L. COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY

Brewing. Miscellaneous Industries.

The largest manufacturing industry in London is that of brewing the number of common brewers in 1880 being 110, who made use of 9,955,177 bushels of malt, while of the 412,192 barrels of beer exported from the United Kingdom 236,206 were from London. To supply the breweries with water, wells now require to be sunk below the chalk to the greensand. According to Stow, the brewers in 1585 in London and Westminster, who then remained "near to the friendly water of Thames," numbered 26, some of them being foreigners, who first introduced the art of cultivating hops. Among the oldest and most important of the breweries now existing is that of Barclay, Perkins, & Co., which covers an area of 12 acres, belonged at one time to Johnson’s friend Trale, and occupies the site of the old Globe theatre.





Silk-weaving, which received a special impulse from the settlement of foreign refuges at Spitalfields after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, has within the last fifty years been in a stagnant condition, owing chiefly to the rivalry of Lancashire. The majority of the other manufactures are carried on in the neighborhood of the Thames. The ships built in London in 1881, which are principally yachts, numbered 64, but their total tonnage was only 2723. The principal shipbuilding yards are at the Isle of Dogs. Boat-building is extensively carried on at Chelsea and at several other places in the upper reaches of the river. There are large engineering-works at Lambeth and Millwall, tanneries at Bermondsey, chemical-works on the Lea, paper-works on the Wandle, and sugar bakeries at White chapel. The cabinetmakers’ shops are situated principally in the neighborhood of Shoreditch, but there are several adjoining Tottenham Court Road and Hampstead Road, where upholstery warehouses are very numerous. Lucifer match making gives employment to a large number of women and children in the eastern districts. There are extensive hat manufactories in Lambeth. The special manufactures in different parts of London are too numerous for mention. The principal depots of the carriage-builders are in Long Acre. A large trade in second-hand clothing is done by the Jews at Houndsditch, especially on Sunday morning, and on the same day of the week there are bird and fancy animal fairs at Church Street, Bethnal Green, and at St Andrew’s Street, Bloomsbury, near the Seven Dials. The center of the wholesale book trade is in Paternoster Row, but some of the principal publishers have their premises in the neighborhood of Covent Garden and still farther west. Fleet Street is largely occupied with the offices of the London and the provincial daily newspapers, but the office of the Times is in Printing-house Square. The weekly newspapers have their offices chiefly in streets running off the Strand.





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