July 21, 2021 • 43 mins
In the 1850s, much of the milk supply in New York was anything but appetizing and wholesome – it was often deadly. But efforts to address the problem were blocked by corrupt officials.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, here
is sort of an obvious heads up if you saw
the title of today's podcast. The topic that we are
(00:23):
talking about today involves really unsanitary practices that took place
when there were not really laws regarding food safety and
quality the way we think about it today. So it
is kind of gross. That's an understatement. Uh. And there
is also mistreatment of animals, so it is also upsetting
on that front. Uh. Just know that going in, and
(00:44):
maybe it maybe a little too intense for you. We
are covering a period of time where the milk supply
in New York was anything but appetizing. It has had
actually been going on for quite some time, but there's
there's one kind of very pivotal moment in the middle
of it, and that's really where we're focus sing and
then we'll talk about the way that problem was brought
to the public's attention and how it was handled after that.
(01:06):
But first we're just going to talk a little bit
about why milk became known as an essential item in
US kitchens, particularly for families with children. So if you
grew up in the US, even if you don't drink
milk yourself, you've almost certainly become accustomed to this idea
that people think of milk as a staple food. I know,
(01:28):
when I was a kid, I loved milk and I
drink it all the time. My brother was allergic, so
it was kind of a division in our household. This
is one of the things that just flies off of
supermarket dairy kase shelves anytime there's a heavy storm coming
and people will joke about, like, what are people doing
with all this milk and bread? Is it French toast
time during during the snowstorm. Uh. Milk has treated like
(01:53):
a cornerstone of every meal and a lot of families,
and it is really popular. We have talked about teas
and butter on the show before, which are of course
also dairy items, but those are made with the idea
of longevity, so a food that you can have on
hand for at least a little while milk does not
(02:13):
have that long shelf life, especially in the era before
artificial refrigeration, so it's kind of an impractical thing to
just have on hand all the time. The concept of
a lot of heavy milk consumption is pretty new if
you plotted out on the timeline of human history. Yeah,
(02:35):
for a long time, dairy milk as a human consumable
was primarily used just as a means to feed babies.
This is also tied up with a very passionate and
centuries long debate about human milk versus the milk from
other animals and what is appropriate for children. Even famed
Puritan Cotton Mother had opinions about breastfeeding being the only
(02:58):
suitable way to feed a try filed and he intimated
in his writing that God would take whether a mother
breastfit or not into account when her day of judgment came.
And then during the nineteenth century there were plenty of
people willing to voice their opinion that breastfeeding was downright uncivilized. Obviously,
those are two extremes to illustrate the vast range of
(03:20):
positions people had on the issue. That debate continues. You
will still find people probably who feel both of those ways.
That debate is thankfully way out of our scope here. Also,
Tracy and I are not moms, so we don't have
quite the same steak in that conversation that other people
might have. So the key thing that we need to
(03:40):
focus on is that in cases where a mother's or
a wet nurse's milk were not an option for whatever reason,
over time people started turning to other milk sources for infants,
and because cows are fairly docile and pretty easy to
work with and produce milk in quantity, they emerge over
(04:00):
time as the most popular non human milk source. There
were people who studied the mortality rates of babies in
regard to being fed animal milk. This was called artificial feeding.
They were comparing that to people who were fed milk
from their mother or a wet nurse all the way
back to the seventeen hundreds, and germ theory as we
(04:22):
know it today was not really in the mix with
this yet. So there were some stabs in the dark
regarding cause and effect of illnesses that seemed like they
were linked to milk. One idea, which was conceived by
French doctor Alphonse LeRoi in the seventeen seventies was for
children to suckle directly from an animal to get the
(04:43):
freshest possible milk, so he was onto the idea that
spoilage could be a problem, but he didn't really know
that bacteria was the culprit for that spoilage. But keeping
live animals on hand for that purpose was not exactly
realistic for a lot of places, especially places like orphanages
(05:04):
or hospitals. Right and even like anybody that lived in
a more metropolitan area, it's not like um, go to
the goat room or the certainly not a cow in
the house. There have been also various types of formula
over the years, which can include any number of ingredients
such as flowers or even cane sugar mixed with water
(05:26):
or milk or some combination of the two, and sometimes
that was used as a way to stretch milk where
that supply was not as uh, you know, constantly available.
But over time there were doctors that started to recommend
milk with various added ingredients as something that could pretty
effectively replicate the nutrition and infant would get from breastfeeding.
(05:47):
So when doctor's touting its benefits, milk really started to
take on an image as a nutritious and health bolstering beverage.
This was not a universally held opinion, though, and there
were still plenty of instant says where milk caused people
to get sick. This included episodes when multiple people and
communities got milk sickness after milk from cows that had
(06:11):
ingested some poisonous plants was introduced into the food supply.
But the trend of feeding infants and children milk continued
upward in the US and in other parts of the
world as cities got bigger and populations boomed, so that
just led a more and more demand for cow's milk, specifically,
so naturally that growing population of metro areas that needed
(06:34):
and wanted milk lead to a boom in the dairy industry.
But in many cases, the dairies that emerged to meet
those demands were not exactly hygienic, and the cows that
were used were not fed the best diet. Feeding more
cows meant far greater overhead for milk producers, so some
of them worked out what seemed like a cost effective solution,
(06:56):
and they moved next to breweries and distilleries, and a
lot of instances, distilleries started dairies of their own as
a way to get a piece of the ever increasing demand.
So a lot of alcohols start out with grain that's
combined with water to give the yeasts something to work with.
But this spent grain is not part of the finished beverage.
(07:18):
It's a waste product. And dairy producers made deals with
alcohol producers to take their run off to feed their animals,
or in the cases of these combo businesses, the distillers
didn't really bother to source any other food for their animals.
They were just feeding them the runoff from their distilleries.
So we should mention here that there are cases where
(07:40):
this is okay. If someone is soaking their grains and
then straining them out before fermentation, these grains can be
an are fed to livestock. Like there are a lot
of breweries today that are feeding their spent grain to
farm animals, and it's this is really just the grain
mean that has been used to make the work to
(08:04):
make the beer, not like runoff that also contains alcohol
and other waste products. Um. The brewery that brewed the
beer for our wedding had to deal with farmers. Lots
of places do this, um and it is perfectly fine.
So we are not coming if you know someone who
does that or is part of one of those We're
not dogging on them. What we are about to tell
(08:25):
you will explain the problem. Yeah, yeah, So what we
are talking about here is dairy cows being fed this
watery spent swill of mash that had been through the
fermentation process and boiled without being strained. And this runoff
swill was not only kind of gross, it really didn't
(08:47):
have a lot of nutritional value anymore. It could also
go bad really quickly. Unlike just the spent grain that
is used today, this was not a good food source
for animals or anyone really, and as a consequence, the
quality of the milk being produced by animals being fed
this swill was poor at best. That's a very kind
(09:09):
way to put it. That milk was often watery that
did not have the normal fat content of a whole milk,
and also it was often blue in color. So to
make that milk appear more wholesome than it was, dairies
that used the swill run off to feed their cows
started adding all kinds of things to the milk. Food
colorings and molasses were added to make it look and
(09:31):
taste good, and in instances where the dairy watered down
the already watery milk to stretch profits chalk, and sometimes
even plaster of Paris was also added to improve the texture.
This uh sounds like it would be really bad for babies,
and it was, and infant mortality was really high. Some
(09:52):
estimates are that nearly half of the babies in Manhattan
died pretty routinely. And because there were innumera boll issues
developing as the city became more and more crowded, it
actually took a while for people to realize that the
milk supply had become poisonous. Yeah, there were lots of
lots of efforts at attribution about like, oh, crowding is
(10:15):
making disease spread more quickly. Yes, that's part of it.
You know, there were lots of other things that they
could point to you and go, I think this might
be the problem. It just it took a bit. Uh.
And in just a moment, we will talk about the
journalists who started to write about this problem with adulterated
milk being fed to babies. But first we're going to
pause for a sponsor break. Frank Leslie is usually credited
(10:43):
with breaking the swill milk scandal open in his paper,
and we will talk about that expose a in a moment,
but activist Robert Millam Hartley, who is known for his
work in the Temperance movement, was an early criticizer of
the subpar milk supply, well before most other writers. Eighty
two Partly published a book titled and Historic, Scientific and
(11:04):
Practical Essay on Milk as an Article of Human Sustenance,
with a consideration of the effects consequent upon the present
unnatural methods of producing it for the supply of large cities.
