private management, they are ventilated and clean. For the most
part, they are unventilated and dirty; and, to the reeking walls,
putrid fat and other offensive animal matter clings with a
tenacious hold. The busiest slaughter-houses in London are in the
neighbourhood of Smithfield, in Newgate Market, in Whitechapel, in
Newport Market, in Leadenhall Market, in Clare Market. All these
places are surrounded by houses of a poor description, swarming
with inhabitants. Some of them are close to the worst burialgrounds
in London. When the slaughter-house is below the ground,
it is a common practice to throw the sheep down areas, neck and
crop – which is exciting, but not at all cruel. When it is on the
level surface, it is often extremely difficult of approach. Then,
the beasts have to be worried, and goaded, and pronged, and tailtwisted,
for a long time before they can be got in – which is
entirely owing to their natural obstinacy. When it is not
difficult of approach, but is in a foul condition, what they see
and scent makes them still more reluctant to enter – which is their
natural obstinacy again. When they do get in at last, after no
trouble and suffering to speak of (for, there is nothing in the
previous journey into the heart of London, the night’s endurance in
Smithfield, the struggle out again, among the crowded multitude,
the coaches, carts, waggons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, phaetons,
cabs, trucks, dogs, boys, whoopings, roarings, and ten thousand
other distractions), they are represented to be in a most unfit
state to be killed, according to microscopic examinations made of
their fevered blood by one of the most distinguished physiologists
in the world, PROFESSOR OWEN – but that’s humbug. When they ARE
killed, at last, their reeking carcases are hung in impure air, to
become, as the same Professor will explain to you, less nutritious
and more unwholesome – but he is only an UNcommon counsellor, so
don’t mind HIM. In half a quarter of a mile’s length of
Whitechapel, at one time, there shall be six hundred newly
slaughtered oxen hanging up, and seven hundred sheep – but, the
more the merrier – proof of prosperity. Hard by Snow Hill and
Warwick Lane, you shall see the little children, inured to sights
of brutality from their birth, trotting along the alleys, mingled
with troops of horribly busy pigs, up to their ankles in blood –
but it makes the young rascals hardy. Into the imperfect sewers of
this overgrown city, you shall have the immense mass of corruption,
engendered by these practices, lazily thrown out of sight, to rise,
in poisonous gases, into your house at night, when your sleeping
children will most readily absorb them, and to find its languid
way, at last, into the river that you drink – but, the French are a
frog-eating people who wear wooden shoes, and it’s O the roast beef
of England, my boy, the jolly old English roast beef.
It is quite a mistake – a newfangled notion altogether – to suppose
that there is any natural antagonism between putrefaction and
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
health. They know better than that, in the Common Council. You
may talk about Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man through
his sense of smell, when he draws near to something dangerous; but,
that won’t go down in the City. Nature very often don’t mean
anything. Mrs. Quickly says that prunes are ill for a green wound;
but whosoever says that putrid animal substances are ill for a
green wound, or for robust vigour, or for anything or for anybody,
is a humanity-monger and a humbug. Britons never, never, never,
&c., therefore. And prosperity to cattle-driving, cattleslaughtering,
bone-crushing, blood-boiling, trotter-scraping,
tripe-dressing, paunch-cleaning, gut-spinning, hide-preparing,
tallow-melting, and other salubrious proceedings, in the midst of
hospitals, churchyards, workhouses, schools, infirmaries, refuges,
dwellings, provision-shops nurseries, sick-beds, every stage and
baiting-place in the journey from birth to death!
These UNcommon counsellors, your Professor Owens and fellows, will
contend that to tolerate these things in a civilised city, is to
reduce it to a worse condition than BRUCE found to prevail in
ABYSSINIA. For there (say they) the jackals and wild dogs came at