SYMHC Classics: Swill Milk

This 2021 episode covers a period of time when the milk supply in New York was anything but appetizing and wholesome – it was often deadly. But efforts to address the problem were blocked by corrupt officials. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 2:45Holly Frey?

  Happy Saturday. After this week's episode on typhoid, we are continuing our food safety theme with our episode on the swill milk scandal of 1858, which was also mentioned in last week's classic on NASA's role in food safety.

• 3:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  This originally came out on July 21st, 2021. We would say enjoy, but this one's pretty gross.

• 3:12Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 3:22Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 3:27Holly Frey?

  Okay, here is sort of an obvious heads up if you saw the title of today's podcast. The topic that we are talking about today involves really unsanitary practices that took place when there were not really laws regarding food safety and quality the way we think about it today. So it is kind of gross. That's an understatement. And there is also mistreatment of animals, so it is also upsetting on that front. Just know that going in, and maybe it may be a little too intense for you. We are covering a period of time where the milk supply in New York was anything but appetizing. So it's actually been going on for quite some time, but there's, there's one kind of very pivotal moment in the middle of it, and that's really where we're focusing.

• 4:11Holly Frey?

  And then we'll talk about the way that problem was brought to the public's attention and how it was handled after that. But first, we are just going to talk a little bit about why milk became known as an essential item in US kitchens, particularly for families with children.

• 4:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  So if you grew up in the US, even if you don't drink milk yourself, you've almost certainly become accustomed to this idea that people think of milk as a staple food. I know when I was a kid, I loved milk and I drank it all the time. My brother was allergic, so it was a division in our household. This is one of the things that just flies off of supermarket dairy case shelves anytime there's a heavy storm coming, and people will joke about like, what are people doing with all this milk and bread? Is it French toast time during, during the snowstorm? Milk is treated like a cornerstone of every meal in a lot of families, and it is really popular.

• 5:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have talked about cheese and butter on the show before, which are of course also dairy items. But those are made with the idea of longevity, so a food that you can have on hand for at least a little while. Milk does not have that long shelf life, especially in the era before artificial refrigeration. So it's kind of an impractical thing to just have on hand all the time. The concept of a lot of heavy milk consumption is pretty new if you plot it out on the timeline of human history.

• 5:44Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Holly Frey?

  For a long time, dairy milk as a human consumable was primarily used just as a means to feed babies. This is also tied up with a very passionate and centuries-long debate about human milk versus the milk from other animals and what is appropriate for children. Even famed Puritan Cotton Mather had opinions about breastfeeding being the only suitable way to feed a child. And he intimated in his writing that God would take whether a mother breastfed or not into account when her day of judgment came. And then during the 19th century, there were plenty of people willing to voice their opinion that breastfeeding was downright uncivilized.

• 6:26Holly Frey?

  Obviously, those are two extremes to illustrate the vast range of positions people had on the issue. That debate continues. You will still find people probably who feel both of those ways. That debate is thankfully way out of our scope here. Also, Tracy and I are not moms, so we don't have quite the same stake in that conversation that other people might have. So the key thing that we need to focus on is that in cases where a mother's or a wet nurse's milk were not an option, for whatever reason, over time, people started turning to other milk sources for infants. And because cows are fairly docile and pretty easy to work with and produce milk in quantity,

• 7:09Holly Frey?

  they emerged over time as the most popular non-human milk source.

• 7:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  There were people who studied the mortality rates of babies in regard to being fed animal milk. This was called artificial feeding. They were comparing that to people who were fed milk from their mother or a wet nurse, all the way back to the 1700s. And germ theory as we know it today was not really in the mix with this yet. So there were some stabs in the dark regarding cause and effect of illnesses that seemed like they were linked to milk. One idea, which was conceived by French doctor Alphonse Leroy in the 1770s, was for children to suckle directly from an animal to get the freshest possible milk.

• 7:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  So he was on to the idea that spoilage could be a problem, but he didn't really know that bacteria was the culprit for that spoilage. But keeping live animals on hand for that purpose was not exactly realistic for a lot of places, especially places like orphanages or hospitals.

• 8:16Holly Frey?

  Right. And even like anybody that lived in a more metropolitan area, it's not like, go to the goat room.

• 8:25Holly Frey?

