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of private slaughterhouses and to the regulations enforced by the police, which limit the hours during
which cattle may be so driven.
But while objections to private slaughterhouses of the sort I have indicated have greatly
decreased, other objection of a more serious nature has become increasingly evident. I refer to the
impossibility of ensuring the proper inspection of meat so long as the animals are killed in private
slaughterhouses.
Sources of meat supply at the present time.
At the present time meat is received by retail vendors in London from four sources—
1. From the Smithfield meat market, where it is inspected by the officers of the city.
2. Direct from the foreign cattle market at Deptford and from private slaughterhouses
in the Islington market without passing through the Smithfield market. This meat is not
systematically inspected.
3. From the country, whence carcases are sent direct to meat vendors in London.
This meat is not inspected before being conveyed to the vendors' shops.
4. From private slaughterhouses in London. This meat is, in practice, only occasionally
inspected in the slaughterhouses.
Provision required for meat inspection in London.
For the purpose of complete inspection of London meat it would be necessary (a) to provide
public slaughterhouses in substitution for private slaughterhouses, and to inspect the meat killed in
these public slaughterhouses; (b) for a more thorough system of inspection to be organised at the
Deptford slaughterhouse and at the slaughterhouses in the Islington cattle market; (c) to provide in
London a small number of stations at which meat sent up dead from the country to meat vendors' shops
(without passing through the Smithfield market) could be taken for the purpose of inspection. Any
public slaughterhouses provided in London might be utilised for this purpose, and additional stations
provided where necessary. Meat killed in a public slaughterhouse under the control of other
municipal authorities, and bearing evidence of inspection, might be taken direct to meat vendors' shops
without further inspection in London.
Inspection should be accompanied by the stamping of meat which was approved as fit for
human food, and the inspectors of the sanitary authorities should, by sufficient inspection of meat
exposed for sale ensure that it had been duly examined.
The adoption of this system implies a recognition of the principle that no meat which has not
been inspected, shall reach the public. At the present time all meat in London is held to be fit for
human food unless it has been condemned by the officers of the sanitary authorities after inspection,
and for this no proper opportunity exists. No doubt, at the present time, effort is made by respectable
meat vendors to supply their customers with wholesome food; but in the absence of systematic inspection
by skilled persons this result is not always attainable, however desirous the meat vendor may be.
Beyond this, however, there is no doubt that London now receives diseased meat sent up from all parts
of the country.
If evidence of the accuracy of this statement is sought, it is only necessary to point to recent
successful prosecutions instituted, especially by the City Corporation and Holborn District Board, of
various persons sending diseased meat into London from Somerset, Wilts, Derbyshire, Suffolk, Lincolnshire,
Leicestershire, Devon, Norfolk, Essex, Staffordshire, Kent, and Cambridgeshire. The
whole of the meat supplied to London does not however pass through the Smithfield market or the
Holborn district, and no other system than that which I have indicated will prevent persons dealing in
diseased meat from supplying meat vendors in London who are willing to purchase meat of this character.
Such a system is needed more especially for the protection of the poorer population in London, who
purchase low-priced meat. It may of course be argued that London meat is now inspected in the retail
vendors' shops, and no doubt some effort is made by sanitary authorities to perform this duty. But
the proper inspection of meat in the numerous slaughterhouses and butchers' shops in London is a
practical impossibility, and nothing but the centralization of the slaughtering and the provision of
inspection stations will afford adequate protection to the public. "When public slaughterhouses
are instituted throughout the country, and meat is inspected in them, meat inspection stations in
London will be less necessary, provided of course that the dead meat arriving in London bears evidence
of this inspection. The examination in London of dead meat coming from the country will, indeed,
only be necessary until all the meat arriving in London has been killed in public slaughterhouses where
it can be more efficiently inspected. The duty of every community is to ensure, as far as practicable,
by the provision of public slaughterhouses, the proper inspection of all meat killed within its area;
and I therefore think the Committee should, in the first instance, provide an alternative for the
slaughtering of cattle in private slaughterhouses, leaving the needs of London with regard to the
inspection of meat, which is brought dead into London, to be considered subsequently. When London
has made this provision the attention of the Committee may well be directed to making the necessary
arrangements for the inspection of meat sent to London which has been killed without inspection in
other parts of the country.
The provision of public slaughterhouses should, I submit, meet the following requirements —
The slaughterhouses should be very few, so as to give all the advantages of centralisation
for the purpose of inspection of the meat.
They should be within convenient reach of the butchers' shops.
They should be in railway communication with the principal cattle markets outside
London as well as with the Metropolitan Cattle Market in Islington.
The scheme Which I submit for the consideration of the Committee is that six public slaughterhouses
should be provided, three on the south and three on the north of the Thames.
The selections would be approximately as follows—
I. South-West London—Wandsworth, providing for Wandsworth and Battersea.
(Number of licensed slaughterhouses in 1897, 38).