or to the lover of country scenery. In a road called the Spa Road, leading eastward to Bermondsey New Church, we meet with the Spa from which the road derived its name. A chalybeate spring was discovered here about seventy years ago; and the place was converted into a sort of tea garden by an ingenious man, who had exhibited some talent for painting, and who decorated his house of entertainment with subjects from his own pencil. The following description from Hughson, compared with the "Mount Heclas" and "Mount Vesuviuses" of modern exhibitions, will make us doubt whether there is really anything new "under the sun." Mr. Keyse, the proprietor, established a sort of Vauxhall at the Bermondsey Spa, and, finding this to succeed, his ingenuity "suggested various improvements, and among others he entertained the public with an excellent representation of the siege of Gibraltar, consisting of transparencies and fireworks, constructed and arranged by Mr. Keyse himself; the height of the rock was fifty, and the length two hundred feet; the whole of the apparatus covering about four acres of ground."

On the east of the nursery-grounds are the docks, ponds, and reservoirs belonging to the Commercial, the Greenland, and the Grand Surry Docks; and also the buildings which constitute the town of Deptford. These collectively separate the Bermondsey nurseries from that bend or "reach" of the Thames which bounds the western side of the Isle of Dogs.

If we draw a line from Bermondsey New Church to the intersection of the Grange Road with the Old Kent Road, we shall find to the west, or rather the north-west, of that line nearly the whole of the factories connected with the leather and wool trade of London. A circle one mile in diameter, having its centre at the spot where the Abbey once stood, will include within its limits most of the tanners, the curriers, the fellmongers, the woolstaplers, the leather-factors, the leather-dressers, the leather-dyers, the parchment-makers, and the gluemakers, for which this district is so remarkable. There is scarcely a street, a road, a lane, into which we can turn without seeing evidences of one or other of these occupations. One narrow road-leading from the Grange Road to the Kent Road-is particularly distinguishable for the number of leather-factories which it exhibits on either side; some time-worn and mean, others newly and skilfully erected. Another street, known as Long Lane, and lying westward of the church, exhibits nearly twenty distinct establishments where skins or hides undergo some of the many processes to which they are subjected. In Snow's Fields, in Bermondsey New Road, in Russell Street, upper and lower, in Willow Walk, and Page's Walk, and Grange Walk, and others whose names we cannot now remember-in all of these, leather, skins, and wool seem to be the commodities out of which the wealth of the inhabitants has been created. Even the public-houses give note of these peculiarities, by the signs chosen for them, such as the "Woolpack," the "Fellmongers' Arms," "Simon the Tanner," and others of like import. If there is any district in London whose inhabitants might be excused for supporting the proposition that "there is nothing like leather," surely Bermondsey is that place!

It might at first seem that the connexion between leather and wool is not very apparent, the nature, uses, and preparation of the two being so very dissimilar; but when we remember that both are taken from those animals whose flesh sup

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plies us with one portion of our daily food, and in part from other animals, we perceive a reason why the cleansing and preparation of them are conveniently effected in one spot. The ox yields hide for stout leather; the sheep yields wool and skin for thin leather and parchment; the horse yields hide and valuable hair; and from the following enumeration of some of the manufacturers in Bermondsey Street alone it will be seen how many branches of trade spring from these sources:-hide-sellers, tanners, leather-dressers, morocco-leather dressers, leather sellers and cutters, curriers, parchment-makers, wool-agents, woolstaplers, horse-hair manufacturers, hair and flock manufacturers, patent hair-felt manufacturers. There are, besides these, skin and hide salesmen, fellmongers, leather-dyers, and glue-makers, in other parts of the vicinity.

