon, at 6_d._ per lb. 4,000 1,000,000 lbs. of live cod, at 1-1/2_d._ per lb. 5,000 3,250,000 pairs of soles, at 1-1/2_d._ per pair 20,000 4,400,000 whiting, at 1/2_d._ each 9,000 29,400,000 plaice, at 3/4_d._ 90,000 15,700,000 mackarel, at 6 for 1_s._ 130,000 875,000,000 herrings, at 16 a groat 900,000 3,000,000 lbs. of sprats, at 1_d._ per lb. 12,000 400,000 lbs. of eels, at 3 lb. for 1_s._ 6,000 260,000 flounders, at 1_d._ per dozen 100 270,000 dabs, at 1_d._ per dozen 100 --------- Sum total expended yearly in wet fish 1,177,000