Its name was derived from Blynsgate and Byllynsgate, Byllyns perhaps being the name of a man in the area, the south-east part of London, on the north bank of the Thames. Billlingsgate eventually came to mean ‘coarsely or vulgarly abusive language’, much like sailors’ talk or fishmongers’. For nearly three hundred years, it was the principal fish market of London, though in different buildings in the vicinity of each other. But in 1982, the old arcade-style hall that had served its purpose well since 1875 was abandoned for Canary Wharf, the newly built-up riverside business district. The old Billingsgate represented some of the best and worst elements in British culture, for it symbolized the strong ties Britain has to the sea.

   Fish is a key ingredient in select British meals. Fish and chips, for one, was long England’s favorite fast-food meal, and still is a popular treat. To reap the harvest of the sea the way it was reaped for Billingsgate required a great deal of courage, skill, and luck before the onslaughts of wind, tides, and enemies at sea. It was no wonder sailors and fishermen talked the way they did; troops in battle also curse; many people, put under enough duress, do so, too.

    I’ve previously written that I took a lot of photos in London during my time in the Missouri-London reporting semester of Autumn 1981. Some of the time, I was shooting photos for my flatmates’  stories. I took photos of old Union Church for Marynelle Hardee, photos of Covent Garden for Dan Higgings, and photos of Billingsgate for Louis Trager. I don’t know if any of my photos were published by them, except perhaps for Marynelle’s church photo-story. She had me do two days of photos, then wrested the camera away from me to take one shot at services from the balcony, where I too had been shooting. Maybe she knew her photo and published her own. I know she got the credit for it. Unfortunately, she missed taking advantage of my other photos, which included some excellent interior and exterior views, including services — unless she paid for my film processing and took all my shots, which it’s possible she did, though I can’t recall for sure.

The Billingsgate Shoot

    In any case, Louis asked me to shoot Billingsgate for him, and so we left for the tube station about 4:30 in the morning that day. It was plenty dark in the station and on the train. And when we disembarked at the tube-stop, it was still pitch-black. I’d brought special color-corrected film, because Billingsgate employed tungsten lights, which ordinarily would have made my photos look orange. (Some of them may have been orange anyway, because it seems to me I used one roll of regular color film indoors that day.) No one warned me that if the color-corrected film was still in my camera when I went outdoors, subjects would look blue and white in photos.