POOR William Bailey! The 50-year-old painter’s mixer died in Thornaby 100 years ago of ptomaine poisoning, which is caused by the consumption of putrefying bacteria, as Memories 688 a fortnight ago told on the anniversary of his death.
For his last meal, William had consumed an over-ripe “butchers’ duck”.
A doctor told the inquest into his death that “he understood butchers’ duck was made from the refuse in butchers’ shops which is especially dangerous in the summer months”.

READ FIRST: A BUTCHER'S DUCK: A TASTY DELICACY OR A DEADLY LEFTOVER?

A pair of Darlington savoury ducks
Following lots of representations from readers, we now believe the butchers’ duck is the same as a savoury duck which is the same as a penny duck.
It was made from the offal from the pig’s carcase that’d go through a mincer mixed with rusk or stale bread.
A recipe from Aycliffe in the 1970 Durham County Federation of Women’s Institutes recipe book talks of adding a teaspoon of powdered sage, a good pinch of mixed herbs and a level dessertspoon of sugar, although a key ingredient was pig’s caul (“it will be necessary to ask your butcher to keep caul”, says the recipe).
The caul – known locally as “kell” – was the membrane which went round the pig’s organs. When butchers stopped slaughtering their own animals, the caul became hard to source.
The Aycliffe ladies wrote: “Put the caul into warm water for a few minutes, then spread out carefully and cut with scissors into six inch squares. Put heaped tablespoonful of meat mixture on each square and wrap into a ball.”
Then bake for an hour and serve hot with mashed potatoes and peas.
In Darlington, there was a tradition among the town’s 80 butchers 100 years ago to cook ducks on a Thursday evening, and people would go to the town centre with their own bowls to get them dripping hot with gravy for the night’s meal.
The duck is now a dying delicacy – although only this week we spotted a couple being sold in Gregory’s in Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland.

A good old fashioned butcher on the corner of Bondgate and Royal Oak Yard in Darlington
“Most butchers sold savoury ducks years ago,” says Faith Spence. “The three butchers shops in Darlington’s Skinnergate, them namely Jackson’s, Zissler’s and Taylor’s, did. Today we buy them at Hamilton’s butchers in Rosemary Lane in Richmond. 
“Another favourite is haslet from Taylor’s which is similar to savoury duck but more like a meatloaf cut into slices.”
Haslet seems to be the Lincolnshire version of a duck, and these recipes hark back to the days when nothing of the animal was wasted.
The most stomach-churning of these offal offerings was chitterlings (various spellings are possible), which were also known as “poo tubes”. They were the pig’s intestines, the tube that stretched from the stomach to the anus, and they could be lethal if faeces were still in them. Therefore, preparation of chitterlings required much boiling and washing, which created an appalling smell.
You used to see them dangling a metre of so long in a butcher’s shop, and even in the old days they were an acquired taste. You either sliced them and fried them or you just vinegar’d them up and chomped away.
It does sound disgusting, but what exactly is in a kebab today?

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