The Poor Prisoner's Feast
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 05. 2024
- The Poor Prisoner’s Feast takes a look into the food of men who had been locked up for breaking the law. Prisons were nothing like modern times in the 18th century, and neither was society’s idea of reformation. Come dive into prisons, culture, and prisoner food with us!
Our Brand New Viewing Experience ➧ townsendsplus.com/ ➧➧
Retail Website ➧ www.townsends.us/ ➧➧
Help support the channel with Patreon ➧ / townsend ➧➧
Instagram ➧ townsends_official
Poor Feast Playlist czcams.com/play/PL4e4wpjna1vzn_D5t7tBC4QPiU9LC2lXe.html
It still cracks me up that in the 1700's lobster was abundant and considered gross peasant food.
i believe that's why there's a law in Texas about how often prisoners are allowed to eat lobster
a giant insect living in the ocean is kinda gross if you think about it
Because in the 1700s they weren't cooking them while still alive and carefully extracting the meat to serve with butter.
What they would have been eating as "lobster" in this context would be old dead lobsters mashed up into a paste, shells included. Lobster tastes very bad if killed even an hour before cooking, and these were often killed long enough prior to cooking that they were starting to rot.
@@ikillstupidcomments There is, to my knowledge, no historical evidence of that ever being the case. The idea of lobsters being ground to paste with their shell is wholly modern apocrypha. Besides that, it would be so much more effort to "grind up lobsters into paste, shell and all" than it would be to simply discard the shells as we do now - shells which could, in turn, be ground up to use as fertilizer, for which there *is* historical evidence.
@@ikillstupidcomments Not the case at all they were harvested by the ton back then and since most prisons were within a stones throw of the northeastern sea they were common food for the poor much like fish in general. Chicken wings were also considered scraps by the rich and thrown out or cut off before sale and sold or given to the poor and now it's a multi billion dollar industry. Whole wheat bread was also considered impure to the rich who only deserve the finest milled white flour loaves that too has flip flopped.
I'm from Maine and my late grandmother would recall a boy she attended grade school with who would try to hide the fact that his mother packed him lobster for lunch. This was in the 40's, well into the period where lobster was considered "luxury", but the stigma surrounding lobster lingered in Downeast and coastal communities. If you were a common person eating lobster, it meant that your family were likely fishermen and thus poor. The way my grandmother talked about it makes me think she regreted not being kinder to him. Her own upbringing was quite rough and she seldom spoke of it.
Sounds like your grandma was rude to people.
Get bent
Ignore these fools
Sounds like what you replied to flew over your head.@@brucef310
I'm just east of Maine in Canada in The Maritimes, PEI. My Mom was born in 1944 and she said she heard stories of that time or even later when she was in school of lobster being seen as poor people food. edit: for the city folk the fishermen who catch lobster get about $8/pound (now in 2023). Upscale restaurants in NY sell it for what $50?
In Sweden, at least during certain periods, "bread and water" was basically a death sentence. The water wasn't very clean, so you can imagine what that did to people. And they only had a limited amount of both, causing both dehydration and starvation. It was even offered as an alternative to execution; spend some time on bread and water, followed by a prison sentence if you survived. Some tried, gave up and went back to the original sentence of execution to end it quicker. Dark days.
Now, Swedish prisons give gourmet meals.
@@freddieban Is your agenda to say that prisoners deserve torture?
@@freddieban They are given people food, yes. And treated like human beings, which in turn rehabilitate em and makes it far less likely that they will re-offend.
If you look at the number of re-offenders in the Nordic countries compared to the US, you'll see what actually works.
You know you've commited a horrible crime against humanity when Jon refusees to add nutmeg to your meal
Great video as always.
Hahaaaaaaa!!! No nutmeg is a guaranteed tell from him.
His videos never fail to really put you into what it would’ve been like back in those years
Agreed, just the way he explains things really makes you want to experience life back then. Though it would be rough, you still want to be a part of that world just by his explanations.
