With modern supermarkets and a culture of foodbanks, charitable organisations and better food choice in modern times, it’s difficult to comprehend the lengths some families once went to ensure food was on their table. When people fell on difficult times, turning to crime was often the result of simply trying to feed hungry families.
When coal quotas were down and take home pay reduced, miners also faced a dilemma of where the next meal would come from. One such example of this was found in Blantyre in June 1909.
Two miners from Blantyre , named Andrew Kalinski and Hugh McCorgrey , were charged with having on 11th or 12th June 1909 stolen a sheep from a field at Auchinraith Colliery Park. Both the accused men had been caught and therefore pled guilty. The Fiscal explained that the two men entered the field where a Blantyre flesher (butcher) kept some sheep; killed one of the animals, skinned and beheaded it; leaving wool and the animal’s head on the field. They carried off the body, which was subsequently recovered by the police. Sheriff Thomson sent each of accused to prison for sixty days.
