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