The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-19 00:00:00

THE POOR MAN'S MEAT.

The quantity of butcher's meat consumed by
the poorer classes of the metropolis is considerably
greater than is teraany (apposed. It must not,
however, be baldly assumed that this meat is
eaten hi the shape ci beet, pork, or mutton ; on
the,contregy, large, numbers of the poor have been
fieih-eateis for years, without once enjoying,
unless at rare intervals, the luxury of a bit of beef
or mutton. The meat used by them is procured
wholly from what is technically termed the
" offal" of slaughtered animals, and which forms
a moat important feature of the metropolitan
dead-meat trade, its sale generally constituting
the principal source from whence the profit. of
the wholesale butcher are derived. The offal can-
tina of the head, tail, kidneys, heart, tongue,
liver, skirt, and similar portions of the animal ;
the feet generally going with the skin or bide.
The estimated value of the offal per animal is
about 50e. for a bullock, and from 10s. to
13s. for a sheep. The offal, when fresh,
generally forms, in poor neighbourhoods,
the most saleable portion of the animal.
In Whitechapel a pair of milts can be purchased
for a penny. As the two milts together weigh
nearly a pound, this forms the cheapest kind of
animal food within the reach of the poor, and as
such is eagerly sought after. The oxtails are
generally disposed of, at prices varying from Is.
4d. to 25., to hotel and dining-room proprietors,
as are many of the kidneys, which bring about Is.
4d. Sheep kidneys are sold with the portions of
the animal to which they are attached. The tripes
of bullocks are purchased wholesale by the tripe-
&ewers, who, after properly preparing them,
either retail the same themselves, or else dispose of
them among the tripe-shops in Clare-market and
other poor neighbourhoods. The same claw of
dealers also purchase from the hide and sheepskin
tradesmen the feet of sheep and oxen, which, after
being duly cleansed and dressed, are retailed under
the designation of "trotters" and " cowhe,els,"
the latter being much in favour among the
poor for making stew and soup. The feet
of swine, similarly prepared, are sold principally
by hawkers, who find their trade most brisk to-
wards evening in the various public-houses—a
pint of beer and a pig's foot or trotter often con-
stituting the evening meal of many of the poorer
class of labourers. The price of a sheep's foot or
pig's foot thus dressed ranges from a halfpenny
to threehalfpenoe, one penny being the medium
charge. A considerable portion of the livers and
skirts are purchased wholesale by retail dealers in
low neighbourhoods. The general price of these
is ls. Bd. In Whitechapel some of the Petticoat-
lane Jews are good customers, the liver being re-
tailed by them in the same manner es fish, namely,
in a cooked state direct from the frying-pan, the
purchasers generally being the poorest of the
poor, who seldom have themeana of procuring a
fire. The hearts of exen and imp, in the ma-
jority of instances, constitute the Sunday dinner of
the purchasers, who are generally working people.
Stuffed with a pennyworth of herbs, and baked
with a few potatoes, they afford a cheap sub-
stitute for the rib of beef or shoulder of
mutton which the poor so often find them-
selves, from want of means, unable to purchase.
A bullock's heart sells for about ls. 6d. Certain
portiere' of the entrails of wine& are also used as
Calves', heads and sheep's heads are bought
largely by a certain class of dealers, who retail the
same readily in a baked state. They also find a
quick sale among individual purchasers,
among Scottish artisans, who are thus nethled to
procure their favourite luxury at a lower rate than
in Edinburgh or Glasgow, where the great de-
Mina exceeding the supply, naturally leads to
enhseteed prima The ox,hasida are baggy
in the making of soups, and form another eta
article of food among the poor. They are bo t
wholesale by the tripe-dreasers. An ox's tripe
and head are valued at lie. Sheep's brains are
retailed almost solely to the dealers in baked sheep's
heads. The tongue, both of the ox and the sheep,
is generally sold by the tripe-dresser to the
curer, and forms, with the ex-tail, the dearest por-
tions of the offal. Other parts of the offal, such
as the tripe! of sheep, are disposed of as food for
cats and dogs. It is, however, a well-known fact
that sheep's tripe is largely used as an article of
food among the poor—necessity overcoming their
natural distaste. No part of the animal is lost.
Even the blood is valuable, being used first for
calico-printing, and then for manure. Other
portions of animal matter find their way into the
hands of bone-boilers, and people of a similar
class. When it is remembered that in 1867, no
less than 265,754 head of oxen, and 1,472,000
sheep, forming a total of 1,737,754 animals, ex-
clusive of calves and swine, were disposed of in
the Metropolitan Market, some adequate idea may
be formed of the magnitude which the trade in
animal offal has attained, and the important
position occupied by it in the domestic economy
of the poor. Anything which may tend
to increase the price of the commoner descriptions
of offal must inevitably press with terrible seve-
rity on the humbler classes. Yet the possibility of
this has been almost wholly overlooked by the
advocates of the new Metropolitan Foreign Cattle
Market. The Duke of Richmond, in answer to
a question by Mr. Hope Scott, declared that "he
knew nothing about offal ;" and yet he wasv
anxious for the establishment of the proposed
market. He had looked at thequestion from one
point of view only. It has been shown conclu-
sively in the evidence taken before the Metropo-
litan Foreign Cattle Market Committee that the
oousory slaughter of foreign animals at Da-
genham, instead of in the present localities, will
most certainly lead in various ways to a oom-
plete withdrawal of a large portion of animal offal
from the different metropolitan retail mar-
kets; the coat of carriage and the de-
terioration of quality occasioned by the
time and mode of transit from Dagenham to
the retail shops being more than sufficient to
absorb the profit of the dealers. The evidence
given respecting this probable result was remark-
ably nnanimons, and has not been in any way con-
troverted, At present the greater portion of the
offal is disposed of by the retail butcher, being
sold almost as feet as it is exhibited for sale in kis
shop. Where it is disposed of wholesale, the
establishments of the purchasers are generally in
the immediate neighbourhood of the slaughter-
houses. At Dagenham the whole system would
have to be changed. The offal would have to be
disposed of entirely by contract, and conveyed in
carts to London. The general experience of the
metropolitan butchers is that offal sold in this
manner is not capable of being so cheaply
and readily distributed among the poor as
under the present system. A Whitechapel
butcher, who some time since contracted for
the supply of meat to the government
at Deptford, furnished important information on
this point. During the two years that he held
the contract he slaughtered 9,000 animals at
Deptford, it being one of the conditions of the
contract that all the animals intended for go-
vernment use should be killed at that place. He
showed that the lose on the offal of each animal
thus killed, occasioned by its being brought from
Deptford to Whitechapel for sale, amounted at
the lowest to 3s. 7d., or about the profit usually
made by the butcher; the deterioration produced
by the inevitable knocking about of the offal
during its transit, and its delay in ap • in the
markets, forming the cause of e • ce.
He protected himself from loss by charging the
government a higher price for the meat sold
by him. But in ordinary trade the result
would become apparent in the lessened quantity
of meat brought into the market. In fact, every-
thing tends to prove that the animals must bo