ONE hundred years ago this week, The Northern Echo’s sister paper, the Darlington & Stockton Times, carried a deeply unpleasant story under the eye-catching headline: “Danger of butchers’ duck in hot weather”.

It told how an inquest was examining the death of William Bailey, 50, a painter’s mixer, of Thornaby who had died of ptomaine poisoning, which is caused by the consumption of putrefying bacteria.

A doctor said he had found the bacteria in the poor man’s stomach along with his last meal of “butchers’ duck” – a local delicacy of which Memories has never previously been aware.

A Dr Young told the inquest that “he understood butchers’ duck was made from the refuse in butchers’ shops which is especially dangerous in the summer months”.

Is a butchers’ duck the same as a savoury duck or a penny duck? These ducks, known elsewhere in the country as faggots, were made of offal and offcuts of pork, minced up and wrapped up in a tasty, fatty membrane. These were traditionally made on a Thursday and, in the good old days, people would take their own dishes to the butcher’s of a Thursday evening and come home with a hot, dribbly, delicious duck that they’d consume with Pease pudding.

READ MORE: IN SEARCH OF A SAVOURY DUCK

OR: FROM PIG BRAINS TO PORK POO TUBES: WOULD YOU EAT ANY OF THESE SOUTH DURHAM DELICACIES?

In March 2021, Memories last ventured through a butcher’s dangly curtain and found two butchers in Darlington – Mulhollands in the market and Todds in Haughton – still making penny ducks. Both ducks tasted really good, but both butchers have since closed.

Does anywhere still make such things, and was a butchers’ duck different from a savoury duck, or was a butchers’ duck the offal that was too awful to go in a penny duck? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk if you have any duck-related information.

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