Partly believed that milk produced in a wholesome way was
a perfect food, and he traced its history and the
animals that produce it in this book. To support his stance,
(11:27):
he includes a testimonial from a doctor in the book
that reads, quote, I live in the country, but occasionally
go to the city, and while there I make a
practice of securing, if possible, my accustomed glass of milk
morning and evening, instead of coffee and tea, which for
some years I have laid aside. Altogether. Three years ago,
last winter I took lodgings at a respectable house near Broadway,
(11:51):
and bespoke as usual my glass of milk. I observed
that the taste of this milk was unnatural, unsavory, and
I have no relish for it. In fact, it soon
became loathsome, and at the end of one week I
found myself greatly enfeebled, with loss of appetite, a feverish
heat of the hands, and a slightly furred tongue, with
(12:14):
other indications of disorder. The milk, I was informed, came
from a dairy supplied with swill from a distillery. I
left the boarding house and took lodgings at the Clinton Hotel,
where I found a well flavored glass of milk morning
and evening, and in three days I was well. Mr
h the landlord, assured me that he was supplied with
(12:37):
milk from Harlem by a farmer who fed his cows
on wholesome food. So that Doctor's account goes on to
warn parents that if they are going to buy milk
for their children, they should inspect the dairy the supply
comes from themselves, to see the horrible conditions the animals
live in, and how their teeth are in abysmal condition
from bad food, and how all of this smells anything
(13:00):
but wholesome. Hartley's right up, which is credited with coining
the term swill milk includes a number of other accounts,
and they're horrifying. This includes abysmal conditions regarding animal welfare,
instances of dying cows too weak to stand still being milked.
Hartley then lays out his own proof that the milk
(13:23):
these poorly fed cows produced is bad. He had conducted
a number of experiments with it and found that it
couldn't be made into butter. And his words, quote the
nutrient properties of milk we have shown consists chiefly of
oil and albumin. But so deficient is slop milk of
these essential attributes that it is incapable of producing butter
(13:46):
or cheese. The author proclaims, quote, there is not a
more certain poison in the form of food than this
swill milk. And his strongest case in terms of connecting
swill milk to public health is the statistics that he cites.
In eighteen fifteen, thirty three of the deaths in Boston
were children younger than five years old. By the end
(14:08):
of the nineteen thirties, that number had grown to forty three,
and he includes similar numbers for New York and Philadelphia.
And then he goes on to name five hundred dairies
in New York that were actively producing swill milk. You
would think this information would be explosive, but it took
a long time for the issues identified by Hartley to
(14:28):
be investigated. Some of this was because of Hartley's association
with the Temperance movement, which was not popular in New York.
There was a common perception that Hartley was attacking distillery
dairies and an effort to hurt the distilleries themselves. This
was all part of his Temperance activism. Swill milk wasn't
studied by the New York Academy of Medicine for another
(14:51):
six years, and that study, of course, found it nutritionally deficient.
But the practice of producing swill milk continue and by
the mid eighteen fifties and estimated two thirds of New
York's six million dollar annual spend on milk went to
swill milk. Slowly, though, the information in Hartley's book became
(15:12):
more and more commonly known. People started to question where
their milk was coming from and whether that was the
source of child deaths from malnutrition. Finally, in eighteen fifty seven,
an investigation was launched by city officials of Brooklyn. We
recall at this time, Brooklyn and New York were kind
of two different entities. The resulting report was horrifying, detailing
(15:34):
a seemingly endless array of animal mistreatment and the handling
of the milk those animals produced. Those animals were crowded
so tightly together that they never moved and their stalls
were rarely mucked out. Life expectancy for a cow at
a swill milk dairy was only about six months. This report,
which was documented through the official investigation, also had a
(15:57):
weight that skeptics may have found lacking in heart these
anonymous eyewitness accounts. The swill milk issue at this point
was at last getting very wide scale exposure. While the
report compiled by Brooklyn authorities was really damning, it wasn't
as though everyone was reading municipal documents. The story really
broke open on the pages of Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper
(16:21):
on May eight, fifty eight, with the first installment in
a series about swill milk and a five thousand word expose.
Leslie shared all of the grizzly details that had been
part of the city's findings and more. Leslie said that
he had been spurred into investigation when a bottle of
milk delivered to his door had obviously contained heads up,
(16:44):
this is gross pus floating in the milk, and the
details his reporters had uncovered were accompanied with equally unsettling illustrations.
These articles alerted the public to the fact that even
cows with bovine to brook losis were being used to
produce the milk they might buy from a vendor cart
right on their own street. That was reported that in
(17:07):
some cases, meat from the sick cows that had died
in these distillery dairies had been sold at markets in
poor neighborhoods, and this milk was being sold to the
public with the assurance that it was good and wholesome.
Often the bottles were labeled with things like pure Orange
County Milk or some similar nomenclature to suggest that this
(17:28):
was wholesome milk from presumably healthy cows. Keep in mind, too,
that all of this predated routine pasteurization. Louis Pasteur was
working on his idea that there were germs in play
in the spoilage of liquids intended for consumption as the
swill milk scandal was playing out, but commercial milk pasteurizers
weren't even produced until the late eighteen eighties, and that
(17:50):
meant that every minute that even wholesome milk was on
a street cart, it was inching towards spoilage because it
had never been sterilized. But swill milk started out dirty
and just got worse, and milk wasn't yet being bottled
at this time. It was often doled out of pails
into smaller pails, and that meant that it was also
on these carts open to debris falling in it at
(18:11):
any time. The images and Leslie's, which were drawings, of course,
included sick cows being held up with straps that they
could be milked, cows with sores on their bodies from malnutrition,
and really filthy conditions. Leslie took out ads and other
newspapers to advertise the expose series on swill milk. He
(18:33):
sent his staff artists to try to sneak into dairies
and get material for their renderings. According to Leslie's quote,
swill milk should be branded with the word poison, just
as narcotics are. So Frank Leslie was genuinely exposing some
truly gnarly things going on in these diaries, but he
was also definitely doing so in a very sensationalist manner. Uh.
(18:58):
It's worth noting that he had worked a T. Barnum
on his publishing endeavors prior to going out on his
own as a publisher. Leslie not only reported the news,
but he did so in a way that he knew
would incense readers. And he also published illustrations in his
articles that stereotyped Irish immigrants who worked in the dairies.
So while his expos a series was raising important issues
(19:21):
to public awareness, it came with its own problems and
in some ways that led him to be discredited by people.
He was also very clearly on the side of the
temperance movement, and the third installment of the Leslie's Illustrated
story about swill milk this was evident, and writing that
mentions the evil of drink in the same sentence as
(19:42):
the dangers of swill milk. Quote. Wherever large masses of
people congregate, thus creating a great demand from milk, a
distillery springs up at once, and while this furnishes the
fiery alcohol which makes the fathers and husbands drunkers, loafers
and perhaps murderers. The phil the cow stables which hang
(20:02):
around it like bloated parasites, dispensed the poison that deals
death to the mothers and children, and the public did
get angry when they learned that they had been feeding
their babies milk that was purposely filled with things like chalk.
Because Frank Leslie had published the names and addresses of
dairies that were making swill milk and passing it off
as fresh milk from country dairies, many of those dairies
(20:25):
soon found angry mobs at their doors for people and
reporters who had been talking about the obviously gross milk.
For a while, it seemed like there was finally some hope.
A May eighteen fifty eight article titled how We Poison
Our Children that appeared in the New York Times read quote,
swill milk is no new thing in our city. Wherever
(20:48):
there is a distillery, there is a temptation to manufacture
that particular rite. Up walked through all the investigations, the
completely gross things that had been found in milk, the
stench associated with the dairies that had become more and
more of a concern as cities grew and the neighborhoods
were built adjacent to the stables. There's a tone in
(21:11):
this piece that loads Leslie is sort of a savior
figure and encourages every head of a household to examine
their own milk for contaminants, while the city manages putitive
measures for the people involved in producing swill milk. On
May twenty an article appeared in The New York Times
titled Swill Milk and Infant Mortality. The lead of the
(21:32):
story stated that the Health commissioners agreed with Mayor team
in that the problem of swill milk had to be addressed,
and that they quote promised to enter upon the performance
of a long neglected duty. Essentially, yes, we should have
been on top of this sooner, but we're doing it now, Okay.
