“Why, ma’am,” she replied, “I never would work of a Sunday—nobody couldn’t make me. I used to tidy up my house after breakfast, and put the saucepan by the fire, and then I went over to the old church at Kensington. The people now and then threw stones at me, and used to threaten to set the dogs at me; but they never did,—the Lord didn’t let ’em; and they knew me, too, that I’d be torn in pieces before I’d give up what I knew to be right.” I was astonished at the immense numbers of pigs which these people seemed to keep, and I asked the old woman how they managed to find food for them all; she said— “We most of us keep a horse, or a donkey and cart, and we go round early in the morning to the gentlefolk’s houses, and collect the _refuges_ from the kitchens. When we comes home, we sorts it out; the best of it we eats ourselves or sells it to a neighbour, the fat is all boiled down, and the rest we gives to the pigs.” “Do you go to the same houses every day?” I asked. “Why, you see, ma’am, that depends upon how much _refuge_ they have. When they have lots of company, then they gets a deal of _refuge_. I have been to the Duke of —, whenever he has been in town, for the last thirty years. Last week one of his daughters was married, and the house was full all the week; then there was plenty for me. But, do you know, ma’am, for all I’ve been in the habit of going backwards and forwards to that house so many years, them servants, that they have now, never had the manners to give me a bit of bridecake. I couldn’t help speaking about it. I says to them, ‘Well, this _is_ something to think! I have been in attendance on the Duke this thirty years, and can’t get a bit of bridecake when his daughter is married.’ Of course that wasn’t the Duke’s fault, you see, ma’am; it was all a-hoeing to them servants. When the families goes out of town, the servants is put upon board wages, and they skrimps and saves everything; we aint wanted to call then, ’cause there’s not a scrap left for us. Oh no, it aint no use then.” Although, as years rolled on, London continued to come further out of town, till those pig-feeders found themselves again surrounded by streets, squares, and terraces, inhabited by the “quality,” little attention was directed to the place, till the visitation of cholera in 1849. Then the eyes of the newly arrived were opened, and many were horrified at discerning what a plague-spot they had in their midst. In one of the first numbers of Dickens’s “Household Words” the following passages appeared, which at once brought the place into notice; and, both in and out of Parliament, plans for its improvement were discussed:—