Not accurate, too little dysentery and plague.
cant take u seriously with that pfp lmao
Fortnite
Then you look at the modern obesity epidemic and realise we're not much different to animals; give us more food - tasty food at that - we're going to stuff our faces
Just to clarify for others who associate lobster with prisoner's food due to the thumbnail and images: it should be noted that there was so much lobster, people couldn't eat them all after they were caught and killed, so instead of fresh or live lobster that was killed, most people ate canned or lobster that had gone bad. People who enjoy lobster today enjoy them in the freshest form they can get because holy crab... Preserved lobster is really really bad and you'd understand why it'd be inhumane.
lobster even fresh was killed "as most animal" were, now they had no idea lobster can change taste in as little as 5 minutes due to that. we enjoy lobster now because as you said we enjoy it as fresh as possible, that means cooking alive. that is the only way of cooking that preserves and makes the lobster taste its best, even if killed 30 seconds before cooking could spoil its taste and make in unconsumable
@@valy673 I am seriously doubting that 30 seconds after death changes the taste of the lobster meat. That sounds like a super old wives tale / myth
Not to mention it would have been most likely served as a cold mash with little attention given to picking out the shells.
A lot of modern chefs kill the lobster before cooking it because it's more humane, and because the lack of heavy stress make it tastier. They do so right before cooking, though. @@valy673
@@michael_177 It is, fairly common to kill before cooking now; albeit just before.
You really need your own history channel show. Far more entertaining and insightful that what they have on nowadays.
Keep up the good work Mr Townsends and co
He's so entertaining and insightful because he's *not* on History Channel lol. HC would ruin this channel by finding some way to turn it into a reality show.
I'm sorry, but this wouldn't work on the history channel. You need at least one pawn shop and some aliens, then it might work! 😂😢
"and today on History Channel, i present you the poor aliens feast"
They would never have his show on the history channel because it show is about history. It would be very off topic for their brand.
@CookieMonster-nt8hh Or, "there is no way people in the 18th century could have stored meat in this way without help of advanced civilization. Maybe extraterrestrial in origin?"
I swear the "Feast" series is my favorite lineup on this channel. I just love how much of a good narrative the team is able to compose around these dishes which makes their more simplistic styles of cooking just that much more fasciniating, I've never enjoyed history more than when I watch this channel. Love it!
100% agree. I was so excited to see this video pop up, I was just thinking about the prisoner lobster connection yesterday and wondered if Townsend would do a video about it. It really does create a great narrative framework for them to hang their stories on. I also really love about this channel how much comments focus on not just Townsend but his team in general. Warms my heart!
I wish my history teachers were as enthusiastic about things as he is. We need channel's like this.
I bet your history teachers not going to cook you a stew either, using ingredients from those time periods ;) haha
*channels
no possessive "s" needed. Did you not attend school?
@@sophronielits not that big of a deal
I saw you posted a picture of "NewGate" in what was then Simsbury CT, it is now Granby, CT. It was a disused copper mine converted into a state prison about 1774. The prisoners were kept down in the mine caverns. The original intent was for the prisoners to earn their keep by mining copper. That did not last long. It seems the prisoners had this idea they could dig their way out of prison -who would of thought~! The prison was occupied until 1827 when the prisoners were transfered to a new prison. The prison still exists today as a history Museum in Granby, CT, it is open to the public from May to September
There is something so comforting about historic channels like this. I’ve been experiencing some semi mild depression and this channel is helping a little. It’s also making me hungry for fresh bread and “mush.” I think toast and oatmeal is going to be my breakfast tomorrow.
Just as an addition to the lobster comments, brother's coworker, poor family from The Maritimes,as a child, had lobster sandwiches for lunch everyday as it was readily available, cheaper than anything else but singled you out as being poor, because that was all they could afford, this was in the 1950's, not that long ago.
i spent 90 days in jail, back in 2019.... while it sucked, it was never lost on me how much worst things could be...and the food actually ranged from decent to pretty darn good, they actually served the best lentil soup i've ever had
Thanks for another great video. Lamb plucks, isnt the "guts" as you say, Pluck refers to the liver, lungs and heart. Its is what is used in making haggis (extremely delicious Scottish delicacy for anyone who isnt in Scotland/doesnt know.)