  Or the, certainly not a cow in the house. There have been also various types of formula over the years, which can include any number of ingredients, such as flours or even cane sugar mixed with water or milk or some combination of the two. And sometimes that was used as a way to stretch milk where that supply was not as, you know, constantly available. But over time, there were doctors that started to recommend milk with various added ingredients as something that could pretty effectively replicate the nutrition an infant would get from breastfeeding. So with doctors touting its benefits, milk really started to take on an image as a nutritious and health-bolstering beverage.

• 9:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was not a universally-held opinion, though, and there were still plenty of instances where milk caused people to get sick. This included episodes when multiple people in communities got milk sickness after milk from cows that had ingested some poisonous plants was introduced into the food supply. But the trend of feeding infants and children milk continued upward in the US and in other parts of the world as cities got bigger and populations boomed. So that just led to more and more demand for cows' milk specifically.

• 9:41Holly Frey?

  So naturally, that growing population of metro areas that needed and wanted milk led to a boom in the dairy industry. But in many cases, the dairies that emerged to meet those demands were not exactly hygienic. And the cows that were used were not fed the best diet. Feeding more cows meant far greater overhead for milk producers, so some of them worked out what seemed like a cost-effective solution, and they moved next to breweries and distilleries. And in a lot of instances, distilleries started dairies of their own as a way to get a piece of the ever-increasing demand.

• 10:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  So a lot of alcohols start out with grain that's combined with water to give the yeast something to work with. But this spent grain is not part of the finished beverage. It's a waste product. And dairy producers made deals with alcohol producers to take their runoff to feed their animals. Or in the cases of these combo businesses, the distillers didn't really bother to source any other food for their animals. They were just feeding them the runoff from their distilleries. So we should mention here that there are cases where this is okay. If someone is soaking their grains and then straining them out before fermentation, these grains can be and are fed to livestock.

• 11:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, there are a lot of breweries today that are feeding their spent grain to farm animals, and it's, this is really just- The grain that has been used

• 11:13Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  To make the work, to make the beer, not like runoff that also contains alcohol and other waste products.

• 11:20Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 11:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  The brewery that brewed the beer for our wedding had a deal with farmers.

• 11:25Holly Frey?

  Lots of places do this and it is perfectly fine. So we are not coming down on those people.

• 11:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  We're not saying that's bad.

• 11:31Holly Frey?

  If you know someone who does that or is part of one of those, we're not dogging on them. What we are about to tell you will explain the problem.

• 11:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, yeah. So what we are talking about here is dairy cows being fed this watery spent swill of mash that had been through the fermentation process and boiled without being strained. And this runoff swill was not only kind of gross, it really didn't have a lot of nutritional value anymore. It could also go bad really quickly. Unlike just the spent grain that is used today, this was not a good food source for animals or anyone, really.

• 12:11Holly Frey?

  And as a consequence, the quality of the milk being produced by animals being fed this swill was poor at best. That's a very kind way to put it. That milk was often watery. It did not have the normal fat content of a whole milk. And also it was often blue in color. So to make that milk appear more wholesome than it was, dairies that use the swill runoff to feed their cows, started adding all kinds of things to the milk. Food colorings and molasses were added to make it look and taste good. And in instances where the dairy watered down the already watery milk to stretch profits, chalk and sometimes even plaster of Paris was also added to improve the texture.

• 12:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  This sounds like it would be really bad for babies and it was. And infant mortality was really high. Some estimates are that nearly half of the babies in Manhattan died pretty routinely. And because there were innumerable issues developing as the city became more and more crowded, it actually took a while for people to realize that the milk supply had become poisonous.

• 13:21Holly Frey?

  Yeah, there were lots of, lots of efforts at attribution about like, oh, crowding is making disease spread more quickly. Yes, that's part of it. You know, there were lots of other things that they could point to and go, I think this might be the problem. It just, it took a bit. And in just a moment, we will talk about the journalists who started to write about this problem with adulterated milk being fed to babies. But first we are going to pause for a sponsor break.

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  Hey everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

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  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

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• 18:51Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually

• 19:36Holly Frey?

  understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:59Holly Frey?

  Frank Leslie is usually credited with breaking the swill milk scandal open in his paper, and we will talk about that exposé in a moment. But activist Robert Milam Hartley, who is known for his work in the temperance movement, was an early criticizer of the subpar milk supply. Well before most other writers, in 1842, Hartley published a book titled "An Historic, Scientific, and Practical Essay on Milk: As an Article of Human Sustenance, With a Consideration of the Effects Consequent Upon the Present Unnatural Methods of Producing It for the Supply of Large Cities."

