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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: WHS1899 on Friday 01 August 08 08:45 BST (UK)
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I have an ancestor who was a pork butcher. Looking at Google, it seems, as the name suggests, that a pork butcher sold all things pork related. But why? Didn't they have beef or poultry? Or were there beef and poultry butchers too?
Does anyone know the answer?
Beverley
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It may be something to do with the specialised nature of the curing process for pork products. The regular butcher would have sold all kinds of fresh meat, but you would go to the pork butcher for bacon, ham, gammon, pork pies etc.
France too has its Charcuteries as well as regular Boucheries.
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If you go back a hundred years many butchers just sold the meat that they farmed. Pigs could be kept on a relatively small acreage and fed on collected food waste, while cattle and sheep required appropriate land which he may not have had available.
Thus the answer may lie in the question: why did your ancester only farm pigs? Larger businesses will often have developed their specialisation from these beginnings. This applies particularly with pork where there are many prepared products, bacon, ham, pies etc which do not exist to any extent for other meats. Thus a pork butcher also becomes a specialist in producing these.
David
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Watch out Piggy! Look what happened to your pal! :o
(http://www.curtisoflincoln.com/history3_pic.jpg)
Curtis's of Lincoln - they seem to have diversified since I were a lad. http://www.curtisoflincoln.com
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Beverley,
Not really answering your question but just in passing, they still had pork butchers in Leicestershire when I was young. They sold everything piggy related particularly pork pies and sausages. I think Walkers was one chain of pork butchers and Pork Farms another.
Other butchers in the town sold all sorts of meat, only the pork butchers seemed exclusive.
Brie
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Hi again Bevereley,
Have just asked my Ma and Pa. They think the reason is probably historical. At one time there were separate markets for different types of animal. Apparently this can still be seen in place names e.g. Poultry in London and Swinegate in Leeds.
Brie
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Shaun was right.
You did not go to pork butchers just for pork.
They used to do a lot of processing. They cured the hams and gammons; made sausages, pork pies etc.
Our local butcher used to say that the only thing from a pig he could not use was the squeak. I suppose their demise is due to the fact that very few people now eat fagots, brawn,chitterlings, potted meat, trotters and all the other things that made them competitive against a normal butcher who did not produce these products.
Rog
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Hi again Bevereley,
Have just asked my Ma and Pa. They think the reason is probably historical. At one time there were separate markets for different types of animal. Apparently this can still be seen in place names e.g. Poultry in London and Swinegate in Leeds.
Brie
Many of my ancestors came from a small village in Suffolk called Swilland, which apparently got its name from pig farming connections.
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Here's my take on it........
Pork tends to go bad fairly quickly in comparison to beef or lamb.
I don't know why but it was likely due to the animals nature, cows chew grass, pigs are omnivores :-\
So pork was eaten fresh, smoked or cured whereas the best beef or venison was "hung" to age ( a bacterial process) :o
In the days before refridgeration each of these meats would have required different storage and processing facilities.
Even in the old days, they knew about cross-contamination.
Genie (a butcher's daughter).
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NOT Sweeney Todd ?? :o :o :o :o ;D ;D ;D ;D
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One and the same, Diddy ;D
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There was still a Pork Butchers in Macclesfield when we left in 1979 - very good it was too - they made 'ham burgers' and they were delicious.
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I have an ancestor who was a pork butcher. Looking at Google, it seems, as the name suggests, that a pork butcher sold all things pork related. But why? Didn't they have beef or poultry? Or were there beef and poultry butchers too?
Does anyone know the answer?
Beverley
[/quote
;D
My great grandfather was a pork butcher and I was always under the impression (mostly gained from my mother - who got it from my grandmother) that he wasn't a butcher as in selling pork - but that he was a butcher as in a kind of slaughterman...and possibly he used to keep pigs too (but I'm not 100% sure on that bit). I googled it a while back and I'm sure I read something which confirmed the difference between a "pork butcher" and a "pork seller". I'll have a look and see if I can find it again.
Milly
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??? ??? Maybe I was mis-informed (whoever heard of that happening in old family history tales!!). I'm a bit confused now... This book seems to suggest a pork butcher is a shopkeeper of some kind who sold pork-stuff and also dairy produce if they wanted to. Maybe it can be both. :-\
http://www.rootschat.com/links/03zo/
I'm going to have to investigate more now ::) ::) ::)
Milly
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To all of you who have replied......thank you very much. All of it has been really helpful and so interesting. My pork butcher ancestor was a lady of 76!
Beverley
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Hmmm, a lady of 76 :-\
I doubt that she swung the pole ax ;D
She most likely just sold the products and had someone else do the "wet work".
Was her son a butcher perchance? The trade does run in families.
