Boiling down in the 1840s: A Grimy Means to a Solvent End

Abstract

In these words Murray summed up the sense of despair and despon dency which had descended on the colony by 1843, extending from the commercial nerve centres of Sydney and Melbourne to the squatting runs in the outlying districts. That men of the substance and standing of Murray could be brought to the very edge of bankruptcy (and his position was by no means exceptional) is a fair measure of the serious economic plight of the colony in the depression years of the early 1840s. On Murray's admission the only ray of light in the gloom was the recently publicised (but not new) technique of boiling down sheep and cattle to transform a live healthy animal with virtually no market value into an inert mass of boiled meat from which, in the case of a reasonably fat wether, 24-28 lbs. of tallow could be drained with a net cash value of 5/to 6/per head. Although the experiments conducted on boiling down were not published until 19 June 1843,3 the simplicity of the process and low capital requirement together with the desperate plight of the squatters, led to its almost immediate adoption, so that as early as August 1843 people like Murray saw salvation in the boiling down process. No reliable figures are available of the numbers of sheep and cattle boiled down, but estimates (which vary widely) indicate that possibly four-five million sheep and about a quarter-million cattle were processed for tallow between 1843 and 18514 when the gold rushes forced stock prices up and put art end to boiling down of large numbers of stock. During this period over 30,000 tons of tallow valued at slightly more than ?lm. sterling were exported to Great Britain.5 But more important than the actual number boiled down and the monetary return from the tallow, were the economic and psychological effects of having a lower limit placed on the stock market. Here was a barrier against foreclosure by city financiers and a safety valve in times of crisis, or in Roberts' words 'something tangible in a period of falling values',6 and so it was