The "swinish multitude": Controversies over hogs in antebellum New York City

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 37, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 639-660

  McNeur, Catherine ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Animals; Environmental history; New York City; Public space; Social conflict

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL; ECONOMIC CONDITIONS; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POPULATION GROWTH; PUBLIC SPACE; SOCIAL CONFLICT;

ANIMAL; ARTICLE; CIVIL DISORDER; ECONOMICS; EPIDEMIC; ETHNOLOGY; HEALTH; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SANITATION; SWINE; SWINE DISEASE; UNITED STATES; URBAN POPULATION;

ANIMALS; DISEASE OUTBREAKS; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; NEW YORK CITY; PUBLIC FACILITIES; RIOTS; SANITATION; SWINE; SWINE DISEASES; URBAN HEALTH; URBAN POPULATION;

NEW YORK [NEW YORK (STT)]; NEW YORK [UNITED STATES]; UNITED STATES;

ANIMALIA;

EID: 80054803604     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144211407561     Document Type: Article

References (231)

1. After the city began enforcing the hog law in the summer of 1821, they faced immediate resistance when the catchers went to work. By the summer of 1822 most of the outer wards were exempt from the hog law due to the actions of hog owners and the compromises made by their Aldermen. "Hogs in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, June 12, 1821
2. "Extract from the Report," New-York Evening Post, July 12, 1821
3. Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 (New York: Published by the City of New York, 1917), July 21, 1821, 11:722
4. Hogs Running at Large in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, August 7, 1821
5. "Police," New-York Spectator, August 7, 1821
6. Minutes of the Common Council, June 10 1822, 12:430
7. Minutes of the Common Council, June 24, 1822, 12:447
8. Minutes of the Common Council, July 8, 1822, 12:460-61.
9. Abner Curtis was appointed register and collector of dogs in 1811 and remained in that position for seven years. During his first year on the job, Curtis witnessed the first dogcart riot in 1811. Another dogcart riot occurred in 1818, following the end of his term. With the threat of rabies very real, dogs were another urban animal considered a nuisance when running loose. Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 224-27.
10. Quotes from "Hog Law," New York Spectator, April 8, 1825.
11. Regarding Henry Bourden's role in the riot: "Court of Sessions," Weekly Commercial Advertiser, April 19, 1825
12. People vs. Henry Bourden, New York City Court of General Sessions Records, New York Municipal Archives, Roll 11. Henry Bourden is likely the "Henry Borden" listed in the 1830 and 1840 U.S. censuses, living in the Eighth Ward. 1830
13. United States Federal Census, New York Ward 8, New York County, New York, Roll 97, 273
14. 1840 United States Federal Census, New York Ward 8, New York County, New York, Roll 302, 334.
15. "Hog Law," New York Spectator; Minutes of the Common Council, March 14, 1825, 14:365
16. Minutes of the Common Council, March 28, 1825, 14:410-11.
17. New York's hogs have been the subject of a handful of articles and chapters. In The Road to Mobocracy, Paul Gilje places the hog riots of the 1820s and 1830s in the context of a string of popular riots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that the battles over hogs show a growing divide between lower-class needs and middle-class sensibilities. Hendrik Hartog uses the prosecution of a hog owner to show the ways municipal powers and legal arguments were transforming during this period in both Public Property and Private Power and "Pigs and Positivism." In "A Delicate Balance" Howard Rock shows how artisans used hogs as part of a larger informal economy to make ends meet during tough economic times. Finally, John Duffy repeatedly reminds readers how hogs were a constant presence in the antebellum city and a reminder to residents and historians of how inadequately New York dealt with public health issues. This article builds on the work of these historians to reveal how these political, economic, and public health struggles came together to shape public space and the urban environment. Through this it is possible to understand more about how public space was used and ultimately controlled. Paul Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Hendrik Hartog, "Pigs and Positivism," Wisconsin Law Review (July/August 1985): 899-934
18. Hendrik Hartog, Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730-1870, Studies in Legal History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 139-42
19. John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968).
20. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938), 252.
