A fishmonger is someone who sells fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 and seafood

Seafood

Seafood is any form of marine life regarded as food by humans. Seafoods include fish, molluscs , crustaceans , echinoderms . Edible sea plants, such as some seaweeds and microalgae, are also seafood, and are widely eaten around the world, especially in Asia...

. In some countries modern supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

s are replacing fishmongers who operate in shops or fish market

Fish market

A fish market is a marketplace used for marketing fish products. It can be dedicated to wholesale trade between fishermen and fish merchants, or to the sale of seafood to individual consumers, or to both...

s.

Fishmongers can be wholesalers

Wholesale

Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...

 or retailers

Retail

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

, and are trained at selecting and purchasing, handling, gutting, boning, filleting

Fillet (cut)

A fillet is a cut or slice of boneless meat or fish.- Meat :In the case of beef, in the USA, the term most often refers to beef tenderloin, especially filet mignon.- Chicken :...

, displaying, merchandising and selling their product. In many places fishmongers, like butcher

Butcher

A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

s, are a dying breed. With the advent of many modern ways of distributing and packaging food, supermarkets often opt for less expensive alternatives to these trained, highly skilled professionals.

Worshipful Company of Fishmongers

The fishmongers guild, one of the earliest guilds, was established in the City of London

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

 by a Royal Charter granted by Edward I shortly after he became king in 1272. Partnership with foreigners was forbidden and the sale of fish was tightly controlled to ensure freshness and restrain profit, which was limited to one penny in the shilling

Shilling

The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

. Nevertheless, the guild grew rich and, after Edward's victory over the Scots, was able to make a great show, including one thousand mounted knights.

During the reign of Edward II, the political power of the fishmongers waned and Parliament decreed that no fishmonger could become mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 of the city. This was soon rescinded though and their wealth increased further so that, during the reign of Edward III, the guild could provide £40 to the war against the French, this being a great sum at that time.

The guild was then reformed by Great Charter as the Mystery of the Fishmongers of London. They were given a monopoly over the crying and selling of fish and they regulated the catching of fish in the Thames which teemed with fish such as salmon

Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...

 at that time. The guild still continues today as one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies.

Tools

The tools used by fishmongers include:

• pliers
  Pliers
  Pliers are a hand tool used to hold objects firmly, for bending, or physical compression. Generally, pliers consist of a pair of metal first-class levers joined at a fulcrum positioned closer to one end of the levers, creating short jaws on one side of the fulcrum, and longer handles on the other...
  
   to pull out pinbones
• a fish scaler to remove scales
• a filleting knife to cut away the flesh from the bones
• short strong knives for opening oysters and other shellfish
• protective gloves
• a curved knife for gutting and removing roe
  Roe
  Roe or hard roe is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses of fish and certain marine animals, such as shrimp, scallop and sea urchins...
  
  

Fishmongers in culture

In many countries, the fishwife was proverbial for her sharp tongue and outspoken speech. In Medieval France, the ones in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 were known for their special privilege of being able to speak frankly to the King himself, when he ventured into the marketplace, and voice criticism without fear of punishment.

Charles Fort

Charles Fort

Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. Today, the terms Fortean and Forteana are used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print today.-Biography:Charles Hoy Fort was born in 1874 in Albany, New York, of Dutch...

 in his book Lo! compiles the story of the Mad Fishmonger or "St. Fishmonger", which later appears in the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...

. St. Fishmonger allegedly caused crabs and periwinkles to fall from the sky.

In the English translation of the Asterix

Asterix

Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...

 series, the village fishmonger is called Unhygienix.
In the film The Beach

The Beach (film)

The Beach is a 2000 adventure drama film directed by Danny Boyle and based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Alex Garland, which was adapted for the film by John Hodge. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and features Tilda Swinton, Robert Carlyle, Virginie Ledoyen and Guillaume Canet...

, the Island's chef has only fish as a source of meat, and is named Unhygienix in reference to the Asterix character.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, some contend that the word fishmonger was a euphemism

Euphemism

A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...

 for a "fleshmonger," or pimp

Pimp

A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...

.

Historic fishmongers

• Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian Anarchist executed in 1927 following a controversial American trial
• Dolly Peel
  Dolly Peel
  Dorothy Peel , known as Dolly, was a famous character in Victorian South Shields, England, who acquired local legendary status. She is commemorated by a statue in the centre of the town.-Life:...
  
  
• Dolly Pentreath
  Dolly Pentreath
  Dolly Pentreath, or Dorothy Pentreath was probably the last fluent native speaker of the Cornish language, prior to its revival in 1904 and the subsequent small number of children brought up as bilingual native speakers of revived Cornish.She is often stated to have been the last monoglot speaker...
  
   the last native speaker of Cornish
  Cornish language
  Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
  
  
• Marretje Arents
  Marretje Arents
  Marretje Arents , known as Mat van den Nieuwendijk, and het limoenwijf, was a Dutch fishwife and rebellion leader, sentenced to death as one of the three instigators and leaders responsible for the so called Pachter riots of 1748....
  
  
• Molly Malone
  Molly Malone
  "Molly Malone" is a popular song, set in Dublin, Ireland, which has become the unofficial anthem of Dublin City....