TRANSLATION OF SMITH./ IELD MARKET. •
IN comparing the two plans before the public for improving the meat market, there are more elements for consideration than the simple merits of either plan. Government proposes to remove Smithfield; which would be an absolute good. The Corporation proposes a very comprehensive plan ; which can scarcely be said to remove Smithfield Market, in the popular sense of carrying it out of town, but which would totally remove two other nuisances, and would remove the most serious objections to a live meat market in the centre of the Metropolis. A pamphlet has just issued from the press, for the purpose of making this plan clear to the public mind ; and we must say that it has very greatly modified our opinion.*
To that easily-procured document we may refer for a distinct and graphic account of the plan and of its contingent advantages ; but its general nature may be very briefly indicated. On the Western side of Smithfield lies a region of agglomerated nuisances —narrow crooked streets and labyrinthine alleys, private slaughter- ' houses, low skin-dressers, and tripe-makers, low lodging-houses, and worse. Behind the India House is a long-doomed nuisance, called Leadenhall Market, for killed meat. Now both these com- prehensive nuisances are to be absolutely removed. The bad region West of Smithfield is to be cleared out, and on its site is to be constructed a vast market, covering an area larger than Lincoln's Inn Fields, with a frontage Westwards, and new streets surround- ing it. In the front part would be the market for killed meat, a broad parallelogram building ; behind that the cattle market, of an amphitheatric form, surrounded by a wall, and outside that by an open street. The extreme back of the semicircular wall would abut upon the present Smithfield. To the dexter side of the mar- ket front, Northwards, would lie a range of slaughter-houses. By - this plan the market would be entirely shut away from the tho- roughfare. The newest improvements of drainage, ventilation,
• The Moral and Sanitary Aspects of the New Central Cattle Market, as proposed by the Corporation of the City of London. With Plans. By J. Stevenson Bushnan, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh ; Senior Physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, &e.
fire." Published by Orr and Co.
&c. would practically annul the substantial nuisances arising from the assemblage of so many beasts and the slaughtering ; the blood and other effusions being carried off by the great sewer to the Essex marshes. We presume that humanity would be conciliated by finally adopting the new mode of slaughtering beasts—punctur- ing the spinal cord. The passage of cattle through the streets of London is chiefly injurious in the day ; by an absurd enactment, it can now take place only during that bad time : according to the plan of the Corporation, it would be limited to the night. Per- haps it would be possible to disarm it altogether of any unpleasant or formidable consequences, by placing the beasts in moveable pens, of which they would themselves be the motive power. Let us survey the contingent advantages of the plan. Smith- field cleared out, and made the site of model lodging-houses, baths, fountains, &c. [for that is a constituent part of the scheme] ; the region to the West, a shocking nest of nuisances, diseases, and abominations, cleared out, and a handsome market substituted; Leadenhall Market abolished ; the cattle traffic of the day abolished ; a central market retained, and the transit of cattle across London, from the Southern counties and the docks, minimized. Practi- cally, this seems to us to secure more than was promised by the mere exile of Smithfield out of the City—a great deal more.
There is another element in the calculation. Government pro- mises are now reckoned in the same category with lovers' vows, pie-crusts, and egg-shells—Government has a " bill," but when the public shall have the consequent fact, who shall say ? The Corpo- ration also has a bill, and it generally honours its bills : it is ready to make the scheme a great fact—now.
Previous page
