3-071-036 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Landing fish at Billingsgate Market, 1881. 'It is understood that the Corporation of the City will maintain Billingsgate Market for the trade in fish coming to London by the Thames; and that the market in Farringdon-road will be chiefly for what is brought to town by railway, though it may also become a central depot for some part of the fish landed at Billingsgate...It is at five o'clock in the morning, all the year round, that the great bell is rung, and the iron gates of the market are unbarred, both on the river side and on the City side; when crowds of labourers in smock frocks, with leather caps, enter from Lower Thames-street, while others come ashore from boats on the river, to assist in quickly unloading the vessels moored alongside the wharf. A whole fleet of North Sea fishing-boats,...with Dutch eel-boats, and with Thames barges, full, in the season, of shrimps from the Kentish shores, of lobsters and crabs, of oysters and other bivalves, lie in the river fronting Billingsgate...Into each of these are lowered two timber gangways, up one of which climb the porters with trunks of fish upon their heads, while down the other trip those returning with the empty boxes or trunks, as they are indifferently called, ready for a fresh load'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.