Where the Settlement's meat came from: the Council's slaughterhouses, 1883–1934

The short answer. For its first fifty years the foreign community of Shanghai ate beef killed in what its own Health Officer called “huts of the poorest possible description” at Pahsienjao, outside the Settlement, and the Municipal Council asked for a public slaughter-house from 1883 and did nothing until 1891. The abattoir it built on Fearon Road in Hongkou opened on 1 March 1893 against a boycott by the butchers, killed 21,979 animals in its first ten months and 101,726 in 1928, and by then held more than 500 cattle in sheds built for 340. The replacement, the four-storey concrete abattoir on Sawgin Road that Shanghai now calls 1933 Old Millfun, was planned from 1925, redesigned in 1929, filled with cattle in January 1934 and cost two and a half million taels. This is how the Council’s own reports tell it.

1883: “much need in Shanghai for a public slaughter-house”

The cattle came by boat from the interior and were killed where they landed. The Health Officer, Dr Henderson, wrote in 1883 that he had described the place ten years earlier and nothing had changed: “The sheds, boiling-down houses, and slaughter-houses are, for convenience sake, placed in close proximity to one another; they are, with few exceptions, huts of the poorest possible description.” They stood at Pahsienjao, on the French side of the Yangjingbang, and the Council’s inspectors could only reject what reached the market: 3,583 lb of beef, 261 lb of mutton and 348 lb of pork in 1883. “There is much need in Shanghai for a public slaughter-house under the control of the Municipality,” Henderson wrote, and because the cattle depot would stay where it was, the house “would have to be built somewhere in the south-west corner of the English Settlement.” The surveyor drew a plan that March “to cost Tls. 7 @ 8,000 exclusive of the land required for a site, which would measure about 34 mow”, two Hongkew lots were offered at 925 taels a mu, and the Council “decided to allow the building of a slaughter house to stand over in the meantime.” The French Council had raised the same question in February, and would raise it again in 1889, “déja a plusieurs reprises depuis 1880”; the Council replied that it would wait for its new surveyor.

The kill meanwhile was counted. Animals slaughtered for foreign use numbered 20,358 in 1883, 21,496 in 1887, when the fall from 22,558 was “most probably owing to there having been fewer men-of-war in port”, 22,868 in 1888 and 23,855 in 1889. The inspectors found little to reject: in 1887 “only two carcases have been rejected at the slaughter-houses as unfit for food, and this was simply because the meat was thin and poor”. The trouble was price and control, not disease. When the Chinese authorities put a lekin tax on cattle at Pahsienjao in October 1887, fourteen butchers petitioned the Council and “decided to increase their selling price for beef, etc., by one cent per pound”, and the Council could do nothing about it, because it owned nothing in the chain.

1893: the Fearon Road abattoir and the butchers’ boycott

The Council told the French Council on 15 October 1891 that it would build “a public slaughter-house erected in Hongkew”. It stood on Fearon Road, on 4.667 mu bought in 1891 at 1,400 taels a mu, and “was completed in January last” 1893. At the formal opening on 15 February the chairman called it “an exceedingly fine one, worthy of Shanghai, and reflecting the greatest credit on our able Engineer, Mr. Mayne”, and told the ratepayers what it was for: “no unlicensed butcher-Shop for the sale of meat intended for foreign consumption shall be allowed in the Settlement”. From 1 March “a license fee of $1.00 per month would be charged for each shop where meat was sold to foreigners”, and all cattle for foreign consumption had to come to the abattoir. There were 21 licensed butchers.

They did not come. Fourteen of them petitioned the Mixed Court to be allowed to go on killing at Pahsienjao, and the inspector of markets, sent to buy cattle for the Council’s own butchery, reported that “although we saw at least 150 head of cattle in the several cowsheds, and offered prices far above their market value, were unable to purchase one”. The Council put a constable on the bridges over the Yangjingbang “to prevent any beef slaughtered at Pahsinjoh being brought into the Settlement”, the police were ordered to stop any meat at all crossing, and the boycott broke within the month. The rules the Council made that September are the ones a modern abattoir still recognises: animals brought to the lairage “at least 24 hours” before slaughter and “kept, free of charge”; killing “from 11 am. to 6 p.m.”; rejected animals “branded with the letter R”. From 1 March to the end of 1893 the abattoir killed 6,630 oxen, 13,615 sheep, 1,246 calves and 488 pigs, 21,979 in all, for fees of $1,430.45. The Council bought the lot next door for 6,600 taels and two more for 7,160 for cattle sheds, because “fully 700 bullocks and 2,500 sheep arrive here each month”, and it put in 110 extra hooks for 918 taels before the year was out. The veterinary surgeon on the staff, F. W. Whitney, had rinderpest in the dairies to deal with: there were 31 native dairies with 577 head.

