ABSTRACT
A slaughterhouse is a small building equipped and used for killing and dressing out small numbers of food animals. The term is not now used by meat processing professionals; indeed, they avoid it: slaughterhouses are regarded as archaic, unsanitary, inefficient and pre-industrial. Private slaughterhouses may be euphemistically described as abattoirs. The earliest urban slaughterhouses were small buildings, often close to residences and sometimes located in the butcher's own back parlour. Commercial slaughterhouses appeared at the urban fringe where the traditional butchers' craft was replaced by the assembly line. The city was at liberty to grow around and engulf the slaughterhouses, robbing them of their privacy and seclusion, but the Fleshers managed to alter the built environment and veil the process that was their craft, still operating in the midst of the city, close to the present site of Waverly Station's main concourse.
