Foreign Cattle Market

Situated at the former royal Deptford Dockyard on a bend of the River Thames and owned by the City of London, all animals came from overseas, were landed by cattle boat, kept under quarantine conditions, and had to be slaughtered within 10 days of disembarkation.

Wrote Charles Dickens:All the evidence points to one short, simple, certain, severe and somewhat costly remedy—a market exclusively reserved for foreign fat cattle at every port of debarkation, where every animal intended for the butcher should be slain, after sale, in abbatoirs provided for the purpose.

There was lobbying for the market to be on the river's north bank, since many traders, especially the butchers of Whitechapel, did not want to have to travel to south London to buy their meat; but there were few adequate sites and access to these was poor.

Here in times past Elizabeth I had come to knight Francis Drake aboard the Golden Hind, and Peter the Great of Russia had studied shipbuilding.

By connecting these together Jones obtained a cattle lairage building comprising a pentagonal horseshoe with open sides facing the river and the landing piers (see Layout).

A journalist described it for Australian readers:The buyer runs over the lot, say, twenty or fifty, averaging the weights by calculation, and then offers a price, which is of course contemptuously rejected at first.

[39] Employment conditions in Deptford Foreign Cattle Market were investigated by social researcher Charles Booth and are described in his Life and Labour of the People in London (1896).

[51] In addition 1500 casual workers, mostly drovers and slaughtermen, were paid on piecework,[52] and at times could earn high wages, but the hours were irregular and employment was precarious.

[54][55] There is a record of market workers sending a wreath to the funeral of George Joseph Cooper MP, admired because at one time Argentina was put on the blacklist and he had tried very hard to get it removed.

The women's share in the ugly business begins when the greasy, slimy intestinal skins [many yards long] come to them for the scraping off of all fat and substance still attaching to them.

Describing the pull of London as a meat market for European farmers, Richard Peet said "It was as though a city of several million people were located just off the Dutch coast".

[99] Already in 1880 The Times was advising its readers that a 1,200 pounds (540 kg) steer from (say) Colorado, Wyoming or Montana could be conveyed to Deptford market — over 2,000 miles of land and 3,000 of ocean — for £10 or £12.

[107] The English adventurer Moreton Frewen, writing to The Times, saidCroma, due at Deptford Saturday, the 25th, has on board a hundred fat bullocks, the first consignment of western American cattle that have as yet taken advantage of the cheap transportation afforded by the Great Lakes.

It is [remarkable] that beasts calved more than 6,000 miles away on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, matured in Wyoming and fattened on Lake Superior, should have been destined after crossing the Atlantic on the hoof, to "terminate their engagements" in the Thames.

[126] Such was the demand for export-grade cattle in 1903 that an American agent told his government "it is extremely difficult to get a good piece of beef in the city of Buenos Aires".

At the end of the Victorian era cattle and sheep were shipped to Deptford Market from as far away as Victoria (Australia), New South Wales, Queensland, and Dunedin, New Zealand.

Acting in collusion they allocated market shares and fixed meat prices in the United States, eventually coming under attack by "trust buster" president Theodore Roosevelt.

In the Edwardian era reputable newspapers claimed that As a result of persistent questioning by C. W. Bowerman, Labour MP for Deptford,[134] Winston Churchill (the President of the Board of Trade) set up an inquiry into "how far and in what manner the general supply, distribution and price of Meat in the United Kingdom are controlled or affected by any combination of firms or companies".

Even today, when animal welfare is a consideration and the average journey from feedlot to slaughter plant lasts just a few hours,[137] transport-related stress and injury are major sources of loss to the American meat industry.

[148][149] Risk was greatest in winter, when insurance rates soared to 10% "as a heavy storm may make it necessary to lighten the ship by throwing the entire deck load of cattle overboard".

[150] In 1879 the British government's chief veterinary officer reported on animals jettisoned from transatlantic cattle ships or dying on board from injury or suffocation.

They were unstable if cattle were carried on the upper deck or (worse) on a temporary, higher platform that raised the ship's centre of gravity even further, and obstructed the crew in their duties.

[155] Another accusation was that cattle attendants used cruel methods to make animals get on their feet, such as piercing them with pitchforks, twisting their tails, beating them about the head with iron buckets, or pouring paraffin in their ears.

The cattle attendants included foremen known as "cowboys of the seas", "big burly fellows who are used to rough living and facing danger";[158] also a despised class called "stiffs" who did the work for little or no pay just to get across the Atlantic.

[170] Quite often at these stops, however, the railroad companies, who were not very enthusiastic about the cattle trade,[171] neglected to provide proper water or food, or there was nowhere to rest because the station stockyard was a sea of mud[172] or a drift of snow.

[185] A stockman recalled: The toughest job I ever undertook was to start from the Missouri River and land a consignment of cattle in the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, without a loss.

[188] In the Victorian era the necessity and economic rationale of the transatlantic cattle trade were called in question, since imported chilled meat was a viable alternative.

A writer to The Times said:I know a family in this town of good position who after much anxious thought and weighing all the chances of being poisoned, &c, timorously resolved one day to try this American beef.

[212] In the Victorian era it was reported that "foreign merino sheep are slaughtered at Deptford, sent to Cardiff, the hind quarters there cut off, sent to London again, and there sold as Welsh mutton".

Instead of carcasses chilled or frozen being brought, the live cattle are conveyed to an English port and at once taken ashore and slaughtered... even an expert would find it hard to tell the difference.