Thomas Almeroth-Williams, City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 328 pp.
Histories of the Industrial Revolution and Georgian London have often privileged what Thomas Almeroth Williams calls “innovation-centric accounts of technological progress,”[1] overlooking the continuing significance of animal labor. His book City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London seeks to fill this gap by placing animals at the center of metropolitan history. Focusing on eighteenth and early nineteenth-century London, the book examines how everyday interactions between people and animals shaped metropolitan development and urban life.
Its central argument is that horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and dogs were fundamental to London’s economic, social, cultural, and physical transformation and were among the animals with which urban residents interacted most frequently. Urbanization and industrialization intensified dependence on animals, challenging the assumption that modernization separated urban life from non-human animals.
In the first chapter, “Mill Horse,” the author examines the contribution of mill horses to manufacturing in Georgian London. Before Watt’s steam engine could be implemented in several industries as a viable alternative, mill horses were still used in industries such as brewing, tanning, and brickmaking even after the invention of Watt's steam engine.
In the second chapter, “Draught Horse,” we see draught horses’ contribution to the transportation industry. The number of draught horses used was enormous in Georgian London, and horse breeding and trading were great industries of their own. These horses were the backbone of trading and transportation of many goods. Their sheer number and presence made the streets congested and led to disputes, dangers, and management issues, therefore shaping the daily urban life, administration, and development.
Figure 1. George Moutard Woodward, Miseries of Human Life (Smithfield Market), ca. 1800. Etching by an anonymous engraver.[2]
The third chapter, “Animal Husbandry,” challenges the separation of urban consumption from rural production. Many cows and pigs were still raised within London. The urban expansion did not eliminate these activities at once, but animal husbandry industries adapted to urban expansion. The chapter presents London as an agricultural producer and shows another dimension of human-animal encounters in urban life.
The fourth chapter, “Meat on the Hoof,” examines the livestock trade centered on Smithfield Market. Before refrigeration and railway transport, much of London’s meat arrived as living animals. Driving hundreds of cattle and sheep through the streets connected metropolitan consumers to animals in ways that we do not commonly observe in urban environments today.
Chapter five, “Consuming Horses,” investigates the market for riding and carriage horses. Horse ownership supported commercial innovation and expressed social status. However, the author also presents horses as consumers and how they were among the causes of Britain’s consumer revolution. Their sheer number, requirements for food, accommodation, equipment, and care generated substantial economic activity. I find this approach historiographically valuable because it places non-human animals among the agents of a broader historical transformation traditionally understood solely in terms of human activity and modernity.
Chapter six, “Horsing Around,” explores riding, racing, and hunting. Horses facilitated fashionable sociability, but relationships with them could also offer pleasure beyond human companionship. The author broadens our understanding of metropolitan recreation, which has often concentrated on indoor venues and interactions among people. How Georgian men enjoyed and attended horse riding activities, and with what motivations, are the questions answered in the chapter.
Figure 2. Thomas Rowlandson, after Henry William Bunbury, Cits Airing Themselves on a Sunday, 1810. Etching.[3]
Drawing on legal sources, the final chapter, “Watchdogs,” studies how dogs protected property and regulated access to private space. Their presence and intentional behavior could disrupt theft and force criminals to reconsider their plans or avoid theft. The chapter shows how dogs participated in maintaining metropolitan security in Georgian London as active agents.
City of Beasts’ historiographical contribution lies in demonstrating how deeply animal labor and human-animal interactions shaped early industrialization and urban development. It encourages us to reconsider narratives of technological progress. This argument can also be read alongside Christian Zumbrägel’s apt observation: “Although most contemporaries took the everyday presence of animals for granted, traces of their labor often get overshadowed in progress-oriented narratives of industrialization and urban modernization. The presence of animals in daily life was simply difficult to reconcile with the contrived self-image of modern, industrial societies.”[4] Almeroth-Williams’s book addresses precisely this gap by demonstrating how animals shaped the urban and industrial transformations from whose histories they have often been excluded.
Drawing on legal, business, and parliamentary records, newspapers, maps, letters, and diaries, the book builds its argument in everyday encounters and working practices. Consequently, City of Beasts offers a model for integrating nonhuman actors into broader histories of labor and urban change. It also invites other researchers to look at 18th- and 19th-century metropolises through an animal-inclusive historical perspective.
[1] Thomas Almeroth-Williams, City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 10.
[2] Anonymous engraver, after George Moutard Woodward, Miseries of Human Life (Smithfield Market), ca. 1800, etching, Satirical Print Collection, The London Archives, catalogue no. p5384979, London Picture Archive, record no. 18605; also reproduced in Almeroth-Williams, City of Beasts, 119, fig. 21.
[3] Thomas Rowlandson, after Henry William Bunbury, Cits Airing Themselves on a Sunday, 1810, etching, Satirical Print Collection, The London Archives, catalogue no. p544702x, London Picture Archive, record no. 20160; also reproduced in Almeroth-Williams, City of Beasts, 169, fig. 30.
[4] Christian Zümbrägel, “Toward an Animated History of Technology: A Conceptual Introduction,” Animal History 2, no. 3 (2026): 15, https://doi.org/10.1525/ah.2026.134.
