I thought I might throw in a few pictures.
Here are some old Wilson butcher knives, from Sheffield. The top two are real old-timers.:
These are the same knives in the same order, but left to right instead of top to bottom. The first image shows the tops or backs of their handles. Note the tapered tangs on the older knives:
...and the underside of one of the older knives. Note that the older knives are fitted with slab handles (two pieces) rather than a slotted block, as on the later knife, fourth from the left in the photo above. This does indeed leave a gap under and behind the tang, which would be unacceptable to us now, but was not considered a problem back in the day.
Here are a few Green River knives, although I don't think any of them date much before the 1870's if that:
The top three have full tangs, tapered in thickness.
The next image shows some modern reproductions:
The top one is a seven inch "Hudson Bay" butcher knife made in the 1990's by Cold Steel, using their famous Carbon V tool steel. They marketed several models of "trade knives"... This is just one of them. It's actually a nice knife, but just not authentic.
Second is the current iteration of the renowned Green River butcher/trade knife, this one with a six inch blade. This one and the Cold steel knife use brass cutler's rivets to secure the handle slabs. An American inventor named Mellen Bray submitted several patents for tubular rivets beginning in the late 1870's and early 1880's. The best information I have suggests rivets of this type were not used in the cutlery business until the 1890's, and simple "pins" still continued in use well into the twentieth century. Again, this Green River butcher is a good, solid workhorse of a knife, made by the company that is a direct descendant of the original John Russell Green River Works. It is just not authentic to the 19th century.
Third from the top is a six inch butcher from John Nowill & Sons. Note how this one has no choil to speak of... the blade is the same width as the handle where the blade and handle merge. This is a very early blade design feature for butcher knives. The pin pattern is authentic to the mid 19th century, although it was certainly not the only pin pattern used. Nowill's trademark is old, and is "struck" or stamped into the blade instead of etched. Etching is a modern innovation. The full tang could be authentic to the later 19th century, but the tang should still be tapered, and it isn't.
The bottom knife is one I made from a seven inch Green River blade blank. I'll be the first to tell you it is not authentic, although it is somewhat closer than the factory finished Green River knife. I browned and buffed the blade to give it a patina and remove the etching (which is surprisingly tenacious), spot annealed the tang and drilled it for pins, slightly modified the profile of the tang, and installed beechwood slabs with iron pins. I have not come up with a practical way to taper the tangs of these blades, with the space and equipment I have, so the tang is not tapered, it still has a choil, and the profile of the blade itself is a more modern style than you see on the really old knives. However, beech was probably the most commonly used wood for handles on butcher knives back then. Boxwood, ebony, cocobolo, Brazilwood, and logwood are documented, but beech was most common. I have never seen or heard of curly maple being used on an original trade knife in original condition. I have no doubt that some were rehafted after the original beech scales disintegrated, possibly with maple, but I have found no documentation to support the use of maple on knives as issued.
One other persistent rumor is that butcher knife blades were shipped west in barrels, to be hafted by the end-users. I have seen no documentation of this, either. There were some types of blades that were shipped without handles, such as some snow knives and crooked knives, but the best information I have found thus far indicates butcher and scalping knives were always shipped out to the frontier ready to use. "Country made" handles were probably rehafted.
Notchy Bob
