Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash].

  • Cash, C.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    114/230 (page 98)
    far short of perfection. For one thing, there was no model to work on. For another, at the time we speak of the science of public sanitation had not reached that stage of development which it has to-day. In those days the erection of an abattoir was an event which attracted the attention of the civilised world. At the present day those early buildings stand like the grizzled veterans of some hard-fought war, whose aged and scar-seamed frames hardly win the honour of a passing glance. The present generation does not give a thought to the difficulties which beset the inauguration of those early abattoirs, nor to the continual alterations and extensions which had to be made to keep them abreast of the times, nor to the anxious struggle for their very existence which had to be waged until their cause was championed by the law. And yet even at the present day there are some of those abattoirs still standing which command the ad- miration of professional experts, although, in comparison with the most modern establishments, they are, so to say, mere relics of the past. But the watchword has been ‘ Forward.’ Improvements have been made in all directions, new systems devised and carried out, and in this field, as in others, the old has been superseded by the new. For one thing we have to thank the earliest abattoirs, and that is for proving that these institutions can be self-supporting, that they can pay their way without extraneous assistance. And if this was possible under a regime which gave them no assistance, it was shown to be doubly possible when they were backed up by the strong arm of the law. The first successful experiments induced other towns to emulate the example set, in the