It is firmly built and paved with stone. It is well lighted,
thoroughly aired, and lavishly provided with fresh water. It has
two doors opposite each other; the first, the door by which I
entered from the main yard; the second, which is opposite, opening
on another smaller yard, where the sheep and calves are killed on
benches. The pavement of that yard, I see, slopes downward to a
gutter, for its being more easily cleansed. The slaughter-house is
fifteen feet high, sixteen feet and a-half wide, and thirty-three
feet long. It is fitted with a powerful windlass, by which one man
at the handle can bring the head of an ox down to the ground to
receive the blow from the pole-axe that is to fell him – with the
means of raising the carcass and keeping it suspended during the
after-operation of dressing – and with hooks on which carcasses can
hang, when completely prepared, without touching the walls. Upon
the pavement of this first stone chamber, lies an ox scarcely dead.
If I except the blood draining from him, into a little stone well
in a corner of the pavement, the place is free from offence as the
Place de la Concorde. It is infinitely purer and cleaner, I know,
my friend the functionary, than the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ha,
ha! Monsieur is pleasant, but, truly, there is reason, too, in
what he says.
I look into another of these slaughter-houses. ‘Pray enter,’ says
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a gentleman in bloody boots. ‘This is a calf I have killed this
morning. Having a little time upon my hands, I have cut and
punctured this lace pattern in the coats of his stomach. It is
pretty enough. I did it to divert myself.’ – ‘It is beautiful,
Monsieur, the slaughterer!’ He tells me I have the gentility to
say so.
I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In many, retail dealers, who
have come here for the purpose, are making bargains for meat.
There is killing enough, certainly, to satiate an unused eye; and
there are steaming carcasses enough, to suggest the expediency of a
fowl and salad for dinner; but, everywhere, there is an orderly,
clean, well-systematised routine of work in progress – horrible
work at the best, if you please; but, so much the greater reason
why it should be made the best of. I don’t know (I think I have
observed, my name is Bull) that a Parisian of the lowest order is
particularly delicate, or that his nature is remarkable for an
infinitesimal infusion of ferocity; but, I do know, my potent,
grave, and common counselling Signors, that he is forced, when at
this work, to submit himself to a thoroughly good system, and to
make an Englishman very heartily ashamed of you.
Here, within the walls of the same abattoir, in other roomy and
commodious buildings, are a place for converting the fat into
tallow and packing it for market – a place for cleansing and
scalding calves’ heads and sheep’s feet – a place for preparing
tripe – stables and coach-houses for the butchers – innumerable
conveniences, aiding in the diminution of offensiveness to its
lowest possible point, and the raising of cleanliness and
supervision to their highest. Hence, all the meat that goes out of
the gate is sent away in clean covered carts. And if every trade
connected with the slaughtering of animals were obliged by law to
be carried on in the same place, I doubt, my friend, now reinstated
in the cocked hat (whose civility these two francs imperfectly
acknowledge, but appear munificently to repay), whether there could
be better regulations than those which are carried out at the
Abattoir of Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, for I am away to the
other side of Paris, to the Abattoir of Grenelle! And there I find
exactly the same thing on a smaller scale, with the addition of a
magnificent Artesian well, and a different sort of conductor, in
the person of a neat little woman with neat little eyes, and a neat
little voice, who picks her neat little way among the bullocks in a
very neat little pair of shoes and stockings.