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-fruit trade, 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:--
_Fruit._
Apples 39,561 bushels.
Pears 19,742 "
Cherries 264,240 lbs.
Grapes 1,328,190
Pine-apples 200,000
Oranges 61,635,146
Lemons 15,408,789
_Nuts._
Spanish nuts} 72,509 bushels
Barcolena }
Brazil 11,700 "
Chestnuts 26,250 "
Walnuts 36,088 "
Cocoa-nuts 1,255,009 "
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 331-1/16 lbs. 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 180,000_l._, 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 feet deep, 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, the Strand, Fleet-street, Cheapside, and the
eastward Mile-end road line, for 7-1/2 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 carried _out_ of 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 of 1851, these
food-distributors are classified in the following manner:--
_Males._
Grocers 6,475
Cowkeepers and milksellers 3,372
Cheesemongers 2,156
Butchers 7,428
Poulterers 551
Fishmongers 2,238
Other dealers in animal food 1,376
Greengrocers 3,325
Bakers 9,841
Confectioners 1,806
Other dealers in vegetable food 1,303
Brewers 2,499
Licensed victuallers and beer-shop-keepers, &c. 6,843
Wine and spirit merchants 1,915
Other dealers in drinks 3,805
Saltmakers 37
Water-providers 428
Innkeepers 433
------
56,601
_Females._
Grocers 676
Innkeepers 93
Innkeepers' wives 217
Cowkeepers 1,158
Butchers 205
Butchers' wives 3,086
Fishmongers 151
Others dealing in animal food 283
Greengrocers 941
Bakers 480
Confectioners 542
Other dealers in vegetable food 939
Licensed victuallers and beer-shop-keepers 970
Wives of ditto 4,440
Wine and spirit merchants 15
Other dealers in drinks 457
------
14,653
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.
WOOLWICH ARSENAL.
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 beautiful sepulchral 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 to that 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 which
it 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.