So the plan for the Health Commission was to quote
operate with energy and firmness to purify the stables where
(21:56):
the disgusting stuff is manufactured. The articles stated clearly that
if the Board of Health functioned at all, this should
be something it addressed, and it called for wide sweeping
condemnation and punishments to everyone in the supply chain, stating, quote,
we take it that the city inspector is prepared to
serve his three days notice upon the distillers who furnish
(22:19):
the swill at wholesale, upon the proprietors at the stables,
and upon the milkmen who hawk the puriulent stuff at
the doors of citizens, that they all and severally show
cause before the board why their work of death should
not be discontinued. That same article gets a jab in
at politicians who feigned to be virtuous and care about
(22:41):
their constituents, but then do nothing once they're in office,
and it entreats the administrators involved to act not like that,
but do proceed intelligently and remember that the public health
is at stake. The writer also compares the milk crisis
to the yellow fever outbreak in eighteen fifty six, so
just a couple of years prior, during which a Board
of Health convened daily and took action, comparing the relatively
(23:03):
low number of deaths from yellow fever in the city
to the eight thousand children they calculated had died in
eighteen fifty seven from swill milk consumption. What came of
all this information being shared and the calls to action
in the press. You'll get into that in just a moment,
But first we will hear about the sponsors that keep
the show going. The New York City Alderman assigned to
(23:32):
the swill Milk case did inspect the dairies. A team
was formed made up of Tammany Hall politician and newly
elected Alderman Michael Twomey, who led the effort, and Alderman E.
Harrison Reid and William Tucker, with two additional investigators assigned.
But the team gave the accused dairies a heads up
that they were coming. There were reports of diseased cows
(23:56):
being moved in the night and replaced with healthy ones
brought in from the country farm, and also of stables
being hastily cleaned, and there was also a five day
hearing in which testimony was heard regarding the whole matter.
In an unusual turn, the defense was heard first. Edwin P. Smith,
who was the superintendent of the Johnson and Sons stable
(24:17):
on sixteenth Street, which was one of the dairy stables
called out in numerous articles about swill Milk, was the
first to testify. He stated that there were about five
hundred cows in the stable, although there had been as
many as eight hundred earlier in the year. He said
there had been sick cows there at various times, but
very few, and he claimed that the facility was running
(24:39):
as normal as it always had, including before the expose,
and that his family always drank milk from the swill
fed cows and were in fine health. The next witness
was the stables feeding manager James Atchison, who corroborated Smith's story. Yeah,
I never found a very clear reason why they went
with the defense first, other than the fact that all
(25:01):
of the accusations had kind of been leveled in the
press for a while before this started, so for some
reason they wanted to get first in. Atchison also added
that some of the cows who may have appeared sick,
we're just reacting to routine inoculations, and that he had
never seen any of his animals lose their teeth from
eating swill. He gave hard numbers, whether they're true or not,
(25:24):
regarding the proportion of sick cows. He said that three
of the five hundred they had at the time of
the hearing were sick, and he also stated that cows
only very rarely quote lost the use of their limbs
from standing in the stable that is, according to coverage
of the hearing by the New York Times. There were
several other witnesses called on behalf of the swill milk stables.
(25:45):
A doctor Wells, who was Superintendent Smith's family doctor, testified
that he cared for the entire Smith family and had
never seen any of them ill from drinking swill milk.
Animal keeper Louis Thomas testified that he had cared for
a large number of the Johnson Dairy cows and that
they did not milk sick cows. Even a butcher who
(26:06):
purchased cows from the Johnson and Sons dairy testified that
the stock was good and the meat he had sold
was high quality. On the following day, the hearing was delayed.
It was supposed to start at two pm, but the
Alderman showed up late, and then they went to a
private office instead of the hearing room, and eventually they
emerged into the packed City Hall room and announced the
alderman Tucker was sick, but that they were going to
(26:28):
carry on. They called Dr J. W. Francis to testify.
Dr Francis, who had been studying the issue of swill
milk for years at that point, and had studied dairy
practices both in the US and abroad, was very open
in his opinion that swill milk was terrible for children
that cows fed distillery swill were in a continuous state
(26:50):
of inflammation. He also said that their livers and stomachs
were disease, their tails and hoofs often fell off, that
was something that had also been shown in some of
the illustrations that had appeared in the press, and that
they were certain to become ill due to their diet.
Twomy kept asking if Dr Francis had chemically analyzed any
(27:12):
of the milk himself, and the doctor replied that he
had not, but had read many reports on the matter
and had treated children that had become seriously ill from
a diet of swill milk. Dr Francis also cited the
fact the issue of swill milks danger had been well
known and well documented in the medical community for years already.
(27:33):
Throughout the hearing, Alderman Twomy was hostile to witnesses who
testified against the swill dairies, starting with Dr Francis, who
he interrupted repeatedly and accused of spreading rumors. The Alderman
also led the Johnson dairies medical expert question Dr Francis.
The next doctor called was a doctor Griscomb, who reiterated
(27:54):
a lot of Dr Francis's points. Yeah, if you read
through the word by word accounts printed in the paper,
it sounds like Tomy was just constantly going are you done?
Are you done? Are you done? Like while they were
in the middle of discussing things. Uh, he was not
not cool. A farmer named Norman van Nostrand testified that yes,
(28:14):
there were cows that were so ill in the sixteenth
Street dairy that they had to be suspended from straps,
but that he was under the impression that their milk
was given to the hogs and never sold to the public.
But after those first two days a lot of testimony
backed up all the stories of horrible animal treatment and
adulterated milk. Before the Saturday session of the hearings could
(28:36):
even begin, there was a lot of back and forth
about whether legal counsel should be on hand and whether
the hearing was considered a legal investigation. All present were
assured that it was not a legal matter, but merely
an inquiry by a committee of the Board of Health
with a narrow focus of determining whether swill milk was
(28:57):
detrimental to health. The next went is called was the
city inspector, a Mr. Morton, and his testimony was quite damning.
He spoke of having the stables watched years before and
seeing diseased cows dressed for market after they died there.
He spoke of his employees that were sent to watch
the swill stables being driven away by dairy employees. He
(29:19):
also noted that he had visited some of the stables
to find cows being kept in stalls too small to
allow them to move around at all or even to
lie down. Health Warren Lewis J. Kirk also testified he
had performed post mortem examinations of some of the swill
milk cows and described them as being quote very much diseased.
(29:41):
When asked about the conditions of the stables, he stated,
quote it is not just the place for a cow
if you want to keep her healthy. He was quickly dismissed.
The rest of the hearing played out in a similar way,
with witnesses who spoke well of the swill milk stables
being asked the same sorts of softball question, repeatedly reiterating
the health of the animals and the suitability of the
(30:04):
milk for consumption. Witnesses who were critical of the swill
milk dairies were often cut off or interrupted, or had
their credibility undermined by the committee. Frank Leslie became so
frustrated that he stopped attending midway through the five day hearing.
As the newspapers reported on the daily events and testimonies,
these accounts often ran alongside expert opinions in the paper.
(30:28):
The June one eight New York Times included a statement
that opened with quote, now that the public mind is
aroused to the horrible evils of the slot milk trade
and its destructive effects on infant life, the time appears
opportune to present the testimony of physicians on the subject,
For however indisputable and conclusive, maybe the language of facts
(30:52):
and experience and reference to the evil. Yet from its
very nature, the demonstration might appear incomplete in some minds
with out the testimony of medical men. That statement was
signed by more than four dozen doctors. They included death
statistics of infants and their belief that swill milk was
contributing to many of the infant fatalities in New York
(31:14):
and Brooklyn. At the end of the investigation, the Alderman
took several weeks to review the material and then they
issued their opinion, and that was the swill milk was
not dangerous to the health of infants or adults. The
only criticisms they made were that the ventilation in the
stables could be better and that the stalls could be widened,
(31:34):
but that they saw healthy animals, in good condition and
well kept facilities when they visited. So we should mention
that there was one vocal dissenter on the City Council,
and that was Councilman Charles H. Haswell, who was one
of the investigators assigned to the team. He wrote his
own minority report as the hearing's conclusion. He believed that
(31:55):
the stables had been cleaned only for the committee's visit
and that swill milk was, in fact, quote injurious to health.
One journalists called this a manly and sensible minority report.
That turn of phrase made me laugh a little bit.
Uh that majority report of the council caused outrage, of course.
In the July sixteenth edition of the New York Tribune,
(32:17):
a commentary on the situation started with quote, upon printing
the second day's proceedings of the Committee on the swill
Milk business on the third of June, we foresaw that
the affair was to be a mere farce, that the
report would be made as favorable as possible to the swillman.
