History Café: Squire’s Meat and East Cambridge’s Fight for Change

From the time of its founding in the 1840s, the John P. Squire & Co. meat processing plant was a major force in East Cambridge industry. At its peak in the 1870s, Squire’s was slaughtering over 1200 pigs a day and employing hundreds of workers.

But such large-scale industrial growth came with a price; Squire’s soon found itself at the center of a myriad of controversies due to its pollution of nearby waterways, its treatment of animals, and its failure to ensure safe and fair working conditions for its laborers. The story of Squire’s is one of East Cambridge residents standing up to big business and demanding adequate pay, fair treatment for both humans and animals, and the protection of the environment. In this History Café we will explore the ways in which the neighborhood’s response to Squire’s illustrates some of the major issues facing labor and environmental protection in nineteenth-century Cambridge.

New to History Cafés?
History Cafés are informal lectures in diverse venues, to facilitate learning about Cambridge’s history and the experiences of its current residents. As our guiding framework states, we believe that through their experiences of Cambridge, every person in our city knows something about Cambridge’s history, and their knowledge matters. We support people in sharing history with each other — and weaving their knowledge together.

As always, come with your stories!

You may also like the following events from History Cambridge:

• This Saturday, 17th May, 02:00 pm, Born in North Cambridge: A Guided Tour in Cambridge
• Next month, 21st June, 02:00 pm, Pioneering Poets of Cambridge: A Guided Tour in Cambridge