ABSTRACT
Pearcy was a country butcher, a butcher with a farm in the countryside where he reared and fattened animals, slaughtered them and then brought in the meat ready dressed to sell in a nearby town. The city authorities had been warned by a vestry meeting shortly before the implementation of the new Exeter Markets Act in 1840 that it was important to ensure that provision was made for the country butchers in the new covered markets, and that they should not be charged too much. The narrative that emerges from the case study is of the disappearance by the 1880s from small villages close to the city of the traditional country butcher, a producer-retailer slaughtering and preparing livestock on his farm to sell in the nearby town. The change in Exeter seems to have occurred considerably later than Scola's findings for Manchester, where he considered the country butcher was already in decline by 1830, possibly even by 1820.