But when the highest medical talent in the city came
forward to denounce the business as little short of licensed infanticide,
(32:41):
when the health officers showed that the rotten carcasses of
cows were surreptitiously sold for human food, even in the
best markets, when citizens of high standing added their personal
knowledge of the filthy nature of the business and the
offensive character of the stables, when not a voice was
raised in favor of the nuisance, except from persons immediately
(33:01):
interested therein, we could not believe that could have induced
any three members of the committee to make a report
so utterly opposed to the evidence as that which they
finally produced. Frank Leslie's newspaper skewered the committee members on
July tenth, writing quote, the Committee of the Board of Health,
selected by Mayor Timon, having ended their labors, have handed
(33:24):
in their report. Everyone predicted the nature of the report not, however,
from the character of the evidence brought forward, but from
the character of certain men composing the committee. They have
subscribed their names to a series of deliberate lies. They
have distorted facts. They have become false witnesses, at the
same time being corrupt judges. They have trifled with and
(33:48):
periled the health of the city. They have taken counsel
with the owners of the nuisance they were looked to abate.
They have betrayed the trust reposed in them by their
constituents and the Board of Health. They have proved themselves
every way immeasurably false and capable and corrupt. This article
excludes haswell as a quote gentleman and consequently an honest man,
(34:11):
for his dissenting report in an effort to prove that
Twomy had possibly taken a bribe to find in favor
of the swill milk producers, and affidavit that had been
sworn to Robert Strybig, Commissioner of Deeds, was printed in Leslie's.
A person not named by the paper, although they said
they would provide that information to the appropriate authorities, said
(34:32):
that they witnessed the aldermen visiting Bradish Johnson, the owner
of the Sixteenth Street Dairy on May, two days before
the committee visited the facility. That same person also saw
Twomy return to Johnson's home later that evening, staying three
hours from seven thirty to ten thirty pm. Michael Twomy,
(34:52):
along with Reid and Tucker, were also featured in a
cartoon and frank Leslie's illustrated showing the three men whitewashing
sick cows their pockets stuffed with money. Swomie and Reid
filed libel suits against frank Leslie, although those suits seemed
to fizzle out. They were abandoned, maybe at an effort
on the parts of these aldermen to distance themselves from
(35:15):
this whole thing. And of course this entire episode had
the effect of scaring a lot of people away from
all milk, so that legitimate dairy farmers found themselves worried
about their futures. A rite up titled the Milk Business
of Long Island appeared in the Brooklyn Evening Star on
June while the Committee was still prepping its report, and
(35:38):
in the Evening Star the case was made that only
about ten thousand of the one thousand quarts of milk
consumed in Brooklyn each day came via railroad from wholesome dairies.
It described the farmers producing this wholesome milk as quote
well conditioned Quakers, owning their own farms, and conducting their
affairs with industry and conscientiousness. It was just a matter
(36:01):
of getting consumers on board with this higher quality of milk,
which could be gotten in much greater amounts. According to
this placed article, there was also a list of the
dairies of Long Island that had been certified for their quality,
touting that they had full grazing pastures filled with healthy cows,
and that their farms were open for anyone to visit
for inspection. Michael Twomi ran for Congress later that year,
(36:25):
but was soundly beaten. He did continue a political career,
but the swill milk scandal stuck to his reputation for decades.
In eighteen seventy eight, twenty years after the worst of
the New York milk crisis, this was still used to
skewer him in the press when he ran for coroner
that year. A long article came out that rehashed his
(36:47):
part in the events of eighteen fifty eight and reiterated
the commonly held belief that corruption had been at the
center of the committee's handling of this matter. Although the
eighteen fifty eight committees findings were a disappointment to New
York and Brooklyn activists and residents who hope that this
swill milk problem would be addressed, the issue did not
end there. Calls for reform to save the city's children
(37:10):
continue to be made of local and state government. Concurrently,
issues of adulterated milk and protests over it developed in
other U S cities as well, and as train transport
and preservation science advanced, it became easier to supply the
growing needs of heavily populated area with healthy milk from
trustworthy dairies. On April eighteen sixty two, an Act to
(37:35):
Prevent the Adulteration of milk and prevent the traffic and
impure and unwholesome milk was passed into law in New York.
This is one of many steps towards the passage of
the Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen oh six
at the federal level. So, uh, that's pretty pretty gross.
(37:57):
It's horrifying. Yeah, it's and I'm a lot of newspapers
from that time. We're really sensationalized and how they covered things,
but even taking that into account, still horrifying. Yeah, I
mean the a lot of them were running like the
word for word testimonies from the hearing, and so it
becomes pretty obvious like how that was playing out and
(38:19):
how utterly horrible it was. Um yeah, super gross and
in the middle of a fascination with UM group poisonings
right now for no particular reason. So there might be
more of these, sorry in advance. Well before we get
to listener mail, should we talk about something a little
more pleasant, like like travel. That sounds grand. We are
(38:43):
hoping that it will finally be safe for us to
take our many times postponed trip to Italy this November
beggars crossed. Yes. Um. So this trip was originally planned
to take place in of course that that did not happen.
(39:06):
It's been postponed several times, hopefully happening November four through
eleven of this year, which is um, there's still space available.
A lot of folks have stuck with it through all
of these many delays and totally I mean obviously necessary cancelations,
but we also have some space on it because it
(39:28):
just has not worked out for some people, uh, some
people you know, not really comfortable with that idea at
this point. So there's still space available and you can
learn more about it at Defined destinations dot com. If
you're interested in learning more about that, we would love
to have you along. Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm gonna
(39:50):
eat so much on that trip. Which is also I
thought it would be good to UM to do a
listener mail for this one that UM involves food in
a delightful way. Okay, so this is from our listener Kristen,
who writes greetings from sunny, boiling hot southern California, also
Man West Coast. I am sorry you've been having a
(40:12):
really rough summer, but Kristen goes on. I just finished
listening to the Vacuum episode and the cooking talk at
the end got me. For years, I asked my mother
to write down various recipes, but the one I begged
for the most was her meat loaf. Yes, meat loaf,
the staple of every seventies kitchen. Every time I would ask,
she would wagle a finger tis tisk and say, not yet,
(40:32):
I can't reveal my secret ingredients. What a jerk, right? Uh?
These kinds of stories often take a turn for the worst.
Mine is no different. She died in and my dad
came to live with us. We bemoaned the loss of
that and other recipes. After a year or two, we
finally got down to going through all of the stuff
my dad brought when he moved in. To be fair,
some of it was mine, a foot locker of it.
(40:54):
To be exact. In it, I found old letters that
my mom had written when I moved out and went
to school on the other side of the country. It
was really nice to see and have her handwriting in
front of me. At the bottom of the pile was
a folded typed page. I opened it up and bam,
meat loaf recipe. I yelled, I got you, and ran
to my dad to show him my fine. He cheered.
(41:15):
I made it that night, Mom's meat loaf, green beans,
and baked potatoes. We laughed and cried and leaned back
with full bellies. It was great. Secret ingredient Lipton's onion
soup mix. I'm guessing that was the same thing every seventies,
Mom used. I still laugh over how she guarded that secret.
I have attached a copy of the recipe here in
(41:36):
case you want to give it a go. She left
excellent instructions. Kristin also lost her dad this year, but
this whole story is one of her favorite memories with him. Uh,
she continues, like so many others who said, your podcast
has been a friend and companion through the last year
and a half and it comfort when I needed to
get out of my own head for me to actually
uh and thanks, I send you pictures of my cute
(41:57):
cats Angus, the orange and white, drooling sixteen pounds mean coon,
sweet timid Poto in her safe place. And last, but
never least, Tiny Kitten six pounds of fury who would
attack just as soon as she would snuggle. And unfortunately
tiny Kitten is also no longer with Kristen, But what
a beautiful story. Also, I am one making your mom's
meat loaf recipe um. One because I love to cook,
(42:18):
two because I love meat loaf. Three because yes to
the onion soup mix in the meat loaf. Yes. Something
I love is the meat loaf sandwich made of leftover
meat loaf the next day. For some reason, I love
that more than just the meat loaf on the day
that it was made. Lots of people do. I'm more
(42:40):
for a reheat the meat loaf than put it on
bread for no particular reason than I just love meat
loaf on its own. So Kristen, please know that your
family recipe and your mom's memory is being kept alive
in my kitchen as well. Um. I think that's super
important in a great way to to keep everyone connected
through times like this and really anytime. We're all part
of living history. Your mom's recipe is now part of
(43:03):
my history. Uh So this is one of the things
that I love about recipes handed down through time. It
connects all of us. If you would like to write
to us and send us good meatload recipes, um, you
can do that, or any recipe for something yummy you
think people should be trying. You can do that at
History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also
find us anywhere on social media and uh if you
(43:25):
would like to subscribe and you haven't gotten around to it,
that would be grand. Also, you can do that on
the iHeart radio app or anywhere you listen to your
favorite podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or
(43:46):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, here
is sort of an obvious heads up if you saw
the title of today's podcast. The topic that we are
(00:23):
talking about today involves really unsanitary practices that took place
when there were not really laws regarding food safety and
quality the way we think about it today. So it
is kind of gross. That's an understatement. Uh. And there
is also mistreatment of animals, so it is also upsetting
on that front. Uh. Just know that going in, and
(00:44):
maybe it maybe a little too intense for you. We
are covering a period of time where the milk supply
in New York was anything but appetizing. It has had
actually been going on for quite some time, but there's
there's one kind of very pivotal moment in the middle
of it, and that's really where we're focus sing and
then we'll talk about the way that problem was brought
to the public's attention and how it was handled after that.
