Shopping – Part of the wife’s job, of course, was to keep the family fed. The vegetables came out of the garden but she had to do the shopping for things that you couldn’t get out of the garden. When she went to the grocer’s she would take the shopping list with her, and at the grocer’s in those days, everything was loose. Nothing was packeted except tea. That was in quarter pound packets. The packets themselves comprised a stiff paper. Flour—one bought in stout paper bags or in linen bags. Those were about the only things that were packeted in any way—porridge, rice, sugar—all those things were loose.
The container was brought down. Whatever the wife needed was weighed before her very eyes on the scale, and put into a bag, or in one of these cones that was very cleverly made by the grocers in those days. It was quite an art that I never mastered. The cone was pinched at the bottom and the top folded over.
Usually one of the assistants was on the butter counter and he had two enormous lumps of butter in front of him up to about a two feet cube. One was fresh and the other salt butter, and according to what was asked for, he would knock a lump off this huge cube. He would then put it on the scales, take some off or add some on, until he got it right. On the board in front of him he would shape it into a nice rectangle with his butter pats and wrap it in greaseproof paper.
Ken—I seem to recall at the Home & Colonial they would put some decoration on the butter.
Cecil—That’s right. The chap would select a wooden thing, which he would press into the butter after he shaped it, which left an impression of a cow or thistle etc.
That was the way the housewife bought all the goods from the grocer. When she had exhausted her list, the grocer would get out a large sheet of paper from under the counter, arrange all her purchases on top and
wrap the lot into a parcel. That was an art in itself. The grocers were artists at it, and it was all tied up with string, for there was no such thing as sticky paper we have now. It was brown paper and string.
And he’d say, “Would you like me to deliver it, Mrs So-and-so?” And she’d say, “Yes please”.
And he’d write on the outside where it had to go. And he’d say, “Well the boy will bring it round later on in the day”.
And so his errand boy delivered that and everybody else’s parcels. If it was a small one the grocer would probably arranged it neatly with string on the top for the lady to carry out. If it was a larger parcel he would offer to have it delivered to her. He would write her name and address on the outside and the errand boy would bring it round to the house later on.
The same went on with the butcher. Today the joints are already cut off, but in those days there was nothing like that. The housewife went in. She knew what she wanted in the way of meat—either beef, mutton or pork and what sort of joints she wanted—and told the butcher what she needed. Hanging up behind the butcher were carcasses, and he would take an appropriate piece of meat, put it on the counter, cut off what was required, weigh it and price it. And she would go to the cash desk and she would return to recover her joint, already wrapped.
I well remember my mother. because she, like other housewives, was particular about what she bought. I remember going to the butcher’s with her on one occasion. She told him what she wanted. He got out his knife and said, “About there ma’am?”
She looked at this and said, “No I don’t like the look of that. What’s the other end like?” And he showed her the other end and she said, “No that’s as bad as the other end.” Then she said, “I’ll have a piece from the middle.” You try that with a butcher nowadays. But he cut it down the middle and turned it round so she could see the end and said, “Is that better madam?”
“Yes” she said, and told him how much she wanted.
Cooking
Ken—How did she manage with the cooking?
Cecil—Everything in the way of cooking and heating in those days was done by coal fire. One had to stock up with coal in the summer, because in winter there was such a demand, one had to wait for a long time before it was delivered. So in the winter time, by coal fire and in the kitchen, the cooking was done on the register stove. It seems they were all made by the same firm because they were identical. Even then they were very sophisticated affairs. There was a fire in the middle and an oven on one side. If it was a bigger model there was an oven on either side.
There was a system of dampers—things that you pulled out and pushed in. According to the way you managed the dampers you would direct the heat to the oven, or the hob on top, according to what you wanted. If there was something to be put in the oven the wife would arrange the dampers accordingly, and in due course, she would open the oven door, put her hand in and she would know if the oven was hot enough or not. There were no thermostats in those days and women’s hands were the best thermometers.
What came out of those ovens was beautiful. I remember some lovely dome tops, all brown with a crack across the top. Meat came out beautifully cooked with no other help other than the knowledge of the housewife. That was how the cooking was done.
There was a drawback to that way of cooking, because when mum got up in the morning and the kitchen fire had gone out, she had to lay it and relight it. It took a long time to draw, and it took even longer, before it threw any heat. The family were all early risers and they all wanted cooked breakfasts. They never went out without a cooked breakfast in those days. It was part of the way one lived and there had to be another means of cooking food quickly.
This was done on the paraffin stove. Everyone had a paraffin stove. We had a couple. It was usually a long wick with regulators and a hob on the top to take a frying pan or whatever. And paraffin gave a great deal of heat.
My wife and I had a caravan during the Second World War and we had paraffin-heated on board. My wife had been used to gas cooking and she said that the paraffin was a lot hotter than the gas.
Ken—So how did people preserve their food?
Cecil—We had a larder in Sturges Road. When we lived in the Market Place we had didn’t have a larder there, we had a safe. They were a standard thing purchased in the ironmongers. The sides and back and front were made of perforated zinc to let the air through so there was a current of air. Meat used to keep quite well.
Ken—Mainly kept the flies off.
Cecil—Yes, and you kept it on the right side of the house where it was cool. We never had any problem. I don’t think anybody did in those days. We didn’t get salmonella. We didn’t get mad cow disease. We didn’t get anything like that. Food poisoning was something you had never heard of.
Of course there were other things that impinged on that because you didn’t keep milk for a long time. The milkman called twice a day. He had his cart with a churn in the front and his can. He’d bring his can to the back door and you’d say, “I’ll have a pint please”. You gave him your jug. He would measure the pint out of his can. He did this twice a day, and you always had fresh milk. The baker called every day with a basket with a selection of loaves.
I think we had a lot more fresh food than now because, you see, the trend is now to have deep freezes and fridges. People buy food and they keep it for twelve months so you are eating stale food. How people do it I can’t make out.