Speaking of swill, you’ll never guess who was at the center of the 1858 swill milk scandal in NY. Emma Lazarus father, Moses Lazarus. He along with Brandish Johnson, co owner of Johnson & Lazarus refineries, not only profited from slave labor in the sugar refining industry in Louisiana, but also killed thousands of people in NY in the mid-late 1800s with their contaminated profit-driven swill milk sales:
The Johnson & Lazarus distillery at 16th Street was the subject of a famous muckracking exposé by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1858. Distilleries in 19th century New York had to dispose of the tons of organic waste they generated, and their solution was to feed the still hot mash to hundreds of sick old cows and then sell the milk. The cows were crowded into filthy stables, and were so sickly that some of them were reportedly held up by slings. The milk, referred to as “swill milk,” was often cut with water and then thickened with chalk or flour. Swill milk was accused of being a major cause of infant mortality — it was sold from pushcarts all over the city, advertised, e.g., as farm-fresh milk from Orange County.
