Page:BehindtheScenesinSlaughterHouses.pdf/11

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where the Inspector only occasionally pays a visit, there is also the fact that the meat, as things are managed at present, is allowed to hang to "set" in the same room in which the slaughtering goes on. Thus it is necessarily infected with the reeking gases arising from the killing and dressing of numerous animals in succession. This is the case not only in private places, but even in the great establishments at Deptford and Islington, where we might naturally expect that greater attention would be paid to sanitary matters. These places, however, are under the control of the Corporation, not of the County Council. So crowded are the slaughtering-rooms at Deptford with the carcases of animals hanging to "set," that towards the end of the day the butchers actually have to stoop down to get room to kill! In the interests of the consumer it is most desirable, as long as meat-eating continues, that the processes of killing, of dressing, and of hanging, should all go on in separate apartments. In the public abattoirs at Manchester and Birkenhead, the dressing takes place in one room, and the carcases are left to hang in another: an admirable arrangement, which might with the greatest ease be imitated in London, if the Corporation chose to construct their present ill-planned abattoirs on sanitary and humane principles.

As for the private slaughter-houses of London, the Medical Officer for Kensington, Dr. Dudfield, who has done most valuable work in trying to cleanse the particular Augean stable confided to his charge, declared some time ago that the Kensington slaughter-houses are in about as good a con-