Not quite the eating of horsemeat, but not that far off, either . . .

● In an 1847 pamphlet entitled “Smithfield and the Slaughterhouses: A Letter to the Rt Hon Viscount Morpeth MP by a Liveryman of London”, the Liveryman alleged that at Smithfield, ducks, pigs and so on were fed on slaughterhouse refuse. Smithfield butchers classify meat as “slaughter house”, “knackers” or “dust-heap pork”. “Let the reader reflect on the bare possibility of having partaken of the flesh fed, perhaps, on the foetid refuse of a diseased or glandered horse. . . ”

● Adam Armstrong told a Select Committee that he had seen a cow’s cacase hanging up at the Bear and Ragged Staff pub, on the north-east edge of Smithfield market, that was running with yellow slime, where there should have been fat. This was an example of “cag mag”, said Armstrong, which was the poorest-quality meat, unfit for humans to eat, but which would later be taken under cover of darkness to be made into sausages.   Select Committee on the State of Smithfield Market, 1828, p25