Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Political Economy of Meat
- Chapter 2 Meat and the Social Hierarchy
- Chapter 3 Liberty and Regulation in the Cattle Markets
- Chapter 4 Order and Disorder in the Urban Meat Markets
- Chapter 5 Guild Unity and Discord
- Chapter 6 In the Service of a Master Apprentices and Journeymen
- Chapter 7 Building the Family Firm: Marriage and Succession
- Chapter 8 Butcher Fortune and the Workings of Credit
- Conclusion The Rise of Meat
- Appendix
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Order and Disorder in the Urban Meat Markets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Political Economy of Meat
- Chapter 2 Meat and the Social Hierarchy
- Chapter 3 Liberty and Regulation in the Cattle Markets
- Chapter 4 Order and Disorder in the Urban Meat Markets
- Chapter 5 Guild Unity and Discord
- Chapter 6 In the Service of a Master Apprentices and Journeymen
- Chapter 7 Building the Family Firm: Marriage and Succession
- Chapter 8 Butcher Fortune and the Workings of Credit
- Conclusion The Rise of Meat
- Appendix
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On July 23, 1729 a group of angry and frightened residents from the Saint-Bernard district banded together to complain to the city police about a neighboring butchery, in particular its scalding house that rendered fat from the animals slaughtered there on a daily basis. The neighbors' previous complaints focused on the nuisance (that forced them to live with their windows shut in the heat of the summer), and for the wealthy nobleman who lived among them, the potential property losses (his tarnished silver and his apartments that rented out at a “vile price”). After several attempts to alert the city about the thick, black smoke that poured out of the scalding house, the animal waste that rotted in the alley, and the pools of coagulated blood that filled the gutters, the police finally took notice of the potential fire hazard and the threat the butchery posed to the public's health and safety. According to the commissaire's report:
… in as much as the noise, there is the bad smell that comes out of it that is capable of corrupting the purity of the air, not to mention the continuous dread that they are to see each other burn … it poses an infinite danger.
Clearly, the incendiary threat far outweighed all other forms of pollution that this butchery inflicted on the neighborhood, giving the city grounds to alert the landlords and force them to close the butchery.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Meat MattersButchers, Politics, and Market Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris, pp. 63 - 84Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006