Cattle Market

In our school holidays, I and one or two more used to go with cattle drovers, there were often a thousand Irish cattle arriving at the cattle dock on some Saturdays. The front of the herd would be at the Town Bridge as other cattle were still leaving the cattle dock. We would guard all the sidestreets and passageways. Cattle would be sold at the market, then were taken to various fields outside of town. One drover, Edger, had the foulest mouth you could imagine, another was one-armed Tom, it was rumoured he fell at Spalding Market, hit his head on the ground and it killed him. Tom Dixon was another drover all his working life, he was brought up in Jubilee Avenue. The roads and pavements were splattered with cow muck, you didn't want a poop scoop, a J C B would have been handy. .