• 20:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hartley believed that milk produced in a wholesome way was a perfect food, and he traced its history and the animals that produce it in this book to support his stance. He includes a testimonial from a doctor in the book that reads, quote, "I live in the country, but occasionally go to the city, and while there, I make a practice of securing, if possible, my accustomed glass of milk, morning and evening, instead of coffee and tea, which for some years I have laid aside altogether. Three years ago last winter, I took lodgings at a respectable house near Broadway and bespoke, as usual, my glass of milk. I observed that the taste of this milk was unnatural, unsavory, and I had no relish for it.

• 21:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  In fact, it soon became loathsome, and at the end of one week, I found myself greatly enfeebled with loss of appetite, a feverish heat of the hands, and a slightly furred tongue with other indications of disorder. The milk, I was informed, came from a dairy supplied with swill from a distillery. I left the boarding house and took lodgings at the Clinton Hotel, where I found a well-flavored glass of milk, morning and evening, and in three days, I was well. Mr. H., the landlord, assured me that he was supplied with milk from Harlem by a farmer who fed his cows on wholesome food."

• 22:00Holly Frey?

  So that doctor's account goes on to warn parents that if they are going to buy milk for their children, they should inspect the dairy the supply comes from themselves to see the horrible conditions the animals live in, and how their teeth are in abysmal condition from bad food, and how all of this smells anything but wholesome.

• 22:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hartley's write-up, which is credited with coining the term "swill milk," includes a number of other accounts, and they're horrifying. This includes abysmal conditions regarding animal welfare, instances of dying cows too weak to stand still being milked. Hartley then lays out his own proof that the milk these poorly-fed cows produce is bad. He had conducted a number of experiments with it and found that it couldn't be made into butter. In his words, quote, "The nutrient properties of milk, we have shown, consist chiefly of oil and albumin, but so deficient is slop milk of these essential attributes that it

• 23:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  is incapable of producing butter or cheese." The author proclaims, quote, "There is not a more certain poison in the form of food than this swill milk."

• 23:13Holly Frey?

  And his strongest case in terms of connecting swill milk to public health is the statistics that he cites. In 1815, 33% of the deaths in Boston were children younger than five years old. By the end of the 1930s, that number had grown to 43%. And he includes similar numbers for New York and Philadelphia, and then he goes on to name 500 dairies in New York that were actively producing swill milk.

• 23:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  You would think this information would be explosive, but it took a long time for the issues identified by Hartley to be investigated. Some of this was because of Hartley's association with the temperance movement, which was not popular in New York. There was a common perception that Hartley was attacking distillery dairies in an effort to hurt the distilleries themselves. This was all part of his temperance activism. Swill milk wasn't studied by the New York Academy of Medicine for another six years, and that study, of course, found it nutritionally deficient. But the practice of producing swill milk continued, and by the mid 1850s, an estimated

• 24:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  2/3 of New York's $6 million annual spend on milk went to swill milk. Slowly, though, the information in Hartley's book became more and more commonly known. People started to question where their milk was coming from and whether that was the source of child deaths from malnutrition.

• 24:40Holly Frey?

  Finally, in 1857, an investigation was launched by city officials of Brooklyn. You'll recall at this time, Brooklyn and New York were kind of two different entities. The resulting report was horrifying, detailing a seemingly endless array of animal mistreatment and the handling of the milk those animals produced. Those animals were crowded so tightly together that they never moved, and their stalls were rarely mucked out. Life expectancy for a cow at a swill milk dairy was only about six months. This report, which was documented through the official investigation, also had a weight that skeptics may have found lacking in Hartley's anonymous eyewitness accounts.

• 25:21Holly Frey?

  The swill milk issue at this point was at last getting very wide-scale exposure.

• 25:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  While the report compiled by Brooklyn authorities was really damning, it wasn't as though everyone was reading municipal documents. The story really broke open on the pages of Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper on May 8, 1858, with the first installment in a series about swill milk. In a 5,000-word exposé, Leslie shared all of the grisly details that had been part of the city's findings and more. Leslie said that he had been spurred into investigation when a bottle of milk delivered to his door had obviously contained, heads up, this is gross, pus floating in the milk.

• 26:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  And the details his reporters had uncovered were accompanied with equally unsettling illustrations. These articles alerted the public to the fact that even cows with bovine tuberculosis were being used to produce the milk they might buy from a vendor cart right on their own street. It was reported that in some cases, meat from the sick cows that had died in these distillery dairies had been sold at markets in poor neighborhoods.

