View report page

accommodating the vans and carts, &c. attending the Market.
After much discussion the Corporation finally determined to ask
Parliament for power to appropriate for an inland Fish Market, the
building (nearly completed) of the Central Fruit and Vegetable
Market at Farringdon Street, leaving the question of improving
Billingsgate in abeyance.
In June, 1881, the Metropolitan Board of Works had, at the
instigation of the Home Secretary, taken up the question of the Fish
Market accommodation of the Metropolis. The Board decided that
Billingsgate Market was inadequate, that the deficiency of Market
accommodation has a prejudicial effect in limiting the supply and increasing
the price of an important article of food, and that the Board,
if the necessary powers were granted, would lose no time in providing
such additional Market, so as to afford a cheaper and
more abundant fish supply to which the inhabitants of the Metropolis
are entitled. Also that the authority given to the Corporation
by Charter, in the reign of Edward III. is out of date and acts
prejudicially to the interest of the 4,000,000 inhabitants of the Metropolis,
and should by legislation be so altered as to give power
for the establishment of Local Markets in any parts of the Metropolis
for all kinds of food, whether animal or vegetable.
The advantages of the Shadwell site and the necessity of
providing additional waterside market accommodation were pressed
upon the attention of the Metropolitan Board by the Board, and
the Committee to which the matter had been referred recommended
the Metropolitan Board to approve of a site in Blackfriars Road,
between Southwark Street and Park Street, for a Fish Market,
containing about 6½ acres, at an estimated cost of about £830,000.
This report was rejected by the Board, which thus virtually confessed
its inabilility to deal with the question,
In the meantime a Committee had been appointed by your
Board to confer with delegates from the Vestry of St. George's in the
East and other Districts. The conference passed resolutions that
the Market accomodation in the Metropolis was defective, and that