1905–1911: the stamp, the lekin and the pigs

The abattoir gave the Council a lever it used in every dispute about meat. “No meat is allowed to be sold from any shop or brought into the Settlement unless it bears a Municipal stamp,” the 1905 report said; that year 251 animals were rejected, 62 of them for cattle plague and none for tuberculosis. When the Chinese lekin office raised the tax on cattle “at 4,200 cash a head, as against 600 cash a head previously” and the butchers raised their prices, the Council opened its own municipal butcheries on 19 June 1905 and closed them on 9 October, once “the butchers consented to a general reduction of one cent a pound on beef and mutton”. It would not, however, hand the trade to anyone else: it “consistently refused to lend any assistance” to a German firm’s private pig-slaughtering scheme that year, because it “interfered with the rights of ordinary native dealers and sought to coerce them into making use of this particular slaughtering establishment.” Fees in 1905 were 16,048 taels from an average of 48 butchers. In 1908, when supply failed, the Health Department bought cattle itself and sold them “to the butchers at cost price”, spending $104,900; the kill that year was 16,809 oxen and 29,834 sheep, double the figures of 1893.

The pigs were a separate world, Chinese-owned and killed in the retail pork shops. In June 1910 a pig slaughter-house set up in Zhabei “as a monopoly under the protection of the Constabulary Authorities” cut the Settlement’s pork supply for several days, and the Council gave “temporary facilities for slaughter” in its own abattoir and in the pork shops “to prevent the formation of this monopoly in Chapei”. When the interference “caused a strike among the pork butchers” the Health Office opened a pig slaughtery of its own on Chengtu Road in July 1910 and ran it until the end of February 1911: “43,090 pigs were killed yielding at the fee charged of 8 cents each $3,447 which gave a profit of $1,500.” Then it handed the place back to the pig killers.

1913–1925: the sheds built for 300

The numbers rose with the port. The abattoir killed 18,710 oxen and 31,338 sheep in 1913, “a substantial increase”, and fewer in 1914 “owing to less shipping demand during the latter part of the year”. In 1917 the Health Officer could say that “from among 165,000 cattle killed at the Municipal Slaughterhouse during the past ten years, 17 only were rejected on account of Tuberculosis”, because the native cattle “collected at the Kiangsu centre of Tanyang are practically free from Tuberculosis”, while “the local dairy cattle which are Australian or half-bred animals kept in close captivity, are frequently tuberculous”. The 1917 kill was 16,945 oxen, 27,954 sheep, 3,862 calves and 3,070 pigs; in 1922 it was 28,348 oxen, 37,450 sheep, 8,170 calves and 6,076 pigs, and the fees had doubled to 38,300 taels.

The building had not grown. “The matter of a new site for a combined abattoir, cattleshed and cold storage quarters is now urgent,” the Health Officer wrote in 1921; in 1922, “there is only room for 300 head of oxen. During 1922, as many as 350 head of oxen have required lairage before slaughter. At the abattoir towards the end of the year, every available hook was in use.” By 1925 “on one occasion there were as many as 520 head at the Sheds”, and “Plans for a modern abattoir, comprising cold storage, knackery, tripery, digestor and incinerator, are in process of preparation.” The capital account that year already carried 488,534 taels for the new slaughter-house site.

1925 was also the year the butchers struck. “The strike at the Slaughterhouse commenced on the 1st of June,” three days after the shooting on Nanjing Road; “On June 4th a number of Russians were engaged, and volunteer workers helped in killing and dressing the carcasses,” “Fifty head of cattle and one hundred sheep were imported from Tsingtau,” and “a number of butchers transferred their killing business to the abattoirs of the French Municipal Council.” The native butchers came back on 8 June. The year’s kill fell to 71,654 animals from 81,247, and 290 carcases were rejected, 87 of them pigs with swine fever.

1928–1929: a record year and a cheaper plan

“The year has been a record one for the Municipal Slaughterhouse,” the 1928 report began. “The number of animals killed was 101,726, being 1,961 more than last year and 13,332 more than during 1926,” and fees passed $55,000 for the first time. The cattle came “from Tanyang via the Shanghai-Nanking Railway”, and the sheds, with “a maximum capacity of three hundred and forty oxen”, often held “over five hundred head of cattle” at once, tethered in the passages and out in the weather. There were 52 registered butchers. Of 370 carcases rejected, 51 were for tuberculosis and 111 were pigs with swine fever. Pigs were at last coming under inspection: from 1 November 1928 the four private pig slaughterhouses were inspected at 10 cents a pig, and a municipal pig slaughterhouse in Yangshupu, built for about 100 pigs a day for 6,929 taels, “commenced operating on February 16, 1929”. The dairies had their own crisis that year: herds not immunised against rinderpest “lost nearly 50 per cent”, and “to replace losses, cows were imported from Japan, Manchuria, Canada and Great Britain”.

