When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012