ABSTRACT
The Emerald Hill (South Melbourne) abattoirs were poorly drained, the blood and refuse lying in gutters instead of escaping to the Yarra. From this Lower Yarra region ‘the most disgusting exhalations [are brought] right up to the Melbourne wharves and to portions of West Melbourne’. Winter or summer, slovenliness and wastefulness appeared to characterise every process of the noxious trades in Melbourne, beginning with the very act of slaughtering itself. The first-established and most successful of these establishments, the Melbourne Meat Preserving Company works at Maribyrnong, was regarded by contemporaries, and has come to be regarded by modern historians, as one of the marvels of the nascent Victorian industrial scene. Melbourne’s abattoirs and slaughterhouses produced about 3000 tons of blood each year 1870–71, and the meat-preserving companies at least another 1000 tons. The Argus expressed perfectly emerging metropolitan attitudes to Footscray — just the place to quarantine Melbourne’s noxious trades.
