Meeting the Meat Demand: How German Pork Butchers Filled a Gap in the Meat Supply of Britain’s 19th-century Industrial Society

Abstract

The Industrial Revolution brought far-reaching changes in food production and culture. This aspect especially pertains to 19^th century Great Britain. It was German immigrants who highly influenced the available variety of food and the food supply in big cities and industrial areas as pork butchers. Recent research revealed that these immigrants mostly came from a small agricultural area in Southwest Germany, called Hohenlohe. There they had butcher’s shops that also served as country inns where they offered hot and wholesome meals. Both this marketing concept and their huge variety of pork products were new in England. Thus, the Hohenlohe pork butchers supplied the industrial workforce—men and women alike—with full meals that needed little additional preparation and could be taken to the factory for lunch in a basin and also for consumption at home with the family in the evenings. This way the first take-aways with cheap German delicacies and convenient food were created. The new tastes were delightedly accepted as the new forms of food supply exactly met the workers’ needs. The butcher immigrants became innovators in food provision and they fashioned new eating and food consumption habits in the highly industrialised parts of the country. With the outbreak of World War I, however, the atmosphere suddenly changed. Overnight the formerly respected and innocent immigrants were considered public enemies and unexpectedly found themselves confronted with hatred and rejection.