Note 54 — APPENDIX. (continued 2)

Mr. Terry, who is a very extensive farmer in Cookham, and was present during this inquiry, explained this, and, in corroboration of Mr. Whateley’s evidence on this point, stated that he, as a farmer, could not make any profit by growing pigs beyond a certain size. The only advantage which he had from keeping them was in using them to collect the refuse corn, which would otherwise be trodden under foot at the barn-door and rendered unmarketable; the office of the pig was to gather up this refuse, and convert it into a marketable commodity, pork. To fat the pigs beyond a certain size required more than the refuse of the farm-yard; and, therefore, would not pay the farmer. It was therefore, the practice of the farmers to sell the pigs to the millers, who were enabled to fat them on another description of refuse. Now if the labouring man kept a pig, as he had no farm-yard, and no refuse to feed it with, he must either buy the food or steal it. If he were honest and bought the food, his pork would, as Mr. Whateley has stated, cost much more than he could buy it for. A pig could only be kept on the produce of such a piece of land as a labourer could not well cultivate whilst he attended to his other duties. In this state of things, the temptation to pilfer for the support of the pig was considerable. Other witnesses incidentally corroborated this statement, and I found that with many farmers the circumstance of a labouring man having a pig was an objection to giving him employment. The Rev. Mr. Faithful, of Hatfield, Herts, stated, as the result of his observation, that the keeping of pigs was decidedly not profitable to cottagers; and such was the temptation to steal which their possession of pigs created, that he had known a labourer, who had a pig given to him, to steal from the donor the wood to make its sty, the straw to litter it, and the food to feed it. The farmers ridiculed the prevalent statements as to the small cost at which pigs could be kept,—statements commonly made to the gentry by roguish rustics, who profited by these delusions; a pig was not accommodating enough to fatten on less for the cottager than for the farmer.

A friend, who writes from Wiltshire, observes,—“I cannot make out who it is that does fatten pigs to a profit. I asked a brewer the other day if, with his grains, he did not make it answer; and he told me that, on the contrary, he was always out of pocket, and only kept a pig for the pleasure of eating his own pork. ‘Private individuals,’ he added, ‘feed their pigs with what should rather be called spoilt malt than grains. I cannot afford to do that; I must get out all the goodness for my beer, and then there is not sufficient nutriment left to fatten without the addition of things which I must purchase.’ It is not unlikely that many persons, who fancied they kept pigs to a profit, have fed them on this ‘spoilt malt,’ in ignorance that they were, in fact, giving their swine valuable beer instead of refuse grains.”

A gentleman, speaking of such appendages to labourers’ tenements in a manufacturing district, states,—“Formerly most of our houses had them, but they are terrible things for getting out of repair, and we are pulling them down a good deal, and clearing the ground; for I know, from intelligent, clear-headed workmen, that the manufacturing families cannot grow their pork nearly so cheap as they can buy it. The trade in bacon is quite different to what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Now it is a great business, and the quantity of the improved Irish pigs brought even into smallish cottages is very large. In such villages where yard-room is not very large, swill and manure make a terrible stink. Only such of our people keep pigs as have a fondness for it, and as a sort of hobby, but believing that it does not pay.”