A Visit to Deptford

For the benefit of those who have not much knowledge of the dark places of the world, I may explain that Deptford is a port on the Thames where cattle are landed from foreign countries and where there are extensive slaughter houses, from which the meat trade of London is largely supplied. A visit to such a place is evidently likely to be an unpleasant experience, but it is one which I think all to whom meat is an article of diet should make once at any rate, that they may have some idea of one part of the system which their habits necessitate.

The enclosure extends over some acres of ground, and consists of rows of slaughter houses and lairs, in which many thousand head of cattle can be accommodated temporarily.

On arriving at the outer gates you are informed by a notice board that unless you come on business you had better remain outside as it is “dangerous” to enter. The danger consists in the fact that the oxen, excited and frightened, not unfrequently break away while being driven from the lairs and run wildly about the roads. We had not been inside many minutes when we heard cries of “Look out! there are some more coming,” and we saw a drove approaching from behind at a half trot, pushing and huddling together as cattle do, with the usual accompaniment of flogging and goading to keep them in the right direction. Looking for a place of refuge in case of necessity, we saw the door to a neighbouring lair standing open, and were recommended by a native of the place to come in before it was too late. From here we watched the drove arrive at its destination some thirty paces further along the road. Immediately in front of the slaughter houses are pens large enough to hold some dozen animals, with openings at the back leading directly into the slaughter houses.

To drive the frightened and suspicious cattle into these pens cannot be accomplished without much flogging and prodding with the sharp metal points of the drovers’ sticks. In this case a young steer breaking away from the rest was starting off down the road, when the heavy thud of the drover’s stick across his muzzle turned him back to his doom. It was a cruel blow—a blow which if given to a horse in the public street, would have called forth execrations and perhaps earned for the man who delivered it a fine or imprisonment. So much, however, is our standard of moral action apt to be influenced by surrounding circumstances, that at the time it seemed a quite natural and almost a proper act. Given the position that one had to drive and slaughter a certain number of oxen in a given time, one feels that one would have to employ the same means which these men employ—means which become a matter not of morality with them, but of necessity. Who shall say that this drover was a specially cruel man? As with much that is to be seen at Deptford, the fault seems to be less with the individual than the system and the social demands which force him into unnatural and unfair conditions.

The cattle, once in the small pens with hardly space to turn, have next to be arranged in some order side by side, that at least they shall not injure one another and shall be convenient to drag to the slaughter in turn. This of course necessitates again the usual prodding with spikes, belabouring their heads from above and the twisting of their tails. As the vivisector profanely said, the frog, from its manifold uses for living experiment, was “God’s gift to the Physiologist,” so to the butcher the tail of the ox must appear a special dispensation of Providence for his express benefit. The excruciating pain of tail twisting is best shown by the almost impossible feats an ox will perform under the influence of this barbarous incentive, and it really is a question how without it the drover and slaughterman would be able to accomplish what is demanded of them.

A few paces further along we see the first preparation for the actual slaughter. A chain attached to a windlass within is fastened to the horns of an ox outside. As he is facing the road, and there are two others between him and the doorway, it is no easy matter to get him into position, the more so as the chain becomes 101 entangled between the hind legs of one of the others. Even the uncompromising windlass cannot solve the difficulty by its only property—force. To tear off a horn would not be very difficult; but to force one body through another is too much even for a windlass, and the only possible solution is to prod the second beast until with a maddened plunge it clears the chain, and the wheel again begins to turn and draw the agonized victim steadily to his doom. It was a vigorous animal this time, and not to be overcome without a struggle. Being firmly held by the head, he swung round violently with the hinder quarters, scattering the three butchers and looking defiance at them. Not without some risk one of them, watching his opportunity, stretched forward and slipped a rope round one of the hind legs, and by aid of it the captive was after a long struggle thrown on the floor, slippery with the blood of former victims. The last preparation for the Jewish method of slaughter of which these cruel preparations are the prelude is to fasten a short chain round the lower jaw of the prostrate animal. An iron bar about three feet long is then passed between this chain and the jaw, and using this as a lever the butcher wrenches back the head into the position most convenient to receive the knife, which cuts across the jugular vein and brings to an end the pain of the victim, but not the ghastly scene on which the others in the pen outside are silent spectators until their own turns arrive. The anxious and terrified looks in the eyes of the last one from a batch of about a dozen, who had been taken one by one from his side to meet their fate, was speaking evidence that the pain of anticipation is not confined to man alone. The next victim was to be killed by the pole-axe. The preliminary operation of dragging into the slaughter-house is similar in this case, and bad enough certainly; but the struggle is much shorter, as it is not necessary for the creature to be thrown down.

Another case of the Jewish method led to a struggle more protracted than the first. When the ox was brought to his knees, with his head pressed on the bloody floor, but still unconquered and fighting vigorously, with his hind legs free, what could be more natural than that the sweating man at its head should endeavour to bring the struggle to an end by a strenuous kick with his heavy boot on its nose.

It is not unusual to find people soothing their consciences by levelling the charge of cruelty against the slaughtermen who carry out their demands; but this seems hardly fair. The fault lies with those who make the trade necessary. When a man is pitted against an ox in a life and death struggle he cannot afford to be squeamish, but must make use of any means he has at his disposal. We saw nothing in the behaviour of the men worse than the wish to accomplish their work in the readiest and most expeditious and economical manner possible with the tools given them. As long as there is slaughtering to be done, it is quite certain that it cannot be done in kid gloves or with tender sympathy for the sufferer.

The only effective remedy for the evil is for the world to renounce the barbarous and unnecessary habit of flesh eating. The horror of the whole business is sufficiently objectionable; but we were, I think, no less struck by the meanness and treachery involved. That these gentle, unoffending creatures should be entrapped by the superior cunning of man, goaded to their doom and finally overcome in an unequal combat with three or four men simply for the benefit and pleasure of the superior race, is not creditable to the latter. That society should set aside and doom a large class of men to carry out the sickening and unjust work of which it is ashamed to know and much more to face the details, is a serious responsibility, and an evil of which the community will sooner or later have to reap the fruits!