When the Killing Begins

1885:

In the nineteenth century, animal-killing wasn’t so commonly done behind closed doors, but often out in the open, in the yards of farms. But wherever it was done, for many small-time farmers it wasn’t easy. In this passage from Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy, the death of an animal at the hands of the human is no different then from today.

The Killing of the Pig.

It was thick snow, and the pig-killer was over-due. It seemed he was not coming, and the pig had to be killed that day since Jude and Arabella had run out of barleymeal mixture the day before. The pig had been starving since then. Jude says to his wife Arabella, “What - he has been starving?”

Her reply: “Yes. We always do it the last day or two, to save bother with the innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!”

“That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!”

“You must do the sticking - there’s no help for it. It must be done”.

He went out to the sty, and placed the stool in front, with the knives and ropes at hand. Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed the affrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to repeated cries of rage. While Jude held him, Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs to keep him from struggling. The animal’s note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the cry of despair; long drawn, slow and hopeless. “Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had this to do!” said Jude. “A creature I have fed with my own hands”.     

“Don’t be such a tender-hearted fool! There’s the sticking-knife - the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don’t stick un too deep”.

“I’ll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That’s the chief thing”.   

“You must not!” she cried. “The meat must be well bled, and to do that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meat is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that’s all. I was brought up to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long. He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least”.

“He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may look,” said Jude determinedly.

Scraping the bristles from the pig’s upturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat; then plunged in the knife with all his might.“ ‘Od damn it all!” she cried, “That ever I should say it! You’ve over-stuck un! And I telling you all the time”

“Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature.” However unworkmanlike the deed, it had been mercifully done. The blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she had desired. The dying animal’s cry assumed its third and final tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing at last the treachery of those who seemed his only friends. “Make un stop that!” said Arabella. “Such a noise will bring somebody or other up here, and I don’t want people to know we are doing it ourselves”. Picking up the knife from the ground whereupon Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash, and slit the windpipe. The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming through the hole. “That’s better,” she said.

“It is a hateful business!” said he.

“Pigs must be killed.”