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101
but this is a detail, and no doubt any Act would be drawn in
sufficiently elastic terms. The effect of legislation in the
direction indicated, would probably be to still further reduce
the amount of slaughtering in London, excepting at the
markets of the City Corporation. And this would be no evil,
provided proper arrangements should be made for killing at
public slaughter-houses in the country, and for inspection of
meat intended for the London market. The dead meat trade
should be encouraged. Twenty-seven years ago, when the
population of Kensington was 127,000, we had 56 private
slaughter-houses, and wretched places, for the most part, they
were. Advantage was taken by your Vestry of the passing of
the Slaughter-Houses (Metropolis) Act, 1874, to close the
worst of the premises — the number was reduced to 152 in 1875—
— a suitable standard of requirements having been adopted by
your Vestry and approved by the magistrates who were then
the licensing authority. The result has been a continuous
diminution in the number of slaughter-houses: to thirteen at
the present time, for a population of 172,000. Not much
slaughtering is done at these establishments, a very modest
percentage indeed of the meat consumed being killed in the
parish; in which, as in the metropolis generally, only one
butcher in nine, has a licensed slaughter-house. And whilst
in 1874 there was one slaughter-house to 2,300 of the population,
there is now one to about 13,000. For the rest, I may
observe that I have always been an advocate of public slaughterhouses
; and so far back as March, 1874,1 submitted my views
on the subject in a paper, read before the Society of Medical
Officers of Health, on " Private Slaughter-houses, considered
with reference to the Report of the Select Committee on
Noxious Businesses." In this paper, and after describing the
unsatisfactory state of the then existing slaughter-houses, and
expressing preference for the abattoir system, I specified the
requirements of a sanitary slaughter-house, indicated the conditions
necessary to be enforced by bye-laws—a code of which