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I seem to have got myself in a muddle here. I'm positive she was a lady of 76 that was the pork butcher and that she was on my Dad's side of the family....this is for sure as Dad was 76 at the time, and I remember him saying she must have been a tough old lady. Sadly I can only find one pork butcher in Dad's file and she was 39, which is more like it I guess. I'm convinced I do have one of 76 though....can't ask Dad either, as he lost his fight with cancer in December. I'll hav to keep hunting.
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Beverley,
Where and when did this lady live?
Since about 1875 The Ministry of Health controlled licenses for Slaughtering.
Private slaughter houses were not allowed in many cities and towns so most butchers then either had their animals shipped to a Public Slaughter House and the carcases delivered to the shop or bought carcases from wholesalers.
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Sorry I didn't reply sooner......eldest home from uni, youngest awaiting GCSE results (passed all ;D) and OH started new job, so it's been fraught!
Elizabeth Newman lived in St John St, St Sephulchre, London when she was a pork butcher. By 1861 she was a monthly nurse at 4 Charterhouse Lane, Finsbury, Middx, and by 1871 she was a nurse at 23 St Johns St, Finsbury with the Robinson family (I think the wife Mary Ann Robinson may be Elizabeth's daughter). So I guess being a pork butcher was too much.
I only have her husband John Newman on the 1841 census at St John St, St Sephulchrs, London, he was 35, NBIC and no occupation given. By 1851 Elizabeth is the Head of Household, so I guess John had died? Not sure where I now go to find out more about him......any ideas anyone?
Does anyone know the difference between a MONTHLY nurse and a Nurse? Are they one and the same?
Beverley
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A monthly nurse attended a woman during the first month after her confinement. She thus specialized in looking after mother and child just after child birth.
David
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Can I chip in with a question?
I seem to recall that when I was a kid the pork had to be kept separate from the other meat in the butchers because there had been a risk of parasites in the pork (which is why it was never served rare). Is that correct?
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Yes, quite correct. You can get Trichinosis from eating badly cooked pork, which is infected with the larvae of a species of roundworm Trichinella spiralis. Although rarely fatal, it can give some pretty nasty side effects. Now the process of infection is better understood, the likelihood of eating infected meat is quite low, because more precautions are taken to prevent it.
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David,
Thanks for your reply about monthly nurses.
Beverley
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Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I seem to remember that there was a special license to allow a person to slaughter pigs. The license was purely for pig slaughtering.
Is this correct?
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I found this thread very interesting because I too have a female pork butcher in my lineage. This was back in the 1830s. I thought there had been some mistake - it didn't seem like a woman's job but she could have been a retailer of pork products.
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A bit off topic - but if a pork butcher sells pork from pigs that he slaughters, what are we to think of the businesses that call themselves Family Butchers?
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Slightly related: there are several topics on RootsChat about german pork butchers (and their families), who came to Britain and set up in business as pork butchers.
Topic: RootsChat Topics: German Pork Butchers
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,509347.0.html
Next time you are in Germany go to any big supermarket and have a look at the cold meats section: metre upon metre of different ways to process a pig :)
Bob
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Interesting Wikipedia article on Charcuterie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcuterie
".......charcutier, generally translated into English as "pork butcher". This has led to the mistaken belief that charcuterie can only involve pork. The Food Lover's Companion, however, says, "it refers to the products, particularly (but not limited to) pork specialties such as pâtés, rillettes, galantines, crépinettes, etc., which are made and sold in a delicatessen-style shop, also called a charcuterie."
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Here's my take on it........
Pork tends to go bad fairly quickly in comparison to beef or lamb.
I don't know why but it was likely due to the animals nature, cows chew grass, pigs are omnivores :-\
So pork was eaten fresh, smoked or cured whereas the best beef or venison was "hung" to age ( a bacterial process) :o
Of general interest to the subject, a Pork butcher in Doncaster Rhoden's now closed had for many years a leg of bacon hung from the ceiling which had been bought by a lady for Christmas 1956 for some reason never collected, and was still hanging there in the late 1980s. All that happened was that over the years I used the shop the leg visibily shrank year on year.
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When was your ancestor a pork butcher?
Pork Butcher shops were very traditional in the UK, tight up to the 1970s or 80s, when supermarkets took over, though a few pork pie specialists remain. They specialised in all things made from pork - ham, bacon, sausages, pork pies, sausage rolls, brawn, black pudding, etc. So they weren't like a butcher who sold fresh meat.
There were national and regional chains of pork butchers, so your ancestor could have run one of those. She was highly unlikely to have been involved in rearing and slaughtering pigs, but will have made some of her products, such as pork pies, and bought in the rest.
So a pork butcher did a lot of cooking and baking of products made from pork, and didn't sell much fresh meat. A butcher did the opposite.
