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Sunday 6 October 2013

Butcher

Ancient Egyptians butchers were one of the first to wear high heels to avoid stepping directly in the unusable scraps that would be tossed to the floor.

Roman butchers were responsible for buying the beasts required to feed both their own troops and the occupied countries. They accompanied the Roman soldiers and sometimes the troops ate their meat in pies. The pastry made from flour, oil and water was wrapped round the meat keeping it warm on long marches.

The Roman emperor Constantine passed laws making the occupations of butcher and baker hereditary.

The word "butcher" comes from the Old French bochier (boc meant “goat”). Butcher literally meant “slaughterer of goats.”

Fourteenth century butchers found guilty of selling bad meat were put in the pillory and had the meat burned beneath them.

The 30 year old Margaret Clitherow (1556-86), the wife of a York butcher was imprisoned and then crushed to death with a weighted board for hiding Catholic priests and attempting to smuggle them out of the city.

The first known boxing match in Britain was in 1681, when the Duke of Albemarle organised a match between his butler and his butcher at his home in New Hall, Essex.

Highwayman Dick Turpin trained as a butcher before turning to armed robbery.

The Bramley apple is a cooking apple believed to be named after Matthew Bramley, a butcher in Southwell, who first grew it in his garden in the mid-19C.

When in 2017 a 70-year-old butcher in the south of England, Chris McCabe, became locked in his walk-in freezer, he used a 1.5kg roll of black pudding to escape from the -20 degree celsius temperatures by using it as a battering ram. 

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