They have been tearin’ down all the old markets of late and remodelin’ and rebuildin’ Washington Jefferson and Fulton markets. The old New York markets, in fact, have passed away and so have all, or almost all, of the old time New York butchers.
These last were a jolly industrious worthy race of fellows–the Perrin family, for example, four of ‘em, father and sons, all boss butchers John Perrin, Jr., was livin’ until lately, and was about the best preserved specimen of jolly old sportin’ gentleman I ever came across. He was one of the once famous five who were known all over butcher-dom as the “last five old Fly Market butchers.” When eighty-two years old he was almost as young in looks, and quite as young in heart, as at twenty-two, and a mighty good lookin’ old man. Some of the girls used to prefer his company to that of men fifty years younger, and that fact tickled the old gentleman immensely. Nothin’ pleased him more than cuttin’ out some young chap in the graces of the fair sex. And next to a fine woman he liked a fine horse. In fact, the women used to say that he was quite as fond of horses as he was of ‘emselves. Perhaps he was. He was an excellent rider, and was all the time makin’ up matches and ridin’ races. When he was seventy-two years of age, a time when most men have one foot, if not both, in the grave, he bet two thousand dollars even that he would ride a favorite mare of his on the Union Course, under the saddle, twenty miles in an hour. The parties afterwards backed out of their bet and paid forfeit to the old man, but he always insisted that he could have won his wager if he had been allowed to ride it out. This match was to have been ridden on the same day that Ethan Allen and Lantern trotted their great team race, and created almost as much local excitement.
He was a great man, too, for soldierin, and was one of the members of the once celebrated Butchers’ troop, which was in its time as popular in New York as the Seventh Regiment to-day. This troop was composed wholly of butchers, “none but butchers need apply,” and Perrin, beginnin’ as private, soon got to be captain. He wasn’t a fancy officer either, but took pride in learnin’ all about the art of war, and was considered in his day the most expert swordsman in the city. He took a great deal of pride in his troop, and was very particular about all its details. The uniform of this Butcher’s troop would cause a sensation on Broadway now. It consisted of a blue, short-tailed coat, trimmed with silver lace, buckskin breeches, long boots and a leather cone cap, with hangin’ red horsehair. It was an expensive “rig” costing about $120, but every butcher stood the charge without a murmur.
This boss of boss butchers began his butcherin’ young. When not ten years old he dressed a lamb in his father’s place, near the old Bull’s Head, put the carcass in a wheelbarrow and trundled it to the Fly Market, a long distance, all by himself. He was considered the best judge of “small stock” in the city, and had a true artist’s eye for the arrangement of the meats on his stall. This talk about an “artist butcher” may sound like highfalutin’ now, but it ain’t, for the old butchers used to have a knack of makin’ their stalls look tasty, and John Perrin had the best snack in this line of ‘em all. People used to come from far and near to see Perrin’s stall, and the fair sex admired it almost as they admired its proprietor. All the young butchers, too, the apprentices, used to come and look at Perrin’s stall and take lessons in gettin’ up arrangements and artistic displays of meats. Perrin had only two rivals in this way of arrangin’ a stall, and those were Andy Wheeler and George Haws.
Perrin stayed in the Fly Market till that was torn down, and then he took a stall in Fulton Market, as did his friend and rival Andy Wheeler, likewise.
“Old John Pell” was a butcher who is still affectionately remembered. He was one of the old-fashioned kind of men, who ought always to be in fashion. He was particularly kind to his employees and apprentices.
One of the Fulton Market butchers of to-day was one of old John Pell’s apprentices, and loves to talk about the old man yet. And no wonder.
The last day of his apprenticeship, old Pell asked the young fellow to stop up and see him “at the house.” The apprentice, wonderin’ what was comin’, dressed himself up in his Sunday-go- to-meeting’s, called on his boss and was shown by the servant into the parlor. There he found his boss waitin’ for him, and his boss’s wife and his boss’s daughters, and several of his boss’s friends, who all received him very kindly.
