198 Animal and Animal Products Trades 



last provision encouraged internal trade in live stock; the first pro- 

 \asion was unavailing; and the second was evaded occasionally when 

 self-interest was advanced by the evasion. 



The actual service and function performed by the salesman is 

 indicated above in the enacting clause of the statute of 1672 when 

 the privilege was restored to the salesman to act as factor for the 

 breeders and graziers. They effected an economy for these latter 

 and thus justified their existence. Their service to the jobbers, 

 though less essential, was quite important. They were prepared 

 and skilled to accomplish sales. They were well versed in the 

 technique of the market, could anticipate dearths and gluts in the 

 supply, and reduce the variations of prices. They made it prac- 

 ticable for the jobber to act over a wider domain and increase 

 his business untrammeled. The jobber studied the buying end of 

 the live-stock market and trade and the salesman specialized in the 

 selling. The two specialists working together facilitated the satis- 

 faction of both the breeder and the consumer by reducing the differ- 

 ence between cost at the farm and selling price in London, i.e. raising 

 the selling price for the breeder and lowering the cost price for the 

 consumer. 



CARCASS BUTCHER. 



The carcass butchers were the wholesale butchers and meat dealers 

 of London.' They bought their live stock at Smithfield, and in the 

 country, and in the other markets of London. They sold to the cut- 

 ting butchers, i.e. the retail butchers. 



The chief meat markets of London were Leadenhall, Newgate, 

 Honey Lane, St. James, Clare and Borough,- and the market at White 

 Chapel which dealt wholesale only.' At these markets live hogs, 

 sucking pigs and calves were sold. One of the most noticeable things 

 about the dealings in these animals and meats was the degree to which 

 the business was concentrated in the hands of a relatively few. 

 Certain dealers stood out preeminently for the large fraction of the 

 total business of the market which they did. In 1730 and thereabouts 

 one Prescott, a wholesale mutton-butcher, killed on an average more 



'Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 211-12. 



2 For a description of Newgate Market, see Maitland, London, II, 925; of Lead- 

 enhall, Defoe, Tour, II, 173^. .These descriptions were for the first half of the 

 eighteenth century. Descriptions for the end of the century may be found in 

 Middlqton, View of Middlesex, 542. 



' Maitland, London, 11, 757. 



