commission on each sheep, pig, or bullock disposed
of, and not by a percentage upon the price
obtained.

The dead meat consigned to Newgate-market
for sale, consists entirely of the hind, or best
parts of the animals; the fore parts being
disposed of in the country — where the killing takes
place — or in London, to provision merchants — by
a separate operation — who use it for salting and
making preserves. The bulk of the mutton comes
from Edinburgh, in baskets containing ten hind
parts of sheep apiece; the bulk of the beef
is sent up from Aberdeen in huge quarters,
protected by coarse canvas bags. As a curious
instance of the unequal effect of railway
competition, it may be mentioned that the charge
for carriage per ton is greater from Bedford
than from this remote northern city of Aberdeen.
The difference in the quantities of consignments
may have something to do with it, but there
stands the bare fact.

When the meat has been tugged and forced
out of its railway waggon, in the small, crowded,
noisy market-place, or the narrow, crowded,
noisy street, it is seized by porters and salesmen's
men, and conveyed to its proper destination.
The quarters of beef, looking like
mattresses in their canvas coverings, are hoisted
upon greasy backs, while the baskets of sheep
are planted on small porters' barrows, and
wheeled desperately in amongst the higgling,
busy crowd. A ceaseless procession of this
character is doomed to struggle for hours
through the narrow groves of fat meat, always
meeting another similar procession, whose destiny
it is to struggle in the same manner, on the
same precious ground, but in an exactly opposite
direction. Proprietors of shops are pushed,
nose foremost, against their meat; hats are
knocked off by the hard, sharp feet of pigs; the
dissection of beef flanks is discontinued
for a time, and the long knife is dropped
dexterously into a gaping pocket or pouch,
that an unlucky stab may not be given in
the wrong place; the dandy white coats
of butcher swells (for there are taste and
aristocracy even here) are larded well by huge
suety bullock-quarters from which there is no
escape; the back-porter shouts to you to take
care of your head, and the barrow-porter requests
you to mind your back; the badgered carter
exclaims "Below!" immediately after he has
tilted over half a ton of raw provisions within an
inch of your feet; horses and carts are backed
helplessly into blind alleys and squares, from
which there seems no possible prospect of escape,
and the one thing agreeable in all this cramped
and confined labour is the general good-
humour and patience of the men. When the
meat has struggled up to the shop of its
appointed salesman, the baskets are rapidly
opened, the canvas coverings are rapidly cut
off, and a little greasy ticket is searched for
amongst the straw, or inside the bag, which is
the sole record of the name of the sender and the
weight of the meat. Sometimes, these tickets,
when the consigners are very careful, are found
skewered into the body of each animal; sometimes,
they are lost altogether, or, when found,
are illegible from grease and bad writing;
sometimes, the basket, when opened, is full of
small joints of mutton and veal, each one of
which belongs to a separate proprietor. These
records are transferred to the small watchbox
counting-houses, while the meat is quickly hung
up on large hooks, in and outside the shops, for
the immediate inspection of the numerous passing
buyers. Every inch of space is made available
in these shops; they are scooped out, so to
speak; the encroachment of a water-pipe is
grudged; and staircases, in some instances, are
swept away, to have their places supplied by
upright ladders nailed against the wall. The
meat is hardly hoisted to the hooks, and the
men have hardly had time to display their
critical admiration of a quarter which
possesses many points of beauty and excellence,
when an early, decisive, or important buyer
marches round the shop with a handful of
skewers, pinches the sheep, lifts up the beef
to examine the quality at the end, and
finally, by sticking a skewer in each animal,
marks a score of favoured quarters as his own.
The walls are quickly stripped again, the
meat is weighed and charged to the buyer,
and a struggle, similar to that which succeeded
in landing it in the salesman's shop, has to be
immediately gone through to land it in the
butchers' market carts. These carts may be in
the Old Bailey, in Newgate-street, or Paternoster-
row, according to their luck in securing a place,
and thither the procession of meat porters has to
wind and fight. Legs of pork are bumped
against huge pieces of veal; bullocks' hearts
and ox-tails are swung jauntily into butcher-boys'
hands, while quarters of beef press onward, and
send the weaker sheep to the wall, by reason of
their superior momentum and weight. As they
struggle out of the market, they meet another
incoming procession of later deliveries, and the
two solid streams pass each other as best they
can. This kind of scene goes on every morning,
for several hours, from four o'clock, perhaps,
until ten A.M.: the most trying mornings
being Saturday and Monday. Contractors,
eating-house keepers, poulterers, and boys who
sell meat-hooks, hatchets, knives, &c., mix
with the crowd of butchers and salesmen;
other boys worm their way about, with early
copies of the morning papers; and little girls
endeavour to convey to hungry shopmen large
mugs of hot coffee and thick slices of bread and
cold pork. Old public-houses which skulk in
out-of-the-way corners, light up the lemons and
rum phials in their dingy windows, and
proceed to brew the favourite market beverage,
rum and milk. Old coffee-houses, with signs
appropriate to their position, which you saw, as
plainly as possible, an hour before, are now
hidden, up to their second floors, with hanging
quarters of beef and mutton, and you grope for
a door under a portico of headless sheep.
Dwelling-houses look quietly down upon this
whirlpool of raw food, and the dull, yellow-