21. Urban environmental historians increasingly are challenging the idea that cities are exclusively social artifacts. Authors such as Ari Kelman, Matthew Klingle, and Michael Rawson, among others, have written about cities in ways that challenge the nature/culture dichotomy and invite readers to consider the presence and influence of nature on cities as well as the reverse. Ari Kelman, A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
22. Matthew Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007);
23. Michael Rawson, Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).
24. See also Christine Meisner Rosen and Joel Arthur Tarr, "The Importance of an Urban Perspective in Environmental History" Journal of Urban History 20 (May 1994): 299-310.
25. For the Dutch, see I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 (New York: R. H. Dodd, 1915-1928), March 15, 1640, 4:92
26. Duffy, A History of Public Health, 11-2.
27. For the English, see Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675-1776 (New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1905), March 23, 1703, 2:258
28. July 20, 1708, 2:358; October 14, 1758, 6:152; November 22, 1770, 7:244. Virginia Anderson looks at the havoc hogs and other livestock wreaked in the British colonies of New England, though she does not dwell too much on urban animal issues. Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
29. Jane Allen, "Population," in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 920-24
30. "The People vs. Isaac Baptiste," New-York Daily Advertiser, August 16, 1820
31. Charles H. Haswell, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (1816-1860) (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896), 86.
32. Rock, "A Delicate Balance," 134
33. Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)
34. Seth Rockman looks at a similar transition in early republican Baltimore. Seth Rockman, Scraping by: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2009).
35. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke, a conservative Whig politician in Britain, referred to the French masses as the "swinish multitude" when he warned readers of the perils of allowing the lower classes to gain political power. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York, Penguin Classics, 1982). The phrase was consequently picked up by critics and reappropriated by laborers and radical writers. Its notoriety made it a well-known phrase in antebellum America and elsewhere. Surely the New York writers reveled in the way they were able to apply it to their particular situation.
36. For more on the ways hogs have been used symbolically in politics and writing, see Carl Fisher, "Politics and Porcine Representation: Multitudinous Swine in the British Eighteenth Century," LIT 10 (2000): 303-26
37. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 45-59, 147-48
38. Brett Mizelle, "'I Have Brought My Pig to a Fine Market,'" in Scott C. Martin, ed., Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 184
39. Robert Malcolmson and Stephanos Mastoris, The English Pig: A History (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998), 1-28.
40. "Address of the Swine," New-York Evening Post, February 21, 1818.
41. Charles Henry Wilson, The Wanderer in America, or Truth at Home (Thirsk, England: Henry Masterman, 1824), 18-9.
42. Many American cities, such as Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, as well as many smaller cities, had roaming hog populations. One traveler, who referred to hogs as America's "favorite pet," declared that he had "not yet found any city, county or town where [he had] not seen these lovable animals wandering about peacefully in huge herds." Ole Munch Raeder, "Correspondent from the Homeland," in Oscar Handlin, ed., This Was America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 217.
43. See also Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Travels in the United States, Etc. During 1849 and 1850 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), May 16, 1849, 13.
44. Ironically, despite these travelers' claims that hogs were a unique problem to New York or the United States, many Europeans cities also struggled with their own roaming hogs, though to a lesser extent. Malcolmson and Mastoris, The English Pig, 40-4.
45. New York City Common Council Papers, 1670-1831, City Inspector Petitions, Municipal Archives Collections, Roll 65, 1818.
46. Horses make an interesting comparison to hogs, as they were equally, if not more, present on the streets of the city, yet they rarely got the kind of negative attention that hogs received until much later in the century when they were being replaced by automobiles. Not only were regal horses a status symbol for wealthier New Yorkers, they were considered "living machines," as Clay McShane and Joel Tarr have termed them, and useful for rich and poor alike. They were much less divisive than hogs. Examples of authors complaining about the disgrace brought on by hogs include: "Hogs in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, April 27, 1819
47. "Swine," New-York Evening Post, November 3, 1819.
