University of Virginia Library

OF "TROTTING," OR "HAWKING"
BUTCHERS.

These two appellations are, or have been,
used somewhat confusedly in the meat trade.
Thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago — for each
term was mentioned to me — the butcher in
question was a man who went "trotting" on
his small horse to the mere distant suburbs to
sell meat. This was when the suburbs, in any
direction, were "not built up to" as they are
now, and the appearance of the trotting butcher
might be hailed as saving a walk of a mile, or
a mile and a half, to a butcher's shop, for only
tradesmen of a smaller capital then opened
butcher's shops in the remoter suburbs. For a
suburban butcher to send round "for orders"
at that period would have occupied too much
time, for a distance must be traversed; and to
have gone, or sent, on horseback, would have
entailed the keeping or hiring of a horse, which
was in those days an expensive matter. One
butcher who told me that he had known the
trade, man and boy, for nearly fifty years, said:
"As to `trotting,' a small man couldn't so
well do it, for if 20l. was offered for a tidy
horse in the war time it would most likely be
said, `I'll get more for it in the cavaldry — for
it was often called cavaldry then — there's better
plunder there.' (Plunder, I may explain, is a
common word in the horse trade to express
profit.) So it wasn't so easy to get a horse."
The trotting butchers were then men sent or
going out from the more frequented parts to
supply the suburbs, but in many cases only
when a tradesman was "hung up" with meat.
They carried from 20 to 100 lb. of meat gene-
rally in one basket, resting on the pommel of
the saddle, and attached by a long leathern
strap to the person of the "trotter." The
trade, however, was irregular and, considering
the expenses, little remunerative; neither was
it extensive, but what might be the extent I
could not ascertain. There then sprung up the
class of butchers — or rather the class became
greatly multiplied — who sent their boys or men
on fast trotting horses to take orders from the
dwellers in the suburbs, and even in the streets,
not suburbs, which were away from the shop
thoroughfares, and afterwards to deliver the
orders — still travelling on horseback — at the
customer's door. This system still continues,
but to nothing like its former extent, and as it
does not pertain especially to the street-trade
I need not dwell upon it at present, nor on the
competition that sprung up as to "trotting
butcher's ponies," — in the "matching" of
which "against time" sporting men have
taken great interest.

Of "trotting" butchers, keeping their own
horses, there are now none, but there are still,
I am told, about six of the class who contrive,
by hiring, or more frequently borrowing, horses
of some friendly butcher, to live by trotting.
These men are all known, and all call upon
known customers — often those whom they have
served in their prosperity, for the trotting but-
cher is a "reduced" man — and are not likely
to be succeeded by any in the same line, or —
as I heard it called — "ride" of business.
These traders not subsisting exactly upon street
traffic, or on any adventure depending upon
door by door, or street by street, commerce,
but upon a connection remaining from their
having been in business on their own accounts,
need no further mention.

The present class of street-traders in raw
meat are known to the trade as "hawking"

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butchers, and they are as thoroughly street-
sellers as are the game and poultry "hawkers."
Their number, I am assured, is never less than
150, and sometimes 200 or even 250. They
have all been butchers, or journeymen but-
chers, and are broken down in the one case, or
unable to obtain work in the other. They then
"watch the turn of the markets," as small
meat "jobbers," and — as on the Stock Ex-
change — "invest," when they account the
market at the lowest. The meat so purchased
is hawked in a large basket carried on the
shoulders, if of a weight too great to be sus-
tained in a basket on the arm. The sale is
confined almost entirely to public-houses, and
those at no great distance from the great meat
marts of Newgate, Leadenhall, and White-
chapel. The hawkers do not go to the suburbs.
Their principal trade is in pork and veal, — for
those joints weigh lighter, and present a larger
surface in comparison with the weight, than
do beef or mutton. The same may be said of
lamb; but of that they do not buy one quarter
so much as of pork or veal.

The hawking butcher bought his meat last
year at from 2½d. to 5½d. the pound, according
to kind and quality. He seldom gave 6d., even
years ago, when meat was dearer; for it is diffi-
cult — I was told by one of these hawkers — to
get more than 6d. per lb. from chance custom-
ers, no matter what the market price. "If I
ask 7½d. or 7d.," he said, "I'm sure of one
answer — `Nonsense!' I never goes no higher
nor 6d.' " Sometimes — and especially if he can
command credit for two or three days — the
hawking butcher will buy the whole carcass of
a sheep. If he reside near the market, he may
"cut it up" in his own room; but he can gene-
rally find the necessary accommodation at some
friendly butcher's block. If the weather be
"bad for keeping," he will dispose of a portion
of the carcass to his brother-hawkers; if cold,
he will persevere in hawking the whole himself.
He usually, however, buys only a hind or fore-
quarter of mutton, or other meat, except beef,
which he buys by the joint, and more sparingly
than he buys any other animal food. The hawker
generally has his joints weighed before he starts,
and can remember the exact pounds and ounces
of each, but the purchasers generally weigh them
before payment; or, as one hawker expressed it,
"They goes to the scales before they come to the
tin."

Many of these hawkers drink hard, and, being
often men of robust constitution, until the ap-
proach of age, can live "hard," — as regards
lodging, especially. One hawker I heard of
slept in a slaughter-house, on the bare but clean
floor, for nearly two years: "But that was seven
years ago, and no butcher would allow it now."