London's Food Supply in 1900

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his comprehensive look at London at the turn of the twentieth century in Imperial London, published in 1901. Here he looks at the supply of food from all parts of the globe:

The most far-seeing political economist at the beginning of the nineteenth century could hardly have pictured a time a hundred years from that date, when 41,000,000 of human beings would occupy these islands (6,000,000 residing in Greater London), towards whose daily sustenance almost every country on the globe would contribute.

In 1800, when the continental ports were closed, bread-stuffs were sent over from America; but, as a rule, if harvests were good, there was no necessity for importations on anything like a large scale, and, with the exception of tea, coffee, sugar, spices and wines, practically everything eatable and drinkable was produced at home.

The better to understand how things had changed since then, and how utterly dependent the Empire's capital was in 1900 upon other countries for its food, let the Londoner go down to Gravesend, and from the pier-head observe the number and size of the vessels that passed by, laden with every kind of produce from the North, East, South and West; fleets of steamers with immense carrying capacity - London's floating larders!

As regards the staff of life, roughly speaking, three-quarters of the amount of wheat required for our annual consumption was brought to us from the ends of the earth; and should this foreign supply be interrupted, or cut off, we should be starved out in a very few weeks.

Then as to beef and mutton, what would our forefathers have thought in 1800 - when the cult of British beefsteaks and porter was at its culminating point - could they have foreseen the following hard facts relating to the dead-meat trade in 1900? viz. that the bona fide English supply was gradually, but surely, diminishing; that every annual report repeated the story that the wholesale market depended more and more upon the breeders abroad; and, that of the meat sold in Smithfield, only 42.8 per cent was home-killed, the balance 57.2 per cent being imported from the Continent, America North and South, and Australasia.

Almost the same might be said of pork, and its resultants, bacon and lard, of which the United States and Canada sent supplies by thousands of tons every year.

The vast quantities of tinned provisions of every kind, from Australia, America, etc, poured into London, together with salted meats, etc, are not taken into account in this estimate.

As to poultry, - fowls, ducks, turkeys and geese, - one would imagine the Briton could dispense with importations, yet not only did Ireland and France send over, as of old, enormous quantities, but Italy catered largely for us.

Holland, Belgium, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Germany, the United States and Canada, and the distant Antipodes continued to send poultry, hares, and the ubiquitous rabbit into the Metropolis in ever-increasing quantities, until the puzzled housekeeper was hard put to distinguish in an ordinary provision-shop between a Surrey chicken or Aylesbury duck freshly killed, and one that last saw the light of day in some continental village three or four weeks previously, or quacked its farewell to earth in New South Wales forty or fifty days before.

In the course of each year Australia generally sent to London about 500,000 crates of rabbits, each package containing twenty-four of these furred little animals.

Game, and other birds, came to us in myriads - pheasants, etc, from America; ptarmigan, capercailzie, etc, from Scandinavia; partridges, gelinottes, etc, from Russia; wild-fowl from Holland; pigeons from France; the toothsome quail from Malta and Egypt; and the ortolan - costliest of table delicacies, twelve francs being often charged at a first-class restaurant for a single choice specimen - from South and Central France.

In the matter of dairy-produce, cheese, butter, eggs (milk was but little imported, except in a condensed form), the outsider would soon have his own way - Canada and the United States, Holland, Denmark, etc, running the grazing districts of England and Ireland very hard in the first two commodities; while Australian butter of excellent quality, to the enormous extent of 25,000 tons - a large proportion being destined for London - was imported during the eight months up to April 30 1900, beating even Denmark, whose progress had been phenomenal.

Eggs seemed to arrive in London from every country under the sun; from Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and would soon no doubt come in great quantities from the Antipodes.

The amount of stuff we consumed is bewildering; and the sums we paid away abroad in hard cash for what ought to be produced at home, amounted to millions sterling per annum.

It had been estimated that the eggs consumed in England in one year would fill 40,000 railway trucks, one-third only being British, and Board of Agriculture statistics show that in 1900 we imported butter to the extent of 17,000,000 lbs. weight, cheese 5,500,000 lbs., eggs 5,000,000 in number, poultry 800,000 lbs. weight, and of margarine 2,500,000 lbs.

Even the harvest of our British sea fisheries, which in 1900 was estimated to reach some 725,000 tons in weight, valued at over £9,600,000 sterling, had, so far as London was concerned, to be supplemented from abroad, Billingsgate receiving eels, smelts, flat-fish, mussels and their congeners from Holland; lobsters from Norway; dried fish from North America; and oysters from France and Portugal; while from Brittany, garnered on its dangerous coast from Nantes to Brest, London got the piquant sardine, which we had at last learned to "prepare" from the sprats and youthful pilchards of our southern shores.

The Metropolis used to be surrounded by large tracts of market-gardens, which provided vegetables sufficient for its wants, at Camberwell, Fulham, Battersea, Mortlake, etc; but these had gradually disappeared, and our growers had established themselves at some distance from town, where the heavy railway rates, added to foreign competition, fatally handicapped them.

Vegetables, such as asparagus, green peas, tomatoes, new potatoes, cauliflowers, etc, were now brought to a remarkable extent from over the seas.

Of the latter, extraordinary shipments arrived in London in 1900 from Boulogne, one vessel alone carrying 70 tons, or 63,000 heads of that vegetable.

Mushrooms, which we could easily grow, came from France, but the importation was decreasing as the home production forged ahead.

The same ought to apply to the popular tomato; yet in 1900 32,000 tons of this vegetable, or fruit - which is it? - were sent into Great Britain (the Metropolis taking the lion's share) from various places over the seas.

The Channel Islands, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, the Canary Islands, the Azores, the Cape of Good Hope, Australasia, America, Canada and the West Indies, might all be regarded as London's winter gardens, and every year witnessed better organization on the part of the foreign producers, and greater facilities for transit by rail and steamer, so that even in the matter of the humble onion, cabbage, carrot and turnip, the foreigner managed to more than hold his own with any market-gardener living within twenty miles of St. Paul's.

Thousands of tons of fruits found their way to Covent Garden Market; apples and pears from the Channel Islands, France, Holland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, America, Canada, Australia and Tasmania; grapes and melons from Spain; the former, with peaches, apricots, plums, etc, from the Cape, California and the Antipodes; pines and bananas from the Canaries, Madeira, the Azores and the West Indies; oranges from California and Australia, the Azores, Jamaica, Florida, Valencia, Sicily, Malta and Palestine.

As to drinkables, we were no longer dependent upon France, Spain and Madeira for wine; as Australia, California and Italy were proving themselves able to compete for our patronage, and their output to the port of London yearly increased.

For tea, coffee and cocoa, we necessarily depended entirely upon importations; but the national supply of beer was but to an infinitesimal degree supplemented from abroad.

Lastly, as to ice - London in 1901 received 250,000 tons from the glaciers of Norway, chiefly from round and about the Christiania Fiord, where, during the first three months of the year, the chilling harvest was gathered.

So necessary was it to tradesmen, especially during a heat-wave, that, should the threatened investment of London take place in the summer, the absence of ice might hasten the capitulation.