48. On the role of horses in the urban landscape: Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)
49. Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)
50. Clay McShane, "Gelded Age Boston," New England Quarterly 74 (August 2001): 274-302.
51. For more on the middle-class and wealthy American quest for refinement, see Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage, 1993). There are many comparisons to be drawn between the way anti-hogites perceived lower-class New Yorkers as wrongly imposing on public spaces and the way conservationists saw locals as desecrating the National Parks in the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
52. See Karl Jacoby, Crimes against Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
53. Louis S. Warren, Hunter's Game (Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press, 1999)
54. Theodore Catton, Inhabited Wilderness (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1997);
55. and Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
56. See Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 44-71;
57. Wilentz, Chants Democratic. 20.
58. Until 1821 the Common Council controlled the cost and weight of bread sold within the city limits with a bread assize. Politically volatile, the debate over the bread assize lasted for over two decades and led to bakers' strikes and many disputes. The prices of other provisions not traditionally controlled by the city continued to rise and fall, but mostly rise, making it difficult for many of New York's destitute to purchase much at all. What E. P. Thompson and other historians have called the "moral economy" was gradually disappearing and the poor had to devise new ways to deal with erratic pricing of basic needs. New York (N.Y.) Common Council, Laws and Ordinances Ordained and Established by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of New-York, in Common Council Convened (New York, T & J. Swords, 1817), 51-6;
59. "Assize of Bread," New-York Herald, March 15, 1815
60. "The Poor . . . " New-York Herald, March 18, 1815;
61. "Bread," New-York Evening Post, for the Country, March 5, 1822
62. "Rise of Milk," New-York Herald, November 30, 1816
63. "Milk," New-York Herald, December 7, 1816;
64. Soup House in Frankfort-Street, near the Arsenal," New-York Herald, February 19, 1817;
65. Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York, Plain Directions on Domestic Economy (New York: Printed by Samuel Wood & Sons, 1821).
66. See Mohl, Poverty in New York, 3-13
67. Peter R. Gluck and Richard J. Meister, Cities in Transition: Social Changes and Institutional Responses in Urban Development (New York: New Viewpoints, 1979), 3-9, 36-43; Rockman, Scraping by.
68. "Remonstrances against Law to Prohibit Swine from Running at Large," New York City Common Council Papers, Municipal Archives, Box 60V, Folder #497 Flat, May 19, 1817.
69. It is difficult to determine how New Yorkers were able to identify their own hogs based on available records. Unlike in cities or towns where hogs were legal, there do not seem to be any ear mark registers associating owners with specific symbols imprinted on their animals' ear. The behavior of hogs going home at night is recounted by Charles Dickens in the 1840s. Charles Dickens, "American Notes for General Circulation," in Park Benjamin, ed., The New World (New York: J. Winchester, 1842).
70. "Remonstrances against Law to Prohibit Swine from Running at Large;" "The Petition of the Subscribers Inhabitants of the City of New York," New York City Common Council Papers, 1670-1831, February 2, 1818, Roll 67.
71. "To the Mayor and Corporation of the City of New-York," Republican Watch-Tower, June 13, 1809, 3.
72. "For the Public Advertiser, Dirty Streets, No. 1," Public Advertiser, April 11, 1810, 2.
73. For an overview of urban American sanitation, see Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment, 1880-1980 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981), 13-20.
74. Minutes of the Common Council, May 18 ,1812, 7:146-47
75. see also, Minutes of the Common Council, November 14, 1814, 8:84
76. See, for instance, Minutes of the Common Council, June 1, 1818, 9:668
77. "Communication," New-York Evening Post, June 29, 1819.
