Let them eat oysters

To Live, the Oyster Must Die 

I had read before that oysters used to be the food of the poor in England, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent:

As the population of London boomed, doubling again and again from the 16th century onwards, these little nuggets of protein became an irresistible way for the fishermen of anywhere within reach of the capital to make a living....
 
The oyster boom expanded as industrialisation accelerated, with oysters fuelling industrial Britain’s industrious workers. Modern machinery made them easier to catch, store and transport, and oysters became the signature food of Victorian Britain.

“The poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s a oyster stall to every half dozen houses. The streets lined with ‘em. Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation,” remarks Sam Weller in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.

That was published in 1836, and Londoners were only just getting going. In 1864, they consumed 700 million oysters. That’s five oysters a week, every week, for each man, woman and child in the city.

The same was true elsewhere in Britain, with predictable results. Oyster fishing began to collapse in Scottish waters in the 1870s, and had all but ceased there by 1920. In the 19th century, fishermen discovered a 200 by 70 mile oyster bed on the seabed between England and Germany, and had cleaned it out within decades. 

And we have still not learned from our mistakes. In the 1970s, fishermen found oysters in the Solent, the channel between the Isle of Wight and the South Coast, giving hope that the industry could be reborn sustainably, but we ate them all instead.