Shoulder of Mutton Field by Whyman Desmond C.;

Author:Whyman, Desmond C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nottingham University Press
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 67: T. G. Randall, Abattoir, Elizabeth Mews, Englands Lane, Hampstead, c1900.

The references to the movement of herd animals, cattle and sheep, albeit the herding instinct of pigs is decidedly absent is one that often came to symbolise a time and place in the minds of the public, when the world around them was different than it is today. The herding of animals on public roads was a police matter regulated under the Metropolitan Streets Act, 1867. The general time limit within which cattle could be driven was between 10 o’clock in the morning and 7 o’clock in the evening, and in London the restrictions covered an area within a four mile radius of Charing Cross. In the period 1870-73, persons in the London metropolitan police district convicted of driving cattle outside the permitted hours totalled 663, and another 1,097 convicted for allowing cattle to stray in a public thoroughfare

The Metropolitan Cattle Market in Islington, with entrances in Caledonian and York Roads was opened by Prince Albert on the 13th June 1855. It had been designed and built, specifically with hygiene and efficiency in mind, at a cost of over £300,000 on land called Copenhagen Fields purchased by the Corporation of the City of London on which stood Copenhagen House together with a tea garden and cricket ground. Initially successful, with butchers who bought on the hoof, a little known earlier attempt by a Mr John Perkins to open a cattle market in Islington ended in failure. In 1835 he bought land between Essex Road (then Lower Road) and the Regents Canal and opened the following year; the venture lasted only a few months. From the onset officers of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were on site to oversee the welfare of the animals. How many cases of cruelty took place and by whom during the lifetime of the market is unknown, except to cite one of many publicised prosecutions. The case in 1866 concerned George Irons a sixteen year old drover from Upper Victoria Road, Holloway, charged with gross cruelty. He was observed brutally beating several cattle with his drovers stick for no apparent reason. The Clerkenwell Magistrate, a Mr Cooke, said it was a clear case of gratuitous violence and sentenced the defendant to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour in the House of Correction for one month. In addition Mr Alexander, clerk of the market committee, stated it was a rule that if a drover was convicted of cruelty never to renew his licence.

For shepherds and drovers this applied equally to their dogs, in particular the drover where mistreatment was widespread and belatedly only addressed by the trade in 1892 with a show of drovers dogs. The first show of its kind held at the Metropolitan Cattle market to improve the breed of sheep dogs and persuade drovers to take more interest and care in their canine assistants. Among the exhibitors from the Collie Club a Mr Ballard of Highgate and Mr Henman from Breaknock Road.

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