Old Print Article: “Pigs Missing From A Theater,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1902)

September 4, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you find our actor, don't eat him.

You could keep pigs–or pretty much anything–in a theater basement in Brooklyn in 1902. Nobody cared what you did. I came across this small item about a pair of pig “actors” escaping from a theater in the January 15, 1902 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

“In the play now being produced at the Park Theater, in Fulton street, by the Spooner Stock Company, two pigs are introduced in a pen during a first act. In the last act one of the pigs is carried on the stage by one of the actors. Between the performances the pigs are kept in the cellar of the theater. On Sunday night the pigs escaped from their pen and made a tour of exploration through the deserted play house. Last night, after the performance, the pigs were penned in the cellar as usual. Their pen adjoins the engine room. When the engineer was taking his ashes out last night the pigs escaped from the building and ran down Adams street to Willoughby street and as far as Gold street. The management of the Park Theater is anxious to learn the whereabouts of the pigs, desiring them for us in to-night’s performance of the play, ‘A Nutmeg Match.'”

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