(01:06):
But first we're just going to talk a little bit
about why milk became known as an essential item in
US kitchens, particularly for families with children. So if you
grew up in the US, even if you don't drink
milk yourself, you've almost certainly become accustomed to this idea
that people think of milk as a staple food. I know,
(01:28):
when I was a kid, I loved milk and I
drink it all the time. My brother was allergic, so
it was kind of a division in our household. This
is one of the things that just flies off of
supermarket dairy kase shelves anytime there's a heavy storm coming
and people will joke about, like, what are people doing
with all this milk and bread? Is it French toast
time during during the snowstorm. Uh. Milk has treated like
(01:53):
a cornerstone of every meal and a lot of families,
and it is really popular. We have talked about teas
and butter on the show before, which are of course
also dairy items, but those are made with the idea
of longevity, so a food that you can have on
hand for at least a little while milk does not
(02:13):
have that long shelf life, especially in the era before
artificial refrigeration, so it's kind of an impractical thing to
just have on hand all the time. The concept of
a lot of heavy milk consumption is pretty new if
you plotted out on the timeline of human history. Yeah,
(02:35):
for a long time, dairy milk as a human consumable
was primarily used just as a means to feed babies.
This is also tied up with a very passionate and
centuries long debate about human milk versus the milk from
other animals and what is appropriate for children. Even famed
Puritan Cotton Mother had opinions about breastfeeding being the only
(02:58):
suitable way to feed a try filed and he intimated
in his writing that God would take whether a mother
breastfit or not into account when her day of judgment came.
And then during the nineteenth century there were plenty of
people willing to voice their opinion that breastfeeding was downright uncivilized. Obviously,
those are two extremes to illustrate the vast range of
(03:20):
positions people had on the issue. That debate continues. You
will still find people probably who feel both of those ways.
That debate is thankfully way out of our scope here. Also,
Tracy and I are not moms, so we don't have
quite the same steak in that conversation that other people
might have. So the key thing that we need to
(03:40):
focus on is that in cases where a mother's or
a wet nurse's milk were not an option for whatever reason,
over time people started turning to other milk sources for infants,
and because cows are fairly docile and pretty easy to
work with and produce milk in quantity, they emerge over
(04:00):
time as the most popular non human milk source. There
were people who studied the mortality rates of babies in
regard to being fed animal milk. This was called artificial feeding.
They were comparing that to people who were fed milk
from their mother or a wet nurse all the way
back to the seventeen hundreds, and germ theory as we
(04:22):
know it today was not really in the mix with
this yet. So there were some stabs in the dark
regarding cause and effect of illnesses that seemed like they
were linked to milk. One idea, which was conceived by
French doctor Alphonse LeRoi in the seventeen seventies was for
children to suckle directly from an animal to get the
(04:43):
freshest possible milk, so he was onto the idea that
spoilage could be a problem, but he didn't really know
that bacteria was the culprit for that spoilage. But keeping
live animals on hand for that purpose was not exactly
realistic for a lot of places, especially places like orphanages
(05:04):
or hospitals. Right and even like anybody that lived in
a more metropolitan area, it's not like um, go to
the goat room or the certainly not a cow in
the house. There have been also various types of formula
over the years, which can include any number of ingredients
such as flowers or even cane sugar mixed with water
(05:26):
or milk or some combination of the two, and sometimes
that was used as a way to stretch milk where
that supply was not as uh, you know, constantly available.
But over time there were doctors that started to recommend
milk with various added ingredients as something that could pretty
effectively replicate the nutrition and infant would get from breastfeeding.
(05:47):
So when doctor's touting its benefits, milk really started to
take on an image as a nutritious and health bolstering beverage.
This was not a universally held opinion, though, and there
were still plenty of instant says where milk caused people
to get sick. This included episodes when multiple people and
communities got milk sickness after milk from cows that had
(06:11):
ingested some poisonous plants was introduced into the food supply.
But the trend of feeding infants and children milk continued
upward in the US and in other parts of the
world as cities got bigger and populations boomed, so that
just led a more and more demand for cow's milk, specifically,
so naturally that growing population of metro areas that needed
(06:34):
and wanted milk lead to a boom in the dairy industry.
But in many cases, the dairies that emerged to meet
those demands were not exactly hygienic, and the cows that
were used were not fed the best diet. Feeding more
cows meant far greater overhead for milk producers, so some
of them worked out what seemed like a cost effective solution,
(06:56):
and they moved next to breweries and distilleries, and a
lot of instances, distilleries started dairies of their own as
a way to get a piece of the ever increasing demand.
So a lot of alcohols start out with grain that's
combined with water to give the yeasts something to work with.
But this spent grain is not part of the finished beverage.
(07:18):
It's a waste product. And dairy producers made deals with
alcohol producers to take their run off to feed their animals,
or in the cases of these combo businesses, the distillers
didn't really bother to source any other food for their animals.
They were just feeding them the runoff from their distilleries.
So we should mention here that there are cases where
(07:40):
this is okay. If someone is soaking their grains and
then straining them out before fermentation, these grains can be
an are fed to livestock. Like there are a lot
of breweries today that are feeding their spent grain to
farm animals, and it's this is really just the grain
mean that has been used to make the work to
(08:04):
make the beer, not like runoff that also contains alcohol
and other waste products. Um. The brewery that brewed the
beer for our wedding had to deal with farmers. Lots
of places do this, um and it is perfectly fine.
So we are not coming if you know someone who
does that or is part of one of those We're
not dogging on them. What we are about to tell
(08:25):
you will explain the problem. Yeah, yeah, So what we
are talking about here is dairy cows being fed this
watery spent swill of mash that had been through the
fermentation process and boiled without being strained. And this runoff
swill was not only kind of gross, it really didn't
(08:47):
have a lot of nutritional value anymore. It could also
go bad really quickly. Unlike just the spent grain that
is used today, this was not a good food source
for animals or anyone really, and as a consequence, the
quality of the milk being produced by animals being fed
this swill was poor at best. That's a very kind
(09:09):
way to put it. That milk was often watery that
did not have the normal fat content of a whole milk,
and also it was often blue in color. So to
make that milk appear more wholesome than it was, dairies
that used the swill run off to feed their cows
started adding all kinds of things to the milk. Food
colorings and molasses were added to make it look and
(09:31):
taste good, and in instances where the dairy watered down
the already watery milk to stretch profits chalk, and sometimes
even plaster of Paris was also added to improve the texture.
This uh sounds like it would be really bad for babies,
and it was, and infant mortality was really high. Some
(09:52):
estimates are that nearly half of the babies in Manhattan
died pretty routinely. And because there were innumera boll issues
developing as the city became more and more crowded, it
actually took a while for people to realize that the
milk supply had become poisonous. Yeah, there were lots of
lots of efforts at attribution about like, oh, crowding is
(10:15):
making disease spread more quickly. Yes, that's part of it.
You know, there were lots of other things that they
could point to you and go, I think this might
be the problem. It just it took a bit. Uh.
And in just a moment, we will talk about the
journalists who started to write about this problem with adulterated
milk being fed to babies. But first we're going to
pause for a sponsor break. Frank Leslie is usually credited
(10:43):
with breaking the swill milk scandal open in his paper,
and we will talk about that expose a in a moment,
but activist Robert Millam Hartley, who is known for his
work in the Temperance movement, was an early criticizer of
the subpar milk supply, well before most other writers. Eighty
two Partly published a book titled and Historic, Scientific and
(11:04):
Practical Essay on Milk as an Article of Human Sustenance,
with a consideration of the effects consequent upon the present
unnatural methods of producing it for the supply of large cities.