The extent to which these branches of manufacture are carried on at Bermondsey has never, as far as we are aware, been ascertained; but it must be enormous. The following remarks of Mr. M'Culloch (Statistical Account of the British Empire') will illustrate the national importance of the manufacture of leather. After alluding to the large scale in which the manufacture is carried on at Bermondsey, that gentleman states, that, besides the hides and skins of animals slaughtered in this country, vast quantities are imported from abroad, to be tanned or dressed in England. "At an average of the years 1833 and 1834, no fewer than 304,279 cwt., or 34,079,248 lbs., of foreign cow, ox, and buffalo hides were entered for home consumption, exclusive of vast quantities of lamb-skins, goat-skins, &c. The total quantity of all sorts of leather, tawed, tanned, dressed, and curried in Great Britain may at present be estimated at about 65,000,000; which, at 1s. 6d. per pound, gives 4,875,000l. as the value of the leather alone." He proceeds to estimate the value of this leather, when manufactured into shoes, harness, gloves, and other saleable articles, at nearly three times this amount, or at 13,000,000l. per annum. This sum he divides into three portions, viz., 4,875,000/, for the raw material; 2,031,000l. for profits, rent of workshops, and capital invested; and 6,094,000l. for wages. The distribution of this large amount of wages he thus conjectures:-" Supposing those employed as shoemakers, saddlers, glovers, &c., to make, one with another, 30l. a-year, the total number of such persons will be 203,000. This, however, does not give the total number of persons employed in the leather-trade, inasmuch as it excludes the tanners, curriers, &c., employed in dressing and preparing the leather. But if, from the value of the prepared leather, 4,875,000l., we deduct 1,500,000l. for the value of the hides and skins, and 2,300,000, for tanners' and curriers' profits, including the expense of bark, lime, pits, &c., we have 1,075,000l. left as wages. Now, as the wages of tanners, curriers, leather-dressers, &c., may, we believe, be taken at 351. a-year at an average, we shall have 30,700 as the number employed in these departments; and, adding these to the persons employed in manufacturing the leather, we have a grand total of 233,700 employed in the various departments of the business."

These are high numbers, and point to the vast importance of this department of manufacture. The nature of our publication does not admit details of manufacturing processes, nor descriptions of particular factories; but the topography and general features of Bermondsey are so dependent on the subdivision of em

ployments arising out of the leather-manufacture, that we deem it right to glance rapidly at them.

In the Chapter relating to "Smithfield," the career of the ox and the sheep is traced down to the point when the drovers consign the animals to the hands of the butcher. Let us take up the thread of the story from that point. The animals are slaughtered, the flesh is retailed for the tables of rich and poor, and the skins and hides pass into other hands. Who is there that has not, at some time or other, had his ears dinned and tormented in the London streets by a cart, rattling and rumbling over the rough stones, and laden with sheep-skins? Neither the sound, nor the sight, nor the odour is a pleasant one; yet is there the germ of much wealth in those carts. They do not belong to the butcher, nor to the tanner, nor to the leather-dresser, nor to the wool-dealer; they are owned by "skin-salesmen," who act as agents between buyer and seller. As the Smithfield salesman transacts the dealings between the country grazier and the London butcher, receiving a small per centage on the purchase price of the animals; as the Mark Lane corn-factor sells the corn of the country farmer to the miller, the mealman, or the corn-chandler of London, receiving in like manner a small payment for his services; so does the skin-salesman act as agent for the butcher, disposing of the skins to the "fell-monger," and receiving a few pence on the purchase-money of each. There are some fell-mongers in Bermondsey who purchase their sheep-skins directly from the butchers, without the interven tion of a salesman; but the general system is as we have stated.

It may next be asked whether these skins, thus taken away in carts from the butchers and slaughterers, are conveyed to factories, to storehouses, or to markets? If the "fell-monger" is the purchaser, the skins are conveyed to his yard; but if, as is more common, the salesman is employed as an intermediate party, the skins are conveyed to the Skin Market in Bermondsey. Until within the last few years, there were two places used as skin-markets on the Southwark side of the water; one near Blackfriars Road, and the other near the Southwark Bridge Road: but the tanners and leather-dressers, deeming it desirable to concentrate the whole routine of operations, made arrangements for building the present Leather and Skin Market. They formed a company, subscribed a joint stock, and purchased a large piece of ground a little to the north of Long Lane, Bermondsey; and by about the year 1833 the whole was completed, at an expense of nearly fifty thousand pounds. On passing into New Weston Street from Long Lane we see the front portion of this building on the right-hand side. It is a long series of brick warehouses, lighted by a range of windows, and having an arched entrance gateway at either end. These entrances open into a quadrangle or court, covered for the most part with grass, and surrounded by warehouses. In the warehouses is transacted the business of a class of persons who are termed "leather-factors," who sell to the curriers or leather-sellers leather belonging to the tanners; or sell London-tanned leather to country purchasers, or country-tanned leather to London purchasers: in short, they are middlemen in the traffic in leather, as skin-salesmen are in the traffic in skins. Beyond this first quadrangle is a second, called the "Skin Depository," and having four entrances, two from the larger quadrangle, and two from a street leading into

