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Accompanied by the Inspector, I have visited on a Saturday
night several butchers' shops and meat stalls in Dockhead,
Bermondsey New Road, and Southwark Park Road. The beef
sold at a low price is generally "American." It varies in quality
from "fair" to "very inferior." In five shops some small pieces of
meat, and in one instance some rabbits, were exposed for sale in a
putrid condition. At one shop we found about a dozen sheeps'
lungs affected with tubercular disease and also a diseased liver.
From one stall the Inspector took a box of exceedingly stale fish,
and at another stall we noticed a most miserable leg of mutton
which weighed five pounds. All these articles were destroyed by
consent of the owners. In only one instance did we meet with
any obstruction. It was at No. 22, Bermondsey New Road, where
we found about ten pounds of meat in a putrid state offered for sale
at 2½d. per pound. The meat was taken before the magistrate at
the Southwark Police Court and was condemned by him. I believe
the bulk of the cheap mutton sold at the stalls—and in some of the
shops, is the flesh of animals who have lost half of their original
weight from a form of consumption known as "sheep rot." This
disease is common in sheep fed on marshy ground and is due to a
parasite affecting the liver. The impoverishment of the blood, in
consequence of large quantities of serum being drained away by the
bowels, brings on a dropsical condition, of which the sheep eventually
dies, or would die if not killed. Differences of opinion exist with
regard to the effects of eating the flesh of diseased animals, but I
have no hesitation in saying that the diminution in nutritive value
in mutton of this kind, far exceeds the difference in the price. It is
dearer at 5d. per pound, than sound mutton at 9d.—as food.
March 1st, 1880.
During the fortnight that ended on the 21st day of
February, 141 births and 108 deaths were registered in Bermondsey.
These numbers were equal to an annual birth rate of 36.7 and
to an annual rate of mortality of 28.1 per 1000 of the estimated
population. The death rate in London for the corresponding period
was 32.1 per 1000.
From the principal diseases of the zymotic class there were 16
deaths, viz:-6 from scarlet fever, 8 from whooping cough and 2
from diarrhœa.