Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 316

From the brewery draught horse, to flocks of sheep driven down London’s streets, Thomas Almeroth-Williams provides an account of the central role animals played in the Georgian capital. City of beasts asserts the primary role of animals in daily and industrial life in the Georgian capital. Cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, and most prominently horses, are all shown to be highly visible and valued presences in London. The agency and power of these beasts is convincingly demonstrated, manifest in their underpinning of ‘physical, social, economic and cultural development in diverse and fundamental ways’ (p. 5). In asserting that, ‘despite obvious inequalities in power relations, horses, livestock and dogs were capable of influencing human behaviour’, (p. 9) Almeroth-Williams also challenges an assumption that industrializing cities isolated its dwellers from livestock and animals.

A rich use of original ‘bottom-up’ sources provides individual accounts and micro-histories to illustrate how Londoners engaged with, thought about, and used animals. Engravings, letters, court and criminal records, diaries, and trade cards evidence Londoners’ day-to-day and working engagement with their non-human counterparts. The utilization of digitized archives – namely newspapers, London lives, and The Old Bailey proceedings online – combine the more traditional histories with the burgeoning field of digital humanities. In a further step, a nuanced interdisciplinary approach draws upon sociology, animal psychology and science. The archives used take precedence over theoretical sources such as philosophical, religious, and romantic works. Almeroth-Williams’s engagement with existing scholarship on human and animal relations is woven throughout the book, demonstrating the dominant presence of theoretical perspectives, which tell of a detachment from lived engagement with animals. Sixty pages of references sit the book well in the academic scholarship, an animal-centric contribution alongside Keith Thomas and Samuel Hays. The work successfully disproves the assumption found in Thomas and subsequent works, that urban populations were removed from the agricultural process, and that only a narrow section of urban society was directly involved in working with animals (p. 86). With insights across a number of subjects including the history of urbanization, industrial and consumer cultures, and the relationship between the country and the city, and 34 plates of illustrations, the text is aimed at the specialist and lay reader alike. From Lewis Mumford to William Cronon, the book is well situated in scholarship which spans decades and discipline, the omission of this secondary literature from the bibliography however, is an unfortunate choice by the publishers.

The book’s original perspectives provide colour, presenting animals at the front and centre of Georgian London life. The implication and discussion of these wider historical themes, though fascinating, is somewhat difficult to trace across chapters and the book’s animal-centric structure. The blurring of the ‘traditional boundaries of “town” versus “country”, and ‘urban versus “rural”’ (p. 4) is demonstrated through Londoners and animals engaging with activities usually regarded as divided from urban life. Similarly, whether in relation to the horses they rode or cared for, the dogs they kept, the animals they reared, or the streets which served as highways for cattle on their way to slaughter, animals influenced and were influenced by the complex human class structures in the Georgian metropolis.

England’s dark satanic steam-driven mills were not the sole, nor even first drivers of industrial change in the UK. Water and wind power are now recognized as significant in the development of industrial Britain (p. 16). Almeroth-Williams places equine labour as an equally important source of motive power in London’s early industrial revolution: mill horses outnumbered steam engines in 1805, and at least 50 horse-powered mills operated across 12 trades between 1740 and 1815 (pp. 39, 20). The more visible presence of draught horses is observed through their role delivering beer from London’s booming brewing trade – breweries in London being then ‘in size and capital…Britain’s biggest industrial operations’ (p. 35). Bred in Leicestershire, draught horses began a six-year journey to London, sold first to the south Midlands or West Country for agricultural labour, before reaching maturity and an adult life of work in London (p. 42).

That Londoners came face-to-face and lived alongside the livestock they consumed, in many cases as literal back-yard industries shows the sometimes literal ‘intimacy’ (p. 69) between the lives of humans and animals in the Capital. The third and fourth chapters, examining animal husbandry and meat consumption, offer a glimpse of this reality and some of its varied examples. Returning again to horses, chapters 5 and 6 affording them a leading role in the ‘consumer revolution’, as owners sought ever more elaborate care, tack, stabling and staff. Almeroth-Williams identifies London as a city of walkers – including the wealthy, to an extent which astonished visitors from the continent (p. 41) – despite this, a ‘distinctive equestrian culture’ emerged (p. 158). It becomes evident that this culture was centred around leisure: either promenading on horseback in Hyde Park, or riding out to the country for sport and exercise, again blurring the traditional urban-rural divide. The final chapter considers the role of watchdogs, enquiring into the relationship between not only dog and master, but also between dogs, criminals, and the developing systems of securing private property against theft.

The London Almeroth-Williams reveals is a Georgian ‘agropolis’ (p. 128): a rapidly industrializing city, which retained distinctly ‘rural’ characteristics through its animal-centric life, open spaces, pastures, and droving paths. What City of Beasts reveals is that what could be considered hallmarks of the Medieval City endured in Georgian London, which became adapted and co-opted to fit the demands of the industrial era.