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XXXIV. MARKETS, CLUBS.

MARKETS.

THE markets of London have in a great measure altered their character within the last century or two. At an early period, and when the town was not too large, it was a convenience to be able to obtain particular articles in particular places. Bread brought from Stratford, in Essex, was sold in Cheapside near Bread Street; meat in St. Nicholas' Shambles, where now stands Newgate Market; fresh fish in Old Fish Street; dried fish and salt fish in Stock Fishmonger Row, now part of Thames Street, old apparel in Cornhill; and cooked victuals in Eastcheap. As the town became extended, the retail shops became more numerous, and trades more divided. Still, wherever new neighbourhoods were built markets were also formed for the sale of the chief necessaries of life, whence arose St. James's Market, Newport Market, Oxford Market, Fitzroy Market, &c., &c. Except the wholesale markets, however, these segregations of trades have much decayed, and most of them only exist from their connection as retail shops, as is proved by the failure of all attempts to establish new ones, and the destruction of those which have been moved, as in the case of Fleet Market, which fell into decay when removed from the sheds and hovels that ran down the street-now Farringdon Street-from Fleet Street to Holborn Bridge, into a spacious and well-built though neither light nor convenient structure, only a few yards west; and in those of attempted markets near the London Road, St. George's Fields, and another at Shepherd's Bush. Of the large wholesale markets we have already noticed the Corn Market, Coal Exchange, and Billingsgate. The remaining markets divide themselves into flesh markets, vegetable markets, and leather markets. Of these Smithfield, Newgate, Covent Garden, and Bermondsey, are the great heads and representatives.

SMITHFIELD.

Smithfield, where the great and only cattle-market of the metropolis is held, is not a place with which the inhabitants of London are very familiar, excepting as a thoroughfare. The grazier from Essex, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, or Lincolnshire, is better acquainted with the spot. The inns and shops in its vicinity are for his accommodation, and exist almost independent of the surrounding population. Smithfield and its immediate precincts may in fact be regarded in the same light as a market-town, thriving upon the industry of a class of customers who resort to it from the country. Some of the shops in the neighbourhood have been used for the same kind of business for above a century; and the customers who now frequent them go there partly because the generation before them did so, and because the experience of years has given the shopkeepers an intimate knowledge of the wants of that portion of the community with which they deal. Smithfield has its bankinghouse too; and when we know that property to the amount of £5,000,000 a-year changes hands in the market, we may easily conceive that such an establishment, isolated as it is, is quite essential. Take away the market, and the industry which it has called into existence would be under the necessity of transferring itself elsewhere. At what period Smithfield became a cattle-market is not exactly known, but it was used for this purpose seven centuries ago, for Fitzstephen, writing in 1150, notices

horses and cattle being sold there. An act of the Common Council of the City recognises a cattle-market at Smithfield previous to 1345; and the Corporation made statutes for its regulation, which are to be found in the City records, and are called the 'Statutes of Smithfield.' In 1356 these statutes were again enacted. The City, however, does not derive its authority to hold the market from any specific charter, but from prescription; and this ancient privilege is confirmed by a charter of Charles I. The rights and privileges which the charter confirmed were taken away by a decision of the Judges in the reign of Charles II., but the City authorities of the present day contend that this judgment was illegal; and an Act was passed in the reign of William and Mary, which restored to the City the ancient rights, founded on constant and uniform usage for so many hundred years. Before leaving this part of the subject we must advert to a charter granted to the City in 1327 (1st Edward III.), which provides "that no market from henceforth shall be granted by us or our heirs to any within seven miles in circuit of the said city." Here, then, many centuries ago, we have the sole cattle-market for the metropolis established on the site where it is at present held, and the City invested with authority to prohibit any rival market within a distance of seven miles. At this remote period a more suitable spot than the one in question could not have been selected. It was a large unenclosed space outside the city walls, and cattle could be driven there without annoyance to the inhabitants of crowded thoroughfares.

