Inasmuch as there has always been a demand for pigs’ flesh, at least among Christians, it is impossible to determine for how long pig-feeding establishments have been thought necessary for the neighbourhood of London. In all probability they had their origin at a very early date, and can claim to be ranked among the “time-honoured institutions” of this great city.
But we are not able to go back much further than sixty years, when we find that this necessary evil had for some time been located near the ground now covered by the Marble Arch, Connaught and other Squares. Here the nuisance was supposed to be out of town, and the porcine tribe luxuriated in this dry and elevated region. If there had been found at that time a registrar-general to note down the deaths and diseases of pigs, the records would excite the envy of swine in the present generation, and induce the sad belief that the former times were better than these. But these respectable animals of the past century had apparently another cause for congratulation. Their society seemed eagerly sought by the great London world; and seeing how perseveringly they were followed, they could proudly boast that they were leading the metropolis “by the nose.” Such a soothing idea was, however, dispelled, when conviction was unwillingly forced upon them, that there was a general desire to get rid of them as near neighbours, and that their room was more highly esteemed than their company.
The ground which these pigs occupied had become too valuable for them to remain there in peace. I have not been able to discover whether they were expelled by purchase, ejectment, or annoyance; but it is certain that, about the period I have named, they were compelled to go in search of a new home.
About that time a man named Lake, a chimney-sweeper and scavenger, who lived in Tottenham Court Road, became, from the nature of his occupation, so obnoxious to his neighbours, that he, too, was compelled to take himself off to a fresh locality. My informant told me he was determined to go at once far enough out of London. He thought three miles in a westerly direction would make him safe, and finding a spot that suited him, he secured a lease of the land, and removed himself and his appendages to a place, now sometimes called Notting Dale, but more generally the “Potteries.” Here, for a short time, he enjoyed almost a solitary life. The population of the place, for the first year or two, consisted of only three persons. Whatever he may have suffered from loneliness, was, no doubt, abundantly made up to him by a sense of freedom, and an absence from all restraint, for his neighbours were distant and few. At length finding he could not use all the land he had leased, he naturally looked about for some one to share it with him. Alas! he was not company for every one. Eventually he heard of a man named Stephens, a bowstring maker, who, from the unsavoury nature of his trade, was enduring a similar persecution to that from which he himself had escaped. Lake invited this man to become his neighbour; and Stephens eventually purchased from him the lease of a plot of land for one hundred pounds, and removed his bowstring establishment to this new possession. Perhaps he did not find it answer to carry on his business so far from town: this does not appear in the narrative; but it is certain that, for some reason, he soon relinquished it, and commenced pig-keeping instead,—probably for the same reason as the bone-picker assigned for his attachment to his trade, that he shouldn’t think it all right, unless he could “feel a smell.”
In his inquiries after pigs, &c., he became acquainted with the distress of the “West-end establishment,” and offered its members a share of the refuge which he and his friend Lake had found. The offer was gladly accepted, and many of the masters either bought or rented small plots of land from the original proprietors, and removed their establishments of pigs and children to this favoured spot, where Lake assured them everybody should do as they liked, and “he’d see that nobody meddled with them.”
Under this magnificent charter and spirited government the little colony progressed rapidly, and numbers of houses, or rather huts, sprang up on all sides. Such things as drainage and fresh water were considered superfluous; and the accumulation of the filth of years rendered it certain, by the simple law of self-preservation, that nothing would be meddled with.
In addition to the above-mentioned trades, about thirty years ago a considerable plot of land was bought for brick-making, the soil being almost entirely composed of stiff clay, peculiarly adapted for that purpose. This introduced another fresh element into the newly formed colony. The labourers employed at this work are not usually of a very high class, and the oldest inhabitants of the Potteries speak of their introduction as an evil. An old woman, who has lived forty years in the place, and her husband’s parents were amongst the first inhabitants, remarked, “Now pig-keepers is respectable; but them brick people, they bean’t, some of them, no wiser than the clay they works on.” I asked this old woman what kind of life they had lived there by themselves so many years. She said, “Oh, ma’am, you’d think ’twas an awful life! The only difference in Sundays and work-days was, that on Sundays we had cock-fighting and bull-baiting, and lots of dogs were kept on purpose to amuse the people by fighting and rat-killing. People all round were afraid of these dogs, and nobody ever cared to come nigh the place. We didn’t ourselves venture out after it was dark; if we hadn’t got in all we wanted before night, why we jist went without it: for besides the dogs, d’ye see, ma’am, there was the roads; leastwise, we called ’em roads, but they wornt for all that,—it was jist a lot of ups and downs, and when you had put one foot down, you didn’t know how to pull the other one up. Once, I mind, I happened to be out late in the evening, and had to go through Cut-throat Lane jist as it was gitting dark, (they calls that Pottery Lane now, you know, ma’am); I heard some people coming along, fighting and swearing, and I was so frightened I got down into the bottom of one of the ruts, and there I stopped till they had gone; so I got a service out of them that time, d’ye see, ma’am.
“We had no near neighbours for a long time; there was a farm-house where the Mitre Tavern now stands, and I can mind, when I have been passing by, seeing the men stacking the hay and the corn, and hearing them singing over their work. Then there was another farm-house, down where the Royal Crescent is now; and sometimes I have been there for a drop of milk, for we hadn’t no shops for a long time.”
I knew that my communicative old woman had been a good Christian character for many years; so I asked her how she, as an individual, had managed to pass her Sundays in this dark place, before there were either schools or places of worship of any kind there.
“Why, ma’am,” she replied, “I never would work of a Sunday—nobody couldn’t make me. I used to tidy up my house after breakfast, and put the saucepan by the fire, and then I went over to the old church at Kensington. The people now and then threw stones at me, and used to threaten to set the dogs at me; but they never did,—the Lord didn’t let ’em; and they knew me, too, that I’d be torn in pieces before I’d give up what I knew to be right.”