Central Meat, Poultry and Provision Market, Smithfield

We had in 1900 one market in London, described as the largest dead-meat market in the world (which surely would be hard to beat!), the amount of flesh-food handled being nearly half-a-million tons per annum.

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This was the Central Meat, Poultry and Provision Market at Smithfield, erected on ground where half-frantic, over-driven live cattle used periodically to make the neighbourhood a terror.

(It had an annex in Farringdon Road for fish, fruit and vegetables.)

The Central was a big red-brick structure with stone dressings in the Renaissance style, designed by Mr. Horace Jones, with a tower at each corner; the roof was of glass, and massive cast-iron balustrades were provided for hanging up the innumerable carcases.

Below were extensive cold-storage chambers, and also the Great Western Railway depot, from which the meat was conveyed to the market by a lift.

Directly or indirectly, this great market employed over 10,000 persons, and on Saturday afternoons (at all other times strictly wholesale), it became a vast shopping-place for the general public.

Though sides of beef and carcases of sheep, pigs, etc., were not interesting objects, this huge dead-meat market at Christmas was most impressive, and should be visited as one of the sights of London.

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