We must now contemplate Smithfield as a market-place embedded in the heart of London, and observe some of the effects produced by the contracted area in which the market was held, while the number of cattle driven to it for sale was rapidly increasing with the growth of the metropolis. In John Erswick's Brief Note of the Benefits that grow to this Realm by the Observation of Fish Days,' published in 1593, we find an estimate of the number of cattle sold yearly in Smithfield at that period. There were, he says, sixty butchers, freemen of the city, who each killed 5 oxen weekly, or 300 per week; the non-freemen, or "foreigners," as they were called, killed altogether four times as many as the freemen, or 1200 weekly. Excluding the days on which abstinence from flesh interfered with the demand for butchers' meat, Erswick states the number of cattle slaughtered annually in London at 67,500. In 1732 the number of cattle sold in Smithfield Market was 76,210, and of sheep 514,700 but both were of small size, and Davenant states that the gross weight of the cattle did not exceed 370 lbs., and that of the sheep and lambs averaged together 28 lbs. This estimate of the average weight is probably rather too low. In some instructions for managing the household of Prince Henry, son of James I., the purveyor is directed to observe that an ox should weigh 600 lbs., and a sheep 44 lbs., or 46 lbs.; and though there might be few of this weight in the market, yet an average of 370 lbs. does certainly appear low. From 1740 to 1750 the population of the metropolis being about 670,000, there were sold at an average, during these ten years, about 74,000 cattle, and about 570,000 sheep. Between this period and 1831 the population increased about 218 per cent., and taking an average of three years ending with 1831, 156,000 cattle and 1,238,000 sheep were sold annually in Smithfield; being an increase of 110 per cent. on the cattle, and of 117 per cent. on the sheep, as compared with the numbers sold in 1740-50. But the average weight of cattle is now about 640 lbs., and of sheep about 96 lbs.: so that, while in number the sales at Smithfield have not kept pace with the population, the excess of weight in the animals sold in 1831 over those in 1740-50 shows that the consumption of butchers' meat is greater in proportion to the population than it was eighty years before-and this without reckoning the very large supplies of killed meat conveyed by railways and

steam-boats to Newgate and Leadenhall Markets. Cattle and sheep are also now imported largely from foreign countries, but a great part of those intended for the London market are sold in Smithfield. In 1849 there were nearly 40,000 beasts imported, 13,500 calves, and 130,000 sheep and lambs, besides a large quantity of freshkilled meat, a great proportion of all which reached London. The average weekly sale is now upwards of 4000 beasts, and more than 31,000 sheep. In addition to the above, about 21,000 calves and a quarter of a million pigs are annually sold. The cattle-market is on Mondays and Fridays, but the great market-day for cattle and sheep is Monday, or rather Monday morning.

There are two great thoroughfares by which the cattle are brought to London— from the north by Highgate Archway, and from the eastern counties by Whitechapel Road; large numbers are also brought by the various railways. They reach the outskirts of London on Sunday; about nine o'clock in the evening they are driven into the city, and continue arriving in Smithfield from that hour until the morning. In this large irregular area, comprising about three and a half acres, enclosed by houses, the scene on a foggy, wet, and wintry morning is one of which few persons not living in the immediate neighbourhood, or whose business does not require their attendance in the market, have an accurate conception. The drovers are furnished with torches to enable them to distinguish the marks on the cattle, to put the sheep into pens, and to form the beasts into "droves." There is not room to tie up much more than one-half of the cattle sent for sale, and the remainder are formed into groups of about twenty each, called "rings" or "off-droves," each beast with its head to the centre of the drove. This is not accomplished without the greatest exertion; and about two o'clock in the morning the scene is one of terrific confusion. To get the "beasts" into a ring, to enable purchasers to examine them more readily, the drovers aim blows at the heads of the animals, in endeavouring to avoid which they keep ther heads towards the ground. Should they attempt to run backwards, a shower of blows forces them to remain in their position. The deterioration of the meat from this barbarity has been calculated at no less a sum than £100,000 a year-all this would be avoided if there were room to tie up the beasts. The exertions to prevent different flocks of sheep from mixing with each other are not so great, but here the drovers' dogs are useful. The lowing of the oxen, the tremulous cries of the sheep, the barking of dogs, the rattling of sticks on the heads and bodies of the animals, the shouts of the drovers, and the flashing about of torches, present altogether a wild and terrific combination: and few, either of those who reside in the metropolis, or who visit it, have the resolution to witness the strange scene.

