Category Archives: Borough

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.

Air Raid shelters in 1948

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Mitcham Borough Council minutes, volume 15, 1948-49, page 95 :-

The Borough Engineer submitted the following report: –

December 3, 1948.

To the Chairman and Members of the General Purposes Committee.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Air Raid Shelters.

In accordance with the instructions of the Committee I give below a list of shelters which have not yet been demolished :—

  • Morden Road (Deer Park Gardens).
  • Commonside West.
  • Commonside East.
  • Manor Road.
  • Rowan Road.
  • Figges Marsh S.
  • Figges Marsh N.
  • Manship Road.
  • Moffatt Gardens.
  • Cranmer Road.
  • Fair Green.
  • Carshalton Road.

Home Office sanction to the making safe of the shelters has just been received and negotiations are proceeding with the contractors, Messrs. J. Sullivan, Ltd., whose tender (in the sum of £603 15s.) was forwarded, in July, to the Home Office for approval.

Personal note: I remember in the mid 1960s the air raid shelters at the southern end of Figges Marsh and on the north side of Cranmer Road near the junction with Carshalton Road.