Miscellany: The London Markets

Last Saturday evening I went with our friend, Henry Colman, the agricultural traveller, and ex-Governor Davis. to see the London population. The exGovernor seemed in fine health, and he is a man of whose looks one may be proud any where. I congratúlate him on having escaped the disgrace of being nominated, and perhaps elected, on the same ticket with a slaveholder and duellist. He may well leave such an honor to ajesuitical, colonizing presbyterian. But to the sight. We proceeded across theold Westminster bridge to a street on the sunny side, called Lambeth Marsh. and there we saw the population of London - a vast quantity of it, between the hours of 11 and 12- a population of tens of thousands which does not go to bed till the short hours, if indeed it has any bed to go to. This wido McAdamised street, for half a mile in length, is in fact nothing but a market resorted to chiefly by the poorer class of people. It is an interminable vista of shops or stalls for the saleof meat, bread, beer, potatoes, pots and kettles, and cheap clothing. The sidewalks are covered with little stands of the minor dealers, and standing in the street you will see not a few other still smaller dealers, the counters of whose shops are slüng about their necks. or in the case of the women, singularly balanced in front by a broad strap around the hips. The long street, lighted with extravagantly flaring gas torches, is one moving mass of people, about three-fourths women, sharply looking out profitably to sell or to buy a dinner for the morrow. The laboring people being paid their week's wages on Saturday night, accounts for their being seen in the greatest force on that evening. And yet one sees almost as great a crowd again on Sabbath morning from 8 to 9 o'clock. It is a burthened and bruised and not over tidily washed popuïation that we see h'ere. The great appetite seems to be for meat and beer. - The stupidity imbibed with the latter "rays darkness" through the faces of the niillion. Surely we do not see any where ïn America, unless it be in some parts of Albany, such perfecily unsentimentalces. They are enough to make a Muse go into bysterics. As to meat, England is carnivorous. Dr. Graham would vex Iiimself to death here. The vista of sláughtered animáis and dangling fragmènts of animáis in this strect would be awful to him. But go to Smithfield on Monday morning You will see acres and acres of sheep, to say nothing of beef cattle, cramined togclher in countless pens - certainly, I should say, not Iess than three acres of solid, compact sheep. Bv Tucsday morning they will be hanging in thousands of butchers' shops, some six or eight in a shop, or rather in front of the shops, skinned nicely all exccpt their heads, which are left on with their eyes open and the blood trickling trom their noses, for the dclightand gratificaron of this carnivorous people. Betvveen two splendid plate glass windows, for the display of rich shawls and fancy millinery, you pérhaps fincl the butchers' cqually magnificent shop, with the six or eight bloody nosed fat weathers displayed at full bcfore the window. By Monday morning, London has made an end of all this - has swallowed its mutton-chops and licked its wolf-chops, and is ready for another three acres of sheen.After al], there is a sad multitudc that do not get any too much meat. Tiiosc vo noticcd in Lambeth Marsh scemed to buy on the most ecpnomical scale. Here n poor woman contented herself with a sheep's head; there another with a bone that 'vould not make an extravagantly rich soup. There was a relail trade in very small pieces whieh seemed to have been cutup a good while - indeed, it looked in somc cases like a second-hand trade in tbc refuse bits f rom more fashionable shops. The price of mutton varies from 5 pcnce to 8 pence - 10 to 16 cents - and of beef from 12 to 20 cents per pound. - For the sustcnnnce of dogs and cats, of which, especially the latter, even the poorest Londoners are fond, there is a separate meat trade, having separate shops.. People who are .so poor or economical that they cannot aflbrd meat from their own piafes for their dog.s and cats; are the putrons of these establishment. - They use the flesh of horses and the entrails of other slaughtered animáis. - The horse flesh is parboiled and cut into bits to sell for a half-penny or farthing each. And the entrails are washed, scaldedand pinned up into little halls with askewer. A very poor woman lodged in a garret or cellar, will cheerfully spend a farthing or half penny a day on her beloved cat, which shares with her an abode from which mice have long since been starved out. Some of the traders in ibis line are itinerant, or perhapssend round to supply a regular circle of customers. It was a good while after I saw this business goingon, before I understoodit. A man, awfully shabby, with a basket full of these bits oí" meat, each piece having a Hule stick stiiek tlirough it, cries shrilly, and to me unintelligibly, before a door, "C-a-fs mea't." The door opcns, and the first face that appears is the cat'Sj the next her mistress. The woman an.ously dickers for the meat, and the caí mcamvhilc purs and rubs herself most lovingly and persuasively ogainst both the high contracting partios. I could not understand, till a friendassu red me it was for her special benefit, why puss should manifest so much interest in the bargain. So much for some of the peculiar customs of the poor.