ABSTRACT
Some three months ago an ‘ancient’ cow suffered from a wasting disease at Glastonbury and was then killed, we suppose, to prevent its dying. The carcase was sold for 7 s to a gentleman named Chivers and was despatched by him to a meat salesman named Harrington, of 99, Charterhouse-street, in a hamper labelled ‘cat’s meat’ per the London and South-Western Railway, being delivered at his (Harrington’s) premises with the label attached. From cat’s meat the carcase entered upon a higher incarnation in the house of one Robinson, an East-end sausage-maker; but at the moment of its being cut up for sausages on December 5th, 1895, a sanitary inspector entered, with the result that Robinson was fined at Worship-street Police-court in the sum of £50. The meat having been traced to Harrington, he was charged at Clerkenwell Sessions and sentenced to three months’ hard labour, about as much as a vagrant gets for that mysterious ‘offence’ known as ‘sleeping out’. The scoundrels who sell bad meat for human food ought to be treated as the poisoners they really are. We would suggest the revival of the pillory. Messrs Robinson and Harrington standing in this machine in St Paul’s Churchyard labelled in large letters with their names, addresses, and offences, with fragments of the cow or the sausages round their necks, would be a most wholesome sight.