Now days people would turn their nose up at those but not even 100 years ago that would still be fairly common foods for the lower class. It wasn't till after WW2 that (at least in the US) that the more common cuts of meats become normal in the average household.
@@SilvaDreams Yes, but to go even further, the flavour of those organs, (especially the lungs) are insanely good. I get that some people are squeamish about such things, (I have things I am squeamish about that I'm sure are delicious) There is no such squeamishness about haggis in scotland though, it isnt an occassional delicacy its eaten every day by people from all walks of life its on 99 percent of breakfast menus here. (And Scotland, I am sad to say has a lot of "fussy eaters") but yeah haggis is delicious. And the combination of sheeps lung, liver, heart, oats, spices and fat, cooked in sheeps stomach.. is probably one of the greatest flavours I've ever had.
I dont eat it very often, purely because of health reasons, (its full of bad fats and calories) but Ill have it once a month or so and look forward to it every time.@@SilvaDreams
@@sharpskilz That is a bit of a lingering myth since the 90s of there being "bad" fats and cholesterol, the study that was run was proven wrong not even a year later but it was still run with till the 2000's. All of them are good it's just we tend to eat too much for our sedentary modern life style.
True or not that may be, but its still a lot of calories and Im a bit overweight so i avoid too many calories in the one sitting.
If I didnt have some kind of "mantra" to stick to I would be as big as a house.
I know guys who do 18 hour days on farms who are still unhealthily fat because of their food choices. So theres some sense in being careful about what you eat. At least thats my thinking
I think I misspoke about "bad fats" but I mean it just is very calorie dense, and extremely yummy @@SilvaDreams
Man, this channel is so positive he can broach a dark topic like historical mistreatment of prisoners with full honesty and understanding without sounding like a downer. It really makes you want to learn from him.
My 4th great grandfather was held prisoner by the British in 1776 for firing at a Man-o-War in New York Harbor. He was held in the Dutch Reformed Church. He tried escaping by tunneling with others, but was caught. His older Loyalist brother would bring him food, though it was not divulged in our family documents what the food was. He was 15 at the time and was eventually paroled. The family moved back to New Jersey.
My ancestors, several in fact, fought with Frances Marion in the swamps of the Carolinas against the Brits. They raided Loyalists to get enough food to carry on. To this day the first son of some of cousins are named Marion. Many got land grants in Georgia for serving in the Revolution because the Continental Congress had no money to pay them.
Ok bud cool story
My irish ancestors were sent to this country as prisoners, we escaped and ran off into the woods and lived with the Native Americans, we got along with them cuz we both hated the english.
Same my family also mixed with Africans at a very early time period we are still mostly white as rice but everyone in my family has like 20% African in em.
Irish native American solidarity is a big thing. Native people in the United States actually sent food relief to Ireland during the potato famine.
My grandmother told me once about how lobster used to be an inmate food, and I found this so interesting that I decided to share this historical note with my friends. My teacher overheard this story and called my grandmother a liar and me an idiot. An evil little part of me wants me to send that teacher this video out of the blue (this was 4 years ago).
Do it
It's official, I'm eating worse than a prisoner who's being fed as bad as he possibly can without croaking.
😂❤
That soup was probably thinned out. It maybe 17 ox hearts but that was probably to feed over 200 prisoners.
If this guy was my history teacher I’d have paid so much attention, and always looked forward to his classes
No nutmeg?! You're breaking my heart.
Sincerely, thank you for this episode and everything you create. Your videos are entertaining, informational, and always humble me with the abundance we have available to us today.
imagine letting a common prisoner have nutmeg.
even the pepper was stretch.
there is such a thing as too much fan service. putting nutmeg in EVERYTHING would get so trite and cringe. he only does it when necessary.
Still looks way more delicious than my daily diet.
oh yeah i love me some processed meat in the morning !
Sadly, it is way better for you than the standard American eats daily. We are in a time where the poor suffer from obesity issues. This would have been unimaginable only 100 years ago.
