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93
The country sources, it will be seen, show a characteristic
distribution. Much of the milk is derived from the great milkproducing
counties of Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire,
Warwickshire, and Wiltshire, and very little appears to come
from the home counties. To furnish some idea of distance I
have marked on a map straight measurements from London for
25, 50, 100, and 150 miles. Of course, actually the distances by rail
from London are much greater. But even this rough and ready
method gives an approximate idea of the great distances which
Finsbury milk travels before it reaches the milkshop. The distances
of the 281 places, in straight measurement, are as follows:—
Within the 25 mile radius equal 2 ( 0.7 per cent.)
,, 50 „ „ 13 ( 4.6 „ )
100 „ „ 111(39.5 „ )
„ 150 „ „ 145(51.9 „ )
,, 200 ,, ,, 10 ( 3.5 ,, )
It is evident that 95 per cent, of all the milk which comes into
Finsbury from the country must of necessity spend several hours on
the railway. From one cause or another this period of transit
from farm to milk-shop averages 10 to 12 hours. An example
will illustrate what actually happens. A certain contractor in
Finsbury obtains his milk from a number of farms in the Derbyshire
and Staffordshire district. He possesses a more or less correct list
of the farms with which he deals, and a correct list of his milk
agents through whom he does his business. He receives between
1,000 and 1,500 gallons of milk daily, and it is delivered in ordinary
milk churns at Euston or St. Pancras Stations early in the morning.
At R., in Staffordshire, he has an agent who obtains milk from some
half dozen farms within three or four miles of E. railway station.
Milking takes place between 4 and 6 p.m., and the milk is strained,
and some of it cooled, and placed in churns and sent to R. railway
station. The milk undergoes various vicissitudes on the railway
(whose company does not provide refrigerator cars for its ordinary
milk traffic), and eventually it arrives at Euston about three or four
o'clock in the morning. The milk contractor (with his vans) meets
the milk and distributes it, selecting so many churns for this van
and so many for that, and by six in the morning the milk is at the