Partly believed that milk produced in a wholesome way was
a perfect food, and he traced its history and the
animals that produce it in this book. To support his stance,
(11:27):
he includes a testimonial from a doctor in the book
that reads, quote, I live in the country, but occasionally
go to the city, and while there I make a
practice of securing, if possible, my accustomed glass of milk
morning and evening, instead of coffee and tea, which for
some years I have laid aside. Altogether. Three years ago,
last winter I took lodgings at a respectable house near Broadway,
(11:51):
and bespoke as usual my glass of milk. I observed
that the taste of this milk was unnatural, unsavory, and
I have no relish for it. In fact, it soon
became loathsome, and at the end of one week I
found myself greatly enfeebled, with loss of appetite, a feverish
heat of the hands, and a slightly furred tongue, with
(12:14):
other indications of disorder. The milk, I was informed, came
from a dairy supplied with swill from a distillery. I
left the boarding house and took lodgings at the Clinton Hotel,
where I found a well flavored glass of milk morning
and evening, and in three days I was well. Mr
h the landlord, assured me that he was supplied with
(12:37):
milk from Harlem by a farmer who fed his cows
on wholesome food. So that Doctor's account goes on to
warn parents that if they are going to buy milk
for their children, they should inspect the dairy the supply
comes from themselves, to see the horrible conditions the animals
live in, and how their teeth are in abysmal condition
from bad food, and how all of this smells anything
(13:00):
but wholesome. Hartley's right up, which is credited with coining
the term swill milk includes a number of other accounts,
and they're horrifying. This includes abysmal conditions regarding animal welfare,
instances of dying cows too weak to stand still being milked.
Hartley then lays out his own proof that the milk
(13:23):
these poorly fed cows produced is bad. He had conducted
a number of experiments with it and found that it
couldn't be made into butter. And his words, quote the
nutrient properties of milk we have shown consists chiefly of
oil and albumin. But so deficient is slop milk of
these essential attributes that it is incapable of producing butter
(13:46):
or cheese. The author proclaims, quote, there is not a
more certain poison in the form of food than this
swill milk. And his strongest case in terms of connecting
swill milk to public health is the statistics that he cites.
In eighteen fifteen, thirty three of the deaths in Boston
were children younger than five years old. By the end
(14:08):
of the nineteen thirties, that number had grown to forty three,
and he includes similar numbers for New York and Philadelphia.
And then he goes on to name five hundred dairies
in New York that were actively producing swill milk. You
would think this information would be explosive, but it took
a long time for the issues identified by Hartley to
(14:28):
be investigated. Some of this was because of Hartley's association
with the Temperance movement, which was not popular in New York.
There was a common perception that Hartley was attacking distillery
dairies and an effort to hurt the distilleries themselves. This
was all part of his Temperance activism. Swill milk wasn't
studied by the New York Academy of Medicine for another
(14:51):
six years, and that study, of course, found it nutritionally deficient.
But the practice of producing swill milk continue and by
the mid eighteen fifties and estimated two thirds of New
York's six million dollar annual spend on milk went to
swill milk. Slowly, though, the information in Hartley's book became
(15:12):
more and more commonly known. People started to question where
their milk was coming from and whether that was the
source of child deaths from malnutrition. Finally, in eighteen fifty seven,
an investigation was launched by city officials of Brooklyn. We
recall at this time, Brooklyn and New York were kind
of two different entities. The resulting report was horrifying, detailing
(15:34):
a seemingly endless array of animal mistreatment and the handling
of the milk those animals produced. Those animals were crowded
so tightly together that they never moved and their stalls
were rarely mucked out. Life expectancy for a cow at
a swill milk dairy was only about six months. This report,
which was documented through the official investigation, also had a
(15:57):
weight that skeptics may have found lacking in heart these
anonymous eyewitness accounts. The swill milk issue at this point
was at last getting very wide scale exposure. While the
report compiled by Brooklyn authorities was really damning, it wasn't
as though everyone was reading municipal documents. The story really
broke open on the pages of Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper
(16:21):
on May eight, fifty eight, with the first installment in
a series about swill milk and a five thousand word expose.
Leslie shared all of the grizzly details that had been
part of the city's findings and more. Leslie said that
he had been spurred into investigation when a bottle of
milk delivered to his door had obviously contained heads up,
(16:44):
this is gross pus floating in the milk, and the
details his reporters had uncovered were accompanied with equally unsettling illustrations.
These articles alerted the public to the fact that even
cows with bovine to brook losis were being used to
produce the milk they might buy from a vendor cart
right on their own street. That was reported that in
(17:07):
some cases, meat from the sick cows that had died
in these distillery dairies had been sold at markets in
poor neighborhoods, and this milk was being sold to the
public with the assurance that it was good and wholesome.
Often the bottles were labeled with things like pure Orange
County Milk or some similar nomenclature to suggest that this
(17:28):
was wholesome milk from presumably healthy cows. Keep in mind, too,
that all of this predated routine pasteurization. Louis Pasteur was
working on his idea that there were germs in play
in the spoilage of liquids intended for consumption as the
swill milk scandal was playing out, but commercial milk pasteurizers
weren't even produced until the late eighteen eighties, and that
(17:50):
meant that every minute that even wholesome milk was on
a street cart, it was inching towards spoilage because it
had never been sterilized. But swill milk started out dirty
and just got worse, and milk wasn't yet being bottled
at this time. It was often doled out of pails
into smaller pails, and that meant that it was also
on these carts open to debris falling in it at
(18:11):
any time. The images and Leslie's, which were drawings, of course,
included sick cows being held up with straps that they
could be milked, cows with sores on their bodies from malnutrition,
and really filthy conditions. Leslie took out ads and other
newspapers to advertise the expose series on swill milk. He
(18:33):
sent his staff artists to try to sneak into dairies
and get material for their renderings. According to Leslie's quote,
swill milk should be branded with the word poison, just
as narcotics are. So Frank Leslie was genuinely exposing some
truly gnarly things going on in these diaries, but he
was also definitely doing so in a very sensationalist manner. Uh.
(18:58):
It's worth noting that he had worked a T. Barnum
on his publishing endeavors prior to going out on his
own as a publisher. Leslie not only reported the news,
but he did so in a way that he knew
would incense readers. And he also published illustrations in his
articles that stereotyped Irish immigrants who worked in the dairies.
So while his expos a series was raising important issues
(19:21):
to public awareness, it came with its own problems and
in some ways that led him to be discredited by people.
He was also very clearly on the side of the
temperance movement, and the third installment of the Leslie's Illustrated
story about swill milk this was evident, and writing that
mentions the evil of drink in the same sentence as
(19:42):
the dangers of swill milk. Quote. Wherever large masses of
people congregate, thus creating a great demand from milk, a
distillery springs up at once, and while this furnishes the
fiery alcohol which makes the fathers and husbands drunkers, loafers
and perhaps murderers. The phil the cow stables which hang
(20:02):
around it like bloated parasites, dispensed the poison that deals
death to the mothers and children, and the public did
get angry when they learned that they had been feeding
their babies milk that was purposely filled with things like chalk.
Because Frank Leslie had published the names and addresses of
dairies that were making swill milk and passing it off
as fresh milk from country dairies, many of those dairies
(20:25):
soon found angry mobs at their doors for people and
reporters who had been talking about the obviously gross milk.
For a while, it seemed like there was finally some hope.
A May eighteen fifty eight article titled how We Poison
Our Children that appeared in the New York Times read quote,
swill milk is no new thing in our city. Wherever
(20:48):
there is a distillery, there is a temptation to manufacture
that particular rite. Up walked through all the investigations, the
completely gross things that had been found in milk, the
stench associated with the dairies that had become more and
more of a concern as cities grew and the neighborhoods
were built adjacent to the stables. There's a tone in
(21:11):
this piece that loads Leslie is sort of a savior
figure and encourages every head of a household to examine
their own milk for contaminants, while the city manages putitive
measures for the people involved in producing swill milk. On
May twenty an article appeared in The New York Times
titled Swill Milk and Infant Mortality. The lead of the
(21:32):
story stated that the Health commissioners agreed with Mayor team
in that the problem of swill milk had to be addressed,
and that they quote promised to enter upon the performance
of a long neglected duty. Essentially, yes, we should have
been on top of this sooner, but we're doing it now, Okay.
