BUYING, STORING, AND CARING FOR FOOD
The place where food is bought is important. How it is bought and when
are also important questions. The usual plan for a Lambeth housekeeper
is to make her great purchase on Saturday evening when she gets her
allowance. She probably buys the soap, wood, oil, tea, sugar, margarine,
tinned milk, and perhaps jam, for the week. To these she adds the Sunday
dinner, which means a joint or part of a joint, greens, and potatoes. The
bread she gets daily, also the rasher, fish, or other relish, for her
husband’s special use. Further purchases of meat are made, if they are
made, about Wednesday, while potatoes and pot herbs, as well as fish,
often come round on barrows, and are usually bought as required. When she
has put aside the rent, the insurance, the boot club money, and spent
the Saturday night’s five or six shillings, she keeps the pennies for
the gas-meter and the money for the little extras in some kind of purse
or private receptacle which lives within reach of her hand. A woman,
during the time she is laid up at her confinement, will sleep with her
purse in her hand or under the pillow, and during the daytime she doles
out with an anxious heart the pennies for gas or the two-pences for
father’s relish. She generally complains bitterly that the neighbour who
is “doing” for her has a heavy hand with the margarine, and no conscience
with the tea or sugar.
The regular shopping is monotonous. The order at the grocer’s shop is
nearly always the same, as is also that at the oilman’s. The Sunday
dinner requires thought, but tends to repeat itself with the more
methodical housewife, who has perhaps a leaning towards neck of mutton as
the most interesting of the cheaper joints, or towards a half-shoulder
as cutting to better advantage. It is often the same dinner week after
week—one course of meat with greens and potatoes. Some women indulge in
flights of fancy, and treat the family to a few pounds of fat bacon at
6d. per pound, a quality which is not to be recommended, or even to the
extravagance of a rabbit and onions for a change. These women would be
likely to vary the vegetables too; and in their accounts tomatoes, when
tomatoes are cheap, may appear. It is only in the budgets of the very
small family, however, that such extravagant luxuries would creep in.
In households where there is but one room there may be no storage space
at all. Coal may be kept in the one cupboard on the floor beside the
fireplace; or there may be such hoards of mice in the walls that no place
is safe for food but a basin with a plate over it. One woman when lying
in bed early in the morning unravelled a mystery which had puzzled her
for weeks. She had not been able to find out how the food she kept on a
high shelf of the dresser was being got at by mice. On the morning in
question her eye was caught by movements which appeared to her to be
in the air above her head. To her surprise, she realized that a long
procession of mice was making use of her clothes-line to cross the room
and climb down the loose end on to the high dresser shelf. They would,
when satisfied, doubtless have returned by the same route had she not
roused her husband. “But ’e ony terrified ’em,” she said sadly, “’e never
caught one.” In such cases it is necessary for the housekeeper to buy
all provisions other than tinned milk, perhaps, day by day. She probably
finds this more extravagant—even to the extent of paying more for the
article. Tea, butter, and sugar, by the ounce may actually cost more, and
they seldom go so far.
Another reason for buying all necessaries daily is that many men, though
in a perfectly regular job (such as some kinds of carting), are paid
daily, as though they were casuals. The amounts vary, moreover. One day
they bring home 4s. 6d., another 3s. The housewife is never sure what
she will have to spend, and as the family needs are, so must she supply
necessaries out of the irregular daily sum handed to her.
The daily purchases of the wife of a dustsorter are given below. The
husband was paid 3s. a day in cash, which he brought regularly to his
wife. He collected out of the material he sorted, which came from the
dustbins of Westminster, enough broken bread to sell as pig-food for a
sum which paid both the rent and the burial insurance. He also collected
and brought home each evening enough coal and cinders to supply the
family needs, and, curiously enough, he collected and brought home a
sufficiency of soap. After paying 5s. for rent and 1s. for insurance,
he had enough left from these extra sources of income for his own
pocket-money. With rent, insurance, coal, and soap, provided, the
housekeeper would have been well off indeed, as Lambeth goes, could she
have laid out her money to better advantage. She never had more than 3s.
at a time, and was accustomed to buy everything day by day. There was but
one room. There were four children, who looked stronger than they were.
The mother suffered from anæmia, and was not a particularly good manager,
though she fed her children fairly well and seemed to be a moderately
good cook. She had no oven. An account of how she laid out her 18s. is
given on pp. 108, 109.
It is obvious that this is an extravagant way of buying. Not only is the
woman charged more for some items, such as sugar and butter, which she
prefers to margarine even at the extra price, but the daily purchase
leads to larger amounts being used. Her husband is a teetotaller, but
likes strong tea, and that very sweet. Hence 12 ozs. of tea, 3 lbs. of
sugar, and 3 tins of milk. The baby was very young and the mother anæmic,
and the 8d. for a girl to take it out is money usefully spent. Otherwise
the infant would hardly ever have left the room, as her mother does the
daily marketing when the baby is asleep. Since this account was made out
the authorities have advised the family to take two rooms at an advanced
rental of 2s., of which the father and mother each pay half. So the
weekly list of purchases has now to be made out of 17s. The baby is six
months old instead of five weeks, and the mother’s milk has completely
failed her. Thus the expenses increase, while the housekeeping allowance
is less.
s. d.
