PRICE OF FISH.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
SIR,—I was yesterday greatly surprised by reading an article in your va- luable paper, headed "Fish," in which you launch out against fishmongers, without, I am sure, having just grounds for so doing. In the first place, you say, that fishmongers are not content with a fair remunerating profit, such as the nature of the commodity justifies; I can assure you, Sir, ii a fishmonger did not get more profit by other kinds of fish than he does by soles, he would have but a poor sole to walk upon. For example, good middling-sized land. carriage soles have been selling, for the last six weeks, at 6d. per pair. Perhaps, Mr. Spectator, you are not aware of the contents of a pot of soles—it is, then, about thirty to fiftypair of soles, out of which number if you get more than ten pair of saleable soles, you may think yourself fortunate; the rest are tech. nically termed slips, for which you do not obtain more than twopence per pair. You then go on to say that the fishmonger foregoes the profit he might obtain (by supplying the poor at half-price) by throwing it away : whoever told you this, Sir, uttered that which is not the fact. I can assure you, Sir, during nearly all the last winter, a biuhel of sprats might have been bought at from 6d. to Is. per bushel, yet the poor would not buy them; and the greater part were sold for manure ; and in the bushel there was enough wholesome food or eighteen persons' dinner. Again, during the laSt week, the best barrelled cod has been selling at one penny per pound. But the fact is, Sir, the poor will not buy fish : if they will, they can get it cheap enough.
I am much inclinedto think your Ramsgate correspondent has deceived you : he says two vessels have carried to Billingsgate within the last month 16.0pots of soles for thetehteri fast, &c., for Which the owners received 6s. per pot. I 'only wonder they received any thing, coming by water, and the wind as it was , nearly all last month. Why were not the soles sent in the usual manner, by laud-carriage, as seven-eighths of the soles received and sold in this market are, and are regularly posted up to town ? I dollope your readers will consult their household-books, and look to the prices they have been giving for fish, and then let them try Billingsgate. The soles of which I speak are caught in the afternoon, brought on shore on the evening of the same day, and by six o'clock the next morning are in Billingsgate-a distance of seventy-two miles . by land, and sometimes more. I now call upon you, Mr. Spectator, to show that you are impartial, by publishing this letter. You have made a charge, and a serious one, too, against a body of men who are as respectable as any body of men, be they :horn they may.
But it has this moment struck me, your Ramsgate correspondent knows as much about the carriage of fish as he does about Billingsgate. He, perhaps, knows more about Hungerford Market. I believe the fishmongers of Bil- lingsgate have little to fear from the revival of Hungerford Market ; and that they think so, is proved by their not opposing the bill for the restoration of the same.
Let Cheap Clubs look to whom they employ to buy their fish. I have now only to beg that you will give insertion to these lines in your columns, and prove, by so doing, that you are open to all and governed by none ; and you may depend that the foregoing are facts. I am, Mr. Spectator, Yours, a constant reader, and [Our arguments against the fishmongers (not fish-salesmen), in the article • alluded to, and in several others, on the same subject, do not turn on the in- formation supplied by correspondents, but on facts corning within our own . observation. We have traced a fish from Billingsgate to Bond Street, and
• marked its alterations in price as it moved westward, until from ninepence it
• had swelled to three shillings the pound. With regard to the correspondent above alluded to, we have only to state, that his letter came to us with the Ramsgate post-mark on it ; and that we have precisely the same evidence of its authenticity, and of the veracity of its author, as we have of the letter of 'A Fish Salesman."]
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