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46
to inquire into the truth of the statement or to direct the Inspector to
attend and prove his words before your Sanitary Committee. All the
Commissioners would do was to permit Mr. Terrett to give his evidence to
your Sanitary Committee. He was invited to attend on two or three
occasions for this purpose, but failed to do so!
The Corporation does not allow the visceral organs of animals, "offal"—
i.e., sweetbreads, tongues, livers, kidneys, sheep and oxen heads, lungs,
plucks, &c.—to be sold wholesale in the Central Market. The shops in
that building can only be rented by carcase salesmen. This rule is not, I
think, beneficial either to the public or to the poor. The consequence is
that there are six or seven wholesale "offal" shops in our portion of the
Market, and it may have happened that a few diseased livers, lungs, sheep
and oxen heads have escaped the vigilance of your Inspectors, but no such
case has ever been proved. Most of these offal salesmen sell on commission
to retail butchers, and not, as stated, to the ignorant poor. They, as
consignees, have but a very small pecuniary interest in dodging the meat
Inspector, as the City Press states they do. This slanderous accusation is, I
am convinced, utterly false, as regards both the carcase and the offal salesmen
in your district. In a long and intimate experience I have not found them
to be sharpers, tricksters or fraudulent dealers, as one would infer from the
public press, but as honest, open and straightforward tradesmen as any in
the City of London.
Having acted as Pathologist to two large hospitals, I took pains, years
ago, to acquaint myself with the diseases and morbid anatomy of oxen,
sheep, and pigs, and did my best to instruct the Inspectors your Board
appointed as my assistants. Three of these Inspectors are living, and will,
as meat examiners, compare favourably with any of the City Inspectors.
It is true that we have passed young calves and carcases which City men
would have condemned as unfit for food. For instance, 26 fine oxen had
their legs and other bones broken one Sunday morning in a railway smash
at Ealing, which necessitated their being slaughtered and dressed on the
spot by inexpert slaughtermen. The carcases of 22 of these were subsequently
exposed for sale in the Central Market, and four in Charterhouse
Street. They were not artistically dressed, and perhaps did not look nice.
I unhesitatingly passed the four in your district as fit for food, but the 22
inside the Market, which were described by a notable and respected
salesman "as the finest and healthiest meat he had ever seen," were seized
and flung into the manure cart by the City Inspectors. I sincerely trust
that a public inquiry, either by the Local Government or the Agricultural