I’m reading this book called The Ties That Bound and it analyzes primary sources from medieval England. I was surprised by how common it was for pigs to kill children. I have so many questions! Where did the pigs come from and why were they able to wander into homes? And likewise how did toddlers get outside without supervision? Did people not have functioning doors with locks and handles? Are pigs particularly violent, more than other animals? Were these domestic pigs being raised as livestock, or more likely wild pigs? Would a pig eat a child? Were children taught to fear pigs?
Pigs in the medieval period were a very different animal to the friendly fat pink creatures living in pigsties we imagine today. Before modern levels of agricultural productivity, there wasn't often an abundance of cheap grains and soybeans to feed enclosed livestock, with only rare exceptions like the elite Roman swine destined for aristocratic tables, who were fed "two pounds of barley soaked in water" daily (Varro, Rerum rusticarum libri tres). Most pigs were let loose to scavenge, converting random farm waste and forest nuts and roots into meat and fat.
In the forest, domesticated swine would constantly encounter and interbreed with wild boars. The traits that make for a good medieval scavenger are rather different from what modern pig farmers look for in a factory farm pig. Medieval pigs would have been more athletic and inquisitive and wily, much closer in appearance and behavior to wild boars.
Pigs are not particularly violent but they are omnivores and their appetites do match their reputations. Pigs will happily eat meat when they find it. They aren't predatory animals but hungry pigs will certainly eat warm little humans if they think they can get away with it. Even today it's not unusual for pig farmers to be eaten by their hogs.
Historian Mark Essig, in his seminal text Lesser Beasts (Basic Books 2015) noted that "Medieval swine had frequent opportunity for scavenging human remains", including executed prisoners, battlefield deaths, suicides, and excommunicated Christians left unburied as punishment. Essig argues that "the Jewish distaste for pigs persisted as well, transformed but preserved within European Christianity... Pigs were not only unclean: on occasion, they seemed downright evil." Essig argues that as human populations expanded and forests shrank, hunger forced European pigs to feed in human settlements, precipitating more porcine anthropophagy.