Get off Chariton's streets, you swine!

Preoccupied as we are with snow and extreme cold, perhaps it’s a good time to look back to another time, spring 1869, when Chariton faced another threat --- marauding swine. 

The practice at the time for some, apparently, was to allow their hogs to range freely. Keep in mind that many families in Chariton at the time kept on their properties horses for transportation, cows to provide milk, chickens for eggs and meat --- and fattened a hog or two, too. 

Allowing the hogs to ramble when not confined was an economy measure. But one that tended to annoy neighbors who, for example, found someone’s hogs rooting around in their gardens. 

As a result, the town council during March of 1869 adopted an ordinance (at left) regarding the “running at large of swine within the corporate limits,” effective April 1, that instructed the town marshal to capture any hogs running loose and impound them. 

In order to claim their hogs, owners were required to pay a fee of 25 cents per hog plus 5 cents per day for keeping same. If no owner appeared, the marshal was instructed after three days to post a public notice describing the pig. After five more days and still no response, the marshal could sell the animal to the highest bidder, dividing the proceeds between himself and the city treasury.

The ordinance must have been effective. Democrat editor John V. Faith reported as follows in his edition of April 8 under the headline, "The Departed:"

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"Since the second day of April, our streets have presented a solemn and desolate appearance, notwithstanding the activity in ordinary business, and the presence of an unusual number of people. The feeling that something was lacking would force itself upon every one and many spots that formerly wore an aspect of life are now quiet. The mudholes and sidewalks are no longer the resting places of their former occupants.

"All this is owing to the workings of a hoggish ordinance passed by the city council and ruthlessly enforced by the heartless marshal, Jack Hall. The familiar faces of the healthy porkers are no longer visible, except at the city pound and in private stiles, and it seems that least one-half of our former population has been restrained from the privileges of our streets, gardens, dooryards and kitchens.

"For several days, the screams and sighs of the pork family were called out by the ruthless hand of the marshal, as he was enforcing this edict against the liberties of that class of the animal family vulgarly called hogs. It is all explained by the fact that we have a hog law."