The meat was an essential part of Victorians’ meals, and they didn’t waste even a single piece of meat. The meat was divided in terms of cuts and their tenderness. The upper classes bought fresh and large feasting joints; for their meals, bones were bought to flavors soups. Less meaty and fewer tender cuts were sold to the poor, including salted fat for nutrition. There are even stories of the blood being sold by the pint for drinking – supposedly good for combating Tuberculosis. People used to buy meat daily due to a lack of refrigeration. Some butchers used salt to preserve and helped to take pieces of meat fresh for longer during warmer times. At the end of the 19th century, ice blocks were used to preserve meat. These ice blocks were delivered daily in horse-drawn carts. Animals were taken from rural areas to cities and markets, where they were slaughtered on the spot and sold. Animals and birds were hung up outside the butcher shops, arranged by categories and size. Some butchers slaughtered hundreds and even thousands of animals at once and hung outside the shops, as you can see in the photos below.
in Weird