It may be a little out of fashion nowadays but you may be familiar with the expression ‘hogwash’, as in: ‘that is a load of hogwash’, (i.e a load of rubbish). Indeed quite recently John Brennan, the former director of the CIA stated that Russia denials of involvement in US elections and collusions with the Trump campaign team were ‘in a word, hogwash’.

Maria Dunning knew all about hogwash. In fact she dealt in it, collecting kitchen waste to sell as pigs swill (from where the term originated in the 1400s). Unfortunately for her (and the residents of Princes Gardens, Kensington) the kitchen waste she’d collected had an unpleasantly pungent smell. Since she had taken to storing it on the street, albeit temporarily, locals had complained and this had summoned the good men of the Westminster board of works to investigate.

It wasn’t the first time that Maria had been prosecuted for infringing local bye laws and it ended up with her being summoned before a magistrate at Westminster Police court. The sanitary inspector explained that traders like Maria went door-to-door to collect the kitchen waste which ‘they carried away in tubs’ and this caused problems:

‘the liquor overflowed, and ran out the carts into the street, and in Ennismore-gardens and Princes-gate the smell was often very offensive. The defendant had been cautioned more than once, but on the day in question allowed more than two quarts of this offensive liquor to run over into the road. It was sour and smelt very bad’.

Maria disagreed; she held that the smell was actually quite sweet and anyway she couldn’t be held responsible for what other hogwash sales people did, she only collected form one property, that belonging to Judge Blackburn. This was Baron Colin Blackburn, an eminent legal mind of his day but sadly one who was not available in court to defend Maria. In his absence the magistrate fined her 10s plus costs and warned her not to repeat the offence if she wanted to avoid a much stiffer penalty in the future.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, May 28, 1875]