_City Sanitary Laws_ (Vol. ii., p. 99.).--The act of Parliament
prohibiting the slaughter of cattle within the city, referred to in the
passage from _Arnold's Chronicle_, extracted by your correspondent
T.S.D. is the 4 Hen. VII. c. 3., which enacts that--
"No butcher shall kill any flesh within his scalding-house, or
within the walls of London, in pain to forfeit for every ox so
killed 12d. and for every other beast 8d., to be divided between
the king and the prosecutor."--Bohun's _Privilegia Londini_
1723, p. 480.
Brydall, in his _Camera Regis_ (Lond. 1666, p. 114.), quotes the statute
of 11 Hen. VII. c. 21, as the authority for the "singularity" attaching
to the city, that "butchers shall kill no beasts in London." I believe,
however, Bohun's reference will be found to be the correct one. The
statute in question has, I think, never been repealed; but in the
absence of abbatoirs, or other proper provision for the slaughtering of
cattle without the walls of the city, it seems doubtful whether the
{189} pains and penalties to which the "contrary doers" were liable,
were at any time strictly enforced.