_Monday_, 3s.:
2 ozs. tea, 2d.; ½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter,
3½d.; bread, 3d. 0 10
Potatoes, 2d.; onions, carrots, greens, 2½d. 0 4½
Gas 0 2
-----
1 4½
-----
In hand 1 7½
_Tuesday_, 3s.:
2 ozs. tea, 2d.; ½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter,
3½d.; bread, 3d. 0 10
One tin of milk, 3½d.; relish for husband’s tea, 2d. 0 5½
Potatoes, 2d.; greens and pot herbs, 3½d.; meat, 7d. 1 0½
Gas 0 2
-----
2 6
-----
In hand 2 1½
_Wednesday_, 3s.:
2 ozs. tea, 2d.; ½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter,
3½d.; bread, 3d. 0 10
1 lb. pieces, 4½d.; potatoes, 2d.; vegetables,
1½d.; rice, ½d. 0 8½
Clothing club 1 0
Gas 0 1
-----
2 7½
-----
In hand 2 6
_Thursday_, 3s.:
½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter, 3½d.; bread, 3d 0 8
One tin of milk, 3½d.; meat, 6d.; potatoes, 2d;
Quaker oats, 2½d.; rice, ½d. 1 2½
Boot club 1 0
Gas 0 1
-----
2 11½
-----
In hand 2 6½
_Friday_, 3s.:
2 ozs. tea, 2d.; ½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter,
3½d.; bread, 3d. 0 10
Suet, 2d.; flour, 2½d.; treacle, 1½d. 0 6
Gas 0 2
Five days’ pay for neighbour’s girl to take
out the baby 0 6
-----
2 0
-----
In hand 3 6½
_Saturday_, 3s. + 3s. 6½d. = 6s. 6½d.:
2 ozs. tea, 2d.; ½ lb. sugar, 1½d.; 4 ozs. butter,
3½d.; bread, 6d. 1 1
One tin of milk, 3½d.; bacon, 6d.; eggs, 2d.;
potatoes, 2d.; greens, 2d. 1 3½
Gas 0 1
Sunday’s joint 2 0
Bakehouse 0 2
Blacklead, hearthstone, matches, soda 0 4
Husband’s shirt 1 0
Baby’s birth certificate 0 3
Girl to mind baby 0 2
-----
6 6½
In the case of women who handle the whole week’s wage at once, there is
generally great need of more cupboard space. Occasionally a scullery
helps to solve the problem, and there is often a very shallow cupboard
beside the chimney, high enough from the floor to be clear of mice and
beetles, and out of reach of children. A kitchen with the copper in it is
a bad place for keeping food; a kitchen infested with any kind of vermin
is also a bad place to keep food; a kitchen which is plagued with flies
is equally impossible. The women whose lives are passed in such kitchens
may feel that, in spite of the extra expense and waste, daily buying of
perishable food is a necessity.
A woman with a sick child—one of six—living in one room, was allowed milk
for the use of the child, who was extremely ill. The only place where she
could keep the milk was a basin with an old piece of wet rag thrown over
it. The visitor found seven flies in the milk, and many others crawling
on the inner side of the rag. The weather was stifling. The room, though
untidy, was tolerably clean. But over the senseless child on the one bed
in the room hovered a great cloud of flies. The mother stood hour after
hour brushing them away. On the advice of the visitor the sick child
was carried off there and then to the infirmary, where it ultimately
recovered. Once the child was removed, the flies ceased to swarm into the
room.
Cooking, which has already been mentioned in connection with old and
burnt saucepans and utensils, is necessarily very perfunctory and
rudimentary. To boil a neck with pot herbs on Sunday, and make a stew
of “pieces” on Wednesday, often finishes all that has to be done with
meat. The intermediate dinners will ring the changes on cold neck, suet
pudding, perhaps fried fish or cheap sausages, and rice or potatoes.
Breakfast and tea, with the exception of the husband’s relishes, consist
of tea, and bread spread with butter, jam, or margarine. In houses where
no gas is laid on, the gas-stove cannot take the place of a missing
oven, and it is extraordinary how many one-roomed dwellings are without
an oven. Two pots, both burned, a frying-pan, and a kettle, do not make
an equipment with which it is easy to manage the delicacies of cooking.
Boiling can be done in a burnt saucepan, provided there is water enough
in the can which stands behind the door to fill the pot sufficiently.
Frying is held to be easy, but fat is not plentiful, and frying in
Lambeth usually means frizzling in a very tiny amount of half-boiling
grease. The great panful of fat which would be used by a good cook is
impossible of attainment. To stand by and watch the cooking is difficult
when so many things have to be done at once. The pot, once placed on
the fire or the gas-stove, has to look after itself, while the mother
nurses a baby, or does a bit of washing, or tidies the room and gets out
the few plates which she calls “laying the dinner.” The children all
come trooping in from school before she has finished, and have to be
scolded a little and told to get out of the way, and when she has got
them arranged sitting or standing round the table she helps each one as
quickly and fairly as she can. If her husband is not there, she may put
aside his portion to be warmed up and eaten later. She does not attempt
to eat with the family. She is server and provider, and her work is to
see that everyone gets a fair share, according to his or her deserts and
the merits of the case. She may or may not sit down, but perhaps with the
baby in her arms she feeds the youngest but one with potato and gravy
or suet pudding, whichever is the dinner of the day, for fear it shall
waste its food and spoil its clothes. When the family have finished what
she sets before them, she sees to washing of hands where the age of the
washer is tender, and thankfully packs them all off again to afternoon
school, having as likely as not called back the one who banged the door
to tell him to go out again and “do it prop’ly.” The husband may not
like his dinner put aside for him, in which case a second cooking is
necessary. So much has to be done each day. The Lambeth woman has no joy
in cooking for its own sake.