• 26:34Holly Frey?

  And this milk was being sold to the public with the assurance that it was good and wholesome. Often, the bottles were labeled with things like "pure Orange County milk" or some similar nomenclature to suggest that this was wholesome milk from presumably healthy cows. Keep in mind, too, that all of this predated routine pasteurization. Louis Pasteur was working on his idea that there were germs in play in the spoilage of liquids intended for consumption as the swill milk scandal was playing out, but commercial milk pasteurizers weren't even produced until the late 1880s. And that meant that every minute that even wholesome milk was on a street cart, it was inching towards spoilage because it had never been sterilized.

• 27:16Holly Frey?

  But swill milk started out dirty and just got worse. And milk wasn't yet being bottled at this time. It was often doled out of pails into smaller pails, and that meant that it was also on these carts, open to debris falling in it at any time.

• 27:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  The images in Leslie's, which were drawings, of course, included sick cows being held up with straps so they could be milked, cows with sores on their bodies from malnutrition, and really filthy conditions. Leslie took out ads and other newspapers to advertise the exposé series on swill milk. He sent his staff artists to try to sneak into dairies and get material for their renderings. According to Leslie's, quote, "Swill milk should be branded with the word poison, just as narcotics are."

• 28:04Holly Frey?

  So Frank Leslie was genuinely exposing some truly gnarly things going on in these dairies, but he was also definitely doing so in a very sensationalist manner. It's worth noting that he had worked with P.T. Barnum on his publishing endeavors prior to going out on his own as a publisher. Leslie not only reported the news, but he did so in a way that he knew would incense readers. And he also published illustrations in his articles that stereotyped Irish immigrants who worked in the dairies. So while his exposé series was raising important issues to public awareness, it came with its own problems, and in some ways, that led him to be discredited by people.

• 28:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  He was also very clearly on the side of the temperance movement. In the third installment of the Leslie's Illustrated story about swill milk, this was evident in writing that mentions the evil of drink in the same sentence as the dangers of swill milk. Quote, "Wherever large masses of people congregate, thus creating a great demand for milk, a distillery springs up at once, and while this furnishes the fiery alcohol, which makes the fathers and husbands drunkers, loafers, and perhaps murderers, the filthy cow stables, which hang around it like bloated parasites, dispense the poison that deals death to the mothers and children."

• 29:27Holly Frey?

  And the public did get angry when they learned that they had been feeding their babies milk that was purposely filled with things like chalk. Because Frank Leslie had published the names and addresses of dairies that were making swill milk and passing it off as fresh milk from country dairies, many of those dairies soon found angry mobs at their doors.

• 29:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  For people and reporters who had been talking about the obviously gross milk for a while, it seemed like there was finally some hope. A May 13, 1858 article titled "How We Poison Our Children" that appeared in the New York Times read, quote, "Swill milk is no new thing in our city. Wherever there is a distillery, there is a temptation to manufacture." That particular write-up walked through all the investigations, the completely gross things that had been found in milk, the stench associated with the dairies that had become more and more of a concern as cities grew and the neighborhoods were built adjacent to the stables.

• 30:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  There's a tone in this piece that lauds Leslie as sort of a savior figure and encourages every head of a household to examine their own milk for contaminants, while the city manages punitive measures for the people involved in producing swill milk.

• 30:44Holly Frey?

  On May 22, an article appeared in the New York Times titled "Swill Milk and Infant Mortality." The lead of the story stated that the health commissioners agreed with Mayor Timon that the problem of swill milk had to be addressed, and that they, quote, "promised to enter upon the performance of a long-neglected duty." Essentially, yes, we should have been on top of this sooner, but we're doing it now, okay?

• 31:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  So the plan for the health commission was to, quote, "operate with energy and firmness to purify the stables where the disgusting stuff is manufactured."

• 31:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  The article stated clearly that if the Board of Health functioned at all, this should be something it addressed. And it called for wide sweeping condemnation and punishments to everyone in the supply chain stating, quote, "We take it that the city inspector is prepared to serve his three days notice upon the distillers who furnish the swill at wholesale, upon the proprietors of the stables, and upon the milkmen who hawk the purulent stuff at the doors of citizens that they all and severally show cause before the board why their work of death should not be discontinued."

• 31:54Holly Frey?

