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205
heralded by the vigorous ringing of his hand-bell. In many
instances, I suspect, the butter was really margarine.
There were no pre-packed foods at this time and only a few
commodities such as salmon, condensed milk, corned beef and
sardines were canned. Meat was being sold from open-fronted
shops and raw milk dispensed from uncovered cans at street
doors. People bought groceries "loose" and items such as jam,
syrup and pickles were weighed out on highly polished scales
in the customer's own bowl or container—there were no automatic
scales at that time. Tea was sold directly from open
wooden chests, sugar "moist", "lump", or "pieces" was taken
straight from the sack and packed into thick blue paper "pokes"
or cones made up then and there, and butter was scooped from
a solid decorated block, patted into shape by wooden patters,
weighed and delivered to the purchaser in grease-proof paper.
Ice-cream, manufactured mainly by Italians in the one room
where the family ate and slept, was being sold from hand-carts
under most reprehensible conditions. Sweetmeats such as ginger
snaps were hawked from portable trays with little regard for
the dirt-laden atmosphere. Saveloys, pease pudding, faggots,
pig's trotters, tripe and bullock's cheeks often cooked in, and
sold from the front rooms of dwellings of doubtful cleanliness,
were the delicacies of a colourful but unhygienic bygone age,
when the average man's wage was often no more than £1 a week.
Household refuse was collected from ill assorted bins or
merely shovelled from ash pits to be conveyed to the Council's
depot in topless horse-drawn carts to lie exposed on the quayside
to await transportation by barge to the dumping areas in
the North Sea. Some main streets were surfaced with wooden
blocks and street orderlies had great difficulty in cleaning away
the filth and horse manure ground into its surface by passing
traffic. During dry weather, dust from these sources provided a
constant stream of pathogenic organisms on to the contents of
open-fronted shops and the uncovered comestibles. In extreme
weather conditions horses would die and it was no rare sight
to see a carcass in the street waiting removal to the knacker's
yard.
More often than not, a standpipe in an open yard was the
only means of providing a number of families in the vicinity
with a not too reliable water supply and similar arrangements
for the use of water closets were common.
Unlike today, there was no national scheme for medical
attention and arrangements for such treatment were a trifle