A Reading Room & Library

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Billingsgate, library, philanthrophy

On the corner of Lower Thames Street and St. Mary at Hill stands a late Victorian red brick building which would not have merited a place in this blog if I had not noticed the lettering on the building on the St. Mary at Hill side. Halfway up the building, in large white letters, can the words ‘Reading Room & Library’ be seen. And at the same level as the reading room letters, but around the corner in Lower Thames Street, three spaces seem to have been left open for more words. Were they never put up, or were they removed at some point? It turns out to have been the latter.

In the old photograph above, you may just be able to make out that the lettering in the three spaces between the first and second floor read: Billingsgate Christian Mission. This organisation was set up in 1878 to combine the work of the former Billingsgate District Association with Christian missionary work within Billingsgate Fish Market, working from Weigh House Chapel, 31 King Street, until their new building was ready. This new building opposite the fish market was designed for the Billingsgate Christian Mission by the architect George Baines (1852-1934) and erected in 1889. In 1897, the mission set up a dispensary where free first aid was offered to those working in and around the market. The name of the organisation was then lengthened to the Billingsgate Christian Mission and Dispensary. Besides treating the workers at the market, they also trained nurses and missionary workers prior to going abroad. The British Journal of Nursing of 18 November, 1905, reports on the opening at the mission of an ophthalmic ward where on Tuesday evenings the “poorer working men are able to obtain the best advice” without having to lose half a day’s wages to go to the regular ophthalmic hospital.

A newspaper report⁽¹⁾ on a meeting held in connection with the laying of the memorial stones of the new mission premises relates that fourteen years before, the London City Mission had appointed an agent for ‘aggressive’ work in the district and that various agencies had been involved and that now (that is, in July 1889) “a well-chosen library of 1,000 volumes was established, a reading room and a day refuge” and that “Gospel services and temperance meetings were initiated”. The new Mission building was to combine many of these initiatives and was to include a coffee tavern, a Gospel hall, reading rooms, library and refuge. The ground floor also included a post office, but I presume that was not part of the Mission activities, but a commercial enterprise.

C. Oakey, Billingsgate from Within

In c. 1933, Charles Oakey, secretary to the Mission, wrote a book on the organisation, Billingsgate from Within, An Account of the Work Carried on at The Mission and Dispensary, in which he says that the Mission took care of both the physical and moral welfare of their ‘target group’ with temperance meetings, tract distribution, a Sunday school, sleeping accommodation and, where necessary, food, but above all, medical attention. No one was asked for a fee, but all contributions were gladly accepted. Oakey says that the first-aid department treated some 20,000 people yearly. The building was closed in 1990; most of its charitable work had relocated with the Fish Market to Canary Wharf.

What I unfortunately do not know is what books could be read in the Reading Room, but we may guess that Christian tracts made up the majority of the reading material. I have written to the LMA to ask if the records of the Mission contain any information on the library and if there is any insight into the library holdings to be had, I will share the information with you in an update.
UPDATE: No, there is nothing to be seen in the papers at the LMA to deduce what books they had, but LMA suggested asking the Fishmongers’ Company as they also hold records. Have asked, so to be continued.

(1) The Morning Post, 24 July 1889.

You may also like to read my post on Old Billingsgate Market

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Old Billingsgate Market

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Billingsgate, fish, Thames, weathervane

This fish market started life as a general market where coal, salt and other goods were traded, but seems to have become an exclusive fish market in the 17th century. The second part of the name suggests that it all started as a watergate, possibly as early as Roman times and it was certainly used as a small port by the Saxons. Where the first part came from is not entirely certain. It may have been that a man named Billing, Byllins or even Blynes owned the land or the right of the watergate where the fish were brought on land. Another – albeit very unlikely – suggestion is that the name comes from Belin or Belinus, a mythical British king. Whatever the origin of the name, up to the 15th century, fish was brought further upstream to Queenhithe (hithe means small port), but that meant navigating under London Bridge and over time, Billingsgate, to the east of the bridge, became more popular.

