Walking through Smithfield Market…

 It has been a while since I haven’t posted anything on this blog. The reason is that I am still reading through Peter Ackroyd’s 800-page biography of London. So far, I am quite enjoying the historian’s prose. Although the book starts in a rather classical chronological order, as you would expect from a history book, it soon shifts to a more thematic approach in which the story of London is told through descriptions and anecdotes related to a given topic, such as Pestilence and Flame (the London Fire and the Great Plague) or Crime and Punishment(the theatricality of justice and executions throughout the ages). I have learnt quite a deal about the history of the city, and will now see London with a different eye. Every morning, as I walk through the Smithfield wholesale meat market on my way to the office and look upon the bleeding pork carcasses, I cannot help but think that Smithfield was also infamously known as a place where executions were carried out. According to Historic UK, this is where those who were accused of high treason were “dragged by a horse to the place of execution, hanged until almost dead, then disembowelled whilst still conscious, beheaded, and finally being chopped into four pieces (i.e. ‘quartered) and subsequently having these pieces put on display across the city.” No wonder I sometimes struggle  to drink my morning coffee after walking through Smithfield Market…