Introduction

On 13 June 1855, Prince Albert looked out over the crowd gathered to commemorate the opening of the new Metropolitan Cattle Market in Islington, less than three miles away. ¹ Rain had begun to fall and most of the celebrants kept dry under a large marquée as they listened to Albert’s speech. ‘This splendid and useful work’, the Prince declared, ‘could only be undertaken by public bodies, and carried out to success by public spirit’. ² The public bodies included Parliament, the City, butchers, consumers of meat, urban and animal welfare reformers, entrepreneurs who engaged their public spirit in a decades-long struggle over the position of the world’s largest cattle market. Since the Middle Ages, the live cattle market had previously existed in Smithfield just three miles from Islington near the City’s Roman walls and was the source of meat for the metropolis and beyond. Moving the market only a few miles from its old site had proven a monumental task, one that collided with the arrival of the modern city.