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London County Council.
FRIED FISH SHOPS, FISH CURERS', AND MARINE
STORE DEALERS' PREMISES.
Report of the Medical Officer on the methods adopted for the conduct of the businesses of fried
fish seller, fish curer, and marine store dealer, and as to whether these businesses should
be added to the list of offensive businesses scheduled under Section 19 of the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891.
Ordered by the Public Health Committee to be printed, March 22nd, 1906.
The Business of a Fried Fish Seller.
The frying of fish has been a familiar source of annoyance and a cause of frequent complaint
in this country for the last half century. In London, as long ago as the Exhibition year of 1851,
there were a few fried fish shops, the situation of which can be vouched for by veterans in the
trade. Fifty years ago, however, fried fish was commonly sold in association with baked potatoes
(an oven being attached to the frying stove), or with bread, and the trade is said to have been
well-nigh revolutionised about thirty years ago when the practice of combining the sale of fried
fish with that of "a la mode," or chip, potatoes was introduced from France.
Mayhew ("London Labour and the London Poor"), writing in 1861, speaks of the preparation of
fried fish by street sellers as a trade then established for some years, and computes there were
then some three hundred persons carrying it on. He says:—"The fish fried by street dealers is
known as 'plaice dabs' and 'sole dabs,' which are merely plaice and soles—dab being a common
word for any flat fish. . . . The supply is known in the trade as 'friers,' and consists of the
overplus of a fishmonger's store, of what he has not sold overnight, and does not care to offer
for sale on the following morning, and therefore sends to the costermongers, whose customers
are chiefly among the poor. . . . .Many of the 'friers' are good . . . . but some
are very queer indeed, and they are consequently fried with a most liberal allowance of oil,
which will conceal anything . . . . The fish to be fried is first washed and gutted; the
fins, head, and tail are then cut off, and the trunk is dipped in flour and water, so that
in frying, oil being always used, the skin will not be scorched by the, perhaps, too violent
action of the fire, but merely browned. . . . . the fish is cooked in ordinary frying-pans.
. . . . The fried fish sellers live in some out-of-the-way alley, and not infrequently in
garrets ; for among even the poorest class there are great objections to their being fellow-lodgers on
account of the odour from the frying. . . . . Their residences are in some of the labyrinths of courts
and alleys that run from Gray's Inn-lane to Leather-lane, and similar places between Fetter and
Chancery Lanes. They are to be found, too, in the courts running from Cowcross-street, Smithfield,
and from Turnmill-street and Ray-street, Clerkenwell, also in the alleys about Bishopsgate-street
and the Kingsland-road, and some in the half-ruinous buildings near the Southwark anil Borough
Roads. . . . . A gin-drinking neighbourhood, one coster said, suits best, for people haven't their
smell so correct there."
From such humble origins the trade has grown to its present considerable dimensions, gradually
encroaching upon more and more respectable neighbourhoods, and appealing to a clientèle possessed
of more and more critical tastes. In 1888, 250 addresses of fried fish shops appear in the Post
Office Directory, and in 1906 this number has grown to 600, while the inquiries of the Council's
inspectors show that within the County of London the number of such shops is at least 1,057 and
probably extends to upwards of 1,200.
The annual amount of fish of all kinds brought into London is said to have increased from
some 90,000 tons in 1854 to considerably more than twice that amount at the present time, but
these figures afford no guide to the expansion of the fish-frying trade, which deals almost exclusively
with plaice, haddock, and, in less degree, skate. It may be noted that, according to
Mayhew, plaice and haddock constituted only about 10 per cent. of the wet fish annually consumed
in London fifty years ago, while in 1904 they constitute about 30 per cent. of the total wet fish
landed in England and Wales, and probably a larger percentage still of the fish consumed in
London. The great extension of the supply of cheap fish to the large towns is indicated by the
fact that the amount of fish carried by railway in England has increased from 250,000 tons in
1885 to 486,575 tons in 1904, while the aggregate net tonnage of first class trawlers has increased
from 19,030 in 1893, to 65,338 in 1904.
It might have been anticipated, perhaps, that as the trade gradually emerged from obscure
nlleys into the light of day, more and more objection would have been raised on the score of
2,000—21.5.06. [A. S. 78