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I had ancestors who were pork butchers and their siblings were butchers but not of pork. In fact I have generations of farmers/butchers in my family, then one uncle was a butcher in Cleveleys and Blackpool, he had a few shops at one time, and two of his sons were butchers. Then out of the blue, one of my sons had a Saturday job in a butcher's shop and decided to train as a butcher. However, he gave it up when family butchers started closing down when the supermarkets took over where we lived.
We went to Tunbridge Wells last week and they had privately owned butchers shops there and in another couple of small towns nearby that we visited.
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just reading the interesting post on pork butchers and the thought occurred to me as to why almost the only thing sold in punnets are strawberries !
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Perhaps it is because a punnet is a small container made for gathering small fruit or vegetables. Originally it was made to also measure the fruit gathered and contained approximately a pound (a pun).
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An etymology < the name of a man with the surname Punnett (supposed inventor of the container) has also been suggested, although apparently no contemporary documentation is available. OED
Stan
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Pork butchers are still alive and well in the North of England, where I come from. Waterall Bros in Sheffield is a fantastic example. They do well, I guess, because they are specialists and their pork, ham, pork pies, scratchings, haslet etc etc are just much better than a non-specialist's.
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Excellent one in Boston, Bycrofts of Wormgate. When Mr Bycroft died a few years ago without an heir he was kind enough to leave the business to his staff.
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One Pork Butcher on my extended line. Charles Frederick Schiefler of Millom, Cumberland. He just made it onto the 1939 Register. From just Germany for his birthplace I now have 17 April 1866, Germany. Better than nothing.
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I just found this thread. I was Googling pork butchers because I've just been shopping in Leicester where pork butchers were a very popular thing up to the 70s. Walkers being probably the biggest and best know. They reopened their shop in Leicester a couple of years ago but it lasted almost no time before it closed again. The reason I was Googling it was that I noticed today there are at least two pork butchers still in the new indoor market so it does still thrive.
I wonder if all the pork butchers originated from the German ones? Walker is obviously not a German name.
In ansswer to the original question though, I would have guessed that there were specific pork butchers partly because pork has always been the cheapest meat so they would have catered to the working class population. Also, they were like the French charcutiers in that they cured pork and many many things from it.
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My 3xGGF put his occupation as bacon curer & shopman on 1841 census. He had a different occupation on 1851 census when his wife was a shopkeeper. I assume his wife had taken over running the shop. One of his brothers was a provisions dealer in the same town. Father, grandfather & great-grandfather of 3xGGF had been butchers in a small town. The father and grandfather had combined occupation butcher with innkeeper.
I've just eaten Wiltshire cured ham. I like Yorkshire cured.
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When I was young a man would make the rounds collecting free vegetable peelings from housewives for his pigs. Even with a very small backyard a man could keep a female pig and hire a boar for a small charge to service his sow. It's not done now, but also when I was young greengrocers would cut off bits of bruised apple, which was given to the pigman and the good piece of apple was sold to housewives or children who who would buy half an apple.
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I have not noticed this idea stated already.....
Anyone who kept a kosher household would feel more comfortable about buying their meat from an establishment that did not have any pork on the premises for fear of cross "contamination".
So there were kosher butchers, and other butchers that sold what you couldn't buy from the kosher butcher.
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I found this thread very interesting because I too have a female pork butcher in my lineage. This was back in the 1830s. I thought there had been some mistake - it didn't seem like a woman's job but she could have been a retailer of pork products.
I have an idea that "Lark Rise to Candleford" by Flora Thompson deals with the subject....
https://www.cuckfieldconnections.org.uk/post/19th-century-pig-s-life-and-poaching
Sometimes a pig slaughterer came, but not always, so I guess in certain rural areas all kids grew up knowing how this needed to be done.
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As a descendant from a long line of butchers I'm interested in this and the history of butchery generally.
I wonder if there's any possibility that the separate existence (until recently) of pork butchers as distinct from "normal" butchers could be a hangover from the deep rooted taboos around pork that existed in some areas of Europe as well as in religious-cultural groups such as Islam and Judaism.
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_pork_taboo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_pork_taboo)
It's pure speculation.
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Reply #42 as in #40
;)
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Prior to industrialisation most people survived by living off the land. Imagine if you went to a new country and needed to earn enough per year to feed your family.
If you couldn't find a job, you'd possibly buy a young sow (female pig), which you knew would be cheap to house and feed and would have up to ten piglets twice a year. You might even have a few chickens at the bottom of your garden to sell their eggs but chickens in those days didn't lay eggs all year round.
My parents had a pal who had a sow named "Empress" and boy wasn't he excited when she won first prize (best in show) at an annual show.