In Leadenhall Market.
By Arthur Morrison.
EADENHALL MARKET is a changed place since fifteen years ago. Broad arcades and plate-glass fronts stand where stood and tumbled those singular shops in which no man could tell exactly where the main structure of the building left off and the hutches, boxes, boards, benches, and stock began; where the ways were devious and men's elbows brushed as near either side as they may have done any time since the market
was founded by good Sir Richard Whittington, in the year of our Lord 1408. Other things have changed beside the shops; by statute of 1533 no beef might here be sold for more than a halfpenny a pound, nor mutton for more than a halfpenny half-farthing. Nowadays this good old law is defied shamelessly.
But the demolition of 1880 left us something. It did not sweep away everything of hutches, boxes, boards, baskets, and smell; thanks be to the Corporation for that they left us Ship Tavern Passage.
"Framed round with boxes."
Dear old Ship Tavern Passage! Cumbered with cages, boxes, and baskets, littered with straw, sand, and sawdust; filled with barks and yelps, crows and clucks, and the smell of mice and rabbits! What living thing, short of a hippopotamus, have I not bought there in one of those poky little shops, the door to which is a hole, framed round with boxes full of living things, and guarded by tied dogs perpetually attempting to get at each other across the opening. In the days when the attic was devoted to surreptitious guinea-pigs, when white rats escaped from the school desk, and when grown sisters' dislike of mice seemed insane, then was Ship Tavern Passage a dream of delight.
What a delightful door is one such as these to a boy! Here is a box full of pigeons—puffy pouters, neckless and almost headless. On top of this another box full of rabbits—mild-eyed nibblers with tender pink noses, with ears at lop, half-lop, cock, and the rest. On this, again, there are guinea-pigs; and, still higher, a mighty crowing and indignant cock, in a basket. What differing emotions do the inscriptions on many boards convey to different minds! "Small reptiles on hand" is an inspiriting