@@MakeMoney-zh7ucStep your game up
@@MakeMoney-zh7uclobster is processed ? Wow
@@MakeMoney-zh7ucimagine not knowing what a lobster is, so you think it's ground meat shaped into a lobster shape
Phenomenal presentation of this heavy historical subject, thank you kindly for delving into such an important aspect of this time period. Wonderfully covered, and the feast at the end was very heartening. Hats off to all of you!
I love history so much! I also love food related content. This channel is so informative and I’m glad I came across it a year ago. Haven’t missed a video since. Please keep up the amazing content!
This channel should be one of the biggest on CZcams. It’s so high quality and the entertainment factor is always there. Much appreciated
Love this channel, reminds me of Good Eats with Alton Brown. I watched every night before bed. I just found this channel and love the history and themes in these videos. Great work Townsends!
As always this video is amazingly interesting, well presented, and researched. The movement in the pictures and maps is great. Awesome job ❤
I love this channel and everyone who is a part of it over the years
Without exception, every single video is truly amazing.
Definitely one of my favourite channels. Always so informative. First time commenting, but have been subscribed for 6 months. Keep these coming.
One of your southernmost subscribers.
Rob, Tasmania, Australia
You are a true national treasure of historic information. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.
This actually looks good, I bet it's especially nice on a cold any rainy autumn day to warm you up! The video was very indormative as always.
I appreciate so much that ya'll looked into this difficult and painful topic!
Wow your videos get better and better. You have a knack for creating them. Keep it up!
Jon’s positivity is wonderful. I really love these videos ❤
thanks for sharing with us Fred.
I really appreciate your compassion for the real people that make up our history.
Thank you for the look back 🙏🙏🙏
Great video as per usual. Thank you
I'm loving this series of videos!
Everytime i return to this channel i cant help binging the entire series. Its a calmig wholesome learning experience. ❤
I’m waiting for Max’s hardtack *CLACK CLACK* clip to magically appear in a Townsends video.
Loving the feast series! I’m so glad this is on CZcams and you control it rather than a cable network…
Amazing never suspected you to actually do something along the lines of a prisoner's meal this is truly intriguing and I love the thinking path please do more similar to this maybe what would a picnic look like or something or even a family gathering
Another fascinating video. Thank you.
From the UK. Been sick today and stuck off work miserable in bed. Stumbled upon these videos...they are wonderful!
I love your videos esp readings of SH and Xmas Carol. You bring humanity back to even the darkest of subjects.
Thank you for your videos, Mr. Townsend
I'm addicted to this feast series. I also love that you've embraced the comment section teasing about nutmeg and adding that as an ingredient, if you will, to your episodes 😉
John… You have a wonderful, soothing voice. I want you to know that please, never change. Your videos are one of the few things I can listen to after a string of seizures, and not feel like a dog in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I recently finished reading Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin Napoleonic wars books. Many of the videos from Townsends add to the content of the books. I'm very grateful to Jon and company for the excellence in presentation and for the bigger picture they make of 18th and 19th century history!
Great video, loved the topic.
I love a new townsends video to wake up to in the morning ❤❤
Can’t wait for the day Townsends begins a partnership with education programs. Content like this would’ve gotten me way more excited about history class as a child in grade school.
Can we all just appreciate how well fed everyone is in this day and age in America, even the poorest?
Great history lesson for us all! Thx Townsends!
Back then all forms of Seafoods were so bountiful. You could literally walk onto the Beach and pick up buckets worth of pristine qualify Clams, Muscles, Oysters and Lobster.
Thanks for doing this video It's important to understand.
Great episode!
I appreciate both the sociological and religious history behind the changes in prison that you have shared with us. Thank you.
Go to jail get lobster. Nowadays you have to pay 60 bucks to get a lobster pizza.
For just a little clarification, pluck tended to refer to the lungs, heart, trachea, and sometimes esophageal tract, vs offal, ie, the guts. Pluck was used in the making of Haggis.
Uh, oh, Jon's in the Big House! The Clink! The Slammer!
Great video, Jon, Aaron, Caleb, Will, Ryan, and all the other beautiful people at Townsends!
I am loving this series
This reminds me of a question I always wanted to ask on the live stream but I work on Friday's and never get a chance to ask. What kind of cases did courts of the time tend to see? Are there journals or diaries of court clerks, lawyers, or judges that talks about the daily events of a courthouse?
