The advantages London derives from railways, in regard to its supply of
good meat, may be gathered from the evidence given by Mr. George Rowley
in 1834, on behalf of the Great Western Railway Company.
“You have been a general salesman of live and dead stock of all
descriptions in Newgate Market 32 years?”—“Yes.”
“What is about the annual amount of your sales?”—“I turn over £300,000 in
a year.”
“Would a railway that facilitated the communication between London and
Bristol be an advantage to your business?”—“I think it would be a special
advantage to London altogether.”
“In what way?”—“The facility of having goods brought in reference to live
stock is very important; I have been in the habit of paying Mr. Bowman,
of Bristol, £1,000 a-week for many weeks; that has been for sending live
hogs to me to be sold, to be slaughtered in London; and I have, out of
that £1,000 a-week as many as 40 or 50 pigs die on the road, and they
have sold for little or nothing. The exertion of the pigs kills them.”
“The means of conveying pigs on a railway would be a great
advantage?”—“Yes, as far as having the pigs come good to market, without
being subject to a distemper that creates fever, and they die as red as
that bag before you, and when they are killed in good health they die a
natural colour.”
“Then do I understand you that those who are fortunate enough to survive
the journey are the worse for it?”—“Yes, in weight.”
“And in quality?”—“Yes! All meat killed in the country, and delivered in
the London market dead, in a good state, will make from 6d. to 8d. a
stone more than what is slaughtered in London.”