Billingsgate from W. Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 2, p. 48

In 1698/9, an Act of Parliament (10 & 11 William III, c.24) was passed to make Billingsgate “a free and open market for all sorts of fish whatsoever” as a reaction to extortionate practices by fishmongers who would not allow the itinerant fish sellers to buy their wares directly from the fishermen but only from them – at inflated prices of course. The Act installed quality controls, regulated the tolls that could be asked from fishermen offloading their cargo and also made sure that fish bought at the market could be sold elsewhere. For the protection of the English fishermen, no foreign vessel was allowed to offer fish to the market, with one exception: live eels could be sold by Dutch fishermen. Please note that the Act does not speak of fish caught by foreigners, just of fish brought on land by foreigners, which allowed for so-called carriers or hatch-boats to collect fish from any fishermen, for instance at Gravesend or Dover, and bring it to the market. In 1840 the Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction (volume 36) alleged that one third of fish brought to Billingsgate was actually caught by foreigners.

At first, the market stalls were individual wooden sheds or booths which stood haphazardly in the area of the dock, but by the middle of the 19th century, a grander scheme was envisioned. The first purpose-built building, designed by John Jay, was erected in the 1850 and stood between Lower Thames Street and the riverside. The building quickly proved to be too small and was replaced in 1876 by the arcaded market hall designed by the City Architect Sir Horace Jones.

Jones’s Billingsgate Fish Market from Illustrated London News, 30 Sept. 1876

Billingsgate Prize Puzzle from Punch

The ever increasing trade not only required a larger building, but also better access roads away from the City centre. In 1883, Punch already ridiculed the traffic congestion near the market by publishing a puzzle listing four problems of which numbers one and two sum up to problem nicely: 1. How to get into the market; 2. How to get out of the market. But it took until 1982 for the market to be moved to its present location in the Docklands area. The traders, especially the women, of the market were known for their coarse language and swearing; opprobrious and foul-mouth language is called ‘Billingsgate discourse’ according to Benjamin Martin’s Lingua Britannica Reformata of 1754. But the market also made a great subject for depiction by artists such as William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson.

Thomas Rowlandson, Procession of the Cod Company
©The Trustees of the British Museum

William Hogarth, The Shrimp Girl
©The National Gallery

Billingsgate came in for a lot of negative reactions from travellers. Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the market in 1857 and commented that it was “a dirty, evil-smelling, crowded precinct, thronged with people carrying fish on their heads, and lined with fish-shops and fish-stalls, and pervaded with a fishy odour. The footwalk was narrow, —as indeed was the whole street,— and filthy to travel upon”.⁽¹⁾ Warnings on what to wear were also in order, “Let the visitor beware how he enters the market in a good coat, for, as sure as he goes in in broad cloth, he will come out in scale armour. They are not polite at Billingsgate, as all the world knows, and ‘by your leave’ is only a preliminary to your hat being knocked off your head by a bushel of oysters or a basket of crabs”.⁽²⁾ Have a look here for more lively descriptions of the market.

Did you know that George Orwell worked at Billingsgate for a while? “When a porter is having trouble to get his barrow up, he shouts ‘Up the ‘ill!’ and you spring forward (there is fierce competition for the jobs, of course) and shove the barrow behind. The payment is ‘twopence an up’. They take on about one shover-up for four hundredweight, and the work knocks it out of your thighs and elbows, but you don’t get enough jobs to tire you out. Standing there from five till nearly midday, I never made more than 1/6d”.⁽³⁾ He used his knowledge in Keep the Aspidistra Flying where Gordon Comstock tries his hand at the barrow-pushing game, but he did not last long and had to fall back on the charity of his sister.⁽⁴⁾

Old Billingsgate Market, the 1877 building that is, has fortunately not fallen foul of the demolition hammer and is now a hospitality and events venue. The weathervanes on top of the building can still be admired. If you want to have a look at the new market at Canary Wharf, you will have to get up early as it is only open between 4am and 9.30am.⁽⁵⁾

Billingsgate weathervane

(1) Nathaniel Hawthorne , The English Note-Books, 15 Nov. 1857.
(2) Dr. Andrew Wynter, ‘The London Commissariat’, Quarterly Review, No. cxc, vol. xcv 1854.
(3) George Orwell, Diary, 19 Sept. to 8 Oct. 1931. Quote is taken from hoppicking.wordpress.com.
(4) George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, (London, Penguin Books), 2000, p. 54.
(5) Official site can be found here.

You may also like to read the post on the Billingsgate Christian Mission.