On line shopping in 1909

Now I could have chosen any one of a number of those online grocery vans and over the years we have used a few, but Morrisons is the current company which does a good job of delivering on those wet days when I don’t fancy trailing home  with a shed load of stuff.  

That and the simple fact that  I have always liked the colour yellow.

Of course despite what  all the media might tell you about shopping on line it isn’t new.

A century ago delivery men on bikes and on horse drawn carts plied the roads of Manchester delivering to the homes of the wealthy and not so wealthy.

So here is another one of those occasional posts looking at how horses pulled the way across the township.

Now I don’t have a date or an exact location for our delivery boy and horse but reckon it could be sometime around the end of 1909 and perhaps in new Chorlton.

In that year the firm of George Ernest Tinker was still based on Bradshaw Street in Hulme which was between Chester Road and City Road, but by 1911 had moved.

So if this is about 1909 then I think the delivery boy in the picture will be Harold Tinker who was 15 and employed by his father as a “Delivering Bread by Van.”

By contrast George described himself and his eldest son as master bakers in the 1911 census and the family were living in a 7 roomed house called Burnham on Burnage Lane.

Now I can’t find a business address for them in that year but they were clearly still trading.

Harold would not have been alone on our roads back then, look at any picture of the period and there will be a delivery cart somewhere.

Not only would there have been the specialist tradesmen coming in from outside the township but there would have been local shopkeepers, the coal vans and the itinerant traders.

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker and Morrisons