Then he found waitin’ for him in the dinin’ room a splendid dinner, at which his boss’s family and friends all drank his health and wished him happiness.
And then he found waitin’ for him a sum of money, which old man Pell handed to his apprentice, not as a gift, but as his right, bein’ monies derived from the sales of little things which were considered as the “perks” of butchers’ boys and apprentices. This good wishin’, this dinner, this money, and above all the recommendation which old Tom Pell gave his apprentice, proved the foundation of the future of the present successful Fulton Market butcher.
Tom Gibbons was another good old butcher of the good old-fashioned kind, of whom there ain’t too many. He was a public spirited chap and always came to the front in every way whenever the butchers were concerned. He got up agricultural fairs, offered prizes for the finest cattle, was great in public meetin’s and still greater in private benevolence.
Of the three great public celebrations in which the butchers of New York took part Tom Gibbons made the principal show in two. These three great public turnouts were that in celebration of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the celebration of peace between England and this country some twenty-five years later, and the celebration of the openin’ of the Erie Canal. In the peace and Erie Canal celebrations Tom Gibbons took the lead.
He got the biggest pair of cattle of his time in this country, called Monarch and Sovereign, and sent some of Monarch all the way to Washington to the President. The papers at that time made quite a fuss over “this gift of a Monarch to a President.” It ain’t every day a President can eat a monarch.
Just about this time a curious canard got started and excited the whole country, and all started, too, from a joke in the old Fly Market.
Havin’ one morning killed a fat bullock which the farmer from whom he had purchased had named “George the Fourth,” Gibbons jokin’ly told one of his customers that the Irish (meanin’ Michael McGloin, his chief assistant) had assassinated George the Fourth, the then rulin’ monarch of Great Britain, who happened at that time to be on a visit to Ireland. Among others to whom Gibbons had repeated the joke was an enthusiastic Irishman–an original O’Donovan Rossa–who, because the wish was father to the thought, took it for gospel truth and rushed off and told his Irish friends. Before night the story of the assassination of George the Fourth had got round all the barrooms in the city, and the next day it got into the papers. There being no cable dispatches or swift steamers in those days, news was too scarce a commodity not to be made use of. Then it traveled up the Hudson and down South, gettin’ more particulars as it rolled along. At Albany they had the exact place and exact date of the assassination, and at Savannah they had the name of the assassin. After the joke had been played for all it was worth, Gibbons got out little hand posters stating that “his George the Fourth bullock, which weighed 1875 pounds, had been assassinated by his Irish assistant, Michael McGloin, would be served up to Englishmen, Irishmen, Americans and the rest of mankind, at eighteen pence a pound, at old Fly Market.”
Tom Gibbons had one peculiarity, in which few men resembled him–more’s the pity. He was always pityin’ prisoners and doing all he could to help the poor devils who had got in jail. His pity wasn’t at all sentimental. He didn’t go to see ‘em or send ‘em books or investigate their condition or abuses, or talk of ‘em or at ‘em. All he ever did, and that he did all the time, was to send them something to eat, especially the debtors in the debtors’ jail. He sent ‘em every Xmas and Fourth of July a good dinner, and to some of ‘em he sent dinners on days that were not public holidays. Nor did he send the poor prisoners unsellable stuff; no, he took care always to send them some of his best–his “premium beef.” And he did all he could by precept and example to induce his brother market men to remember the poor prisoners. And yet this fine old Christian and gentlemen died poor, ruined by a false friend of his whom he had trusted, a skunk named Sykes.
One of the most prominent of the old butchers was David Seaman, who, to show what’s in a name, was a “man” who had never been on the “sea” in his life. Seaman had a sort of knack for organizin’ and conductin’ things, and he was the man who took charge of the once famous lawsuit of the fourteen old Fly Market butchers against the corporation. These fourteen butchers, of whom Seaman was one, had been obliged to give up their stalls in the old Fly Market by the course of “improvement.” Not wishin’ to be “improved” out of existence the fourteen sued the corporation for damages, and through Seaman’s energy and persistency won their suit and got nearly $11,000 damages.
