This picture was taken in 1900 of an old knackeryard. It must of been a very busy business with two knackercarts & all the workers. The site is now a housing estate.   Can you see the dead horse?

As far as I know knacker Yard's are unique to the United Kingdom. Years ago they were all over the country including towns and cities, in rural areas where there was a high density of cattle, knacker yards could be as close as four all five miles apart. This was because getting the dead cattle to the knacker yard before motor vehicles were being used was a problem; the only way to move them was by horse and carts this cut down the area that a knacker yard could cover by only a few miles. In later times knacker yards could cover a radius of up to 50 miles. In villages the local knacker yard supplied many things for the locals, horse oils were saved and boiled up, the local football club would come down and soak their boots in the oil to soften them up, the cricket club would use the oil to rub into their bats. I know of one knacker man who used to make neatsfoot oil for the local doctor who used to rub the oil into up her a patient's joints after coming out of plaster. Certain bones would be collected and sent to a knife manufacturer for bone handles. The bones and waste would be boiled to remove all the fat which would be sold as tallow, the rest would be ground up and sold for fertilizer, the hide would be sold to the local tannery, the meat would be sold for pet food going mainly up to specialists cats meat shops. These shops were mainly in the big cities and towns and did not disappear until the middle to late Sixties.

Even in the seventies Knackermen were under attack by the Common Market.The problem was that the Common Market officials were trying to destroy a business they did not know anything about.

The 1970s when there was still a great demand for knacker meat I had three lorries that would go out early in the morning and would be out all day collecting casualty fallen stock. Most of the meat then would be sold to canneries with the best joints being kept back and sterilized. I sold this meat to Wembley Stadium when they raced greyhounds there, I also supplied the police training kennels at Chelmsford the rest would go to pet shops and local greyhound owners. Many knacker yards stopped processing the waste from dead animals because large companies were collecting all the bones and waste from slaughterhouses and knacker yard's and it was not viable for the smaller business to process gut and bone. Nowadays it would be almost impossible for a knacker yard to start processing fat and bone again as rules and regulations and cost of starting up would be inhibitive. Nowadays it is almost impossible to make a profit from an knacker yard, MAFF seem to be changing rules and regulations week by week, most work comes from picking up casualty animals over 30 months old and taking them straight to a large incinerator to be burned, this is paid for by the government. On the 1st July 2001 all cattle over 30 months casualties or dead must be incinerated.

Knackermen have many uses, this picture was taken of John Baxter Knackerman cutting up a whale washed up on Holcomb beach Norfolk in the 1970's. He was asked to remove this whale by the local council. The tail when laid out was 4.5 meters across

Another picture of the whale. In the head of the whale is about 40 gallons of fluid which is used in the cosmetics industry.John had the idea of knocking a 2in pipe into the head and catching the fluid in a drum,when they done this it came out with such pressure that every body got covered in it but non was actually saved

Transport

Up until motor transport was available the horse and cart was the only way to transport dead cattle and horses, these knacker carts were specially built for the job, when a knacker man went to a farm to collect a dead animal he would take the horse out of the cart and tip it up in front of the dead animal's head, he would then put a roller between the shafts of the cart this roller had a ratchet on it and would at act as a type of winch he would then slowly pull the animal on to the back of the cart, he would then tip the cart up straight again, put the horse back in and go back to the knacker yard.

Look closely at this knacker cart, can you see the dead horses head hanging over the edge of the cart. I wonder what people would say if I was seen going down the road like this now!! Notice the two men in front holding poleaxes. Poleaxes were widely used for killing animals in those days.

When motor transport started being used this revolutionized knackeryard's. The modern-day knackercart would have an electric winch and have sealed floor to keep all the liquids from a carcass from going on to the road. Many small knackersyards still use horse trailers or old vans

A modern day knackercart with aluminum body electric winch and sealed floor . This one shown is a 35cwt van and can carry three cows.

This rare picture was taken on a farm many years ago. Knackercarts were part of everyday rural life & most people new what they were, nowadays knackercarts go about there job and nobody knows.

Humane Killers

POLAXE GUN: This gun is over 100 years old and is still in use today. The knackerman who uses it says it is the only gun he has that will kill a boar or pot belly pig. It fires a .45 caliber bullet and was made in America. Note the hole in the end of the axe handle, this is the trigger.

Machinery

In the early days the byproduct (Offal, bone, fat ect) from a dead animals was probably cooked in vats 
with the fat being skimmed of and the rest fed to pigs.
When pressurized steam became widely used it was soon found that the waste cooked under pressure was a lot
quicker process, this is where the came in  .