Jon talks about this a bit in this livestream czcams.com/video/3IGULxL5Rdc/video.html starting at about minute 59.
Yes, there are records from the courts, a great source is the Old Bailey Records www.oldbaileyonline.org//static/GettingStarted.jsp
In colonial times where I live near Melbourne Australia they fed the prisoners abalone! They called it 'mutton fish'. It wasn't until the Chinese came and showed them how to cook it right that it became a luxury!
That needs to happen to carp
Abalone is actually really good, i actually have had sea cucumbers before, they are really good too, worth a try, you have to have them cooked right though
@@ArchangelMichael. Yes, it's what he said.
another awesome video
Always amazing videos,
I like the part at the end where he says this is (name of meal being shown in the video) and it is very good
Great research
Something about this channel calms my anxiety, even though he’s talking about prisons in this episode.
I've really enjoyed this series.
The manner in which you tell the history of the people, and with those paintings, I really get transported to that time period and can really imagine myself being one of the characters that you are talking about.
Love the video but in America at least, there is absolutely nothing "rehabilitating" about the Federal Prison system. We should adopt Finland's model imo.
Excellent video
Excellent deep dive on the topic. I'm sure his version would be delicious. I would imagine back in those days hygiene and food safety factored a whole lot less, especially in a penententary of the day.
Many people get flabbergasted to hear prisoners used to be fed lobster, but don't understand just how quickly it goes bad and how bad it gets. If not chilled properly (and this was in the 18th century) it more or less starts to immediately break down and smell like ammonia. And not just a faint whiff. I've been to (and promptly walked out of) restaurants where the smell burned your throat before you took a bite!
They weren't getting lobsters directly from the ocean and sending them to prisoners, these were what couldn't be sold and were starting to go bad BEFORE being shipped to the prisons... and you certainly wern't getting any butter to drip then in! These were food poisoning in a shell.
@7:20 do you have any information on the meals for the australian prisons? the lobsters and other foods? seeing the lobster infront of you made me hope to hear somthing about those prisons
Speaking of prisoners of war and the food they had, *Antoine-Augustin Parmentier* is a very interesting character.
Parmentier was a french pharmacist who was captured and imprisoned by the Prussians, during the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763)
His diet in prison consisted mainly of potatoes, which the French considered animal feed.
When he was released from prison after three years and returned home to France, he realized that his health was fine. Potatoes were quite suitable for human consumption.
And then he started to promote the wonderful potato all over France.
He developed many recipes with potatoes, and several of them still caries his name.
1:42 witnesses are still sometimes held in jail, especially if they ignore subpoenas.
I'd like to see you do a special on Christmas foods of the time. Defiantly different from a German Christmas Dinner
It makes sense to keep the potatoeskin on the potatoes because it is very nutritious.
I challenge you to do a segment on Salt Risen Bread.
Would LOVE to see it!
What a great video. I really love when you dive into the history, and then tie it back to FOOD!
I Love this Series! Interesting Information AND Food, its like christmas
Thanks Jon like you said not a fun topic but one we need to know. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼🍞
Honestly this looks so good! On a good fall cool eve... Chunk ov bread oh my goodness. YUM
We don't really rehabilitate anyone anymore in prisons. A few people learn from their situation in prison, but many just end up back in there. Once institutionalized, some people prefer the order to prison over the chaotic situation of being free.
It's not "anymore," the US has never actually set up a prison system with the goal of rehabilitation. We harp on about rehabilitation to feel better about ourselves but still take a punitive approach to it because being "soft on crime" is a political loser. We covered that whole bit extensively in law school. Then look into the Norwegian prison system. Only 20% re-offend within two years, lowest rate in the world, and it holds about even over time (i.e. they don't just wait five years to do crime again). In the US we see 43% within the same year, 68% at three years, 77% within five years, 83% within nine years. But if we just punish harder, surely that will fix them!
@@BigSeth1090 what's really caused our system to be such a failure is that a person will come out with no skills, their record makes finding good work hard, they get back into their old habits to make money, and so they end up back in the same prison later. Vocational training and more tax incentives for companies to hire ex-cons can be helpful.
