Re: BOROUGH MARKET
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 2:21 am
ducati dad wrote:Hi Kiwi, seeing your pics of the bushel baskets stacked up in the market, took me back to my youth. My first job, on leaving school age 16, was with HM Customs based in Hibernia Wharf. One day I had to take some papers around to Pickfords Wharf and on getting to St Mary Overies dock, there was quite a commotion going on. I saw a docker that I knew. "Old Bill" and asked him what was todo. He told me to shinny up the wall of the dock and look over. This I did and nearly fell into the dock with surprise. The wholr length of the dock was boiling with thousands and thousands of eels. Porters and Dockers were using empty bushell basket with a length of rope tied to the handle to bail eels out onto the road.I think the idea was to get them down the any pie and eel shop in the vicinity to earn a couple of bob. Old Bill reckoned that somewhere on their journey the leaders had taken a wrong turn and came up the thames and into the dock. As he said "Take a good look son and remember it, because you will never see the like again". That was about 1957..