Where: Smithfield Meat Market

Who: A Butcher’s Apprentice

Sometimes people of London come to watch us in our labour, come to buy or just to see the sight of so much flesh all together. I don’t usually bother about them. But that morning among the gawpers was this strange dog I see, a huge dog it was, the size of a Great Dane or something, but misshapen and ugly and mangy. Curiously, it had a brass ring hanging from its nose. Then there was the dog’s owner, that was another queer thing right there. He was a bald man with a long nose, queer and pointy, and the other oddness was his ears: his ears were not equal to each other, one was old and wrinkled, the other small and neat and youthful. Despite all that he was quite a dapper little fellow – and kept an umbrella hooked at his arm. The man, he comes up, he says, ‘I want one whole dead pig. My dog, my dog shall carry it. Here, Otter, come, girl. Strap the pig to the dog, my good fellow.’

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, please, come along. She’ll carry it and more besides.’