ABSTRACT
The next Abuse is that of Butchers and Poulterers setting up Shops and Stalls, in the best and most publick as well as private Streets, from one End of this great Town to the other. The great eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone explained that publicnuisances dealt generally with any activities or behaviours in public spaceswhich annoyed, or even should annoy, the generality of persons who wished touse those spaces for legitimate purposes. Bad pavements interfered with drainage and accumulatedrotting wastes. The holding of Markets must have been a very early Care in all well-governed Cities and Towns, where the People may have constant and necessary Supplies, and those who furnish the Provisions, a certain Place and Time to expose and sell them, and therefore certain Places for Markets, and certain Times for holding them, have been always observed.