The nuisance of holding a market for cattle in the heart of London is not confined to Smithfield. There it is endured for the sake of the profit which it brings to the shops, coffee-houses, inns, and other places of accommodation; and yet a person who resided in Smithfield stated before a parliamentary committee that he had lived there for fourteen years, and found it impossible to sleep in the front of his house on the Sunday night. But the evil extends to all the thoroughfares leading to the market; and there is danger as well as inconvenience in driving bullocks and sheep through crowded streets, exposing passengers to accident, and keeping the neighbourhood in a state of confusion once a-week during the entire year. The attempt to remove the market to the outskirts of London, which was made a few years ago, signally failed, although the experiment was made on a scale which it might have been expected would have ensured its success; and so did a much earlier attempt. Stow says, speaking of St. Nicholas' Shambles and Newgate Market-" In the 3rd of Richard II., motion was made that no butcher should kill no flesh within

London, but at Knightsbridge, or such like distance of place from the walls of the city." The nuisance, however, has become unbearable, and a bill is now before Parliament for abolishing Smithfield Market, and it is to be removed elsewhere.

The smaller retail butchers do not buy in Smithfield, unless it may be now and then a few sheep. They prefer purchasing from the carcass butchers, who kill to a large extent. The carcass butchers are to be found principally in Warwick Lane, Newgate Market, Leadenhall Market, and in Whitechapel. Some of them are slaughtermen, and kill on their own premises; but the business of killing is also carried on as a separate occupation. There are slaughtermen who kill above a thousand sheep and several hundred beasts a week. Many of the places in which they perform their operations are the most horrible dens which can be conceived, being literally underground cellars, down which the sheep are precipitated and immediately butchered. There are slaughtermen who kill sheep only. It is stated that the London slaughtermen perform their work with a knack and handiness which the country slaughterers cannot attain; and the charge for killing, skinning, and preparing an ox for the wholesale butcher, and delivering the carcass, is not more than four shillings. The London Jews have a different system of slaughtering from the other butchers: instead of knocking down the animal with an axe, they kill it with a knife, and a seal is put upon the carcass by a Jewish inspector, in proof of its having been slaughtered according to the mode prescribed by the Jewish religion.

There is a horse-market held in Smithfield on the afternoon of Fridays. It commences in the summer season at three in the afternoon, and closes at seven; and in winter is held from two o'clock until dusk. This market had much the same reputation in Shakspere's time, and most probably for centuries before, which it now bears. The number of horses is usually three or four hundred, and from fifty to a hundred asses. Here low jockeys attempt to display their broken-down animals to the best advantage, and costermongers "chaffer" over the buying and selling of their asses ; and scenes of drollery and coarse and boisterous mirth may be witnessed which at least illustrate low life in London.

Smithfield is also one of the metropolitan hay and straw markets. This market is held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. A payment of sixpence per load (unless the property of freemen), and a penny for each entry of sale, has produced above £400 a-year. The supplies arrive from places within a circle of forty miles round London.

Of the meat markets mentioned above, Newgate Market lies a little south-east of Smithfield, between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. It was originally a meat market, the market-house standing in Newgate Street, the butcher market being held in Butcher-Hall Lane, and around a church called in consequence St. Nicholas Shambles, pulled down during the Reformation. After the great fire, the market was removed to its present site, and a great part of Warwick Lane has been appropriated to the same purposes, where formerly stood the town residence of Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," and against a house at the Newgate Street corner of the lane is a bas-relief of Guy, Earl of Warwick, bearing the date of 1668. The underground cellars we have spoken of as being used for slaughter-houses, peculiarly apply to this district.

Whitechapel Market consists of a long row of shops at the eastern end of the High Street, with slaughter-houses at the back. It is probably second in rank to Newgate Market.

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