A history of the frozen meat trade : an account of the development and present day methods of preparation, transport, and marketing of frozen and chilled meats / by James Troubridge Critchell and Joseph Raymond.

  • Critchell, James Troubridge, 1850-1917.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of the frozen meat trade : an account of the development and present day methods of preparation, transport, and marketing of frozen and chilled meats / by James Troubridge Critchell and Joseph Raymond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    refrigeration in this connection. In Liebig’s “ Chemical Letters ” (Vol. XI., 32nd letter, p. 139, 4th edit.) he alludes to the surplus cattle in Australia and the River Plate as “ merely export material for tallow and hides production.” Liebig’s first experiments on a commercial scale in the manufacture of extract were carried out in the River Plate about 1863 or 1864. Mr. G. C. Giebert was the first general manager in South America of the Liebig’s Extract of Meat Co. The first men to preserve meat by practical tinning methods in Australia were the late Henry Dangar, of the Hunter River, New South Wales, and his brother, the late William Dangar, of Turanville, Scone. Discontented with the wretchedly low values of cattle—they had sold a mob of splendid bullocks in Sydney for £2 125. 6c?. a head in 1846—Messrs. Dangar set about starting tinning works. Towards the end of 1847 they began operations at Honeysuckle Point, near Newcastle, New South Wales. Mr. Charles Gedye was manager ; the meat was packed in 41b. and 6 lb. tins, and hermetically sealed, the tins being painted and labelled in London. The meat (beef, mutton, tongues, and soup and bouilli) sold readily in London, and the Admiralty took quantities of it. The factory was carried on with success—meat at first cost only |c?. per lb.—but the gold discoveries in 1851 raised the price of cattle to such a prohibitive figure that the works were closed early in the fifties, and now Honeysuckle Point is covered with dwelling- houses. Messrs. H. E. and M. Moses, of New South Wales, were also canning meat about that time. In 1850 there were 110 boiling down establishments in Australia, and the production of tallow was enormous. The sheep slaughtered for this purpose numbered 800,000, cattle 73,000 : the tallow exported in that year was close on 11,000 tons, valued at £301,000. At one works (Russell’s, Hunter River) 12,000 sheep were boiled down in four weeks. In 1851 the scale of boiling down enterprise greatly increased, and probably about 10 per cent, of all the sheep in Australia fell victims to this wasteful process in that year. Dr. Lang, one of Australia’s ablest pioneers in the problems of public life, religion, and education, inveighed against this wholesale and