The cattle market of Smithfield:
the selling of cattle and the consumption of meat.
When
describing all the breeds of Great
Britain, following the breeds of all the
counties, Youatt also turns his attention to Middelesex, or, in his words, the
Metropolis. (1)
He starts
the description with stating that there is no distinct breed in the county, and
only a small portion of the fields are applied for fattening of cattle for the
butcher. Some land is devoted to the temporary keep, the parking so to say, of
cattle as they have journied from all over the country to the cattle market of Smithfield. Youatt
presents a table, taken from another source, of the number of cattle and sheep
sold each year at Smithfield
from 1732 up to 1830. The number of cattle sold in 1732 was 76,210 and of sheep
514,700; in 1830 their number had been increased to 159,907 for cattle and
1287,070 for sheep, that is (my calculations) 440 cattle and 3500 sheep per day.
Think of all the noise, stench and jams in the streets of all those animals,
coming in and going out in one day! All these were the supplies for London and towns and
villages in the neighbourhood, and for the navy.
Next to
that there was what Youatt called the dead market, which was the selling of
dead meat sent up from the country “generally speaking perfectly wholesome, and
fairly and honestly slaughtered, although it is said that the flesh of some
animals that did not come by their death through the hands of man, has
occasionally found its way to the Newgate market.”
Based on
several assumptions, estimations and numbers of tables, Youatt calculates the
average quantity of meat consumed by each individual in the course of one year.
The outcome for London
is 170 pound
per person per year or half a pound per day. He considers this a very high
calculation compared to that of Paris, where people consume 80 pounds per day, and of
Brussels, where they consume 89
pounds, but, says he, “ours is a meat-eating population,
and composed chiefly of Protestants; and when we remember that this includes
the bones as well as the meat, half a pound per day is not too much to allow to
each person”.
(1). William
Youatt, Cattle, their Breeds, Managment
and Diseases, London:
Baldwin and Craddock, 1834, p.255-257.
