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These are recollections of local shops and tradesmen, seen through the eyes of a child from a working class family in the early 1900s in Edmonton, north London (then Middlesex). They were written in the 1980s by my mother, Florence Edith Clarke (born Cole), and are here as a service to other researchers and a tribute to her memory. They include: the grocer; the greengrocer; the baker; the dairy; the draper; the sweet shop; and the street vendor. |
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My mother shopped locally and I sometimes went with her. There were no supermarkets selling everything. So we had to go to lots of different shops which made shopping a lengthy business. It was also hard work because we had no cars to carry our purchases back home, although fortunately it was common for shops to deliver. |
| The provisions came from a grocer's shop called Brown’s. It was a family shop, where everyone was treated as though their custom mattered. The grocer would greet my mother by name, saying something like:
"Good evening Mrs Cole. What would you like? Some collar bacon and not too salt?"
Then he would hold up a piece of bacon and say, "How about some rashers off here?"
There was quite an art to cutting the bacon. Small weights such as half an ounze or an ounze were on a piece of string and had to be manipulated with great skill. I heard my mother say about one shop
"I’m not going there. He's a bit too tricky on the scales for my
liking".
The cheese came as a large hunk and had to be cut with a wire to whatever size one wanted. The butter came in large blocks which stood on a marble slab with another slab in front with the word "butter" engraved in gold coloured letters. Butter was not pre-packed into convenient weights for sale. It had to be cut to weight with butter pats made of wood and kept in a pail of water to stop them sticking. There was an art to cutting the butter because it was never possible to cut off the precise weight that anyone wanted. So the grocer had to take bits off or put bits on to make up a right weight. To add a bit, he would use the butter pats which had been standing in the water and smack a bit onto the main piece of butter. He might have to do this a number of times, and the smacking was important to make the piece of butter into a nice shape. I loved to watch my mother’s face when Mr Brown gave her a taste of the butter on the end of the pat to see if it was too salt (a common practice in those days). Her lips would go and down and up and down, and I thought it must have been lovely to be able to do that. |
| The greengrocer was Mr Rice. With his wife, he worked a flourishing business in Silver Street, and he came to deliver with his horse and cart on Saturdays. I remember him mostly on a hot summer’s day, when he would tuck a large cabbage leaf into the back of his cap to protect his neck from the hot sun. We children regularly spent some of our pocket money with him, mainly on locus beans. They were often full of insects eggs but we weren’t put off. I really liked them. |
| There were two bakers shops in Edmonton where we
lived and both were owned by Germans. There were no cream cakes in
those days. The two cakes that I associated with the shops were long
oblong shortbreads with a cherry in the centre and something called
rice cakes. These were very plain that had crystallised sugar
sprinkled on top, again with a cherry in the centre. The bread was
cooked in the bakery at the back of the shop. It was a lovely sight to
see the baker come into the shop wearing a cap
and white apron and carrying a tray of hot bread on top
of his head, and the smell was wonderful. The bread was lovely, crusty and its tasty.
Most of it as white; there was some brown but white
was much more popular.
You didn't pay for your bread as you bought it. The Baker carried a book in a leather pouch, and every item was entered into it. Then you paid for a whole week on Saturdays. Bakers would deliver orders to houses. Our baker had a two wheel hand cart with a wooden leg at the back and one either side of the handles. During the 1914-18 war, though, things changed. So many men were called up into the forces that we had to go and get our own bread from the shop. We had ration books and the bread had to be weighed. If the loaf was supposed to be two pounds, and it fell short, the shop had little squares of bread about two inches across that were called makeweights. Usually only one would ever be required. In those days when the children went to fetch the bread, it was quite normal for them to eat the makeweight on the way home. |
| The dairy was a beautifully clean-looking place with
white tiles on the walls, white china swans in the window and a china
vat on the counter with a bright measure hanging on the side. Dairies
mostly sold butter, eggs and biscuits as well as milk and they
displayed new-laid eggs in the window. The churns were kept in the
yard at the back.
The dairy might make several deliveries each day, which was fortunate because there were no fridges. Some of the milk carts were like chariots, high in the front and lower the back, so that the milkman could easily step onto the pavement or the road. The milk was carried in metal cans with lids, and on each one was an oval brass plate showing the tradesman’s name. There were no milk bottles or milk cartons. Housewives had to provide their own jugs, and the milkman would measure out milk into them. |
| The draper's shop in Silver Street was kept by the Roth family. Mr
Roth was always in the shop but when there were a lot of customers he
would call to his wife, who lived with him above the shop "Are
you busy my dear?" She would reply "I'm always busy",
but she would always come down to help.
The shop was fascinatingly tiny, with so much merchandise that there was hardly room to get in. Yet Mr Roth always seemed to have whatever you wanted and could lay his hands on it immediately. Nothing was prepacked, so if you only wanted a yard of elastic, he would measure it out and cut it off for you. Two of the children were my age: Leonard Roth and Queeny who were outstandingly brilliant and both went on to university. I feel a certain bond with the family because they much later moved to one of the large houses in Pymms Villas, Silver Street which was destroyed, along with the Clarke's house there, in the German bombing of World War Two. I knew that Mr Roth was in hospital and asked for his bible, and I wish I had asked about Mrs Roth, but I had moved out of the area by then and the bombing of the Clarkes took all my attention. |
| The corner sweet shop was near the school which sold triangular bags of broken wafer biscuits with a marshmallow fish on top. Then there was a corner sweet shop which always had a large tray of home-made toffee on the counter. The shopkeeper would break it up with a small hammer and what looked like a pair of scissors. This shop sold all kinds of children’s sweets - bull’s eyes, pear drops, humbugs, liquorice and tiger nuts. We liked these because they were nice and sweet, although it wasn’t uncommon to get a lump of grit in them which gave your teeth and nasty jar. |
| I can recall the lavender woman selling lavender at
sixteen sprigs a penny; the gypsies selling their pegs and lace, and
offering to tell our fortune if we crossed their palms with money.
They mostly had a baby hitched to them and of course the baby would
arouse people’s pity.
There was the scissor grinder with his grinder, a large wheel inserted into a two wheel barrow. He worked the wheel with his foot using a treadle and always wore on an apron. Then there was the organ grinder. He didn’t arouse much interest with us children unless he had a monkey with him, which he sometimes did. There was also the wood cutter selling logs. His trade was mostly from a horse and cart or donkeys - yes, there were more donkeys around in those days. One donkey and cart that stands out in my memory was the man who sold oranges. This was a seasonal thing unlike today when we get beautiful oranges all the year. His were blood oranges and sour. I well remember his street cry of, "Five oranges for a penny". Childlike, I heard it as "5 oranges 4 a penny" and I couldn’t understand how it could be both 4 and 5. It was a long time before I understood. Then there was one of our local allotment holders who grew pinks. He would stand in Silver Street with his basket of flowers calling out, “Pink pinks and white pinks – a penny a bunch”. |
version date: 08 January, 2008