Commerce in 1900 London: Commodity Exchanges

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London 1905 Brass Nautical Sextant & Black Antique -nautical collection
29 Jan 2012 at 11:39am
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German Design 4" Black Antique Nautical Sextant -LONDON 1917 ROYAL NAVY SEXTANT
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In 1900 The Baltic was a special Exchange where cereals, timber, and Russian produce were dealt with on a vast scale.

The old South Sea House, which had been the Excise Office, was burned down in 1826.

In 1855-6, the newer building with frontage to Threadneedle Street was sold for £55,700, and became the business premises of the Baltic, whose merchants had previously conducted their affairs at the Baltic Coffee House, in Sweeting's Rents, until that thoroughfare was swept away for the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, when the Baltic was removed to Threadneedle Street.

It was at the height of its reputation about 1840, when Mr. Richard Thornton and Jeremiah Harman were the monarchs of the trade.

By 1900 the Baltic had sold their premises, which were completely demolished, to the British Linen Company Bank at a price which yielded to the owners of £100 stock (which cost originally but £50), no less a sum than £750.

The Baltic was now temporarily housed in the Great Eastern Railway buildings, until their new Exchange, which would take two years to complete, was ready for them in Jeffrey Square, St. Mary Axe.

Coal was sold at the Exchange in Lower Thames Street, facing Billingsgate, where whole cargoes of Wallsends, East Hartlepools, Hiltons, Wharncliffes, etc., not to speak of enormous "parcels" of railway-borne "black diamonds," changed hands in a very short time.

The building itself was worthy of more notice than it usually received.

Its vestibule was richly decorated with arabesques; and the rotunda, round which were several tiers of galleries, contained many paintings representing the English rivers associated with the coal trade, such as the Thames, Tyne, Humber, etc.; while its peculiar but appropriate ornamentation was that of fossilized palms, ferns, and giant reeds found in the coal-beds.

Wool sales periodically came off at the Exchange in Coleman Street, in a hall not unlike a small theatre, or rather operating-room in a hospital, the seats rising one above the other to a gallery.

The seller was below, at a rostrum, and during the sales the atmosphere was pervaded with the peculiar odour of fleeces, while the samples dragged promiscuously from the bales much resembled London snow-flakes.

Hops were exclusively sold at a special Exchange - a fine large airy building - in the Borough, over the water at Southwark, where American, Californian, Australian and Bavarian hops competed with the familiar home-grown article known as East and Mid Kents, the Weald of Kents, Sussex, Farnhams, Worcesters, etc.

Mark Lane, close to Fenchurch Street Railway Station had two Exchanges synonymous all over the globe with the Corn Trade.

The older building consisted of a Doric colonnade resembling that of a Roman villa, but with the centre impluvium roofed in.

Communicating with it was the glass-roofed, grey-pillared new Exchange, spacious and lofty, with a Grecian Doric portico.

On market-days, i.e. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the numerous stands were filled to overflowing with samples of grain and flour (the test for gluten in the latter being to make a paste of it with some water, and for wheat, to chew it), and were surrounded by crowds of corn-merchants, factors, farmers, millers and brokers.

At the close of the day the floor was strewed with the samples that, after inspection, the buyers had tossed away.

After the floor was cleaned up, the sweepings were sold for poultry food.

In Lime Street, No. 1, on the right-hand side from Leadenhall Street, was the Hudson's Bay Company - long since removed from Fenchurch Street - where the costly products of their Hyperborean regions were disposed of at stated periods, and where a wealth of furs and bird-skins could be seen in the rough, such as only the great markets of Germany or Russia could boast of, and which ranged in value from musk-rats of a few pence each, to rare silver-fox and rich sea-otter, worth, if perfect, £300 or £400 apiece.

Feathers were sold in Mincing Lane; of these the most expensive were the osprey, the heron, and, par excellence, the egret, sold by the ounce weight, the 1900 quotation for an egret being about £4, 10s. per ounce.

Ostrich being again in fashion, the competition at sales was keen, sometimes in one month as much as 61,000 lbs. of these being offered, representing a sum of £157,500.

As 150 to 200 feathers go to the pound, the number of plumes passing through the London market must be prodigious.

