Doctrinal opportunism is satirized in Du Maurier's picture of the vicar of a seaside town who was "High Church during the season, and Low all the rest of the year." Much in the same spirit is the list of qualifications necessary for a curate in a country parish: the chief desideratum being that he must be able to play tennis with the vicar's daughters. These jests were almost common form at the close of the Victorian age. A more serious situation arose in 1885 owing to the demand for Disestablishment put forward by the Radicals, but Punch refused to treat it seriously. His cartoon, "A False Alarm," shows a chorus of Conservative owls – including Lord Salisbury and Mr. Cross – crying, "Too-whit, too-whoo, Church in Danger."

The Bishop (to his youngest and favourite son): "Now, why shouldn't you adopt the stage as a profession, Theodore? Lord Ronald Beaumanoir, who's a year younger than yourself, is already getting sixteen guineas a week for low comedy parts at the Criterion! The duchess told me so herself only yesterday!"

Punch appends an extract from a speech by Mr. Chamberlain expressing his incredulity of any settlement of this question being arrived at in the Parliament about to assemble. This view is further developed in a burlesque forecast, "The Disestablisher's Diary," with sensational and circumstantial details of the passing of Disestablishment, the conversion of Westminster Abbey into a Coffee Hall, bishops begging in the streets, riots of country clergy, etc. In 1887 the scheme of the late Dean, then Archdeacon or "Harsh Deacon" Farrar (as Punch called him), for a Church House as a Jubilee memorial roused Punch's violent animosity. It was giving a stone to those who needed bread – the poor clergy. In the cartoon on "Mammon the mendicant," who was sending round the hat, John Bull declines to give anything to the seedy cleric for the Church House: "I'd rather put it into your own [hat]."

A long article is devoted in 1890 to the trial of Bishop King of Lincoln, but beyond facetious descriptions of the eminent counsel engaged the only point made is that the bishop never came near the place. In the same year another bishop, Dr. Jayne of Chester, earned Punch's unstinted approval for encouraging dancing among the working classes. At a conference of the Girls' Friendly Society the bishop had remarked that, "until they were prepared to introduce basket-making into London Society as a substitute for quadrilles and waltzes he was not disposed to accept it as an equivalent for balls and dances among girls of other classes." This liberality of view prompted Punch to cut a series of ecstatic capers over the pluck and common sense of "my pithy Jayne."

In agreeable contrast to these punning comments on Church matters are the tributes to two remarkable men, widely sundered in temperament, physique and doctrine, who both passed away in January, 1892. The memorial lines on Cardinal Manning insist that he was much more than

A great priest, shrewd marshaller of men,
Subtle in verbal fence with tongue or pen,
Ascetic of the cell —

He is extolled as the friend of the poor, the struggling weak, the toiler for temperance, the hastener on of light: —

In many a fray when Right's at odds with Might,
Might's foes will miss their friend.

Homage to Spurgeon

It should be remembered that Punch did not easily applaud Temperance advocates in this period, when he avowed himself as "capable of special sympathy with the publicans." Punch owed an amende to Spurgeon as well as to Manning, and made it handsomely. He recognizes Spurgeon's sturdiness and geniality: —

You spoke a potent word
In the World's ear and listening thousands heard.

Spurgeon stirred the throng, not fastidious or sensitive souls. He was honest, robust, Puritan but not ascetic: —

Crudeness may chill, and confidence offend,
But manhood, mother-wit and selfless zeal,
Speech clear as light and courage true as steel,
Must win the many. Honest soul and brave,
The greatest drop their garlands on your grave.

Gertrude: "You never do anything now, Margaret, but go to all sorts of Churches, and read those old Books of Theology. You never used to be like that."

Margaret: "How can I help it, Gerty? I'm writing a Popular Novel!"

At all points Spurgeon was poles apart from the "Adulated Clergyman," one of Punch's "Modern Types" held up to contempt in the previous year, and noted in another section – who develops out of a mincing effeminate boy into an unconventional emotional preacher, ferocious in pulpit denunciations, but full of honeyed sweetness in fashionable drawing-rooms; adored by weak women, distrusted and despised by normal men.