78. New York, May 15, 1799," Daily Advertiser, May 15, 1799
79. Correspondence between Peter Burtsell and John Pintard, Inspector of Health, January 20, 1806. New York City Common Council Papers, 1670-1831, Roll 29;
80. Minutes of the Common Council, May 28, 1810, 6:209;
81. "Public Health," New-York Evening Post, August 12, 1825
82. "Cholera Statistics," New York Mercury, August 15, 1832
83. "City Intelligence," New York Herald, May 18, 1849;
84. Isaac Candler, A Summary View of America: Comprising a Description of the Face of the Country, and of Several of the Principal Cities (London: T. Cadell, 1824), 22-4.
85. Ole Munch Raeder, "Correspondent from the Homeland," 217
86. "Health of the City," New-York Daily Advertiser, October 29, 1819.
87. Griskin is the lean part of a hog's loin. "The Swinish Multitude," New-York Evening Post, October 10, 1816.
88. For examples of boys riding hogs and getting into trouble, see The People v. Christian Harriet, in D. Bacon, ed., The New-York Judicial Repository (New York: Gould and Banks, 1818), 262-63;
89. "Swine," New-York Evening Post, March 17, 1818;
90. "More Serious Accidents from Hogs," New-York Evening Post, October 29, 1818.
91. For descriptions of victimized women and girls, see "A Congratulation," New-York Evening Post, December 31, 1817
92. The People v. Christian Harriet, in The New-York Judicial Repository, 262;
93. "Communication," New-York Evening Post, June 26, 1819;
94. "New-York May 28, 1810," The New-York Evening Post, May 29, 1810;
95. "To the Editor of the Evening Post," The New-York Evening Post, June 28, 1819;
96. "Yesterday Afternoon," New-York Columbian, July 1, 1820.
97. "Mr Stone," Northern Whig, August 1, 1815.
98. For more on women and household economy, see Jeanne Boydston, Home & Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
99. Rockman, Scraping by, 158-93;
100. Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
101. Allen, "Population;" Charles Lockwood, Manhattan Moves Uptown: An Illustrated History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 50-71.
102. The Common Council had been debating the wording of a new law respecting free-roaming swine in the months before Hammond's petition, but progress came to a standstill on October 21, 1816, when it was laid on the table. Hammond's petition may have been an attempt to break the deadlock and get the ordinance passed. Minutes of the Common Council, November 5, 1816, 8:670;
103. May 17, 1817, 9:130. The archivist at the Municipal Archives of New York was not able to locate the original petition. Rock makes reference to the fact that the petition was signed by about two hundred names in "A Delicate Balance." 37. "The Swinish Multitude," Evening Post, May 26, 1817.
104. This article traces the history of the proposed hog laws from 1816 through May 1817, accounting for the possible reasons for its delay. The Common Council's motives for tabling the ordinance are not mentioned in their minutes. Minutes of the Common Council, May 17, 1817, 9:130.
105. "The Swinish Multitude," New-York Evening Post, May 26, 1817.
106. "Common Council," New-York Evening Post, May 21, 1817;
107. Howard Rock and Paul Gilje, "Sweep O! Sweep O!' African American Chimney Sweeps and Citizenship in the New Nation," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 51 (July 1994): 507-38.
108. For more on the free blacks of New York City, see Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991);
109. Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
110. pproximately half of the petition signers were African American, based on New York State census records: Alice Eicholz and James M. Rose, eds., Free Black Heads of Households in the New York State Federal Census, 1790-1830 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1981).
111. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 116-18;
112. Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of a Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 88, 217-18.
113. Humor remained an important way for the anti-hogites to address what they saw as an embarrassment to the city. It served as an entertaining and artful means for criticizing the city while also wooing potential anti-hogites. "The Hogs and the Corporation," New-York Evening Post, May 27, 1817;
114. "The Hogs and the Corporation," New-York Herald, May 28, 1817.
