"Bones are collected in great quantities in London: the bone-boilers 
there send round their spring-carts every day to the butchers, to inns, 
eating-houses, &c., for the purpose of collecting them. After they are 
taken home, men are employed with short-handled axes, to chop them into 
small pieces as a stock, and pitch them into the boilers. When well 
boiled the fat is skimmed off, and as the bone-boiler is generally also 
a soap-boiler, part of it is used for soap, and the coarser part for 
coach and cart grease. When the bone-boiler has a bone-mill he does not 
require to chop them with with axes, but puts them through his coarsest 
breaking cylinders, and then into the boilers. When no more fat can be 
extracted the bones are then put out to the yard, where I have seen 
stacks of them as high as a three-story house. They are afterwards sold 
to to the crushers as so much per cauldron, which consists of thirty-six 
heaped bushels .... " [p344]

Halkett, James [New Scone, Perthshire]
    1840    "On the adulteration of bone dust." The Farmer's Magazine 
[Printed by Joseph Rogerson, London] 2:244-5.


On 12/22/2013 7:43 PM, adam heinrich wrote:
> Dear HISTARCH,
>
> I am trying to find any publications on soap making in the historic period, particularly anything dealing with faunal remains.  From my understanding, fats used in soap production would have been more likely to use subcutaneous fats like lard. I am trying to address an anonymous claim that bones would have been boiled for grease to make soap, but I am not familiar with such research.
>
> Thanks, Adam Heinrich
>
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 06:31:10 -0500
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: pdf of John Witthoft's Gunflint article
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Dear Everyone,
>> I know some of us have been hounding JV Beckum for the Witthoft paper from
>> PA Archaeologist, In the meanwhile - see the below citation -  i think
>> anyone interested in flint knapping and gunflints will find exceptional,
>> and since it is critical may be worth reading by anyone considering reading
>> the Witthoft paper, with all respects to Witthoft, whose individual
>> contributions to archaeology are many. - Like Mead when she had that
>> walking stick you could kill a horse with, we should be respectful of early
>> research - 50 years of hindsight is an exponential differential.  How's
>> that for a morning rhyme
>>
>> this should be available through on-line library database search - i
>> sourced through academia.com
>>
>> Post-Medieval Archaeology 46/1 2012 - 116-142 - 'State of the Art' of
>> British Gunflint Research with special focus on the early gunflint workshop
>> at Dun Eistean, Lewis
>> Sincerely,
>> kev
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Jon Van Beckum <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings everyone!
>>>
>>> Does anyone have a pdf of John Witthoft's 1966 "A History of Gunflints"
>>> article from the Pennsylvania Archaeologist, 36: 12-49 that they could
>>> share?   I would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>>
>>> Jon Van Beckum
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>> Jon Van Beckum
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> ------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> kevin m. donaghy
>> graduate student
>> Temple University
>> Department of Anthropology
>