The Sun.
London, England, 1849-07-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC Jootisf*LS:
.
TIMES.—The report of the Committee on'tinithfitil& et
market has just been printed by order of the House of
Commons, and the subject of which it treats stands for
immediate discussion. We congratulate the public on
this report. It would, indeed, have been perfectly im-
nrrbierienng
a t any
im-
possible for fifteen men of average honesty and intelli-
gence—not salesmenothoerr Nwg e martlcheant butchers
—to —to
have
conclusiona te
holding of a cattle-market for the supply of a metropo-
litan population of two millions in the very heart of the
city they inhabit, must be an intolerable nuisance. It
needs no examination of witnesses, no Parliamentary
Committee, no huge blue books, no discussions of
municipal or Parliamentary bodies to convince any
reasonable man of 'so very obvious a truth. Goad
droves of cattle through the crowded streets of a
largo town, and the results must be terror, confusion,
and accident to the passers by, and suffering to the
animals themselves; crowd the wretched creatures en a
ridiculously insufficient space when they have been
driven into the market, and keep them standing there
in torture for a long period of time, and the meat must
needs ha deteriorated in quality, and become less fitted
to servo for wholesome nutriment; pollute one locality in
the centre of a vast city with animal excrement and
effluvia; set the kennels a running with gore, garbage,
and filth ; establish a system of knacker's yards,
tainted sausage makers, slaughter-houses, tripe-dres-
sees, cats'-meat-boilers, catgut espinners, bone-houses,
end other noxious trades in the very heart of Lon-
don, and you necessarily give encouragement to
typhus fever, diarrl eel, dysentery, and cholera. Our
quarrel is not only with Smithfield-market, but with
Stnithileld-market and all its attendant nuisances.
We now invite all who, living at a distance from
the actual pollution and annoyance, may have en.
tertained a doubt as to the justice and reason of
our constant remonstrances against their longer conti-
nuance to peruse for themselves the report of the Pare
liarnentary Committee which has just appeared. If any
justification be needed for the efforts so long made by
the Times to abate this most disgraceful and intolerable
nuisance, we would simply refer to this report, and by
this we will be content to stand or fall. The conclusion
arrived at by the Committee after a lengthened investi-
gation was as follows:
" Resolved—That it is the opinion of this Committee
that the continuance of a market for the sale of live
stock in Smithfield is proved by experience to be at-
tended with very serious inconveniences and objections,
and that it ought to he removed."
The answer to this solemn decision of the Committee, on
the part of the advocates of Smithfield-market, will, no
doubt, be that the fifteen gentlemen of whom that body
was composed were interested in the Islington enterprise,
and availed themselves of their Parliamentary position
to further their own pecuniary interests. Such is always
the argument in last resort of the friends of the nui-
sance. The other resolutions—five in number—contain
nothing against which we feel called upon to remonstrate.
It is true enough that the Corporation of the city of
London have endeavoured fur some years past, is a
little " pottering " way, to mitigate the annoyances
caused by the presence of the cattle-market in the heart
of the City; but, the Committee add, "so long as the
market continues to be held in its present situation the
inconveniences referred to will not admit of prevention."
'They tell us in their third resolution that in providing
market accommodation in substitution for Smithfield-
market we must not only provide for the present, but
look forward to the future wants of the growing popu-
lation. This is of course a judicious course of policy.
In the opinion of the Committee the presence of a large
open space such as Smithfield in the heart of a thickly-
; populated district must be of great benefit to the health
of the surrounding neighbourhood; and in the event of
the removal of the market it is desirable that the
greater portion of it may be retained free from buildings.
No doubt such an arrangement would be very desirable.
The fifth resolution is a very important one, as it pro-
nounces authoritatively upon a subject on which much
difference of opinion existed. It is to the effect that
only one great metropolitan cattle market can
exist. "In the selection of its site, regard
should be had to the position of the railway termini,
the place of the disembarkation for Scotch, Irish,
and foreign cattle; the bridges, especially Blackfliars;
and to the density of the population in the neighbour-
hood of such site." By their sixth and last resolution
the Committee recommend the Government to take into
their " early and serious consideration " the construction
of abbatoirs, the establishment of an inspection of
slaughter•houtes, public as well as private; of en organ-
ization of a system of vigilant superintendence of the mar-
kets both of dead and live stock, " to prevent the sale
of meat unfit for human food;" of a shifting of the
market day from Monday to Tuesday, and of erect-
ing lairs with a suitable supply of food and water for
the cattle that are brought to market. Such is the sub-
stance of the six important resolutions at which the
Committee of the liaise of Commons have arrived, after
hearing and digesting an immense mass of evidence.
We may look back with some pride to the steadiness
with which we have advocated the alterations and
opinions proposed and expressed by the Committee in
the teeth of muck selfish and fatuous opposition. It
may be too much to ask of the general reader to wade
through four hundred pages of blue book, but if such an
one will but turn over with his fingers the index to the
report and its analysis, dipping from time to time into
the body of the work, we shall be satisfied. He would
there find ample proof of all the assertions we have
from time to time put forth as to the insufficient area
of Smithfield-market—as to the cruelty practised by
the drovers—as to the annoyance and darger caused by
driving the cattle through the public streets—as to
the unwholesomeness of the meat—as to the diseases
generated in cattle at Smithfield-market, and propagated
by their means throughout the country—as to the inju•
ties inflicted upon the public health in consequence of
the present position of Smithfield-market and its at-
tendant nuisances. It is unfortunately impossible to
crowd together in a single column a sufficiency of facts
from the report to support our previous assertions under
alt these heads; but there the blue book can be pur-
chased by the curious for five shillings—read it who
will. Not only is the case for the removal made cut
by competent witnesses, but in the report will be found
all that can be said on the other side, and the names and
occupations of the men who say it. To us, the single
testimony of an intelligent man, such as Professor
Owen, or Mr. Grainger, or Dr. Galin, perfectly dis-
interested in the matter, and whose attention has
been expressly called to the subject, far outweighs
the interested evidence of a score of magnates
of Newgate-market trembling for the security of
their filthy and pestilential dens. While the cholera is
raging amongst us, it is appalling to reflect that such
prolific causes of the disease are allowed to remain a
single day unchecked. Dr. Gavin says that the sanitary
condition and sanitary regulations of a large town form
a study by themselves. Public health is now a branch
of medicine ; and we certainly prefer the dicta of those
who have given especial attention to the subject. We
dwell upon this consideration just now rather than any
of the other reasons for the removal of Smithfield-
market, as the presence amongst us of the prevailing
epidemic gives it an unusual farce. But even when the
cholera is cot going its rounds among us, what a fearful
centre for the generation of pestilential diseases do we
not possess in Smithfield market and its attendant nui-
sances! Surely it needs not the presence of an actual
plague to tell us that an over-crowded cattle-market in
the centre of this huge town, surrounded by filthy
slaughter houses and horrible dens, in which the pro-
cesses of the filthiest industry are carried forward, must
be a public calamity of the most serious nature.