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From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] Description/Limerick Trade (1888) -- SHAW
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 16:59:20 -0700

Limerick Trade: In the great age of railway travel, before the coming of the motorcar and aeroplane, Victorian Richard LOVETT, leisurely travelled throughout Ireland by steamer, train, carriage and foot. His descriptions of scenes and places were first published in 1888 by The Religious Tract Society. His comments about Limerick included the following: "Limerick has long been a centre of considerable trade, and although at the present time (1888) there is a great depression in shipping, and American competition has practically destroyed Irish flour mills, nevertheless there is considerable commercial activity in the city. Lace of a very superior quality has long been produced here, also fishhooks of a fine temper. The industry that exhibits to the stranger most signs of prosperity and extent is connected with one of the staple productions of the land - the ever-present pig - and expends great energy and capital upon the speediest and best ways of converting him into!
bacon and hams. There is a mistaken idea current that this process can been seen to advantage only in the United States; that is a great delusion. There are larger pig-killing establishments at Cincinnati and Chicago, doubtless, but at none of them is there a greater combination of smartness, neatness, cleanliness, and high quality of the bacon and ham than at Limerick. By the courtesy of the proprietors, the writer was enabled to go over the establishment of Messrs. SHAW and Sons. Multitudes of those pigs which are to be seen by almost every cabin door in Ireland, and by which swarm at every market and fair, find their way here. The buyers, the sharpest and in some respects the most important members of the staff, are constantly securing in all parts of the country hundreds and thousands of pigs. They are not kept long in an active state. Very soon after the porker's arrival it becomes his turn to be chained by the hind leg, swung up to an iron bar, and before he ha!
s had time to utter more than two or three of his shrill protests, a sure and strong hand cuts short his life. In the course of the next few minutes he passes through a series of processes which result in his being cleansed, prepared, weighed; and deposited in the huge room where he awaits his turn to be made into bacon and hams. The rate at which this work is done can be gauged from the fact that sometimes 100 are weighed within the hour. Strange as it may sound, all these processes are done cleanly; and by exceedingly ingenious arrangements of sliding rods it is very seldom necessary for the animal to be placed upon the shoulders of men. It is only by going over an establishment of this kind that some notion of the magnitude of the Irish bacon trade is obtained. Few, probably, think that the shaping of a ham has anything special about it, until they see the rough ham taking a neat and shapely form under knives used by skilful hands."

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• [IGW] Description/Limerick Trade (1888) -- SHAW by "Jean Rice" <>