@@sbrazenor2 that would help to a point. but the bigger problem is that prison is absolutely unlike society to the point that people lose the skills to just live in society. The Norwegian system, prisons are more like enclosed communities. Separate housing units almost like bungalows (that they're responsible for maintaining), a degree of freedom within the community, everyone has a job within the town, so they basically still live "in a society" with access to educational and vocational resources as well. Rather than learning to live inside then having to re-learn how to live outside years later. Only the most dangerous prisoners are sent to anything that resembles our lower-security units.
@@BigSeth1090Well we punish them not to fix them but to provide justice which can often be defined as morally correct vengeance. Punishment is generally not about reform in general. I would say a hybrid system of rehabilitation and punishment is ideal because For some crimes yes they can be reformed but it is immoral to not have some negative consequences and it ultimately undermines the state’s legitimacy when it provides punishment that the victims and larger society do not satisfactory as that is the social contract of giving up the right of individual violence to the state.
@@badart3204 The whole "justice" point overlooks the fact that we live in a fundamentally unjust society. And that's before we get into the racial and economic disparities in criminal punishment. Not criminal activity, criminal punishment.
People agree with our punitive process because they want to see the lesser people hurt, rather than address any of the problems that leads to crime in the first place. Being taken out of society even in the Norwegian sense is punishment, yet to the average American they pop off "well it's just like vacation." No, it's involuntary confinement without enforced suffering. That can, y'know, be a thing.
When people tell themselves "it is moral and just to make them suffer for what they did," they are acting immorally and using "justice" as a word to, well, justify it. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Either someone is the equivalent of a rabid dog who cannot be allowed to continue existing in society because they pathologically cannot be rehabilitated (and the places Norway keeps them look a lot like the places we do), or they're deserving of actual rehabilitation, there's no in-between. Either look in the mirror and say "yep we're bad people on purpose" and own it, or advocate that the system change.
Yeah, the government should act in accordance people's wishes. If our wishes are inhumane, the least we can do is nut up and own it, quit lying to ourselves. If they'd say "yes I want to see unfortunate people suffer needlessly in prison to make myself feel good," I'd at least respect their honesty, if not their immorality.
Another excellent video jon? Any thoughts on video about feast of the slaves?
There was a riot in the early 20th century at Thomaston State prison in Maine over the repeated feeding of lobster that at the time was regarded as a trash fish. They demanded cod at least once a week. How times change, LOL.
I was kind of hoping John would do the whole episode in the prisoner's outfit in the thumbnail
My family is lobster fishermen from Maine going back to 1500. Good vid
I did a study about ten years ago about the cost of meals in Iowa prisons. At that time the low (depending on the institution) was 65 cents per plate and the high was $1.25. Some of the cost may be accounted for by prison farm produce and meats. Anyone who thinks people in jail are living high on the hog is mistaken.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia. We had a penitentiary called Rockhead Prison (1859-1969). My grandmother would tell my father as a child in the 50's that if he did not behave he would be eating lobster in Rockhead Prison.
That is what they ate in prison.
Any child who came to school with lobster sandwiches was obviously poor.
Now we serve it in Michelin rated restaurants.
My uncle worked at the federal prison in Michigan long ago, and when he worked there they got giant truckloads of lobster. The prisoners had lobster so much, they had to find ways to disguise it as another meat, like chicken. Definitely odd to think of these days 😂
Always love your videos! Having said that, I feel a bit misled about the content of this one- you have featured a lobster as your thumbnail and that did not really become a main topic in your video. Hope you understand the feedback
Nice video! Its really amazing how lobster was considered prison meal back then.
French Guiana was another place you could be sent as well...that is some fascinating history...
Edit: also some of the historical laws were interesting. I recall a law in mass that you could not feed your servants lobster more then 2 or 3 times a week.
Townsends---you need to do a video on "Rumford's Soup", invented by a Count Rumford in about 1800. It was the first attempt at "scientific" nutrition, and feeding as many people as cheaply as possible. It quickly became the standard food served in prisons, workhouses, and military rations.
looooooooooove your channel.