A new rival to the pulpit, it may be noted in conclusion, had sprung up in the "theological romance." Mrs. Humphry Ward, whose Robert Elsmere appeared in 1888, was its most widely read representative. But perhaps her greatest title to our gratitude in this context is the fact that it was her recommendation which induced Messrs. Macmillan to publish Mr. Shorthouse's remarkable novel John Inglesant.

LONDON AND ITS GOVERNMENT

Growth and expansion rather than reconstruction was the leading feature of London in the period with which we are now concerned. The spreading of the "great wen," as Cobbett called it, went on in almost all directions, and the linking up of the once detached village of Kensington with Central London was followed by a remarkable extension of that typically Victorian suburb. In 1884 Punch described travellers journeying for hours and hours in a northerly or westerly direction, only to find that they had reached North Kensington or West Kensington, as the case might be. Already in 1876 he had noted the swallowing up of Brompton in South Kensington. Concurrently with this suburban expansion the disappearance or removal of many old landmarks went on apace. In 1876 Punch had suggested that Temple Bar should be removed by one of the elephants in the Lord Mayor's procession. The long contemplated removal took place in 1878, and the historic site was duly occupied by the pedestal bearing the much-criticized "Griffin," which led to abundant satirical comment in prose and verse and pictures. The block in the traffic had been removed, but the cartoon of "Alice in Blunderland" showed that from an architectural point of view Punch thought the remedy worse than the disease. Cremorne Gardens, the scenes of alternate revelries in high and low life, were closed in 1877, and the withdrawal of "Evans's" licence in 1879 was plaintively celebrated in the lament of a middle-aged Man about Town: —

Farewell the quiet chop! the kidneys poached!
Farewell the grizzled bones and the mixed drinks,
That made abstention virtue – O, farewell!
Farewell the ready waiter, the vague bill,
The nose-enlivening pinch, eye-winking smoke,
The kindly hand-shake, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of Paddy Green!
And O you ancient Basses, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamour counterfeit,
Farewell! – A fellow's occupation's gone!

– Othello improved.

In January, 1883, the old colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner was taken down, and on the night of August 12, 1884, was "removed by Messrs. Pickford in a specially constructed waggon drawn by ten horses to Aldershot." The old statue, universally condemned and ridiculed, which would have been removed immediately but for Wellington's own objection, had been allowed to de-decorate a splendid site for nearly forty years. Boehm's statue, which replaced it, dates from 1888. To turn from the grandiose to the homely, we may note that Punch vigorously espoused the cause of the cow-keepers in St. James's Park in 1885, and under the heading, "Wild Sports Near the Horse Guards," protested against the "chivvying from their milk-stalls of a lot of poor old women." One does not look for humour in the Annual Register, but the mention of this episode in that useful book of reference blends information with entertainment: —

September 1st, 1885. In pursuance of the orders of H.R.H. The Ranger, the stall-holders in St. James's Park, who represented the ancient "Milk Fair," held for nearly two centuries in the Mall, were ordered to close their booths and remove their cows. Two only of the stall-keepers refused to comply and after a strong protest in the newspapers, stating that some of the existing tenants had held stalls for more than a century [sic], the order for their immediate removal was relaxed and a compromise at length effected.

The respite granted to these interesting centenarians expired a few years later, and now the St. James's Park menagerie contains nothing larger than the pelicans.

Demolition and Innovation

The proposed demolition of Staple Inn in 1886 was peculiarly distasteful to Punch, who held all these old buildings in pious reverence, and inspired him to indite a ballad of remonstrance to the builder. As a matter of fact, the protest was premature, for the Prudential Assurance Company, into whose hands it passed by purchase, maintained the building as a relic of vanishing London. No such regrets as those awakened by the passing of Staple Inn were aroused by the announcement in 1887 that the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison were to be demolished. When the old Fleet prison was dismantled, Punch could indulge in legitimate rejoicing, because it marked the close of a harsh and cruel penal system – imprisonment for debt. Here it was only a case of structural and sanitary improvements. In ancient days there were prisons impressive by their dignity of design. Their purpose inspired the strange and sinister side of Piranesi's genius in his famous imaginative series of "Carcere." But a modern gaol can at best be an unobtrusive reminder of a still necessary evil.

