3-028-790 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Meat Market, Smithfield, [London], at two in the morning, 1870. 'Hours before daylight, the New Smithfield Market is a scene of busy traffic...The supply is kept up by the dead-meat trains, which arrive during the night on most of the leading railway lines. There is very little repose about the market. Meat-vans are driving up to its gates, or returning to the butchers, with carcasses piled high upon them...The noisy shouts, the glimmering gaslights, the flambeaux, if the morning is foggy, the barking of dogs, the endless chaff, the bustle of the whole scene, cannot be realised by those who never take a stroll by night to those quarters...Every year the demand on the resources of the metropolitan market seems larger. Its operations are indeed stupendous. For instance, during the recent six months, no less than 108,380 beasts, 990 cows, 789,250 sheep and lambs, 8729 calves, and 10,145 pigs have been on sale on a Monday...It takes all this to feed London'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.