115. Minutes of the Common Council, June 23, 1817, 9:215-16;
116. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy, 225.
117. "Quadroped Toleration, Intolerable," New-York Columbian, July 23, 1817;
118. "The Yankee in New-York," Exile, July 26, 1817;
119. "Dogs and Hogs," Albany Argus, August 22, 1817
120. "Communication," New-York Evening Post, September 13, 1817;
121. "For the New-York Evening Post," New-York Evening Post, September 3, 1817;
122. Minutes of the Common Council, October 7, 1817, 9:310;
123. "Swine," New-York Herald, October 11, 1817
124. "A Congratulation," New-York Evening Post, December 31, 1817;
125. "A Law Respecting Swine," New-York Columbian, January 15, 1818, 9:3.
126. Minutes of the Common Council, December 15, 1817, 9:393.
127. "Repeal of the Law Prohibiting Swine Running at Large," New-York Evening Post, December 29, 1817.
128. "The Petition of the Subscribers Inhabitants of the City of New York," New York City Common Council Papers, 1670-1831, February 2, 1818, Roll 67. The race of the signers was determined by checking them against New York State census records: Eicholz and Rose, Free Black Heads of Households.
129. Minutes of the Common Council, February 2, 1818, 9:462.
130. "Hogs," New-York Evening Post, February 16, 1818.
131. Anger at the repeal can also be seen here: "Repeal of the Swine Law," New-York Columbian, February 10, 1818;
132. "Swine Once More," New-York Evening Post, February 21, 1818.
133. "Swine Once More," The New-York Evening Post.
134. Information about the party affiliation of the aldermen can be found in D. T. Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1854 (New York: McSpedon and Baker, Printers, 1854).
135. Mayors during this period served as judge of the Court of General Sessions as part of their position as mayor. "Correspondent," New-York Evening Post, December 7, 1818;
136. New-York Judicial Repository, 258-59.
137. William J. Novak, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 60-71, 191-233.
138. In addition, nuisance law and its use in the judicial system is discussed in Melosi, The Sanitary City, 21-2.
139. New-York Judicial Repository, 264, 269.
140. For a more detailed analysis of this case from a legal historian's perspective, see Hartog, "Pigs and Positivism;" Hartog, Public Property and Private Power, 139-42.
141. One other such case includes the indictment of Isaac Baptiste, following the complaint of a grocer who had a run-in with Baptiste's hogs. The article discussing this case makes reference to the fact that at least twenty such cases had been heard prior, all ruling hogs to be a nuisance. "The People vs. Isaac Baptiste," New-York Daily Advertiser, August 16, 1820.
142. "Hogs Running at Large in the City," New-York Evening Post, July 1, 1819;
143. "Hogs," New-York Daily Advertiser, April 7, 1819;
144. "Hogs Avaunt!" New-York Columbian, January 7, 1819;
145. "Hogs in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, April 27, 1819;
146. "The People vs. Isaac Baptiste," New-York Daily Advertiser.
147. "Salutary Conviction," New-York Evening Post, June 9, 1820.
148. Minutes of the Common Council, April 30, 1821, 11:600;
149. "Proceedings of the Common Council," New-York Evening Post, May 1, 1821.
150. Permission from the state legislature to seize privately owned pigs for the Almshouse was requested on January 8, 1821: Minutes of the Common Council, January 8, 1821, 11:444.
151. The law was passed on April 30, 1821, and reported in the newspapers immediately following: Minutes of the Common Council, April 30, 1821, 11:600;
152. "Proceedings of the Common Council," New-York Evening Post, May 1, 1821.
153. "The Law Respecting the Running of Swine," New-York Spectator, June 1, 1821; "Hogs in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, June 12, 1821.
154. Issues with the enforcement of laws were typical during this period and complaints frequent in the newspaper. The problems stemmed from a combination of insufficient funding, lack of municipal services, and poor organization of the police force.