So the plan for the Health Commission was to quote
operate with energy and firmness to purify the stables where
(21:56):
the disgusting stuff is manufactured. The articles stated clearly that
if the Board of Health functioned at all, this should
be something it addressed, and it called for wide sweeping
condemnation and punishments to everyone in the supply chain, stating, quote,
we take it that the city inspector is prepared to
serve his three days notice upon the distillers who furnish
(22:19):
the swill at wholesale, upon the proprietors at the stables,
and upon the milkmen who hawk the puriulent stuff at
the doors of citizens, that they all and severally show
cause before the board why their work of death should
not be discontinued. That same article gets a jab in
at politicians who feigned to be virtuous and care about
(22:41):
their constituents, but then do nothing once they're in office,
and it entreats the administrators involved to act not like that,
but do proceed intelligently and remember that the public health
is at stake. The writer also compares the milk crisis
to the yellow fever outbreak in eighteen fifty six, so
just a couple of years prior, during which a Board
of Health convened daily and took action, comparing the relatively
(23:03):
low number of deaths from yellow fever in the city
to the eight thousand children they calculated had died in
eighteen fifty seven from swill milk consumption. What came of
all this information being shared and the calls to action
in the press. You'll get into that in just a moment,
But first we will hear about the sponsors that keep
the show going. The New York City Alderman assigned to
(23:32):
the swill Milk case did inspect the dairies. A team
was formed made up of Tammany Hall politician and newly
elected Alderman Michael Twomey, who led the effort, and Alderman E.
Harrison Reid and William Tucker, with two additional investigators assigned.
But the team gave the accused dairies a heads up
that they were coming. There were reports of diseased cows
(23:56):
being moved in the night and replaced with healthy ones
brought in from the country farm, and also of stables
being hastily cleaned, and there was also a five day
hearing in which testimony was heard regarding the whole matter.
In an unusual turn, the defense was heard first. Edwin P. Smith,
who was the superintendent of the Johnson and Sons stable
(24:17):
on sixteenth Street, which was one of the dairy stables
called out in numerous articles about swill Milk, was the
first to testify. He stated that there were about five
hundred cows in the stable, although there had been as
many as eight hundred earlier in the year. He said
there had been sick cows there at various times, but
very few, and he claimed that the facility was running
(24:39):
as normal as it always had, including before the expose,
and that his family always drank milk from the swill
fed cows and were in fine health. The next witness
was the stables feeding manager James Atchison, who corroborated Smith's story. Yeah,
I never found a very clear reason why they went
with the defense first, other than the fact that all
(25:01):
of the accusations had kind of been leveled in the
press for a while before this started, so for some
reason they wanted to get first in. Atchison also added
that some of the cows who may have appeared sick,
we're just reacting to routine inoculations, and that he had
never seen any of his animals lose their teeth from
eating swill. He gave hard numbers, whether they're true or not,
(25:24):
regarding the proportion of sick cows. He said that three
of the five hundred they had at the time of
the hearing were sick, and he also stated that cows
only very rarely quote lost the use of their limbs
from standing in the stable that is, according to coverage
of the hearing by the New York Times. There were
several other witnesses called on behalf of the swill milk stables.
(25:45):
A doctor Wells, who was Superintendent Smith's family doctor, testified
that he cared for the entire Smith family and had
never seen any of them ill from drinking swill milk.
Animal keeper Louis Thomas testified that he had cared for
a large number of the Johnson Dairy cows and that
they did not milk sick cows. Even a butcher who
(26:06):
purchased cows from the Johnson and Sons dairy testified that
the stock was good and the meat he had sold
was high quality. On the following day, the hearing was delayed.
It was supposed to start at two pm, but the
Alderman showed up late, and then they went to a
private office instead of the hearing room, and eventually they
emerged into the packed City Hall room and announced the
alderman Tucker was sick, but that they were going to
(26:28):
carry on. They called Dr J. W. Francis to testify.
Dr Francis, who had been studying the issue of swill
milk for years at that point, and had studied dairy
practices both in the US and abroad, was very open
in his opinion that swill milk was terrible for children
that cows fed distillery swill were in a continuous state
(26:50):
of inflammation. He also said that their livers and stomachs
were disease, their tails and hoofs often fell off, that
was something that had also been shown in some of
the illustrations that had appeared in the press, and that
they were certain to become ill due to their diet.
Twomy kept asking if Dr Francis had chemically analyzed any
(27:12):
of the milk himself, and the doctor replied that he
had not, but had read many reports on the matter
and had treated children that had become seriously ill from
a diet of swill milk. Dr Francis also cited the
fact the issue of swill milks danger had been well
known and well documented in the medical community for years already.
(27:33):
Throughout the hearing, Alderman Twomy was hostile to witnesses who
testified against the swill dairies, starting with Dr Francis, who
he interrupted repeatedly and accused of spreading rumors. The Alderman
also led the Johnson dairies medical expert question Dr Francis.
The next doctor called was a doctor Griscomb, who reiterated
(27:54):
a lot of Dr Francis's points. Yeah, if you read
through the word by word accounts printed in the paper,
it sounds like Tomy was just constantly going are you done?
Are you done? Are you done? Like while they were
in the middle of discussing things. Uh, he was not
not cool. A farmer named Norman van Nostrand testified that yes,
(28:14):
there were cows that were so ill in the sixteenth
Street dairy that they had to be suspended from straps,
but that he was under the impression that their milk
was given to the hogs and never sold to the public.
But after those first two days a lot of testimony
backed up all the stories of horrible animal treatment and
adulterated milk. Before the Saturday session of the hearings could
(28:36):
even begin, there was a lot of back and forth
about whether legal counsel should be on hand and whether
the hearing was considered a legal investigation. All present were
assured that it was not a legal matter, but merely
an inquiry by a committee of the Board of Health
with a narrow focus of determining whether swill milk was
(28:57):
detrimental to health. The next went is called was the
city inspector, a Mr. Morton, and his testimony was quite damning.
He spoke of having the stables watched years before and
seeing diseased cows dressed for market after they died there.
He spoke of his employees that were sent to watch
the swill stables being driven away by dairy employees. He
(29:19):
also noted that he had visited some of the stables
to find cows being kept in stalls too small to
allow them to move around at all or even to
lie down. Health Warren Lewis J. Kirk also testified he
had performed post mortem examinations of some of the swill
milk cows and described them as being quote very much diseased.
(29:41):
When asked about the conditions of the stables, he stated,
quote it is not just the place for a cow
if you want to keep her healthy. He was quickly dismissed.
The rest of the hearing played out in a similar way,
with witnesses who spoke well of the swill milk stables
being asked the same sorts of softball question, repeatedly reiterating
the health of the animals and the suitability of the
(30:04):
milk for consumption. Witnesses who were critical of the swill
milk dairies were often cut off or interrupted, or had
their credibility undermined by the committee. Frank Leslie became so
frustrated that he stopped attending midway through the five day hearing.
As the newspapers reported on the daily events and testimonies,
these accounts often ran alongside expert opinions in the paper.
(30:28):
The June one eight New York Times included a statement
that opened with quote, now that the public mind is
aroused to the horrible evils of the slot milk trade
and its destructive effects on infant life, the time appears
opportune to present the testimony of physicians on the subject,
For however indisputable and conclusive, maybe the language of facts
(30:52):
and experience and reference to the evil. Yet from its
very nature, the demonstration might appear incomplete in some minds
with out the testimony of medical men. That statement was
signed by more than four dozen doctors. They included death
statistics of infants and their belief that swill milk was
contributing to many of the infant fatalities in New York
(31:14):
and Brooklyn. At the end of the investigation, the Alderman
took several weeks to review the material and then they
issued their opinion, and that was the swill milk was
not dangerous to the health of infants or adults. The
only criticisms they made were that the ventilation in the
stables could be better and that the stalls could be widened,
(31:34):
but that they saw healthy animals, in good condition and
well kept facilities when they visited. So we should mention
that there was one vocal dissenter on the City Council,
and that was Councilman Charles H. Haswell, who was one
of the investigators assigned to the team. He wrote his
own minority report as the hearing's conclusion. He believed that
(31:55):
the stables had been cleaned only for the committee's visit
and that swill milk was, in fact, quote injurious to health.
One journalists called this a manly and sensible minority report.
That turn of phrase made me laugh a little bit.
Uh that majority report of the council caused outrage, of course.
In the July sixteenth edition of the New York Tribune,
(32:17):
a commentary on the situation started with quote, upon printing
the second day's proceedings of the Committee on the swill
Milk business on the third of June, we foresaw that
the affair was to be a mere farce, that the
report would be made as favorable as possible to the swillman.
