The fish sent to London is known to Billingsgate salesmen as “red” and “white” fish. The red fish is, as regards the metropolitan mart, confined to the salmon. The other descriptions are known as “white.” The costermongers classify the fish they vend as “wet” and “dry.” All fresh fish is “wet;” all cured or salted fish, “dry.” The fish which is sold “pickled,” is known by that appellation, but its street sale is insignificant. The principal fish-staple, so to speak of the street-fishmonger, is soles, which are in supply all, or nearly all, the year. The next are herrings, mackarel, whitings, Dutch eels, and plaice. The trade in plaice and sprats is almost entirely in the hands of the costermongers; their sale of shrimps is nearer a half than a third of the entire quantity sent to Billingsgate; but their purchase of cod, or of the best lobsters, or crabs, is far below a third. The costermonger rarely buys turbot, or brill, or even salmon, unless he can retail it at 6_d._ the pound. When it is at that price, a street salmon-seller told me that the eagerness to buy it was extreme. He had known persons, who appeared to him to be very poor, buy a pound of salmon, “just for a treat once in a way.” His best, or rather readiest customers--for at 6_d._ a pound all classes of the community may be said to be his purchasers--were the shopkeepers of the busier parts, and the occupants of the smaller private houses of the suburbs. During the past year salmon was scarce and dear, and the costermongers bought, comparatively, none of it. In a tolerably cheap season they do not sell more than from a fifteenth to a twentieth of the quantity received at Billingsgate.
In order to be able to arrive at the quantity or weight of the several kinds of fish sold by the costermongers in the streets of London, it is necessary that we should know the entire amount sent to Billingsgate-market, for it is only by estimating the proportion which the street-sale bears to the whole, that we can attain even an approximation to the truth. The following Table gives the results of certain information collected by myself for the first time, I believe, in this country. The facts, as well as the estimated proportions of each kind of fish sold by the costermongers, have been furnished me by the most eminent of the Billingsgate salesmen--gentlemen to whom I am under many obligations for their kindness, consideration, and assistance, at all times and seasons.