No. 692: Chadwell Street, EC1
M and R Meats, Chadwell Street, London, EC1. Photo © Roger Dean 2012
Lights and Shadows of London Life, Volume II – [James Payn], 1867:
CHAPTER XX, AT THE DOG-SHOW
The whole fashionable world, male and not a few of its female members, emigrated to Battersea Park the other day to see, and even to feel. It was considered a sign of ignorance not to knead and pinch the regions about the tails of the fat cattle. The ladies, who imagined, I think, that the objects of their attentions were personally gratified by this process, indented the animals with the points of their parasols. They gazed with interest upon “Little Wonder” – the fattest pig in the world, I should suppose – and expressed a tender pity that he should have been disqualified for a prize on account of his teeth.
[ The pig in the photograph above sits in the side window of M and R Meats, the butchers at 399 St John Street, EC1. The shop has been a butchers since 1845. R.D.]
And so it was that the ladies “expressed a “tender pity…” What a delicate, deft, perfect evocation by Mr Payn.
Isn’t it just Fiona