Diseased meat sold in Edinburgh, and meat inspection in connection with the public health and with the interests of agriculture : a letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost of Edinburgh / by John Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, John, 1831-1894.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseased meat sold in Edinburgh, and meat inspection in connection with the public health and with the interests of agriculture : a letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost of Edinburgh / by John Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    house; that most of the butchers in the suburbs, in whose stalls the diseased meat is chiefly sold, live in the country, and it is on their farms that the cattle are dressed tor the Aberdeen or London market. The diseased animals are bought up, and are either driven or transported in carts to such farms, and removed into town on Friday and Saturday, more than on other days. Carefully conducted inquiry has enabled me to find out when and how the meat enters Aberdeen, and eludes the vi-ilance of the inspector. As to the inspector, 1 am informed that he is inspector of weighs and measures, collector of the retUs of the city Established churclies, and has other laborious duties to perform besides holding the inspectorship of meats. lie is an active man, hut his pursuits in former years were not those calculated to ren- der him an efficient inspector of meats. He certainly does not encourage fraud, and whatever cases are brought under his notice are decided by a veterinary surgeon, whom he calls in to his assistance. That he does resort to a veterinary surgeon is satisfactory, but enormous quantities of meat are sold which he never sees, and the fatal do not fear him, and feel quite safe when their unwholesome articlo has entered the shops or the dead meat market. It is the policemen walking at night about Aberdeen that these men fear, and they artfully seduce such officer out of their road by hurrying him off to a row occurring close at hand, or the system of bribery is carried on, and the night-watchman enters a public- house with an individual who always precedes the load of polluted flesh. The latter is in carts provided with wooden axles, and it thus wheels through the streets un- heard and unsuspected.