How did an oyster become the symbol of London?
Which symbol best represents London?
Although the dragon is the heraldic symbol of the medieval City and Big Ben, black cabs and red phone boxes haunt the imagination of our overseas visitors, ask a Londoner under the age of 60 and there will inevitably be only one correct answer…
Launched in 2003, the Oyster card has been the ubiquitous symbol of British cosmopolitanism for the best part of the 21st Century in spite of its near redundancy in the wake of the contactless revolution.
Beating out competition from other names, that never were, like ‘pulse’ and ‘gem’ when Transport for London named their new darling, the Oyster card ticked a lot of boxes.
“The world is your pulse” could never have been — it sounds more like a low-budget anxiety attack than a call to action and so the slimy seafood sealed the slippery deal.
This divisive and briny mollusc (coincidentally an out-dated and offensive name for a no-gooder within the north circular ring road) has pedigree in London to be fair...
From warm, temperate coastal waters and estuaries oysters are common all around the British Isles as well as in the coves of the Loire and Brittany, not exactly London specific.
So, why is it considered to be so London-centric?
If you go down to Borough market today you’ll be left with little change from a plastic £5 note for a zinc-rich slurp of the shell, but it wasn’t always the luxurious aphrodisiac we perceive it to be.
Back in the day when you took your pint of bitter for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the least the taverns and alehouses could do was line your stomach and what a bountiful spread to choose from; pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, jellied eels, oysters…. The latter were stacked high on the bar counter as a free amuse-bouche for customers to enjoy.
But these 18th Century oysters weren’t from the fresh waters of the Irish sea or the Scottish estuaries — they were from our very own river Thames — declared biologically dead from pollution within the next hundred years.
So this apparent freebie was to be cautiously consumed, very much at your own risk, not exactly a selling point…
It was thought that the water-filtering properties of oysters would cleanse the Victorian sewage that led to mass cholera outbreaks in the 1850s, but clearly, it didn’t…Thus oyster numbers declined and importers had to go further afield to find fresh oysters to sell at market.
Still regarded as a luxury today in the UK, the tide has changed across the pond, as ecological concern has led to an revival with abundance on both coasts of the US. With fresher waters and larger oyster colonies, the industry drives tourism and the dining economy.
Used shells are repatriated to the seas creating a regenerative circle of life, thereby giving Maine and Seattle a greater claim to be the true oyster capitals of the world than London, who still can’t get her head round a sustainable approach to the heritage of our briny ancestors…
Perhaps there is a more direct link from London’s past to the now moribund travel card of the 2000s and 2010s, as relevant to Gen Z as the New Musical Express or the coalition government…
If you hadn’t noticed, London has a lot of bridges, but this wasn’t always the case. Until the 18th Century London bridge was your only guaranteed dry crossing in the C.O.L / Westminster vicinity between March and December.
Before the industrial revolution, the Thames used to freeze over every winter and you could walk from one side to the next, stopping half-way for a refreshment at one of the pop-up stalls whilst watching a quick round of a bear skidding around the ice as he was mauled to death by the dogs.
In these enlightened times, ice fairs were a regular feature of the winter calendar. In spring, summer and autumn however, your options for a river crossing were fewer and you’d pay the ferryman to ferry you across to the other side (not metaphorical).
Jostling for custom on the banks of the Thames, the ‘Wherrymen’, named after the boat that they rowed even unionized to protest the building of new bridges along the Thames so that they could continue to make their living. A united industry sets regulations, demands certain conditions and might even establish a uniform token of currency that would hold its value in tough times.
Mudlarks, the voluntary scavengers who are given special permission to sift through the tidal eddies of the Thames estuary have added weight to this theory.
As they trawl through the once-lost jewels, trinkets and miscellaneous paraphernalia, brought to the surface through as the sediment rotates, these hobbyists have delighted in the appearance of asynchronous oyster shells with little squares punched through like the stubs of national rail ticket..
Like poker chips or tokens at a country fair, oyster shells were available by demand, within the vicinity of the banks of the river and held no inherent value in and of themselves. Whether you were an aristocrat or a pauper you could exchange your hard-earnt farthings for a few pierced shells and hand them to a wherryman who collected them to exchange for his wages at the end of the day.
Is it any more ludicrous than a pre-paid card that never had quite enough balance to get you to your destination?
Quaint coincidence, urban myth or logical explanation ? You decide.