  That same article gets a jab in at politicians who feign to be virtuous and care about their constituents, but then do nothing once they're in office. And it entreats the administrators involved to act not like that, but do proceed intelligently and remember that the public health is at stake. The writer also compares the milk crisis to the yellow fever outbreak in 1856, so just a couple of years prior, during which the Board of Health convened daily and took action, comparing the relatively low number of deaths from yellow fever in the city to the 8,000 children they calculated had died in 1857 from swill milk consumption.

• 32:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  What came of all this information being shared and the calls to action in the press? We will get into that in just a moment, but first we will hear about the sponsors that keep the show going.

• 32:45Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 33:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whenever I'm traveling, if I'm going to be away from Wi-Fi for a while, I love having things that are loaded up and ready to go, so I don't have to worry about it. Smart Downloads also automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download things ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you will love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 33:58Speaker 06

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• 34:42Speaker 06

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• 35:23Speaker 06

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• 35:29Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 36:12Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays returned for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 37:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 37:32Speaker 07

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• 38:14Speaker 07

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• 38:32Holly Frey?

  The New York City alderman assigned to the swill milk case did inspect the dairies. A team was formed, made up of Tammany Hall politician and newly-elected alderman Michael Twomey, who led the effort, and alderman E. Harrison Reed and William Tucker, with two additional investigators assigned. But the team gave the accused dairies a heads up that they were coming. There were reports of diseased cows being moved in the night and replaced with healthy ones brought in from the country farms, and also of stables being hastily cleaned.

• 39:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  There was also a five-day hearing in which testimony was heard regarding the whole matter. In an unusual turn, the defense was heard first. Edwin P. Smith, who was the superintendent of the Johnson and Sons stable on 16th Street, which was one of the dairy stables called out in numerous articles about swill milk, was the first to testify. He stated that there were about 500 cows in the stable, although there had been as many as 800 earlier in the year. He said there had been sick cows there at various times, but very few. And he claimed that the facility was running as normal, as it always had, including before the exposé, and that his family always drank milk from the swill-fed cows and were in fine health.

• 39:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  The next witness was the stable's feeding manager, James Atchison, who corroborated Smith's story.

• 39:57Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I never found a very clear reason why they went with the defense first, other than the fact that all of the accusations had kind of been leveled in the press for a while before this started. So for some reason, they wanted to get first in. Atchison also added that some of the cows who may have appeared sick were just reacting to routine inoculations, and that he had never seen any of his animals lose their teeth from eating swill. He gave hard numbers, whether they're true or not, regarding the proportion of sick cows. He said that three of the 500 they had at the time of the hearing were sick. And he also stated that cows only very rarely, quote, "lost the use of their limbs from standing in the stable." That is according to coverage of the hearing by The New York Times.

• 40:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  There were several other witnesses called on behalf of the swill milk stables. A Dr. Wells, who was superintendent Smith's family doctor, testified that he cared for the entire Smith family and had never seen any of them ill from drinking swill milk. Animal keeper Louis Thomas testified that he had cared for a large number of the Johnson Dairy cows and that they did not milk sick cows. Even a butcher who purchased cows from the Johnson and Sons dairy testified that the stock was good and the meat he had sold was high quality.

• 41:16Holly Frey?

  On the following day, the hearing was delayed. It was supposed to start at 2:00 PM, but the alderman showed up late. And then they went to a private office instead of the hearing room. And eventually, they emerged into the packed City Hall room and announced that Alderman Tucker was sick, but that they were going to carry on. They called Dr. JW Francis to testify. Dr. Francis, who had been studying the issue of swill milk for years at that point, and had studied dairy practices both in the US and abroad, was very open in his opinion that swill milk was terrible for children, that cows fed distillery swill were in a continuous state of inflammation. He also said that their livers and stomachs were diseased, their tails and hooves often fell off.

• 41:59Holly Frey?

  That was something that had also been shown in some of the illustrations that had appeared in the press, and that they were certain to become ill due to their diet.

• 42:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Twomey kept asking if Dr. Francis had chemically analyzed any of the milk himself. And the doctor replied that he had not, but had read many reports on the matter and had treated children that had become seriously ill from a diet of swill milk. Dr. Francis also cited the fact that the issue of swill milk's danger had been well-known and well-documented in the medical community for years already. Throughout the hearing, Alderman Twomey was hostile to witnesses who testified against the swill dairies, starting with Dr. Francis, who he interrupted repeatedly and accused of spreading rumors. The Alderman also let the Johnson dairies' medical expert question Dr. Francis.