The new abattoir went through the Council’s economy drive before it was built. The Present Economy Committee reported in the Gazette of 9 February 1929 that the Council owned 23.050 mu on Sawgin Road, that the Public Works Department’s first layout, “scattered over the whole site” and estimated at 352,858 taels before land, “had been drawn to the instructions of the officials of the Health Department” and was uneconomical on land as dear as “the Dixwell Road section”, and that at the Committee’s request the department had drawn new plans: “a compact two storey building, so constructed that it can be increased to four storeys”, with “lairage for 440 oxen, 100 calves, 300 sheep and 150 pigs, and slaughter house service at one time for 15 oxen, 4 calves, 20 sheep and 6 pigs”, at “about Tls. 400,000”, on “only 15.737 mow”. That is the origin of the building’s stacked plan. No outside architect is named in any of these reports; the design was the Council’s own.

1932–1934: the building on Sawgin Road

The 1932 report looked back at what was being replaced. The Fearon Road abattoir, it said, “was constructed in 1894 when attention was given to the meat supply of the foreign population only”; its buildings had cost 2,500 taels and its land was now worth 42,500 taels a mu. That year the abattoir killed 31,955 oxen, 9,903 calves, 33,911 sheep and 21,952 pigs, and with the private and municipal pig slaughterhouses the Council’s inspectors passed 530,364 animals; the fighting in Zhabei and Hongkou that spring had left “the functions at the Municipal Abattoir rudimentary for more than one month”. The new “Abattoir and Cattle Sheds on Cadastral Lot 330, Eastern”, at the corner of Dixwell and Sawgin Roads, were going up: “The first section of this building to be completed will be the lairage block which will replace the present cattle sheds. This will be completed in January 1933 and provides accommodation for 886 oxen, 360 calves, 975 sheep and 150 pigs. The Abattoir will be opened later, in the spring of 1933.” The 1933 budget carried 554,000 taels “for the completion and equipping of the Abattoir and Cattle Sheds and for the erection and equipment of a Meat Market in connection therewith”.

By 1934 the new abattoir was running. “The removal of all the activities to the new Abattoir was completed on January 24, and since then it has been functioning with uninterrupted regularity and smoothness.” It was “a multi-storied, up-to-date and spacious building, having incomparable advantages over the old premises”, with “lairage accommodation for about 850 oxen and buffaloes, 300 calves, 1,000 sheep, 500 goats, and 500 pigs”, free for 36 hours and then charged by the day, a change “strongly resented by all the butchers”. Slaughter fees were $1 an ox, 35 cents a calf, 20 cents a sheep. Every ox and calf was ear-tagged on admission, 52,865 tags in the year. “Stunning of oxen is done by Cash Captive, Greener’s Pistols and/or Formator Humane Stunners; and for pigs and sheep (partly) electrical stunners”, and “as anticipated, Chinese butchers and dealers in meat have strongly resisted the introduction of the latest methods”. About 2,000 visitors came to see it. The kill was 40,167 oxen, 12,542 calves and 46,641 sheep, with “a record kill of over half a million pigs” across all the slaughterhouses. A wholesale meat market with cold storage was going up beside it, delayed because its plant had gone down in the wreck of the steamer City of Cambridge. The capital account put the abattoir at 2,459,538.36 taels, with 681,283.62 more for fittings and equipment: six times the Economy Committee’s figure of 1929, for a building that had grown from two storeys to four and from 440 oxen to 850.

What the sources disagree on

The 1893 report dates the Fearon Road abattoir to January 1893 and its opening to 1 March; the 1932 report says it “was constructed in 1894” and cost 2,500 taels, a figure that does not match the 7,000 to 8,000 estimated in 1883 and cannot be checked because the capital account line in the 1893 report is lost to the OCR. The 1934 report gives three dates for the new abattoir: “opened in October, 1933” in the works summary, “January 24” for the completion of the move in the Health report, and “the opening of the new abattoir in January” in the finance section; the lairage block was expected in January 1933 and the abattoir “in the spring of 1933”, so October 1933 for the first killing and January 1934 for the complete move is the reading that fits all three. The capacity figures are a series, not a contradiction: 440 oxen in the 1929 plan, 886 in the 1932 description, “about 850” in 1934. The Council’s own slaughterhouse returns are badly printed in the OCR for 1905, 1909, 1911, 1917 and 1918 and are omitted here. No report names a designer other than the Public Works Department, and the origin of the animals is Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Anhui throughout; no Australian cattle appear, only Australian dairy cows.

What to look for

The 1933 abattoir at 10 Shajing Road is the building the 1929 Committee asked for, stacked rather than spread: cattle walked up the ramps to the lairage floors, were killed on the upper floors and came down as carcases. The spiral ramps, the bridges across the central drum and the lattice concrete windows that kept the floors ventilated are all original; the lairage fees and the ear-tags are not. The meat market and cold store that the City of Cambridge delayed stood beside it. On Fearon Road, now Jiulong Road beside Suzhou Creek, nothing of the 1893 abattoir or its sheds survives; the lot the Council valued at 42,500 taels a mu in 1932 is under later housing. At Pahsienjao the name is all that is left of the sheds and boiling-down houses, in the district around Xizang Road South where the French Concession’s cattle depot stood. On Chengtu Road the pig slaughtery of 1910 was a rented shed and left no trace.