But when the highest medical talent in the city came
forward to denounce the business as little short of licensed infanticide,
(32:41):
when the health officers showed that the rotten carcasses of
cows were surreptitiously sold for human food, even in the
best markets, when citizens of high standing added their personal
knowledge of the filthy nature of the business and the
offensive character of the stables, when not a voice was
raised in favor of the nuisance, except from persons immediately
(33:01):
interested therein, we could not believe that could have induced
any three members of the committee to make a report
so utterly opposed to the evidence as that which they
finally produced. Frank Leslie's newspaper skewered the committee members on
July tenth, writing quote, the Committee of the Board of Health,
selected by Mayor Timon, having ended their labors, have handed
(33:24):
in their report. Everyone predicted the nature of the report not, however,
from the character of the evidence brought forward, but from
the character of certain men composing the committee. They have
subscribed their names to a series of deliberate lies. They
have distorted facts. They have become false witnesses, at the
same time being corrupt judges. They have trifled with and
(33:48):
periled the health of the city. They have taken counsel
with the owners of the nuisance they were looked to abate.
They have betrayed the trust reposed in them by their
constituents and the Board of Health. They have proved themselves
every way immeasurably false and capable and corrupt. This article
excludes haswell as a quote gentleman and consequently an honest man,
(34:11):
for his dissenting report in an effort to prove that
Twomy had possibly taken a bribe to find in favor
of the swill milk producers, and affidavit that had been
sworn to Robert Strybig, Commissioner of Deeds, was printed in Leslie's.
A person not named by the paper, although they said
they would provide that information to the appropriate authorities, said
(34:32):
that they witnessed the aldermen visiting Bradish Johnson, the owner
of the Sixteenth Street Dairy on May, two days before
the committee visited the facility. That same person also saw
Twomy return to Johnson's home later that evening, staying three
hours from seven thirty to ten thirty pm. Michael Twomy,
(34:52):
along with Reid and Tucker, were also featured in a
cartoon and frank Leslie's illustrated showing the three men whitewashing
sick cows their pockets stuffed with money. Swomie and Reid
filed libel suits against frank Leslie, although those suits seemed
to fizzle out. They were abandoned, maybe at an effort
on the parts of these aldermen to distance themselves from
(35:15):
this whole thing. And of course this entire episode had
the effect of scaring a lot of people away from
all milk, so that legitimate dairy farmers found themselves worried
about their futures. A rite up titled the Milk Business
of Long Island appeared in the Brooklyn Evening Star on
June while the Committee was still prepping its report, and
(35:38):
in the Evening Star the case was made that only
about ten thousand of the one thousand quarts of milk
consumed in Brooklyn each day came via railroad from wholesome dairies.
It described the farmers producing this wholesome milk as quote
well conditioned Quakers, owning their own farms, and conducting their
affairs with industry and conscientiousness. It was just a matter
(36:01):
of getting consumers on board with this higher quality of milk,
which could be gotten in much greater amounts. According to
this placed article, there was also a list of the
dairies of Long Island that had been certified for their quality,
touting that they had full grazing pastures filled with healthy cows,
and that their farms were open for anyone to visit
for inspection. Michael Twomi ran for Congress later that year,
(36:25):
but was soundly beaten. He did continue a political career,
but the swill milk scandal stuck to his reputation for decades.
In eighteen seventy eight, twenty years after the worst of
the New York milk crisis, this was still used to
skewer him in the press when he ran for coroner
that year. A long article came out that rehashed his
(36:47):
part in the events of eighteen fifty eight and reiterated
the commonly held belief that corruption had been at the
center of the committee's handling of this matter. Although the
eighteen fifty eight committees findings were a disappointment to New
York and Brooklyn activists and residents who hope that this
swill milk problem would be addressed, the issue did not
end there. Calls for reform to save the city's children
(37:10):
continue to be made of local and state government. Concurrently,
issues of adulterated milk and protests over it developed in
other U S cities as well, and as train transport
and preservation science advanced, it became easier to supply the
growing needs of heavily populated area with healthy milk from
trustworthy dairies. On April eighteen sixty two, an Act to
(37:35):
Prevent the Adulteration of milk and prevent the traffic and
impure and unwholesome milk was passed into law in New York.
This is one of many steps towards the passage of
the Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen oh six
at the federal level. So, uh, that's pretty pretty gross.
(37:57):
It's horrifying. Yeah, it's and I'm a lot of newspapers
from that time. We're really sensationalized and how they covered things,
but even taking that into account, still horrifying. Yeah, I
mean the a lot of them were running like the
word for word testimonies from the hearing, and so it
becomes pretty obvious like how that was playing out and
(38:19):
how utterly horrible it was. Um yeah, super gross and
in the middle of a fascination with UM group poisonings
right now for no particular reason. So there might be
more of these, sorry in advance. Well before we get
to listener mail, should we talk about something a little
more pleasant, like like travel. That sounds grand. We are
(38:43):
hoping that it will finally be safe for us to
take our many times postponed trip to Italy this November
beggars crossed. Yes. Um. So this trip was originally planned
to take place in of course that that did not happen.
(39:06):
It's been postponed several times, hopefully happening November four through
eleven of this year, which is um, there's still space available.
A lot of folks have stuck with it through all
of these many delays and totally I mean obviously necessary cancelations,
but we also have some space on it because it
(39:28):
just has not worked out for some people, uh, some
people you know, not really comfortable with that idea at
this point. So there's still space available and you can
learn more about it at Defined destinations dot com. If
you're interested in learning more about that, we would love
to have you along. Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm gonna
(39:50):
eat so much on that trip. Which is also I
thought it would be good to UM to do a
listener mail for this one that UM involves food in
a delightful way. Okay, so this is from our listener Kristen,
who writes greetings from sunny, boiling hot southern California, also
Man West Coast. I am sorry you've been having a
(40:12):
really rough summer, but Kristen goes on. I just finished
listening to the Vacuum episode and the cooking talk at
the end got me. For years, I asked my mother
to write down various recipes, but the one I begged
for the most was her meat loaf. Yes, meat loaf,
the staple of every seventies kitchen. Every time I would ask,
she would wagle a finger tis tisk and say, not yet,
(40:32):
I can't reveal my secret ingredients. What a jerk, right? Uh?
These kinds of stories often take a turn for the worst.
Mine is no different. She died in and my dad
came to live with us. We bemoaned the loss of
that and other recipes. After a year or two, we
finally got down to going through all of the stuff
my dad brought when he moved in. To be fair,
some of it was mine, a foot locker of it.
(40:54):
To be exact. In it, I found old letters that
my mom had written when I moved out and went
to school on the other side of the country. It
was really nice to see and have her handwriting in
front of me. At the bottom of the pile was
a folded typed page. I opened it up and bam,
meat loaf recipe. I yelled, I got you, and ran
to my dad to show him my fine. He cheered.
(41:15):
I made it that night, Mom's meat loaf, green beans,
and baked potatoes. We laughed and cried and leaned back
with full bellies. It was great. Secret ingredient Lipton's onion
soup mix. I'm guessing that was the same thing every seventies,
Mom used. I still laugh over how she guarded that secret.
I have attached a copy of the recipe here in
(41:36):
case you want to give it a go. She left
excellent instructions. Kristin also lost her dad this year, but
this whole story is one of her favorite memories with him. Uh,
she continues, like so many others who said, your podcast
has been a friend and companion through the last year
and a half and it comfort when I needed to
get out of my own head for me to actually
uh and thanks, I send you pictures of my cute
(41:57):
cats Angus, the orange and white, drooling sixteen pounds mean coon,
sweet timid Poto in her safe place. And last, but
never least, Tiny Kitten six pounds of fury who would
attack just as soon as she would snuggle. And unfortunately
tiny Kitten is also no longer with Kristen, But what
a beautiful story. Also, I am one making your mom's
meat loaf recipe um. One because I love to cook,
(42:18):
two because I love meat loaf. Three because yes to
the onion soup mix in the meat loaf. Yes. Something
I love is the meat loaf sandwich made of leftover
meat loaf the next day. For some reason, I love
that more than just the meat loaf on the day
that it was made. Lots of people do. I'm more
(42:40):
for a reheat the meat loaf than put it on
bread for no particular reason than I just love meat
loaf on its own. So Kristen, please know that your
family recipe and your mom's memory is being kept alive
in my kitchen as well. Um. I think that's super
important in a great way to to keep everyone connected
through times like this and really anytime. We're all part
of living history. Your mom's recipe is now part of
(43:03):
my history. Uh So this is one of the things
that I love about recipes handed down through time. It
connects all of us. If you would like to write
to us and send us good meatload recipes, um, you
can do that, or any recipe for something yummy you
think people should be trying. You can do that at
History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also
find us anywhere on social media and uh if you
(43:25):
would like to subscribe and you haven't gotten around to it,
that would be grand. Also, you can do that on
the iHeart radio app or anywhere you listen to your
favorite podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or
(43:46):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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