• 42:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  The next doctor called was a Dr. Griscum, who reiterated a lot of Dr. Francis's points.

• 42:58Holly Frey?

  Yeah, if you read through the word-by-word accounts printed in the paper, it sounds like Twomey was just constantly going, "Are you done? Are you done? Are you done?" Like while they were in the middle of discussing things. He was not, not cool. A farmer named Norman Van Nostrand testified that yes, there were cows that were so ill in the 16th Street Dairy that they had to be suspended from straps, but that he was under the impression that their milk was given to the hogs and never sold to the public.

• 43:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  But after those first two days, a lot of testimony backed up all the stories of horrible animal treatment and adulterated milk. Before the Saturday session of the hearings could even begin, there was a lot of back and forth about whether legal counsel should be on hand and whether the hearing was considered a legal investigation. All present were assured that it was not a legal matter, but merely an inquiry by a committee of the Board of Health with a narrow focus of determining whether swill milk was detrimental to health.

• 44:01Holly Frey?

  The next witness called was the city inspector, a Mr. Morton, and his testimony was quite damning. He spoke of having the stables watched years before and seeing diseased cows dressed for market after they died there. He spoke of his employees that were sent to watch the swill stables being driven away by dairy employees. He also noted that he had visited some of the stables to find cows being kept in stalls too small to allow them to move around at all or even to lie down.

• 44:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Health Warren Lewis J. Kirk also testified. He had performed postmortem examinations of some of the swill milk cows and described them as being, quote, "very much diseased." When asked about the conditions of the stables, he stated, quote, "It is not just the place for a cow if you want to keep her healthy." He was quickly dismissed.

• 44:54Holly Frey?

  The rest of the hearing played out in a similar way, with witnesses who spoke well of the swill milk stables being asked the same sorts of softball questions repeatedly, reiterating the health of the animals and the suitability of the milk for consumption. Witnesses who were critical of the swill milk dairies were often cut off or interrupted, or had their credibility undermined by the committee. Frank Leslie became so frustrated that he stopped attending midway through the five-day hearing.

• 45:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  As the newspapers reported on the daily events and testimonies, these accounts often ran alongside expert opinions in the paper. The June 1, 1858 New York Times included a statement that opened with, quote, "Now that the public mind is aroused to the horrible evils of the slot milk trade and its destructive effects on infant life, the time appears opportune to present the testimony of physicians on the subject. For however indisputable and conclusive may be the language of facts and experience in reference to the evil, yet from its very nature, the demonstration might appear incomplete in some minds without the testimony of medical men."

• 46:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  That statement was signed by more than four dozen doctors. They included death statistics of infants and their belief that swill milk was contributing to many of the infant fatalities in New York and Brooklyn.

• 46:17Holly Frey?

  At the end of the investigation, the Alderman took several weeks to review the material, and then they issued their opinion. And that was that swill milk was not dangerous to the health of infants or adults. The only criticisms they made were that the ventilation in the stables could be better and that the stalls could be widened, but that they saw healthy animals in good condition and well-kept facilities when they visited.

• 46:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  So we should mention that there was one vocal dissenter on the city council, and that was Councilman Charles H. Haswell, who was one of the investigators assigned to the team. He wrote his own minority report as the hearing's conclusion. He believed that the stables had been cleaned only for the committee's visit and that swill milk was, in fact, quote, "injurious to health." One journalist called this a "manly and sensible minority report."

• 47:09Holly Frey?

  That turn of phrase made me laugh a little bit. That majority report of the council caused outrage, of course. In the July 16 edition of the New York Tribune, a commentary on the situation started with, quote, "Upon printing the second day's proceedings of the committee on the swill milk business on the 3rd of June, we foresaw that the affair was to be a mere farce, that the report would be made as favorable as possible to the swill men. But when the highest medical talent in the city came forward to denounce the business as little short of licensed infanticide, when the health officers showed that the rotten carcasses of cows were surreptitiously sold for human food, even in the best markets,

• 47:51Holly Frey?

  when citizens of high standing added their personal knowledge of the filthy nature of the business and the offensive character of the stables, when not a voice was raised in favor of the nuisance, except from persons immediately interested therein, we could not believe that could have induced any three members of the committee to make a report so utterly opposed to the evidence as that which they finally produced."