Though no achievement comparable in size and importance to the scheme of the Thames Embankment is associated with this period, new architectural features were not wanting; foremost among them were Street's new Law Courts, the swan-song in stone of the Gothic revival; a group of buildings dignified in conception and treatment, but terribly handicapped by their internal discomforts and darkness. I have already spoken of the "Griffin." Cleopatra's Needle was at last set up on the Embankment in 1878, and remains to this day a standing proof of the doubtful wisdom of detaching ancient historic monuments from their surroundings. There is something forlorn in this relic of Ptolemaic Egypt, as it faces the winking sky signs of the Surrey side. To the late 'seventies belongs another architectural innovation destitute of beauty, and only remarkable for its size and height – Queen Anne's Mansions. The invincible conservatism of the English could not be more strikingly displayed than by the fact that after more than forty years Queen Anne's Mansions remains our solitary skyscraper. The El Dorado which this method of economizing space offers to landlords and builders has never been exploited. Some put it down to our sense of the æsthetic fitness of things; others to the paralysing effect of building laws, vested interests, and the dead hand of "ancient lights." Sir Martin Conway, as becomes one who has scaled high peaks in both hemispheres, has recently come forward as an apostle of altitude in architecture, but so far without much response. Punch had no quarrel with anything about Queen Anne's Mansions except their ugliness, and unreservedly withdrew the charge of irregular financial procedure which he had brought – on the strength of The Times– against the projector and original proprietor, Mr. Hankey.

But Queen Anne's Mansions were interesting in another way, for they marked the beginning of the system of residential flats, which has since revolutionized London life. Though Queen Anne's Mansions remain unique at the moment when I write, the flat system "came to stay," to be extensively used, exploited, and criticized. "Flats" however, as we understand the term, were devised for the convenience of the well-to-do or middle-class people. Among the contributions to the solving of the housing problem of the poor on the block system, the most notable in this period was the benefaction of Lord Iveagh, who in 1889 set aside £250,000 for the purpose, following the fine example set by the American millionaire, Peabody. Charing Cross Road, opened in February, 1887, was one of the first of the new thoroughfares which have changed the face of Central London. Punch was much concerned in 1883 by a report that tramways were about to invade Kensington; some years were to elapse before they were admitted to the Embankment, but Punch already complained in this year that it was being spoiled by railways and roughs. Trafalgar Square continued to excite his unflattering comments, but there is no public place in the world which lends itself to more criticism. As an American writer once remarked, the buildings seem to emphasize rather than to correct the slope, so that everything seems to be slithering down towards Whitehall. A notable addition was made to the Square in 1887 by the erection of the Gordon Memorial, and Punch records the curious fact that Thornycroft's statue was unveiled, without any formality, by Mr. David Plunket, Chief Commissioner of Works, in the presence of a few friends of the general.

National Opera Houses

The connexion of art with architecture was not very happy or impressive in these years. When the Royal College of Music was founded in 1882 with Sir George Grove, Punch's old friend, as Director, it was temporarily and inadequately housed in the buildings of the National Training School of Music, in which it had been merged. The move to the new buildings in Prince Consort Road did not take place till 1894. The annals of opera, so far as architecture is concerned, are positively disastrous. Mapleson, the once famous operatic impresario, projected a grand National Opera House on the Embankment; the first brick was laid by Mlle. Titiens in September, 1875, and the first stone of the building by the Duke of Edinburgh in December. But the patronage of "stars" and Royal Dukes could not conjure money out of the pockets of the investing public. The scheme languished, and in 1881 Punch records that the unfinished Opera House was being converted, not musically, into "flats." By the summer of 1884 the project collapsed entirely, and Punch's comments on "A Beggar's Opera House" are not without their point to-day: —

The sale by auction last week of what the retiring newspaper paragraph chronicling the melancholy fact described as the "materials of the unfinished Grand National Opera House on the Thames Embankment," cannot but afford food even to the least artistic mind for some rather disagreeable reflections. That after a six years' struggle, involving the sinking of something like £100,000 in hard cash, the speculative element, that ought to have been equal to the emergency in the first capital in the world, should have been contented to look on and smile, while, to quote once more the paragraph in question, "157 lots, the principal portion of which consisted of the iron girders and columns used in the formation of the pit and box circles, originally costing, it is said, £40,000," were knocked down for "the small sum of £218" is something not very far removed from a national disgrace.

The building was finally demolished in 1888.

