Abattoir (vendor)

Abattoirs, or slaughterhouses, are facilities that undertake the slaughter and preparation of meat under the regulation of the butcher's guild. The killing and butchering of animals takes place in the open air, often within the bustling Wet Market, where vendors sell fresh fish, perishable goods and animal byproducts. In English and Irish towns, the streets designated for slaughtering and butchery are known as “The Shambles”, a name that reflects both their blood-soaked thoroughfares and their critical role in the urban food supply.

Meat is sold in custom weights, cut before the buyer while they wait, though delivery is rare and only arranged for middle-class households that prefer to avoid the stench and brutality of the market. Nobility and persons of wealth, however, tend to purchase live animals rather than butchered cuts, slaughtering their own livestock within their estates under controlled conditions.

The process of slaughter is both common and necessary, ingrained in daily life rather than hidden away. The act of killing, bleeding, skinning, dressing and carving is a public affair, taking place where all may witness it. The sound of cleavers striking bone, the scent of blood pooling on the cobbles and the sight of entrails being carted away are as much a part of city life as the chiming of church bells or the clatter of merchant wagons. In the countryside, where food production is even more personal, most peasants and farmers handle their own slaughtering, ensuring that no part of an animal is wasted.

Wet Market

Here, livestock are driven in, purchased and killed on-site, their meat organs and bones prepared before barrels of brine. The air is thick with the scent of blood and curing salts, an aroma that permeates the surrounding streets. It is common to see children present, learning the trade by observing butchers at work, or waiting as their family's aging dairy cow is led to its final sale. A few exchanged coins, a single expert blow and the evisceration begins. By nightfall, the carcass is packed and salted, ready for transport.

Trade within the Wet Market operates in several ways. Some butchers purchase entire animals from local stockyards or farmers, while others raise their own livestock, slaughtering them at the abattoir's convenience. The hides are stripped and sold to the tanners, who tan them for leather goods, while offal and bones are collected by renderers, boiled down for tallow, glue and soap-making. Even the blood is repurposed, used in the making of sausages, black pudding and animal feed.

With so many byproducts of slaughter, the Wet Market is not simply a butcher's domain — it is a complex network of tradesmen who ensure that nothing goes to waste. The butchers, tanners, candle-makers and fishmongers all rely on the market's constant influx of fresh livestock, turning death into sustenance, trade and industry.

Waste Materials

The process of slaughtering and butchering livestock generates an enormous amount of waste, requiring constant management to prevent the spread of disease, pestilence and overwhelming stench. In towns and cities, the Butcher's Guild and local authorities establish strict regulations for the removal, disposal and repurposing of animal remains, ensuring that the work of slaughtering does not contaminate the streets or water supply.

The slaughtering area — often a designated part of the wet market or a narrow street near the stockyards — quickly becomes saturated with blood, which pools in the gutters and runs through the cracks between cobblestones. To manage this, butchers and their assistants routinely flush the slaughtering area with water, either hauling buckets from nearby wells or diverting flow from a town aqueduct or stream when available. However, in drier regions or places where water is scarce, blood is often left to congeal, requiring scraping and manual removal at the end of the working day. In colder months, frozen blood can coat the streets like a slick, dark sheen, creating treacherous footing in the early mornings.

The guts and offal, once removed from the carcass, are sorted carefully. The most valuable organs — such as the heart, liver, kidneys and stomach — are collected immediately for sale or preservation. Stomachs and intestines must be thoroughly washed and scraped, often requiring several passes of boiling water and lime to strip away the inner lining and residual waste before they can be used for sausage casings or cooking. The less desirable parts — the bladder, gallbladder and intestines beyond use — are often gathered in wooden pails and taken beyond the city walls to be buried, fed to scavenging animals or sold to renderers. A considerable amount of slaughter waste is simply pushed aside into drainage channels, sewers or open gutters, allowing blood, offal and other refuse to be carried away by the natural flow of water. This is especially common in places where rivers or tidal estuaries are nearby, as they serve as convenient dumping grounds for waste that would otherwise require manual removal.

Many wet markets and slaughtering districts are located close to running water specifically for this purpose. The gore and filth generated from daily butchery is washed down into open street gutters, which are designed to carry the flow into larger drainage ditches or directly into a river. In larger towns with rudimentary sewer systems, some slaughterhouses may have covered drains leading to cesspools or underground conduits, though these often clog with fat, sinew and bits of tissue, requiring frequent maintenance. This method of disposal is widely accepted, as few see any alternative. The stench and filth may be unbearable in the slaughtering districts, but so long as the wealthier quarters remain unaffected, there is little pressure for reform.

The stench of the wet market lingers long after the day's work is done. Even the most careful cleaning cannot prevent the air from carrying the scent of blood, fat and offal, which seeps into clothing, wooden stalls and even the cobblestones themselves. Butchers and tanners, in particular, are marked by this pervasive odour, making it impossible to mistake their profession.

See Vendor