Now when I want to fall back into the London of the 1850s, there is no better source than the observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*
They are a fascinating insight into how the poor lived and worked, and chief amongst these were the street sellers, and these I have already written about.**
And so as I have become interested again in the manufacture and sale of ice cream in the 19th century I turned to Mr. Mayhew, who for once didn’t quite get it right.
"I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice creams.
A quick-witted street seller – but, not in the provision’ line- conversing with me upon this subject, and said: ‘Ices in the streets! Aye, and there will be jellies next and then mock turtle, and the real ticket, sir. I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue.
You’ll keep your eyes open sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it. Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.
Not withstanding the sanguine anticipation of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a preservation of the traffic”.
Alas Mr. Mayhew didn’t include pictures of the ice cream sellers, so I have fallen back on The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall.
Location; London in 1851
Pictures; The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall, 1851 from London Labour & the London Poor
*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851
*London Labour and the London Poor, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/London%20Labour%20and%20the%20the%20London%20Poor
My granny’s father was John Henry Townley, who owned a confectioner’s and Herbalist shop at 135 Wilmslow Road ( now in the hear of the “curry mile”!
ReplyDeleteHis expertise was in making ice cream. My grandmother, Annie, a teenager at the time, hated having to push the ice cream handcart to Carters Depository Warehouse?? To serve the workmen there at lunchtime on summer days. No doubt. They cheeked her!
Dave
Granny Townley ( whenever she ate ice cream as an old lady )would say: “Pah! They can’t make ice cream nowadays!”
What would people say was a baked potato, I have in my mind a potato cooked on an open fire maybe a bonfire , and cooked in the skin . Do we now call that a jacket potato.
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