Another scheme which also ended disastrously, though the building survives, was D'Oyly Carte's venture into the domain of serious opera. The new English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue opened in 1891 with Sullivan's Ivanhoe, but the analogy of the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas was deceptive: the expectation of a long run was doomed to failure, and the English Opera House was shortly afterwards converted into the Palace Music Hall. Punch's patriotic amour propre was wounded by the fact that where Ivanhoe had failed, the Basoche, its successor, and an essentially French opera, had caught on. Why, he asks, call it the English Opera House? Why not the "Cosmopolitan" or the "Royal Babel Opera House"? But these are questions which do not fall within the scope of our immediate inquiry. It is enough to record the fact that an abortive attempt to establish English opera on a permanent basis succeeded in enriching the variety stage with a new temple, while the site of Mapleson's projected Grand National Opera House is now occupied by New Scotland Yard, generally admitted to be the most successful outcome of the genius of Norman Shaw.

In earlier days Punch had constituted himself an unofficial Inspector of Nuisances for the Metropolis, and he never fulfilled these self-imposed duties with greater zeal and even fury than in the long campaign which he waged throughout the 'eighties against the then Duke of Bedford. London was a "City of Dreadful Dirt" and Covent Garden Market and the small streets around it, in Punch's view, held the palm for filthiness. He had given the Dukes a rest for a good many years, but the scandal of "Mud-Salad Market" revived in him a truculence worthy of Douglas Jerrold: —

Mud-Salad Market

Mud-Salad Market belongs to his Grace the Duke of Mudford. It was once a tranquil Convent Garden, belonging first to the Abbot of Westminster, and finally to the Dukes of Mudford. The property having been let on building leases, it became a small square in the centre of London, bounded on one side by Inigo Jones's church – "The handsomest barn in England" – on another side by a theatre, and warmly supported on other sides by numerous minor taverns. The hot-houses of the old Garden have become the pot-houses of the modern Market. Mud-Salad Market, like its own vegetables, has now sprouted out in all directions. You may start from Cabbage-leaf corner, near the site of Temple Bar, on a market-morning, and may go as far as Turnip-top Square in Bloomsbury, or Cauliflower-place at Charing Cross, and it is all Mud-Salad Market. Houses are barricaded with mountainous carts of green-stuff, cabs lose themselves in vain attempts to drive through the maze of vegetables, the costermonger makes temporary gardens on the pathway, while the roads are blocked with waggons, carts, donkey-trucks, and porters staggering under the weight of huge baskets. Carrots, turnips, vegetable-marrows, potatoes, lettuces, and onions are masters of the situation. Vegetable refuse, ankle deep, carpets the pathway in every direction, mixed with mud and rain-water, and trampled into a pulpy slimy muck by thousands of hob-nailed boots. Leases drop in, old houses are pulled down, great spaces are cleared, new houses of an approved stucco type are built, and no attempt is made to increase the legitimate limits of Mud-Salad Market.

Scene – Mud-Salad Market

Duke of Mudford: "Sweet pretty place, ain't it?"

Mr. P. (Inspector of Nuisances): "No, my Lord Duke, it isn't pretty, and it isn't sweet! Here, take this broom, and make a clean sweep of it!"

It is not too much to say that Mud-Salad Market is a disgrace to London, a special disgrace to his Grace of Mudford, and about the greatest nuisance ever permitted in a great City of Nuisances.

Rather different this account of Mud-Salad Market from Leigh Hunt's description of a certain Covent Garden Market in his day, when "it was the most agreeable in the metropolis," and when it had been "raised" into "a convenient and elegant state by the noble proprietor." Let his Grace of Mudford take a leaf from that Duke's tree, and, if he can't "raise" Mud-Salad Market, let him "raze" it, and give us a new one.

Grant, your Grace, a new broom to some one, let a clean sweep be made of Mud-Salad Market, and your petitioners will never again pray anything any more.

