Category Archives: Agriculture

Pig Bins and Tottenham Pudding

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Food waste was collected in pig bins, metal dustbins in the street. The waste, such as potato peelings and plate scrapings, were sent to a plant for boiling into a feed for pigs, called Tottenham Pudding.

From the Mitcham & Tooting Advertiser, 4th February, 1954

Pig bins to be abolished

Waste food is now ‘unprofitable’

Kitchen waste is no longer to be collected in Mitcham, and the council’s
street pig bins are to be removed.

Commenting on this at Thursday’s meeting of Mitcham Council, Aid. C.A. Norris (Ind.) congratulated the Public Health Committee on their decision to abolish what he described as “the pig-bin nuisance, and the now unprofitable collection of kitchen waste generally.”

VOLUNTARY COLLECTION

The committee made their decision after receiving a letter from the
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries stating that the Government had decided that the salvage of waste food by local authorities would in future be on a voluntary basis.

The Minister, the letter continued, was prepared to revoke individual
directions for the salvage of kitchen waste should local authorities wish
him to do so. although he hoped they would give the matter careful consideration before deciding to disband their waste food services.

Crusoe Farm Dairy

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Clip from undated photo on Merton Memories, reference Mit_​Work_​Industry_​15-1, copyright London Borough of Merton.

From the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail – Wednesday 24th May 1922, via the British Newspaper Archives.

Romance of a Dairy.

A descendant of Capt. Cook, the explorer, and the oldest inhabitant of Mitcham, Mrs Taylor, aged 96, has died in the house in which she established a one-cow dairy 55 years ago. Mrs Taylor named her dairy “Crusoe Farm Dairy.” There is a local tradition that Daniel Defoe once lived at Tooting Hall, close by.

In a few years Mrs Taylor built up one of the largest milk businesses in South London. It is still carried on under the same name. Up to last Christmas Mrs Taylor was active and in full possession her faculties.

This OS map from 1895 shows Crusoe Farm and Tooting Hall.

1895 OS map

The 1911 census shows Elizabeth Taylor, aged 84, widowed, address: Crusoe Farm, Arnold Road Tooting Junction, Mitcham. She was born in Modbury, Devon and was married 41 years and had 5 children, of which 3 were still alive in 1911. Only one other occupant is shown, her son John Henry Taylor, 52, carpenter.

Maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.