Historic Photos of the Cats’ Meat Men in Victorian London

These historic photos show the nostalgic cats’ meat men traders that were once a common sight across Victorian London.

Cats’ meat men were street vendors in 18th and 19th century Britain who sold skewered meat scraps, primarily horse meat, for cats and dogs. The entrepreneurial animal lovers would push carts or carry wooden trays filled with cheap cuts of meat soaked in blood to keep them looking fresh. These vendors often catered to working-class households, where pet owners would buy small portions to feed their animals.

The black-and-white photos of cats’ meat men come from a variety of sources and have now passed into the public domain. Francis James Mortimer, a famous British photographer who edited Amateur Photographer for decades in the early 20th century, took one of the best images showing a line of cats and dogs lining up in the hope of a sliver of meat.

The trade was surprisingly lucrative. As the newspaper cutting below shows, there were thousands of cats’ meat men in Victorian London alone — serving roughly 300,000 felines in the city. Some of them built loyal customer bases, and many had set routes, calling out their wares in distinctive cries. The Public Domain Review writes that the calls sounded like “CA-DOE-MEE!”

The routes were closely guarded and disagreements would happen if anyone tried selling on a street that wasn’t theirs. There were also occupational hazards: an 1876 picture in The Illustrated Police News shows a cats’ meat man being attacked by a pack of dogs.

The quality of the meat varied widely, as some sellers dealt in fresh cuts while others sold highly questionable offal. Despite the grim nature of the job, cats’ meat men were a staple of city life, mentioned in literature by Charles Dickens and other writers of the era.

By the early 20th century, the rise of commercially packaged pet food and stricter regulations on meat sales gradually put the trade out of business. Thankfully, these photos give us a fascinating glimpse into the quirks of urban life in old London.