Analysis: The city centre was home to many businesses and trades involving the byproducts of animals until the 1980s
It's 1960 and the world is entering optimistically into a new decade. John F Kennedy has become the 35th president of the United States, a new birth control pill has been approved and The Beatles have just formed.
But residents of Dublin’s inner city are still living alongside medieval sounding offensive trades. The list includes blood boilers, blood driers, bone boilers, fat melters and fat extractors, tallow melters, glue makers, size makers, fellmongers, tanners, leather dressers, soap boilers, tripe boilers, gut scrapers and dealers in rags, bones and uncured skins. Not to mention the 46 private slaughterhouses dotted around the city, much to the annoyance of Dublin Corporation who actively encouraged the use of the city’s modern abattoir.
Animals and all forms of animal slaughtering facilities would be removed from North American cities in the early 20th century as the waste associated with their slaughter was perceived as environmentally problematic. Not so in Dublin, where champions of the modern ideals of economic self-sufficiency in the early 1930s viewed industries which utilised the byproducts of animal slaughter as indicators of progress.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany, Huntin' the Cattle’ by Ann Marie Durkan remembers cattle, sheep and pigs in the city and, in particular, at the Dublin Cattle Market
But while Dublin Corporation sought to remove trades related to the byproducts of animal slaughter from the city, national government encouraged industries such as tanning and fellmongering (the processing of sheep skins) as part of their economic war with Britain. These industries would continue to form part of the strategy of import-substituting industrialisation aiming to increase self-reliance pursued by successive Free State governments.
Although fellmongering and tanning were considered 'offensive trades’, it did actually make economic sense to encourage this ‘anti-modern’ circular economy in the city given the presence in Dublin of the largest livestock market in the country. Selling skins, bones and other byproducts of animal slaughter to be processed by those involved in offensive trades such as tanners gave butchers the opportunity to extract more value from the animal. Fellmongers and tanners in the city were ideally positioned to process the skins of the large number of animals slaughtered annually in the capital in the abattoir and private slaughterhouses, some 408,030 in 1935 for example.
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From RTÉ Archives, Barry Linnane reports for RTÉ News in July 1971 on the planned closure of the Dublin Cattle Market
With government support behind the industry, the number of those involved in the preparation of skins and leather rose from 305 to 483 between 1926 and 1936 according to census data, with the numbers of women employed increasing by 149. Dublin-based fellmongers and hide and skin merchants such as the Central Hide and Skin Company on Watling Street, Judd Brothers of Hendrick Street and Hird’s of Marrowbone Lane benefitted from the local economy generated by the location of the Dublin Cattle Market.
These firms were also part of a broader national and international trade. Animal’s skins, like their meat, were valuable on the international market and the ability of Irish buyers to compete against British buyers was limited and so measures to protect this Irish industry were frequently implemented. This involved periodic bans on the export of skins and hides from Ireland between 1934 and 1949.
By 1960, most cities in Europe and America had already removed slaughterhouses in favour of modern abattoirs where mass production could be achieved on disassembly lines. In these cities, butcher craft experienced a vertical split as butchers of the industrialised era in general either focused on killing or on meat selling.
The continuation of the preference for private slaughterhouses over the more modern Dublin Corporation Abattoir, designed to facilitate mass production and inspection, would buck international trends with more than 50% of Dublin butchers and slaughtermen refusing to use it. This meant that the vertical split between those slaughtering animals and those selling their flesh was much less pronounced in Dublin until the 1980s.
Here, many butchers slaughtered their own animals in private slaughterhouses located around the city, instead of in a central area. This practice ensured that poor working-class Dubliners were routinely exposed to animal death more than the middle-classes who had largely abandoned the city. During the 20th century, as city managers sought to modernise the city, suburbanisation had resulted in a social restructuring of the city which saw the poorest remain in tenements and social housing in the inner city while the better off moved into the new 'healthier' suburbs. Hidden from view today, the animal origins of meat were still highly visible in Dublin city right up until the 1980s.
According to farmer George Nolan, who routinely bought and sold cattle in the Dublin Cattle Market from the 1930s onwards, many Dublin butchers had small slaughterhouses close to their shops where, on Wednesdays, they killed the animals they had purchased at the market that day. Larger retailers with multiple retail units such as Eastmans had their animals slaughtered in one location and distributed the carcasses to the individual shops often in open horse-drawn carts or vans.
Multiple small slaughterhouses in the lanes between Parnell Street, Henry Street and Moore Street, can be clearly seen in the Goad Insurance Map above from 1957. Cows, sheep and pigs were walked or driven to these slaughterhouses from the nearby Dublin Cattle Market and many Dubliners recall gruesome and bloody scenes in the area as children.
Dereliction and neglect of many inner-city areas enabled industries such as slaughtering to remain in the centre of the capital and hinder the city’s modernisation. Small slaughterhouses availing of the extensive dereliction in the city would remain problematic in the city until the 1980s, having actually increased in number after the closure of the Dublin Corporation Abattoir in 1976. Slaughterhouses were only removed from the area shown in the map in the late 1970s when the lanes and alleyways behind Moore Street were demolished to make way for the Illac Shopping Centre.
Little has been recorded about the many small offensive trades which were dotted around the city for much of the 20th century except that they were routinely inspected by sanitary officials. However, oral histories collected by Kevin C. Kearns and memoirs such as Paddy Crosbie’s Your dinner's poured out! and Máirín Johnston’s Around the banks of Pimlico vividly recall the noxious smells and the unpleasant vistas associated with them. These ensured that their presence strongly shaped the lives of those unfortunate enough to live or work close to them.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
