One hundred years ago
Mr Blake, MP, told a good story to some Irish fishermen with whom he made an appointment at Billingsgate Market on Tuesday morning, for the purpose of expounding to them some of the secrets of the fish market. The supply of lobsters at Dunmore, in the county of Waterford, had, he said, some years ago begun to fall off, and it was supposed that the introduction of male lobsters from Northern Europe would improve the breed. Scandinavian lobsters were brought, but the Irish lobsters resented the advent of these Scandinavian males so furiously that their corpses were found strewn — claws, legs and bodies all dismembered — on every shore in the neighbourhood of Dunmore. An old lobster fisherman from Connemara listened to Mr Blake's tale with glistening eyes, and then ejaculated, `Begor! after that I'll have a veneration for the lobster 1 never had afore!' Probably the good man regarded the invading lobsters as Britons, and the Irish lobsters who resented their intervention as good Fe- nians. But 'veneration' for a lobster is a delightfully new form of enthusiasm.
Spectator, 11 August 1883
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