Why did a pork Butcher just sell pork?

[barryd]

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.

[MBSLynne]

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.

[Maiden Stone]

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.

[Rena]

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.

[Mowsehowse]

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.

[Mowsehowse]

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.

[bibliotaphist]

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

It's pure speculation.

[Mowsehowse]

Reply #42 as in #40

 

[Rena]

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.