Bermondsey Street. This depository is an oblong plot of ground terminated by semicircular ends: it is pitched with common road-stones along the middle, and flagged round with a broad foot-pavement. Over the pavement, through its whole extent, is an arcade supported by pillars; and the portion of pavement included between every two contiguous pillars is called a "bay." There are about fifty of these "bays," which are let out to skin-salesmen at about twelve pounds per annum each; and on the pavement of his bay the salesman exposes the skins which he is commissioned to sell. Here on market-days may be seen a busy scene of traffic between the salesmen on the one hand and the fellmongers on the other. The carts, laden with sheep-skins, come rattling into the place, and draw up in the road-way of the depository; the skins are taken out, and ranged on the pavement of the bays; the sellers and buyers make their bargains; the purchase-money is paid into the hands of the salesman, and by him transmitted to the butcher; and the skins are removed to the yards of the fellmongers. Our frontispiece presents a sketch of the scene here described.

It is necessary here to mention a distinction which is made between hides and skins. The transactions alluded to above relate to skins only, that is, the coverings of sheep and calves, whereas the skins of oxen and horses are known in the trade as hides. It was supposed, when the New Skin-Market was built, that the dealings in hides would, in part at least, be carried on there as well as that in skins. But nearly all the ox-hides, from which the thicker kinds of leather are made, are still sold at Leadenhall Market, which has long been the centre of this trade. It is not difficult to see why this is the case, for cattle are generally slaughtered, not on the premises of the butcher, but in slaughter-houses near the flesh-markets, and therefore in the vicinity of Leadenhall hide-market. The grass-plot now existing in the area of the larger quadrangle of the Skin-Market is intended to be covered with additional warehouses or depositories, whenever the traffic may render such a step desirable. Nearly all the leather manufacturers in Bermondsey are proprietors in this Market.

There is, then, this difference between the earlier operations of the fellmongers and the tanners of Bermondsey, that the former purchase sheepskins at the Bermondsey Market from salesmen who act as agents to the London butchers, and then prepare the skins for the leather-dressers and parchment-makers; whereas the tanners purchase ox, cow, and calf skins at Leadenhall Market, from the hide-salesmen, as also horse-hides from the persons known as "knackers," and then tan these hides. There are many points of similarity between the two departments; but there are also differences which make a broad line of distinction between them.

All the tanneries in London, with, we believe, one exception, are situated in Bermondsey; and all present nearly the same features. Whoever has resolution enough to brave the appeals to his organ of smell, and visit one of these places, will see a large area of ground-sometimes open above, and in other cases covered by a roof-intersected by pits or oblong cisterns, whose upper edges are level with the ground: these cisterns are the tan-pits, in which hides are exposed to the action of liquor containing oak-bark. He will see, perhaps, in one corner of the premises, a heap of ox and cow horns, just removed from the hide, and about to be sold to the comb-makers, the knife-handle-makers, and other manu

facturers of horn.

He will see in another corner a heap of refuse matter about to be consigned to the glue-manufacturer. In a covered building he will find a

heap of hides exposed to the action of lime, for loosening the hair with which the pelt is covered; and in an adjoining building he will probably see a number of men scraping the surfaces of the hides, to prepare them for the tan-pits. In many of the tanneries, though not all, he will see stacks of spent tan, no longer useful in the tannery, but destined for fuel or manure, or gardeners' hot-beds. In airy buildings he will see the tanned leather hanging up to dry, disposed in long ranges of rooms or galleries. Such are the features which all the tanneries, with some minor differences, exhibit.

In the Willow Walk, and one or two other places in the vicinity, may be seen instances of one of the purposes to which tan is appropriated. A large plot of ground contains, in addition to heaps of tan, skeleton frames about five or six feet in height, consisting of a range of shelves one above another; and on theso shelves are placed the oblong rectangular pieces of "tan-turf," with which the middle classes have not much to do, but which are extensively purchased for fuel, atten or twelve for a penny," by the humbler classes. This is one of the numerous branches of trade arising out of the leather-manufacture, and giving to Bermondsey so many of its peculiar characteristics.

The whole of the fell-mongers belonging to the metropolis are congregated within a small circle around the Skin-Market in Weston Street. It forms no part