大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Jenny of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Peter Cotton and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My name is Peter Cotton and as a child I lived in Chesterton on a council estate named Beasley. Like children of my age, that being eight years old, I wanted a pet rabbit. At this paticular time they were hard to get hold of,there appeared a shortage of them. I was told of a man named Sid in Beasley Avenue who kept rabbits, so one day I stopped him to ask if he would sell me one. "No" was the answer. He would give me one, but I must feed it and keep it in his garden, hutch provided. I agreed, a few of my friends did the same.
How did we feed them?Those who remember, may recall waste food bins (pig bins), these were placed around the estate so that the residents could put any waste food in them. This food was then collected and taken to the work house hospital on London Road, Newcastle.It was then boiled and fed to the pigs that the work house reared to help feed the needy, any spare they sold to other local 'pig keepers.'It had the name 'Tottnem Pudding', so it was a valuable animal food supply, it was an offence to take food out of these bins. We used the bins for our wicket at that time because there no cars on the estate, only horse carts, so it was safe to play.But back to my rabbit feeding, Sid told us the cabbage, carrots and other food that rabbits eat could be found in these bins, so each night our gang equipped with torch and bag raided the bins.Well, our rabbit grew big on this supply of food, but after a while Sid would tell us our rabbit had died. To cover our disappointment he would give us another young one in its place, this happened a lot of times. As I grew older I realised what Sid had been doing, so to give my mind a clear conscience from raiding the bins I thought well, I helped to feed part of the nation.

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