155. Minutes of the Common Council, June 25, 1821, 11:704.
156. Minutes of the Common Council, July 21, 1821, 11:722.
157. "Hogs Running at Large in the Streets," New-York Evening Post, August 4, 1821; "Police," New-York Spectator, August 7, 1821;
158. "From the Daily Advertiser," New-York Evening Post, August 4, 1821.
159. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 133.
160. "In Proceedings of the Corporation . . . ," New-York Evening Post, for the Country, April 5, 1822.
161. "Cleanliness," New-York Evening Post, for the Country, July 15, 1823.
162. Haswell, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 130;
163. People vs. Henry Bourden, New York City Court of General Sessions Records (NYCCGSR), Municipal Archives Collections, April 9, 1825, roll 11
164. People vs. Allaire & Allaire, NYCCGSR, April 9, 1825, roll 11
165. People vs. Thompson and Phalen, NYCCGSR, April 11, 1825, roll 11.
166. Thomas F. DeVoe, The Market Book: Containing a Historical Account of the Public Markets in the Cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Boston (1862; New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 482-83.
167. "If the Laws . . . ," New-York Evening Post, September 8, 1826;
168. "Hog Law," New-York Evening Post, September 8, 1826;
169. "Where Is the Hog Cart?" New-York Evening Post, February 27, 1827;
170. DeVoe, The Market Book, 482-83;
171. New-York Evening Post, July 2, 1830
172. quoted in Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 5:1693;
173. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, 231
174. "Hog Thieves," New-York Evening Post, February 20, 1829.
175. "Communication," New York Mercury, August 1, 1832.
176. The New York State census for 1835 put the hog population of New York County at 11,903 and the 1845 census logs 8,591. The numbers have decreased significantly since the estimate of twenty thousand in 1820. Of course, it is difficult to trust these censuses wholly, as most New Yorkers were breaking laws by keeping hogs on the streets and likely not eager to admit their holdings to the census takers. It is possible that the census takers were counting the hogs kept legally in pens. Even if that is the case, the number of complaints about hogs in the newspapers and city documents declined significantly during this period, likely reflecting a diminishing number on the street. New York State, Census of the State of New York, for 1835 (Albany: Printed by Croswell, Van Benthuysen & Burt, 1836);
177. New York State, Census of the State of New York, for 1845 (Albany: Carroll & Cook, 1846).
178. Some of the more famous tourists who mocked New York's hog problem during this period include Charles Dickens and Henry David Thoreau. Dickens, "American Notes;" Henry David Thoreau, in Walter Harding and Carl Bode, eds., The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (New York: New York University Press, 1958), 112.
179. Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 62.
180. For more discussion of uptown swine, see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 113
181. "New York by Sun-Light-Thermometer 90 in the Shade," New York Herald, July 12, 1849; "Twelfth-Ward-Cholera Incitements," New-York Daily Tribune, August 6, 1849; "The Cholera
182. Report of Last Week," New York Herald, August 6, 1849; "Health of the City-The Cholera Report of Last Week," New York Herald, August 13, 1849.
183. "The Cholera in Orange-St.," New-York Tribune, May 18, 1849;
184. "The Epidemic," New-York Tribune, May 19, 1849;
185. "The Cholera," New-York Tribune, May 21, 1849;
186. "City Intelligence," New York Herald, May 18, 1849;
187. "Our Cholera Sermon," New-York Daily Tribune, August 3, 1849;
188. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, 105-06.
189. Those in the medical profession argued over whether quarantines or sanitary solutions were best for preventing epidemics such as cholera. More on these debates can be found in Rosenberg, The Cholera Years; and Duffy, A History of Public Health.
190. "Practical Lesson in Politics," New-York Daily Tribune, August 21, 1845;
191. "Board of Aldermen," New-York Daily Tribune, June 22, 1847;
192. "The Cholera Report of Last Week," New York Herald, August 6, 1849;
193. "Health of the City-The Cholera Report of Last Week," New York Herald, August 13, 1849;
194. "Emigration-Public Health," New York Herald, April 29, 1850.