That was written in August, 1880. A fortnight later Punch renews and enlarges his attack: —

THE DUKE OF MUDFORD IN GLOOMSBURY

The Duke of Mudford's grip upon London extends far beyond Mud-Salad Market. As Lord Cul-de-Sac and the Earl of No Thoroughfare, he claims and exercises a right of blockade in Gloomsbury. London is a very peculiar city. It is said to be sixteen miles long and eight miles broad, and is supposed to contain a population of four millions. Its parochial rulers for the last ten years have devoted all their energy to the improvement of the great avenues of communication from East to West, but the cross avenues are in much the same condition as they were in the days of Dr. Johnson. The Strand and Fleet Street have been improved, Oxford Street, Holborn, Newgate Street, etc., have been widened, a noble Embankment has been made, and a great serpentine roadway, extending from Waterloo Bridge to Whitechapel, is in course of formation. While this is done, or being done, there is not a thoroughfare worthy of the name from South to North, from Park Lane to Chancery Lane. Berkeley Street, Bond Street, St. Martin's Lane, and other cross streets have to get rid of their northern traffic by dodging round corners. The most central and most important thoroughfare from South to North, is composed of Waterloo Bridge (a bridge from which the halfpenny tax on suicide has just been removed), Wellington Street (which stands on a hill, and is adorned by the Thalia and Melpomene Theatres), Bow Street (which might be called Bow-legged Street, where criminals are tried), Endell Street (where they grow the criminals who are tried at Bow Street), and Gower Street, which belongs to the Duke of Mudford.

A Ducal Defaulter

At the north end of Gower Street the traffic is stopped by a ducal barrier, and turned round several narrow streets, to find its way to the Euston Road as best it can. Three of the largest railway termini – the North Western, the Midland and the Great Northern lie in this direction; but the Duke of Mudford, Lord Cul-de-Sac, and Earl of No Thoroughfare claims his right to stand between these railways and their floods of traffic. The line must be drawn somewhere, and it is drawn at Gower Street. It was Mrs. Partington's mission to try to mop back the Atlantic: it is the Duke of Mudford's mission to push back four millions of people.

By the way, Mud-Salad Market was at its dirtiest and filthiest last Thursday. Such a standing nuisance in London ought to be as impossible as it is impassable.

When the Duke of Westminster helped to start a cheap eating-house with beds and baths in Bow Street, Punch invidiously contrasted his philanthropy with the recalcitrance of the Duke of "Mudford." Nor was he content with agitating for the improvement of Covent Garden, but followed up his attack by a similar exposure of the filthy condition of Billingsgate, maintained by force of vested interests, where the overcrowding led to the destruction of large quantities of fish and the consequent enhancement of prices.⁵ In 1883 the Duke of Bedford had apparently been goaded into offering Covent Garden Market to the Municipal Authorities, but they declined to relieve him of his responsibilities, and the campaign continued. Punch was not the only paper which attacked the Duke for neglecting his London property, but it was the most outspoken and persistent. The Duke had the reputation of being an improving landlord on his country estates, but over a million sterling had been added to the ducal revenues in his time by fines exacted on leases falling due on his Bloomsbury estate, and, in view of this fact, the scandal of Covent Garden inevitably exposed him to hostile comment, from which his successors have been wholly immune.

Much of Punch's criticism of the drawbacks of London was destructive. But he did not refrain from specific suggestions. For example, he persistently agitated for the painting of street names on lamps as a guide at night, and to good purpose, as the extract overleaf shows. The lighting of London still left much to be desired, and foreshadowed the obligatory darkness of war time: —

Punch has long been pegging away at the Vestries and District Boards, to turn the street lamps to account for display of the street names after dark. His pegging has profited. He is glad to hear that the practice is spreading, and will soon, he hopes and trusts, be general. Wherever it is neglected, let ratepayers take up the cry, and bombard not their street lamps, but their District Boards. The manufacturer who has supplied labels with street names for the lamps in Camberwell, writes to Punch to say that he has furnished similar labels throughout the parishes of Kennington, St. George the Martyr Southwark, St. Mary's Newington, and Limehouse, as also to the boroughs of Leeds, Leicester, Birmingham, Bootle-cum-Linacre near Liverpool, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. He has also been supplying the Board of Works with lamp-tablets notifying the position of Fire-plugs and Hydrants, in the parishes of St. George the Martyr Rotherhithe, Deptford, Charlton, and Woolwich, and is now preparing to fix similar tablets in the parish of St. George the Martyr Hanover Square.

"Light – more Light" – is Punch's cry, as it was fighting Ajax's, and dying Goethe's. All honour to Sugg for his railway-Argand-burner, and his new naphthalene with its forty-candle power – and when next he fits it to a train, may Punch be there to see, instead of to struggle with a tantalising twilight, as he does under the present mockery of railway-carriage illumination.

