for in that way, so we present our credentials
at the great horse-slaughtering establishment
at Belle Isle, King's-cross, with a belief that we
are about to see how a portion of the food of
London is supplied.

In the course of one of the most curious
investigations it has been our fortune to pursue
we learn that an average of one hundred and
seventy horses are killed every week here, and
that their flesh is boiled and sold for cats'
meat. Their feet are made into glue, the hoof
part into Prussian blue; their fat into the oil
used for greasing sacks and cart-harness;
their blood makes a dye for calico-printers;
their hides are converted into leather for the
best "uppers;" their bones form excellent
manure; and their tails cover chairs and sofas.
Now, as the flesh of a horse is said to weigh
about three hundred pounds, the foregoing
figures give about fifty-one thousand pounds
weight of meat to be disposed of every week by
this establishment alone. About eight horses a
week, or two thousand four hundred pounds, go
to the Zoological Gardens, and a ton is sent
out in each of the trade carts of the
establishment, and sold to dealers. The residue
is delivered on the premises to cats'-meat
vendors, who come from all parts of London
to buy it. What these people are like, and how
this branch of the business is conducted, must
be left for a future paper—that some of them
drive prize-trotting ponies to carry the cats'
meat away, for which a hundred guineas have
been refused—that fifteen thousand pounds is
spoken of as the fortune of one of them—and
that their calling is, as was remarked to us, "a
brisk, ready-money trade, for which their ain't
no credit, for who'd run tick for a ha'porth of
cats'-meat?" are the chief facts we master
concerning them in our two first visits. We
spend an afternoon at Belle Isle, and go through
the slaughter-houses and yards, to find all
scrupulously clean. A few well-picked skeletons, the
ribs and backbone of which look bleached and
white, as they rest by the wall, are indeed the
only trade symbols we see. There is nothing
unpleasant. From eighty to a hundred horses
are waiting to be killed, but they are in a clean
farm-yard, with abundant straw, and stand in
long rows at the manger of a covered shed,
where they are munching hay with not a thought
of their imminent doom.

It is on a subsequent evening that we are
made thoroughly free of the place. I don't
quite remember now what I expected beforehand,
but I know I found as pleasant and
snugly convivial a little party as I have ever
had the luck to spend an evening with. The
horse-slaughtering chiefs are of a highly social
turn, and express all sorts of warm-hearted
regrets that we are compelled to keep to the
business of the hour. If we will sup, we shan't
have horse-meat, they promise us, but something
comforting. It was a cold boisterous night, and
Belle Isle is behind King's-cross station, at a
distance of about a mile. A comfortless, dirty,
dreary road, the one by which Dick Turpin
galloped on Black Bess in his great ride to
York. No shops, few wayfarers, little lighting.
A monotonous blank wall and iron palisades on
one side, shutting out the railway and the rows
of potato warehouses; irregular shops and buildings
on the other, without symmetry, cleanliness,
or, at this hour, signs of life. Huge
chimneys, with tops in a blaze, peer at us
out of the blank darkness behind the railway-
wall, as if to say, "We're Gas—and shamefully
have our shareholders been treated by Mr.
Cardwell." Here and there a stray dog and a
solitary policeman, but a general sense of
loneliness withal, which was oppressive. The raw
fog lowers upon, and seems to close in, the
road; but we pound away through the semi-
darkness, with little to break the heavy sound
of our cab-wheels crash through the mud, until,
passing under a railway-bridge, we reach a
small tavern and a smaller office adjacent.
There is no direct connexion between the two,
but one of the little knot of loungers outside
first eyes us interrogatively, and then, with a
wink and a silent jerk of the thumb over his left
shoulder, precedes us into the counting-house.
We step from darkness into light, from cold to
warmth, and from dreariness to comfort.

Pushing through an outer room, which is
handsomely decorated with petrified malformations,
and weighty excrescences found in the
bodies of departed steeds, decorated, too, with
the skull of a donkey said to have been ridden
by the Prince of Wales, and with spirited
portraits of celebrated trotters winning their great
matches, and looking as if they liked it, and we
are in a cosy back parlour in which sociality
reigns supreme. A stout cheery yeoman-looking
man, like a gentleman-farmer, grasps us
warmly by the hand and bids us welcome. This
is the managing partner of the horse-slaughtering
firm, who has invited friends learned in the
art to meet us. We form quite a convivial
council on horse-killing. The great slaughterer,
the "Jack" whose name is familiar to every
cabman and costermonger in London, is, we learn,
no more. The gentlemen before us are his
successors, and are incomparably the largest
professional horse-slayers in the kingdom.

"Do we ever find good and sound horses
among those sent to be killed?" replied the
stout gentleman to one of our questions.
There's not a doubt of it. Do we ever doctor
them up and turn 'em out fresh and well? Never,
it's forbidden by Act of Parliament. Every
horse that come in here must be killed within
three days, and we're bound to supply 'em with
proper food and attention while they're with us.
But even if we wern't bound it would be
cheaper to feed them than to starve them, you
know—that stands to reason—don't we sell
the meat by the pound? We're obliged, too,
to enter full particulars of each horse in a
book kept for the purpose, and to have an
inspector present at killing-time to see that
all's square and proper. Who obliges us? The
Act; and I'd like you to understand the law of
this business before we show you anything else.
Parliament has legislated upon horse-slaughtering
three different times—in 1786, in 1844, and