"The London market is very extensively supplied with diseased meat
from the country. There are three insurance offices in London in which
graziers can insure their beasts from disease. It was the practice of
one of these offices to send the unsound animals dying from disease to
their own slaughter-houses, situate a hundred and sixty miles from
London, to be dressed and sent to the London market.... Cattle, sheep,
&c., are insured against all kinds of diseases; and one of the
conditions is, that the diseased animal, when dead, becomes the
property of the insurance company, the party insuring receiving
two-thirds of the value of the animal and one-third of the salvage;
or, in other words, one-third of the amount the beast is sold for when
dead."
Upon being asked, "Do you believe it is still the habit of this company to
send up the diseased animals to London?" he replied,--
"Yes, I do; until lately they were regularly consigned to a
meat-salesman in Newgate market of the name of Mathews.... The larger
quantities are sold to people who manufacture it into soup, meat-pies,
sausages, &c."
We have no wish to destroy the generally robust appetite of the persons
who visit such shops by any gratuitous disclosure; but we question whether
the most hungry crossing-sweeper would look any more with a longing eye
upon the huge German sausages, rich and inviting as they appear, if, like
Mr. Harper, he knew the too probable antecedents of their contents. The
only other preparations of flesh open to adulteration are preserved meats.
Some years ago, "the Goldner canister business" so excited the public
against this invaluable method of storing perishing articles of food, that
a prejudice has existed against it ever since; and a more senseless
prejudice could not be. Goldner's process, since adopted by Messrs. Cooper
and Aves, is simple and beautiful. The provisions, being placed in tin
canisters having their covers soldered down, are plunged up to their necks
in a bath of chloride of calcium (a preparation which imbibes a great heat
without boiling), and their contents are speedily cooked; at the same time
all the air in the meat, and some of the water, are expelled in the form
of steam, which issues from a pin-hole in the lid. The instant the cook
ascertains the process to be complete, he drops a plug of solder upon the
hole, and the mass is thus hermetically sealed. Exclusion of air, and
coagulation of the albumen, are the two conditions which enable us to hand
the most delicate-flavoured meats down to remote generations,--for as
long, in fact, as a stout painted tin canister can maintain itself intact
against the oxidating effect of the atmosphere. We have ourselves partaken
lately of a duck that was winged, and of milk that came from the cow, as
long as eight years ago. Fruit which had been gathered whilst the
free-trade struggle was still going on, we found as delicate in flavour as
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