Web Page No 2676
10th April 2020
1st Picture. Pig Swill Bucket
4th Picture. Home made chicken run
Whilst bringing in the dustbin the other day I struck up a conversation
with one of my neighbours who said, “Do you remember when the dustmen came down
the garden path, picked up your bin, hoisted it onto their shoulders and walked
back to the dustcart to empty it?”
Of course, I said yes but it got me thinking. How many of you who lived
in Portsmouth in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s remember the Pig Bin? We had
one and it sat outside the back door. It was a galvanised bucket with an
attached metal lid into which my mother and grandmother put all sorts of
things, I was never interested so have no idea what sort of food waste was put
in there. I also do not know who collected and emptied the bin and where the
scraps went to when they left us.
During the war years and for about a decade afterwards the population
were asked to keep scraps so that they could be put into a boiler to make Pig
Swill, but where was this done in the Portsmouth area? I know that this
practice was encouraged to spread out the food chain and until now I thought
nothing of it.
However I have found this memory of the Pig Man
“Pig swill would help
meat rationing. A round metal bin and lid, nick-named the ‘Pig Bin’, was
allocated to each house and this was for food scraps and meat bones. The bin
was emptied every few days by an unhappy-looking group in a very smelly lorry.
Eventually the bin became very dented and the lid wouldn’t fit on properly. It
also split and smelly yellowy gunge oozed out the flies which loved it. This
wasn’t bad on cold days but on hot days the bin stunk really bad. Clouds of
bluebottles would be buzzing around it, which then dived onto your bucket and buzzed
round your head. It was a mad scramble to get the lid back on and escape while
holding your breath.!”
The ‘War on Waste’
and the Communal Pig Bins were a
Ministry of Food initiative and this advertisement summed up the situation in
this poem about pigs:
‘Because of the pail, the scraps were saved, Because of the scraps, the pigs were saved Because of the
pigs, the rations were saved,
Because of
the rations, the ships were saved, Because of the ships, the island was saved Because of the island, the Empire was saved And all because of the housewife’s pail’.
In the 1960’s the
Government announced that it was going to ban pig swill as it was identified as
a key link in the chain of infection which spread foot-and-mouth disease across
the country. The main cause was that the pig swill was not boiled enough to
kill the bacteria.
One of the other, home
farm projects encouraged during and after the war was the keeping of chickens.
My family did not take part in this but our next-door neighbours did. I can
still remember the noise from the chicken run next door first thing in the
morning. I also remember that one of my school pals’ father kept rabbits for
meat. Again, that is something else we did not take part in. No one had the
stomach to kill the furry friends in the hutches!
All our meat came
from the local shops. Who remembers whale meat? It was dark red and came in
square blocks and was sold by the fish merchant. It was roasted like beef,
looked like roast beef but tasted of FISH!
I also seem to
remember that horse meat was also available, I think my mother bought it but I
do not remember eating it.
The other thing I
remember was that my father had a lawn that was turned over to growing
potatoes, runner and broad beans and swedes.
Stay in touch
Peter
grseditor@gmail.com
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Leonard Martin was born on Thursday April 17th
1919 in Australia and he came to Britain since 1953 for a holiday also the
following year when he joined BBC Sport in Sportsview Introduced by Peter
Dimmock and the famous voice of British Pathe Newsreels alongside Bob Danvers
Walker. Saturday October 11th 1958 BBC Television Sports Programme Grandstand
& Today's Sport Len's famous voice for the classified football results and
the sport news service & horse racing, rugby results read by John Langham
at Lime Grove Studios in London when Tim Gudgin arrived since 1965. His
nightmare score is East Fife 4 Forfar 5 during 1963-64 season. Len made his
final broadcast on Saturday July 29th 1995 for Grandstand. Sadly, on Monday
August 21st 1995 when he passed away after a short illness in London at the age
of 76 years. The Great Memories of The Famous Voice of The Classified Football
Results on BBC Television Sports Programme Grandstand icon from October 1958 to
July 1995 for the last 37 years is the late Leonard Martin.
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