Wouldn't there be a kid on a giant step ladder ready to retrieve birds if they were selling that many in a day?

Surely you've read Two Bad Mice? (Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca)
"It's as hard as the hams at the
cheesemonger's," said Hunca Munca.

The ham broke off the plate with a
jerk, and rolled under the table.

"Let it alone," said Tom Thumb;
"give me some fish, Hunca Munca!"

Hunca Munca tried every tin spoon
in turn; the fish was glued to the dish.

Then Tom Thumb lost his temper.
He put the ham in the middle of the
floor, and hit it with the tongs and
with the shovel--bang, bang, smash,
smash!

The ham flew all into pieces, for
underneath the shiny paint it was
made of nothing but plaster!

Then there was no end to the rage
and disappointment of Tom Thumb
and Hunca Munca. They broke up the
pudding, the lobsters, the pears and
the oranges.

Obviously those upper birds are plaster and not pining for the fjords

I just sauntered off to do a Google search on plaster birds hanging in butcher shops, and found this.

weird news indeed.

Attachment 46932

Maybe. I can't tell from the photo, but you hang game. If they're game birds and it's Winter then they need to be hung anyway, may as well make a display of it.

I've saved, and magnified, the photo and the top seven rows on the gable end appear to be rabbits, with game birds and poultry below.
The wall on the left hand side appears to be mostly covered in pheasants with some poultry.

I can only speculate but here goes. I wonder if this is a Christmas display? As it would be the first Christmas of WW2 it was probably an effort to show that everything was running as normal.
There is still a shooting estate just outside High Wycombe and no doubt there were more in those days so supplies were unlikely to have been a problem at that stage of the war.

Just my two penn'orth.

ETA: OK, I've just found some more info. The letters 'POU' are just visible on the right hand side of the picture.
Using some inspired searching around the word 'Poulterer' I came up with a bit more info including another photo.
I'm not going to post the photo here as it is available from a commercial photo library and is watermarked. However, the information reads:

The building is considerably larger than it appears in Bruce's post above and there doesn't seem to be a square inch of wall visible anywhere.

See for yourselves here: Getty Images.

Nice find.

Ah, now I understand. Those birds might as well be in a freezer. There are cold places in the world!

I just read an article about a college girl who noticed (not the first one to notice, I'm sure...but...) a musical score on the butt of a character from the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.

She was studying the triptych and noticed there was music score written on someone's ass. Certainly she didn't discover that. Keep in mind, this painting was made (copy and paste Wiki):

Here's a high res link of the original work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Th...Resolution.jpg

And here's the video of the young lady, named Amelia, talking about how she decided to transcribe the music. How curious and smart is she? It's a Cooper "ridiculist' but it totally honors her.



It's just really cute. :)

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvi...diculist__CNN/

Thanks, Amelia. I'd seen the triptych in books but had never studied it so much.

That's pretty cool!

I found the original here.

Some children had their own butcher shops.

Thanks for the link Bruce, that's grand.:thumb:

I've also done some more digging and find that the business was called 'Aldridge's' and appears to have been well known for its Christmas display. I suspect that the firm no longer trades as they don't appear in the phone book. Whether the premises remain is unclear as White Hart Street is now a pedestrian zone so Street View doesn't help.

Anyway, here's the pictures, the first being from the twenties and the second being dated as 1931.

fascinating

Those children's butchers shops look German.
I cant quite decide why, except that it's unconscious influence, knowing that the Germans were great toy-makers and loved their meat.

The one in the lower left is German, the other three are Brit Victorian.


And from Canton, New York...

Ha! Our shops have more meat in them.
Look it the sparse German shop.

We win the butchers!