Dickens's Dictionary of Paris, 1882: An Unconventional Handbook

A (ABA-AQU)

A.

Abattoirs, Les. – An abattoir is a word comparatively new in the French language, because the thing itself is new. By it is meant the place of slaughter of those animals intended for human food. Until the year 1807 the necessity for the slaughter-house was not fully recognized in Paris; animals were brought to the butchers, and were killed in an open place, and after the manner that seemed to be readiest. But the evil was yearly growing greater, and at last, in 1818, five properly-constructed abattoirs, or slaughter-houses, were built and made fit for use. These have since disappeared, and have been replaced by one large establishment, to which entry is made from Rue de Flandre. This is the chief of the abattoirs in Paris; for two others have since been added, one called the Abattoir de Villejuif, and the other Abattoir de Grenelle. Outside Paris there is, at Pantin, a small abattoir for horses only. To these places the animals are brought and killed. The oxen are stunned, the calves and sheep have their throats cut; the pigs are sometimes stunned, sometimes they have their throats cut, according as the buyer wishes. There is not much choice between the two modes: in either case the animal is soon relieved from pain. But to anyone watching the process – after he has seen a dozen ungovernable beasts struggling to free themselves and escape from the block or truck over which they laid or from the iron chair by which they are tied – a sort of convection forms itself in his mind that the animals themselves must have a knowledge, more or less clearly formed, of what is to be their own fate. Their intelligence may be dull, but it exists. The sheep, as he is being driven through the yard, in which he sees and smells the blood of other sheep killed before him, probably does not feel a twitching in different parts of his body and say to himself: "That part is for chops, that is to be the saddle;" but it may be that he then recognizes to himself, more forcibly than he had done hitherto, that he had not been sent into the world merely that he might fill his stomach every day with grass.

The abattoirs are open to the public. At the chief establishment in the Rue de Flandre, Tuesdays and Fridays are the days of the week when the greatest numbers of animals are killed. For the sight-seer those are "the best days." In the winter months 1000 or 1200 oxen are killed daily, 8000 sheep, and 400 or 500 calves. The men will begin to work at different hours in the morning – at 3, at 4, or at 5 o'clock, according to the amount of labour to be done. Usually by 12 o'clock the slaughtering is finished. Sometimes there is work to be done in the afternoon, but it is comparatively unimportant. The oxen are stunned b y a blow on the head from a curiously-shaped hammer. An iron handle, not very big, is affixed to a stick; one end of this handle is in the form of a crook, the other is straight. The straight end is scooped like the bore of a gun. One strong blow dealt on the front part of the forehead, between the two horns, is sufficient to fell the ox. He drops down stunned. He then receives a second blow, from the same end of the hammer, also between the horns, but on the top of the forehead. Into the first of these holes made a long thin stick is thrust, right through the brain; and probably this thrust takes from him his last feeling of consciousness. The skin or hide under his neck is then opened, his throat is cut, and the blood streams forth very copiously. This blood is either collected in large round shallow pails and left to get thick and clotted, or it is stirred up for some while in the troughs into which it is poured from the pails. In the former case, the water which rises to the top of the blood in the pails is used for polishing the cloth used for men's clothes, and the thick substance for manure; in the latter case, the blood of the animals is used chiefly for refining sugar. Separating the hide from the ox or from the calf cannot be done very quickly, the work requires some careful manipulation; but from the sheep, when the first preliminaries are done, the rest is soon accomplished. An actor having to change his costume quickly behind the stage can hardly get out of his clothes more rapidly than the skin, with the wool on it, is torn from the sheep's back. The men as they are at work cannot be clean in their appearance, but they are not dirty or repulsive-looking except from the nature of their occupation. The animals as yet alive are not treated harshly, and after they are killed there is order and method in the mode of proceeding. An abundant supply of water is always running.