Seaman lived in Brooklyn for awhile, and his energy and organizin’ ability had full play there. He went heart and legs and pocketbook into the two things that Brooklyn then most needed, a fire department and a ferry.
Then, findin’ Brooklyn just a little small and dull for him, he moved to New York, where he found that even he had room enough. Here he became a prominent member of old Engine No. 32 and soon worked up his way to fire Warden. Then he dashed into politics, and passin’ through the degree of alderman, got to be a member of the Legislature.
There was at that time quite a bitter feelin’ between the friends of Daniel D. Tompkins and DeWitt Clinton in the Legislature, and Seaman was a red-hot Tompkins man. But he was a gentleman and a man of honor, and when the Tompkins men proposed to have DeWitt Clinton removed from his office of canal commissioner just out of spite, Seaman wouldn’t join ‘em, but voted against ‘em and in favor of retainin’ Clinton. He regarded the removal of Clinton as merely partisan malice, and told the Tompkins-ites one day that “just as sure as they removed Clinton from the office of commissioner, so sure the people would move him into the office of Governor.” And he was right. There was a mass meetin’ held in City Hall Park, New York, to protest against this piece of spite, and when somebody alluded in that meetin’ to the “course of David Seaman, the butcher,” on this question, the whole assemblage took off their hats and gave “David Seaman, the butcher” three rousin’ cheers.
Sill another of the old time butchers of whom this city and their children may well be proud was David Marsh, who was not only a Fly Market, but afterwards a leadin’ Fulton Market Butcher. This Marsh was the head man in what was the best sanitary commission New York has ever seen, or is ever likely to see, the cheapest and the best.
In his time the Board of Health, after conferrin’ with a committee of butchers, appointed a committee of seven old butchers to take charge and supervise all the slaughterin’ of animals done in and around New York, and to see that only healthy meat was offered for sale.
This committee of seven butchers were all men who understood every detail of their own business; who loved their own business for its own sake; who wanted to see it conducted in the right way, and who had the interests and the health of the city at heart. They gave their conscientious skill, time and energy to this work, and they gave it without charge and for twenty years. While this splendid committee of seven was in operation, probably not one bit of tainted meat or fish was sold, or could be sold, in the whole city of New York.
Old David Marsh was always called “Uncle David” and was one of the characters of the market. Nobody had ever seen him angry or out of humor. He always looked upon the sunny side of things.
One time a job was put up to see “if they couldn’t make Uncle David mad.” He was very methodical in his way of doin’ business and liked to personally wait upon all his customers, but each in their turn, systematically and quietly, so as to have time for a kind word or two with everybody.
But one mornin’, Saturday mornin’, too, it so happened (!)– of course, it had all been previously arranged to happen–that all Uncle David’s customers called on him at once, ten or fifteen at a time, all his best customers, too, people he wanted particularly to accommodate. The deuce was in the world this Saturday mornin’. People who used to call at his stall at one hour now called on him at another hour, and all at the same hour. It was “Uncle David” here and “Uncle David” there, “Give me this cut at once, I’m in a hurry.” “Give me that piece at once, I must be off.” Everybody seemed worried and mad, everybody–everybody but Uncle David.
He remained as cool and as calm as he could for a while, and then, seein’ the fuss around him, the old man quietly put down his cleaver and sat himself down on the stool beside his stall. “Well now, gentlemen,” he cried, with his usual smile, as unruffled as ever, “as you all seem to be in a hurry all at once, you had best all help yourselves. Wait on yourselves and I’ll wait till you all get through.” And he evidently meant what he said. No ill temper for him. So the crowd burst into a laugh and owned up the joke, at which Uncle David smiled more than ever.
[Editor’s notes: The above column was adapted from Thomas Farrington De Voe’s (1811-1892) The Market Book : Containing a Historical Account of the Public Markets of the Cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Brooklyn. De Voe was a butcher, historian, and public servant, serving as Superintendent of Markets for the city. On publication, his book was viewed as a curiosity, but has become a significant source for historians of public commerce, New York City social life, and the food industry.]
