The Evansville Daily Journal

Queer Victuals.

The New York Tribune, of Friday, contains the trial of a butcher for selling "plated veal," in which some circumstances leaked out that rather astonished us. Here is the definition of "plated veal," George Pessinger, the prosecuting witness, says: I mean by plated veal, putting a piece of fat pork where the kidneys ought to be: if the whole of these nine quarters were fried out, after taking away the pork, enough fat could not be got out to grease a jack-knife; butchers call this "bob veal;" I have been a butcher for forty years; I consider this meat very unwholesome; it was very young, and had been starved either here or while it was being brought here; there was not a particle of fat about it, and but very little meat on the bones, and consider what there was very unwholesome. This comes from licensing men to sell meat that know nothing about it; the name is sufficient: I can produce a woman in Williamsburgh that cooked steaks cut from the thigh of the pirate Gibbs, who was hung, and people ate and pronounced them the finest they ever ate being under the impression that it was the flesh of an animal.

This statement about eating a round steak of a pirate, appears to have excited a little curiosity in the Court House, and after the case was over, Pessinger was asked what he meant by it. Here is his explanation: Mr. Pessinger, in an explanation of the broiling of a portion of the flesh of Gibbs said it was at a hotel in the Bowery, kept by the husband of the woman referred to, at an affair called a "tackle," in which every person participating, contributed some articles of food to be prepared for dinner; this place was a resort for medical students, and the body of Gibbs having been handed over to the medical faculty for dissection, a wag of a student conceived the idea of playing off a joke upon some of the participants at the "Tackle:" he accordingly procured some slices of the remains of the pirate, which were cooked and passed off as the flesh of some animal; those who partook, pronounced it most delicious. Pessinger attended one of the "Tackles" in his earlier days where part of a dog was nicely cooked and served up; the meat was highly praised by all who partook, and it set nicely upon the stomach until the joke leaked out, and then it would not stay down. "Dog sassages" is a standing joke, but from the above it appears that "dog" meat in some shape is no joke at all.