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Archiver > LONDON > 2001-05 > 0990087936


From: "Betty" <>
Subject: Re: [Lon] Before paper bags?
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 09:25:36 +0100
References: <lPqDLxANjQA7Ewx3@varneys.demon.co.uk>


Hi Eve,

Surely there must have been areas of London where Tradesmen didn't deliver?
The family I am thinking of were the Wilfer family (in Our Mutual Friend)
whose home was "in the Holloway region north of London and then divided from
it by fields and trees. (Sounds fine so far!) Between Battle Bridge and
that part of the Holloway district in which he dwelt, was a tract of
suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled,
carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped
by contractors . . . the lighting of kiln fires made lurid smears on the
fog." It doesn't sound like the sort of country where a Butcher would trust
his delivery boy, let alone his chops and cutlets out unescorted. I'm sure
that more than dignity would have been lost in that fog!

The occasion was also rather late in the evening when the family were
celebrating the fact that, their new lodger having paid his rent in advance,
they could put money aside to pay their own overdue rent and celebrate with
a veal cutlet which Mr. Wilfer himself went out to purchase "He soon
returned bearing the same in a fresh cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a
rasher of ham"

Please don't tell me Eve that Mr. Dickens got it all wrong and it's just a
made up story. I've always thought of Dickens as being (apart from a few
anachronisms) accurate to the times in which he was writing.

There goes another illusion.

Cheers,

Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: Eve McLaughlin <>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 11:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Lon] Before paper bags?


>
> >I'm "re-doing" many Dickens books which I have not read since I was a gal
> >and have learned that if you trotted down to the butchers for a veal
cutlet
> >or such, it would probably have been handed to you wrapped in a fresh
> >Cabbage Leaf.
> >
> I don't know about that, but (except in the 'penneth of cats' meat'
> areas) what sort of butcher's shop actually 'handed' meat to customers,
> rather than taking the orders and delivering it, on a tray, via an
> errand boy, who dumped it, ozzing blood, flies and all, on a plate in
> the customer's kitchen. Butchers were still delivering meat (by van,
> rather more hygienic as to cover from the elements) in the 1930s.
> --
> Eve McLaughlin
>
> Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
> Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society
>
>
> ==== LONDON Mailing List ====
> London Theatres
> http://theatremuseum.vam.ac.uk
>

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