to shopping in Poplar or Blackwall. Shopping on Saturday nights in these
districts is no mere domestic function: it is a festival, an event.
Johnnie washes and puts on his second-best suit, and then he and the
missus depart from the Island, he bearing a large straw marketing bag,
she carrying a string-bag and one of those natty stout-paper bags given
away by greengrocers and milliners. As soon as the 'bus has tossed them
into Salmon Lane, off Commercial Road, they begin to revel.

Salmon Lane on a Saturday night is very much like any other shopping
centre in the more humane quarters of London. Shops and stalls blaze and
roar with endeavour. The shops, by reason of their more respectable
standing, affect to despise stalls, but when it comes to competition it
is usually stalls first and shops hanging round the gate. The place
reeks of naphtha, human flesh, bad language, and good-nature.
Newly-killed rabbits, with their interiors shamelessly displayed,
suspend themselves around the stalls while their proprietors work
joyfully with a chopper and a lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper is
never abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, and many of them have
to await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up his
wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfully
fingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers'
shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherless
brothers and sisters with the few shillings which Dad has doled out. Who
knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending value of
twopence-halfpenny? Observe her as she lays in her Sunday gorge. Two
penn'orth of "pieces" from the butcher's to begin with (for twopence you
get a bagful of oddments of meat, trimmings from various joints, good
nourishing bones, bits of suet, and, if the assistant thinks you have
nice eyes, he will throw in some skirt). Then to the large greengrocer's
shop for a penn'orth of "specks" (spotted or otherwise damaged fruit,
and vegetables of every kind). Of this three penn'orth the most valuable
item is the bones, for these, with a bit of carrot and potato and onion,
will make a pot of soup sufficient in itself to feed the kiddies for two
days. Then, at the baker's, you get a market basket full of stale bread
for twopence, and, seeing it's for Sunday, you spend another penny and
get five stale cakes. At the grocer's, two ounces of tea, two ounces of
margarine, and a penn'orth of