The London horse market

An illustration of a London horse market from the book 'Journeys through London, or, byways of modern Babylon' by James Greenwood, undated, c.1873. Greenwood describes visiting the horse market at Smithfield, held on a Friday afternoon: 'First, as to the goods. A single glance around is at once convincing that the proper name for the place is not a horse, but an ass, market ... There are more donkeys than any other animals present'. He learns that this is due to the season as 'the difference in the value of a donkey in the spring and in the autumn was about twelve shillings'. As a farmer explained: '"What's the reason on it? Why the fruit season's the reason on it. When you aint got nothing to sell, you don't want nothing to draw it about." Of the horses on sale, Greenwood describes the majority as being of 'the listless and dropping-knee'd sort, whose dull ears had ceased to take alarm or pleasure at any sound that greeted them, and who carried in their eyes a droning, weary-to-death look that exposed the vamping and tinkering to which they had been subjected'.