• 48:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Frank Leslie's newspaper skewered the committee members on July 10, writing, quote, "The committee of the Board of Health, selected by Mayor Timman, having ended their labors, have handed in their report. Everyone predicted the nature of the report, not, however, from the character of the evidence brought forward, but from the character of certain men composing the committee. They have subscribed their names to a series of deliberate lies. They have distorted facts. They have become false witnesses. At the same time being corrupt judges, they have trifled with and periled the health of the city. They have taken counsel with the owners of the nuisance they were looked to abate. They have betrayed the trust reposed in them by their constituents in the Board of Health.

• 49:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  They have proved themselves every way immeasurably false, incapable, and corrupt." This article excludes Haswell as a, quote, "gentleman, and consequently, an honest man for his dissenting report."

• 49:15Holly Frey?

  In an effort to prove that Twomey had possibly taken a bribe to find in favor of the swill milk producers, an affidavit that had been sworn to Robert Stribag, Commissioner of Deeds, was printed in Leslie's. A person, not named by the paper, although they said they would provide that information to the appropriate authorities, said that they witnessed the Alderman visiting Bradish Johnson, the owner of the 16th Street Dairy, on May 26, two days before the committee visited the facility. That same person also saw Twomey return to Johnson's home later that evening, staying three hours from 7:30 to 10:30 PM.

• 49:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Michael Twomey, along with Reed and Tucker, were also featured in a cartoon in Frank Leslie's Illustrated showing the three men whitewashing sick cows, their pockets stuffed with money. Twomey and Reed filed libel suits against Frank Leslie, although those suits seemed to fizzle out. They were abandoned, maybe in an effort on the parts of these Aldermen to distance themselves from this whole thing.

• 50:19Holly Frey?

  And of course, this entire episode had the effect of scaring a lot of people away from all milk, so that legitimate dairy farmers found themselves worried about their futures. A write-up titled "The Milk Business of Long Island" appeared in the Brooklyn Evening Star on June 11, 1858, while the committee was still prepping its report. And in the Evening Star, the case was made that only about 10,000 of the 100,000 quarts of milk consumed in Brooklyn each day came via railroad from wholesome dairies. It described the farmers producing this wholesome milk as, quote, "well-conditioned Quakers owning their own farms and conducting their affairs with industry and conscientiousness."

• 51:02Holly Frey?

  It was just a matter of getting consumers on board with this higher quality of milk, which could be gotten in much greater amounts, according to this placed article. There was also a list of the dairies of Long Island that had been certified for their quality, touting that they had full grazing pastures filled with healthy cows and that their farms were open for anyone to visit for inspection.

• 51:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Michael Twomey ran for Congress later that year, but was soundly beaten. He did continue a political career, but the swill milk scandal stuck to his reputation for decades. In 1878, 20 years after the worst of the New York milk crisis, this was still used to skewer him in the press. When he ran for coroner that year, a long article came out that rehashed his part in the events of 1858 and reiterated the commonly-held belief that corruption had been at the center of the committee's handling of this matter.

• 51:58Holly Frey?

  Although the 1858 committee's findings were a disappointment to New York and Brooklyn activists and residents who hoped that this swill milk problem would be addressed, the issue did not end there. Calls for reform to save the city's children continued to be made of local and state government. Concurrently, issues of adulterated milk and protests over it developed in other US cities as well. And as train transport and preservation science advanced, it became easier to supply the growing needs of heavily populated area with healthy milk from trustworthy dairies.

• 52:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  On April 23, 1862, an act to prevent the adulteration of milk and prevent the traffic in impure and unwholesome milk was passed into law in New York. This was one of many steps toward the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 at the federal level. So, uh...

• 52:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's pretty, pretty gross.

• 52:59Holly Frey?

  It's horrifying.

• 53:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. It's, and I mean, a lot of newspapers from that time were really sensationalized on how they covered things, but even taking that into account, still horrifying.

• 53:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I mean, the, a lot of them were running, like, the word-for-word testimonies from the hearing. And so it becomes pretty obvious, like, how that was playing out and how utterly horrible it was. Um, yeah, super gross.

• 53:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:52Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 54:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 54:57Speaker 06

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• 55:42Speaker 06

  needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lilly.com.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron, tenía veintitantos años, y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas. Y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom! Eso es Kisimtah. Obtenga más información sobre Kisimtah o fotumumab en kisimta.com.

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• 57:34Speaker 00

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