Another movement in which Punch took an active part was that for the provision of respectable restaurants for girl workers. The "Coffee-Houses," which were then almost the only sort of cheap eating-houses available, were both dirty and dismal, and the need offered Punch in 1881 an opportunity for combining a practical suggestion with a dig at the Duke of Bedford: —

Punch's Suggested Improvements

A GOOD THING TO DO

If the Church and Stage Guild, and the Association for Administering Weak Tea to Reluctant Ballet Girls, are inclined for practical work, we can tell them how to make themselves exceedingly useful to the humbler members of the dramatic profession. Pantomime rehearsals are beginning, and hundreds of girls, many of them living far off in the suburbs, and most of them receiving only a few shillings a week, are brought into the neighbourhood of Covent Garden early, kept at work all day, with no time to return home before they are required for their night duty at the theatres. There are hundreds of taverns, public-houses, coffee-shops, restaurants, and pastry-cooks, in and about the Strand, but, as far as we are aware, and we are pretty well up in the supply resources of this neighbourhood, there is not one place where these girls can go to get a cheap and decent meal. They can go to hundreds of places, if they like to spend half their week's earnings in less than an hour, but they cannot even do this without being stared at like wild beasts, or annoyed by the insolent patronage of the cad and the prowler. Commercial philanthropy has given the market-men and women of Covent Garden a "kiosk" in Bow Street, and what is done for the Mudford gang might surely be done for Theatrical London. The old Bow Street Police Station is empty and wanting a tenant, as "To Let" bills are stuck upon its broken windows. It has space and position, and the least the Duke of Mudford – the proprietor of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres – can do, is to offer it at a very moderate rental for this useful purpose. A chance for Mudford and popularity.

A series of articles on "How to Improve London" began in the same year, and though some of the suggestions were fantastic or counsels of perfection, many have since been translated into reality. The list of metropolitan improvements suggested in 1886 betrays perhaps an excessive solicitude for equestrians in the Parks and a corresponding desire to control 'buses and carts in their interests. The scheme for doing away with all private residences within Regent's Park is magnificently comprehensive. Punch wished to construct

a public Summer and Winter Garden on a French and German model, with Restaurants open for luncheons, dinners, and suppers, a theatre, a circus, lawn tennis grounds, tennis court, boating by day, and by night fireworks on the ornamental water. Such an establishment is a real want, and Regent's Park, being at once well within reach, and yet so far removed as to offer no obstruction to traffic, is the very place for the purpose.

There is a patriarchalism which is almost Teutonic in his suggestion for preserving the amenities of the Parks and public places: —

Parks and Streets. All Processions, not being State Pageants, should be prohibited. All bodies of persons marching about with and playing, or attempting to play, musical instruments, should be prohibited. Fine and imprisonment should be the punishment for breaking these laws.

Quiet Streets. All organ-grinders and so-called street-musicians should not be permitted to come within a radius of ten miles of Charing Cross on pain of imprisonment, fine, and, for a third offence, penal servitude for not less than seven years.

Meetings. Public spaces, at least four miles out of London, to be set apart for open-air meetings, if required, and only such spaces to be used for such purposes.

Parks. The London Parks shall be only used by the Public for the purposes of recreation and enjoyment, and not for political meetings, haranguing, preachings, and suchlike nuisances, which render Sunday a day of turbulence and unrest, and prevent quiet, peaceable people, who are at work all the week, from enjoying the fresh air on their only holiday.

The reference to musical instruments in processions is clearly aimed at the Salvation Army, of which in its earlier phase Punch, as we have learned, was the resolute enemy.

Public Vehicles

In 1889 Punch drew up a new Bill for London Improvements, including his old schemes for extending Rotten Row, making new rides, and otherwise protecting the equestrian interest, but adding new suggestions for the wholesale planting of trees along the principal streets and thoroughfares, the training of creepers over all the structures of the District Railway, the provision of popular restaurants in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and in general the opening of as many open-air refreshment places as possible – on the French model.

5. An attempt was made in 1884 to open a new fish market in Smithfield to break the monopoly of Billingsgate, but the scheme failed through mismanagement, and Punch renewed his attacks in 1889.