Owner is Fined $75 for Cruelty to Pigs

1920

Gives Government Diet as Excuse and Appeals Case

CLINTON, Mass., Feb. 26. — Melvin F. Master of Lowell, owner of a farm in Harvard, was fined $75 by Judge Jonathan Smith in the District Court here on a charge of cruelty to twenty-two pigs he had at his farm.

Robert L. Dyson of Worcester, agent for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, prosecuted the case. Other witnesses were Paul Griffin, a 14-year-old boy left by Master to care for the pigs, and Constable William Hanna of Harvard.

It was shown that eight of the pigs died of exposure in January and that the fourteen found alive weighed but forty pounds at 9 months of age, when they should weigh 150 pounds each. They were fed but twenty-five pounds of bran and meal a day since Dec. 3, the Griffin boy testified.