Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/862

 832 LONDON [INDUSTRY. in 1514, and gradually acquired the management of lighthouses and buoys not only on the Thames but on the whole English coast, be sides the superintendence of naval arsenals and dockyards. Along with the corporation of the City it had the conservancy of the Thames, until those authorities were superseded by the Thames Conservancy Board. Its general rights and privileges have also been much curtailed since 1853, when it was put under the partial con trol of the Board of Trade, but it has still the sole charge of the erection and maintenance of lighthouses and buoys, the examination of pilots and of navigating lieutenants : and two of its elder breth ren act as nautical advisers in the High Court of Admiralty. The City. The prosperity of that portion of London known as the City is largely due to its proximity to the port, but the rapid development of the trade of the port is closely connected with the increase of London outside the City limits, which is of course dependent on a great variety of causes. The uninterrupted extension of the busi ness and financial transactions of the City, and the connexion of these with the rapid increase of the surrounding population, is suffi ciently evidenced by the fact that the rateable annual value of the Gity has risen from about 760 an acre in 1801 to about 5300 an acre in 1881 ; that the net profits under the commercial and mer cantile schedule D for the combined boroughs of the metropolis (1879-80) amounted to 81,088,368, of which the profits for the City alone amounted to 39,263,424, a larger sum than that of the whole seventeen next largest cities and towns of the United King dom ; and that the number of persons entering the City daily during the sixteen hours of business has increased from 657,379 in 1866 to 739,640 in 1881. Ex- The business centre of London is the Royal Exchange, which changes, occupies a commanding position between Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, at the principal convergence of the City thoroughfares. The first building, erected 1565-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham and presented to the City, was destroyed by the great fire, and the second opened in 1669 was also burnt in 1838. The present exchange (1839-44), designed by Tite and erected at a cost of 180,000, is a quadrangular structure with an imposing Corinthian portico at its 1rincipal entrance, and encloses a court surrounded by an ambu- atory. It is in the open central area that the commercial transac tions take place the ground floor being occupied by shops and offices, and the principal floor by insurance companies and &quot; Lloyd s rooms.&quot; The principal exchanges for special articles are the corn exchange in Mark Lane, where the privilege of a fair was originally granted by Edward I. ; the wool exchange in Coleman Street ; the coal exchange adjoining the custom-house, erected in 1849 in the Italian style, and consisting of a rotunda surmounted by a dome; and the auction mart for landed property in Tokenhouse Yard. The metal market is a very important one ; and there is also a very large consignment of precious metals and diamonds, the workers in which are chiefly concentrated in the neighbourhood of The Mint. Clerkenwell. The Royal Mint, Tower Hill, erected in 1805 on the site of the Cistercian abbey of St Mary, is the only mint in Eng land for the fabrication of gold and silver coins, but bronze coins are chiefly made at Birmingham, and gold coinage is now also manufactured at Sidney and Melbourne. Banking. The unique commercial position of London, and its intercourse with every quarter of the globe, have assisted to make it financially in a more complete sense than it is commercially the metropolis of the world. The stock jobbers and brokers, who according to the City census of 1881 numbered 1682, and who have their offices chiefly in the courts and alleys adjoining the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, are nearly all members of the stock exchange, for whom the present building in Capel Street was erected in 1801 ; but there is also an open stock exchange in Lothbury. The earliest approximation to banking transactions in London appeared in the negotiations for loans between Elizabeth and the principal city merchants, but the general adoption of the system was due to the civil war, when the merchants, some of whom had already made use of the Royal Mint as a bank of deposit, and the landed proprietors, began to place their money for the sake of greater security in the hands of the goldsmiths. Some of the private banks now existing, such as Coutts s and Child s, date from the 17th century, and a new era in the financial history of London was inaugurated in 1 694 by the foundation of the Bank of England, of which a full account is given in the article BANKING (vol. iii. p. 316 sq.). Until 1733 the business of the bank was carried on at Grocers Hall. The present building, which covers about 4 acres, and was enlarged in 1770 and 1788 by Sir Robert Taylor and Sir John Soane, presents to the street a low triangular wall without windows, and almost entirely devoid of ornament except at the north-west corner, which was copied from the temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli. Until the establishment of the London and Westminster Bank in 1834, the Bank of England was the only joint-stock bank in London. The private and joint-stock banks which have offices in London now number over 150. The principal banks are mem bers of the Clearing House near Lombard Street, where a daily exchange of drafts or cheques is effected. For the year ending April 30, 1882, the total amount of bills, cheques, &c., paid at the Clearing House was 6,382,645,000, the largest sum paid in any of the fifteen years for which statistics have been collected, the amount for the first year ending 1868 being only 3,257,411,000. The extent of the commercial enterprise of London is strikingly indi cated by the large number of companies, with their field of operations chiefly in foreign countries, which have been projected in the City or have in it their headquarters. The foreign operations of these companies are however sometimes only nominal, their real business being wholly confined to London itself. The largest manufacturing industry in London is that of brewing, 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 &quot;near to the friendly water of Thames,&quot; 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 Thrale, and occupies the site of the old Globe theatre. Silk-weaving, which received a special impulse from the settle- Miscel- ment of foreign refugees at Spitalfields after the revocation of the laneous edict of Nantes, has within the last fifty years been in a stagnant indus- condition, owing chiefly to the rivalry of Lancashire. The majority tries, of the other manufactures are carried on in the neighbourhood 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, potteries and glass works at Lambeth, Whitefriars, and Southwark, tanneries at Ber- mondsey, chemical-works on the Lea, paper-works on the Wandle, and sugar bakeries at Whitechapel. The cabinetmakers shops are situated principally in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, but there are several adjoining Tottenham Court Road and Hampstead l!oad, 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 centre of the wholesale book trade is in Paternoster Row, but some of the principal pub lishers have their premises in the neighbourhood 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 news papers have their offices chiefly in streets running off the Strand. PAUPERISM. London since 1867 has been divided into thirty Poor-law poor-law unions, which are governed by boards of guardians, for unions. the most part elected annually by the householders and owners of property, the number of votes possessed by each owner or house holder varying from one to six, according to the value of the property. A proportion of the guardians in each union are so ex ojficio, or are nominated by the Local Government Board. The Act of 1867 authorized the establishment of outdoor dispensaries in any union or parish ; and in twenty-seven of the thirty unions of the metro polis there are now forty-seven of these dispensaries, the number of prescriptions made up in the year 1880 being over a million. For the maintenance of lunatics and insane poor, of patients suffering from contagious diseases, and of pauper children at school, and for the relief of casual paupers, a metropolitan common poor fund is provided, through the operation of which the cost of maintaining the poor is now equalized, to the extent of 42 - 3 per cent, of the whole sum applied over the metropolitan area. The good results which have followed, both in lessening expense and diminishing pauperism, especially outdoor pauperism, form a strong argument for the complete equalization of the rates, and the creation of a united poor-law authority for the whole metropolis. The three unions which in 1880 contributed most in aid of the poorer ones were Kensington (27,705), St George s (25,299), and the City of London (61,080); and the three unions most benefited were Holborn (21,048), Bethnal Green (19,835), and St Saviour s, Southwark (23,085); but, as will be seen from Table XXI. below, great inequality still exists in the rating, and the rate is generally higher in the poorer districts. Each poor-law union possesses one or more workhouses, but the accommodation is inadequate, and difficulty in dealing satisfactorily with applicants often follows. Several unions, by the powers granted them under the Act of 1867, have combined into districts to provide infirmaries for the sick and imbecile, there being now only three unions