Tanneries- You Can Smell the Plot Hooks

Among the warehouses and breweries of south London, certain buildings emanate noxious odors, whose stench rises above even the Thames midday breeze. Work in a tannery was decent, and required skill, but was absolutely disgusting. The smells of chemicals and bodily fluids combine with the making of an everyday material to make tanneries a great location for a Victoriana adventure.

The process of Victorian tanning is something like this: 

Freshly skinned hides arrive in massive piles, although some may have been cured poorly at the slaughterhouse and starting to rot. The hides are cleaned and hit with a wooden mace to soften the skins. Next the workers lower the hides into pits dug in the tannery floor or large vats filled with a mixture of lime and water. The mixture loosens the hair on the hide causes any fat still attached to swell. After being submerged for a week and a half, the hair comes out in handfuls. Tanners place the hide on a beam (a thick plank rounded like a tree trunk), and scrape the hair off using a blade with wooden handles on both ends. Then they flip over the hide and scrape off the fat.
Now the hide isready for bating. The tanner drops the hide in a mixture of dog feces, bird feces, urine and heated water that has been sitting in a vat for weeks. The bacteria in the water soften the hide, then the skin is treated with salt in preparation for the actually tanning.
The hides are stretched on frames and again submerged, this time in acid made from tree bark (containing the chemical Tannin) and water. More and more tannin is added to the water over a few weeks to tan the hide to leather. Once complete , workers clean, stretch and dry the leather in a dark shed or warehouse.
To finish, the leather can be dyed, bleached, greased or polished with wax for whatever finish was required for its eventual use. Then the leathers are bundled up and sold to leatherworkers to be cut and shaped into the finished product.

Plot Hooks: 
Most of the hides delivered to a Tannery come from butchered cows. The butchers often left the cow’s inedible parts attached, so a pile of hooves and horns was not an uncommon sight in a tannery backroom. Perhaps these discarded symbols of power and evil would be valuable to persons practicing darker magics in large quantities.

To make a few extra pence, the poor would collect dog feces found in the street and sell it to tanneries. A batch of hides produced by a local tannery has produced very fine quality leathers. The only difference in the tanning process was the inclusion of feces from an unidentified source. If a supply of feces from this animal could be found the tannery would be very appreciative.

With the terrible stench and the piles of unclean castoffs, few people other than tradesmen enter a tannery. Men of an illegal mindset may be able to use the facilities creatively, if they need a place to hide something. Preferably something that won’t absorb odors, or has odors that need to be covered up. Chamicales could be poured into the pits to allow certain things to be dissolved, electroplated, mixed, or bottled in secret.  

Tannery as Fight Scene Location:
There are worse places to throw a fight than a tannery. The lime pits and bating vats make for great obstacles and the threat of falling in should be emphasized. Piles of finished leathers or stinking hides can cushion a nasty fall.

The specialized tools used in a tannery will work as improvised weapons in a pinch. Vat hooks are long wooden poles with a metal hook on one end used to move or pull out submerged leather. Fleshing knives are used to slice fat from the hides. They have wooden handles on both ends with a sharp blade in the center. Could be awkwardly used one handed. Even an unfinished hide could be used to ward off an attack.

If the fight goes south, the tanneries delivery cart could be commandeered for a quick getaway, (although the load of unfinished hides may make the fleeing character’s easier to find).