THE FROZEN CAVERNS OF LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 25

THE FROZEN CAVERNS OF LONDON

The Caledonian Market in London, Mecca of bargain-hunters wheru anything from a goldfish to a grand piano can be "picked up," is doomed. But the market that provides the. teeming millions with their essential food remains, and any cessation of its day-by-day activities would bring chaos, writes Walter Wood in '"Tit-Bits." Go into Smithfield Market, and you can walk along two miles of streets of beef, mutton, pork, poultry, and other things concerning cattle, sheep, and pigs, and fowls of earth and air. You wonder where the people are coming from to eat this stupendous display of food, and how long they will be in consuming it; for you can look upon thousands of tons of carcases. And you wonder more when you realise that this assemblage of potential Joints, steaks, and chops is merely a temporary exhibition, and that within a few hours it will hava been distributed in London and elsewhere, and replaced by other thousands of tons of carcasses, to be disposed of as quickly. In one day more than 5000 tons of produce have been received, sold, and dispatched from Smithfield. "If you put this spectacle into terms of meat hooks you get a collection which if placed on end will reach 45 miles. You find shop frontage aggregating two-miles, with more than fifteen miles of display rails; and if that is not enough there are subterranean cold storage cellars which suggest the "caverns ■ measureless to man" of Kubla Khan. These cold stores, part, of the market and. adjoining it, can hold 15,000 tons of meat, or, if you like to think of it in another way, 600,000 carcasses of mutton. Look at only a single flock of-, sheep >and you will realise what that .enormous number means, This told storage helps to emphasise both the national and imperial lmportance of Smithfield. London receives four of every five carcasses of mutton and lamb exported to England from Australia and New Zealand, hall of the exports of South American mutton and lamb, two-thirds of the total quantity oi chilled beef sent to

England from South America, and nearly the same percentage of Australian and New Zealand frozen beef exports. Where does all this fresh, frozen, and chilled meat go, keeping company with, in round figures, 25,000 tons of poultry and game, more than 7000 tons i-of rabbits, 2700 tons of eggs, and other substantial commodities? These Central Markets at Smithfield are and always have been the chief centre for selling and distributing the surplus meat and poultry supplies of Great Britain and Ireland, the Dominions, South America, France, and other countries. To the 8,000,000 consumers within a radius of twelve miles of London you can put a vast additional community in many parts of the world. „ Butchers from all parts of Greater London and from outside districts buy | their meat at the market, whence it is removed in the buyers' own carts or carriers' vans. As we deal with miles of meat so we must deal with armies when we consider how those miles are handled. Everything at Smithfield is on the grand scale. Seven thousand people are employed on the internal business of the market. There are no fewer than 1600 porters, and such is their strength tind speed that within an hour they can unload 400 four-ton lorries which are backed in for discharge at one time. That is an astonishing achievement, greatly helped by thirty entrance gates to expedite delivery. _ Everything else is in keeping electric bandsaws are used for cutting meat; hydraulic lifts connect the railway system and the cold stores. The bulk of business is done very early in the day. The greatest pressure is at Christmas. One memorable "push" was on Monday, December ZZ, 1913, when the day's supplies reached 4390 tons. Seventy per cent of that total went to market shops or stalls before 6 a.m., but to get through the work meant that the "pitching, or "inward deliveries," began at ten o'clock on the previous Sunday night.