“Barbarities
which it would not be thought could be practiced in a Christian country”.
This is
what Youatt wrote in 1834 when describing the situation at the Smithfield cattle market
in his days. His complaint and accusations were based on the fact that the
market was no longer large enough to contain all the cattle and drive them
through the streets to the butcher. This lack of space resulted in danger for
the people and “many an act of cruelty to the poor beasts”. “The most barbarous
expedients were resorted to to pack the cattle in the circumscribed space.
Youatt supported his accusations with an extremely long footnote which contains
a text, taken The Voice of Humanity,
“an excellent and cheap quarterly publication”. Parts of this texts are
worthwhile quoting.
“In Smithfield market there is not room to tie
up to the rails much more than half of the cattle sent there for sale! The
remainder are disposed of by being formed, in groups of about twenty in each,
into “ rings” or “ off-droves,”as such divisions are termed. About two o’clock
in the morning the Smithfield
barbarities are at the height, and the constables, being sent into the market
in the daytime only, are consequently not in attendance. The drovers surround
the unfortunate bullocks which cannot be tied up in the market, and commence by
aiming with their bludgeons blows at their heads, to avoid which they endeavour
to hide their heads, by keeping them towards the ground. On attempting to run
backwards, the bullocks are restrained by blows upon their bucks and legs, together
with the application of goads; whilst, if they venture to lift up the head, a
dozen bludgeons are instantly hammering on it, until again lowered to the
ground. This scene of barbarity is continued until every bullock, however
refractory, obstinate, stupid, or dangerous at first, has been disciplined to stand quietly in a
ring—their heads in the centre, their bodies diverging outward like the radii
of a circle: this is done that they may conveniently be handled by the
butchers. The barbarity of Smithfield is at its height during the night; but in the daytime, by seeing the
process by which one or more bullocks, when sold, are driven out of a “ring” or
“off drove,"—and observing the hammerings with bludgeons on the head; the
thrusting the goads into the nostrils of the animals to make them move
backwards, after similar instruments had been applied to urge them in the
contrary direction; by witnessing the mode of re-forming the “ rings" or
"' off-droves," which are constantly broken through by the withdrawment
of purchased animals, as well as by the passing and repassing of carts and drays,
some faint idea may be formed of the amount of needless barbarity inflicted, and of the consequent deterioration
of the meat.”
The
footnote continues with statements of witnesses who describe salesmen with 20
cattle or so having to make their beasts form a ring in the manner described
above; but when these animals have to go out of this ring again, to be led to
the butcher, they are now anxious of all the blows and mistreatments and want
to join every other ring they see, from which they have to be removed again
with similar blows to heads and legs, making them blind and cripple; and so the
animals are in the greatest distress and in the end, at the moment of
slaughtering, severely wounded.
“All this
would be entirely prevented, if there were room to tie each bullock separately”
.
William
Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Management
and Diseases, London:
Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.258-260.
