The Cat’s Meat Man

On January 10, 1901, twelve days before Queen Victoria did the unthinkable and died, 250 cat’s meat men sat down to a slap-up dinner at a restaurant in Holborn, on the edge of central London. 

Photograph by Francis James Mortimer of an itinerant vendor of meat for cats and dogs, ca. 1900

A cat’s meat man stopped at a house and delivered a pre-ordered package of meat, often threaded onto a long skewer. At the same time, his shout was the signal for householders and domestics to come out onto the pavement and buy their pets’ food straight from the barrow. 

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