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The Review - BOOKS
 

Des Whyman, centre, with son Terry and wife Vicki in 1990


Butchers Paul and Frank Corrigan, 1974. The Corrigan family ran 12 stores in the borough.
A butcher's hook at a trade fast dying out

A history of butchers shops makes for a fascinating read, even if the author (butcher, retired) is married to a veggie, writes Dan Carrier

Shoulder of Mutton Field: The Retail Butchers Trade in Camden
by Desmond Whyman, £7.95

THERE was a silver lining for butcher delivery boy Desmond Whyman. His Hampstead round, which required him to get his bike from the foot of Haverstock Hill up to Whitestone Pond and beyond, meant although it was hard going on his way out, he could freewheel his way back down.

Then there were the tips he’d get at Christmas and some of his customers gave him some kudos among his friends. He got to deliver to forces’ sweetheart and national icon Vera Lynn at her house next door to the Bull and Bush pub.
Such vignettes are the background to a remarkable book written by the former Kentish Town butcher. Mr Whyman spent the first 10 years of his retirement researching the Camden meat trade where he made his livelihood and the result is a read that is captivating for its detail and is an important social history.
Des, 65, eventually qualified as a butcher himself and ran his own shop in Queen’s Crescent and then later in Romford.
But his story starts in 1702 when, as Mr Whyman notes, “the presence of a hawking meat seller was recorded in the parish registers”.
Mr Whyman says he was compelled to write the history of Camden’s meat trade because he realised something that was a facet of every day life was rapidly disappearing.
He says: “In the last 20 years your high street butchers have been closing at an astonishing rate. It was an important part of people’s daily shopping routine and provided people with jobs too.”
His research reveals that at first the local meat trade started with a person using a smallholding to raise his own pigs. Any surplus would be pickled and sold to neighbours. This cottage industry developed in time with the home being converted into a makeshift shop. In 1788, a Joseph Hale established a butchers in Angler’s Lane and by 1823 a business directory noted there were already seven butchers in a small stretch of Kentish Town running from Angler’s Lane up to the Bull and Gate pub.
Mr Whyman was born in Rhyl Street, Kentish Town in 1941. He came from a family of meat sellers – his grandmother was Hannah Aries, part of the Aries Brothers from Chalk Farm Road, which Mr Whyman has traced back to 1856 where they ran a beef and ham shop.
He managed R&C Butchers in Queen’s Crescent before taking over a shop in Romford.
He says: “I got the idea for the book when I thought about how the trade had changed since I was a boy.
“There was always a butchers in every street and people would have their meat delivered to their door. In the past 20 years high street shops have disappeared and I wanted to make sure the history was not lost forever. I hope in years to come someone will pick up the book and say: ‘I don’t know who this Des chap is, but I am pleased he bothered recording this’.”
Mr Whyman’s own professional background is tied in with the rise and decline of the butcher: the place he learnt his trade has long disappeared.
“I did my own training in Harrisons Butchers in Camden High Street in the 1950s,” he recalls.
He left Haverstock School in 1955 and started work as a delivery boy for Lidstones, run by an Irish butcher called Mr Gray.
“On my first day I noticed he was missing three fingers on his left hand he told me he had lost them in the mincing machine,” he continues. “I suddenly thought to myself I’m not very keen on becoming a butcher after all. But I still turned up the following day.
“We started at six every morning. I’d set off on my deliveries that the butchers had already prepared.”
In his basket were around 25 different cuts – and because his round took him to the heights of Hampstead, he would deliver more expensive meat than if he was going to homes in Kentish Town and Camden Town.
“They would have lots of game – pheasants, snipes, and they would always ask for steak instead of stewing lamb.”
His deliveries would take him up to lunchtime, and then it was back to the shop to spend the afternoon cleaning.
He worked every day up to 5.30pm – excluding Sundays and Thursday, which were traditionally early closing day. He was paid one pound, 17 shillings and six pence – and was also allowed to take some mince or sausages home twice a week, and a joint from the display window on Saturday night for his family’s Sunday roast.
Mr Whyman spent seven years as an apprentice learning his trade before running Kimbers Butchers. It was here he met and married Victoria Saunders, his wife of 42 years.
She lived in nearby Islip Street and would come in with her mother.
“One day, soon after we had been married, I brought home a lovely piece of steak,” he recalls.
“She looked at me and said she had a confession to make, she hated meat and had been a vegetarian all her life. She had only come in to the shop regularly so she could court me. Imagine that, a veggie marrying a butcher.”

• Shoulder of Mutton Field is available at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town Road and butchers in the borough
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