195. Helen Tangires, Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
196. "The Bone Boiling Establishments of New York," New York Herald, July 20, 1859.
197. Frederick Law Olmsted, "Passages in the Life of an Unpractical Man," in Charles E. Beveridge and David Schuller, eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Vol. III Creating Central Park, 1857-1861 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 84-94.
198. Hogtown was just south of Seneca Village, which was mostly populated by free African Americans. "The Present Look of our Great Central Park," New York Times, July 9, 1856
199. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 59-91.
200. "Practical Lesson in Politics," New-York Daily Tribune, August 21, 1845
201. "Results of the War upon the Piggeries," New York Times, September 20, 1859.
202. "Metropolitan Nuisances," New York Times, June 5, 1858.
203. "Common Council Proceedings," New York Times, July 3, 1854;
204. "Common Council Proceedings," New York Times, August 11, 1854;
205. "Municipal," New York Times, November 27, 1855
206. The city was paying for Central Park through special assessments made on the property surrounding the park that stood to gain in value. Real estate values and nuisances that could bring them down were therefore a big issue for those bearing the cost of this public works project. Robin Einhorn discusses a similar political situation in Property Rules. Robin Einhorn, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
207. "Affairs of the City Inspector's Office," New York Times, July 7, 1859
208. "News of the Day," New York Times, July 7, 1859;
209. "The Bone Boiling Establishments of New York," New York Herald, July 20, 1859.
210. "City Intelligence," New York Herald, July 26, 1859.
211. "Further Particulars of the 'Hogtown War,'" New York Herald, July 29, 1859;
212. "The Storming of Hogtown," New York Herald, July 27, 1859;
213. "City Intelligence," New York Times, July 7, 1859.
214. "The Storming of Hogtown," New York Herald.
215. "The Offal and Piggery Nuisances," New York Times, July 27, 1859
216. "The Storming of Hogtown," New York Herald;
217. "The News," New York Herald, July 27, 1859;
218. "Another Raid upon the Piggeries," New York Times, August 9, 1859;
219. "The Public Health," New York Herald, August 13, 1859.
220. "The Offal and Piggery Nuisances," New York Times
221. "Further Particulars of the "Hogtown War," New York Herald, July 29, 1859.
222. "City Intelligence," New York Times, July 28, 1859.
223. "Removal of the Up Town Piggeries," New York Herald, September 5, 1859
224. Condition of the Streets-The Right Men for the Right Places," New York Herald, August 16, 1859
225. "Down with the New York Piggeries in Our City-Let Inspector Delavan Keep His Hogs at Home," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 9, 1859
226. "The News," New York Herald, August 15, 1859.
227. Pigs remained on the minds of the city's lawmakers when the first Tenement House Act was passed in 1867, forbidding "any horse, cow, calf, swine, pig, sheep or goat" from being kept in a "tenement or lodging-house," or, in other words, a poor man's residence. Robert W. DeForest and Lawrence Veiller, eds., The Tenement House Problem: Including the Report of the New York State Tenement House Commission (New York: Macmillan & Co, 1903), 308.
228. General City News," New York Times, July 14, 1860.
229. Board of Councilmen, Annual Report of the City Inspector of the City of New York for the Year Ending December 31, 1859 (New York: Edmund Jones & Co., 1860), 9. In his annual report, Delavan almost sounds regretful that one nuisance (piggeries) has been replaced with another. The city apparently had to remove fifty to one hundred tons of offal twice daily during the warmer months of the year and find an adequate dumping ground that would not threaten public health.
230. New York (N.Y.) Board of Commissioners of Central Park, Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park: January, 1861 (New York: Wm. C. Bryant & Co., Printers, 1861), 106-09.
231. See Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People.