Ivory was sold at the London Docks warehouse, generally on the fourth Tuesday of the month during the season, when the visitor could learn the meaning of such mysterious terms as hard and soft teeth, billiard-ball pieces, bagatelle pieces, points for balls, cut hollow cores, scrivelloes, ball scrivelloes, centres, etc., and also realize why ivory articles were so dear, for he would see "cut points" of first-rate quality, 2 3/8 to 3 inches diameter for billiard-balls, fetching £72 to £95 per cwt.

The total quantity of tobacco consumed in the United Kingdom in 1900 was 90,000,000 lbs., a large proportion of which came into this country by way of London.

(Liverpool was the largest centre of the tobacco trade in the United Kingdom, the stock averaging 80,000,000 lbs., or more than half the total amount "bonded" in the country.)

Monthly sales were held at the rooms of Grant Chambers and Co., 37, Fenchurch Street, up a little court, an old-established concern, and the only place where tobacco was disposed of by auction, most of it being privately sold.

Many countries then exported the fragrant weed.

Havana, Manila, Virginia, and Ohio no longer had it all their own way as in the old days; Sumatra, Turkey, Greece, Cuba, Algeria, Java, China, Japan, Mexico, Paraguay being contributors to the English market, while in the matter of price, Havana tobacco, once at the top of the market, was now excelled by brands from Mexico and Sumatra.

In Monument Buildings, behind the Monument, and also at Botolph House, Eastcheap, were the fine show-rooms and salerooms of Keeling and Hunt, where foreign fruits of all kinds were sold, oranges and lemons in enormous quantities, and nuts of every imaginable size and shape, from the humble barcelona and monkey-nut to the costly sapucaya from South America, and the ever-popular cocoa-nut.

In Mincing Lane were the far-famed commercial sale-rooms, a handsome new building with large windows, where the business of the Mart of Nations surely culminated.

All the choice products of earth, foreign and colonial, were sold here by auction; sugar, tea, coffee, rice, jute, spices, oils, and wines and spirits, with medicaments to cure a too free indulgence in some of the foregoing.

It is not generally known that there were held here at fortnightly intervals, auctions of crude drugs, for which the Metropolis was the great market centre.

On arrival, the most valuable of these were stored in the London and St. Katherine's Docks' warehouses, from many of which samples were drawn for exhibition in the drugbrokers' show-rooms at Crutched Friars on the day before the auction; but the most costly ones were shown in bulk in their original packages, and very curious they were:

• Honduras sarsaparilla in neat bundles in a "seron" composed of two pieces of hide tied together with thongs
• monkey-skins and gourds filled with the dried juice of aloes
• rhubarb in tinlined cases
• horns containing the excretion of the civet-cat;
• camphor
• honey
• chincona
• shellac
• peppermint
• the deadly strophanthus from Zambesi and the Yaboon district of Africa

and other strange and unfamiliar products of distant lands, were sold in Mincing Lane, and afterwards distributed to other centres of civilization.

At the Commercial Sale Rooms there was an annual auction of various goods, most of the articles having been found "undeclared " among the private effects of the passengers and crews of different ships coming to the port of London, and confiscated.

They ranged from bonnet-pins to spirits of all descriptions, including old iron, seamen's chests, cigars, tea, tobacco, and wine, and soap containing spirit!

After a sale of any article had been effected, a deposit of twenty-five per cent was demanded.

Subsequently the goods were "measured," and the purchase was completed.

Apparently, the principal buyers were small shopkeepers, publicans, and some few brokers.

The major portion of the interesting and valuable collection of goods offered for sale, were at the Queen's Warehouse, Custom House, Lower Thames Street, the remainder being stored at the varied docks.

At Bull Wharf, Queenhithe, not far from St. Paul's, was the Shell Exchange or Sale Room.

Here shells from India, Australia, Japan, Tahiti, New Zealand, Torres' Straits, the Persian Gulf, Queensland and Western Australia were sold six times a year; buyers coming from Sheffield, Birmingham, and the Continent.

The shells were used in the manufacture of buttons, cutlery, and inlaying, and their value ranged from 10s. per cwt. to £10 per cwt., choice specimens sometimes realizing £20 each; the best came from Western Australia and Queensland.

Last of the Exchanges, but almost the most important, was the "Shipping," located at Nos. 19 and 21, Billiter Street, on the east side, where interests of our great mercantile marine were well looked after.

Next: Mercantile London in 1900: The Docks