A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain

by Michael Paterson

  The public was aware of these abuses, some of which were caused by the fact that a commodity – such as tea – might simply be too expensive in its original form, and that substitutes brought it within reach of millions who would not otherwise have been able to afford the genuine article. Nevertheless, efforts were made to address the issue. A publication by a German chemist in 1820 had drawn public attention to the worst abuses. In 1850 an Analytical and Sanitary Commission was set up, and over the next three years its findings were also published. Parliament eventually brought in legislation, with the Food and Drugs Act 1860, extended twelve years later. Though the quality of foodstuffs therefore gradually improved, there was no adequate means of checking the goods sold by thousands of street vendors, and abuses continued throughout the century.

  Tinned and Frozen

  By the time the railway had become an established part of life, its implications for feeding the population had already become obvious. It was possible, for instance, to send fish inland from coastal ports within a matter of hours (fish could be frozen aboard the trawlers that caught it), thus providing a new source of relatively cheap protein to people throughout the country, not least through the proliferation of fish and chip shops. Even more importantly, the railway could carry vastly more food than the lumbering wagons that had preceded it, and this in itself helped to bring down the price of many things. Livestock had always been herded to the towns by drovers and slaughtered in the shambles once it arrived. Now it could be killed at home and sent as prepared carcasses even from the farthest-flung regions. Milk was one commodity that was not easily transportable, for it could not be kept fresh even on short journeys, and it was not until the sixties that the development of a mechanical cooler, and of metal churns, solved this difficulty.

  From the seventies – a decade when bad harvests were ruining agriculture in Britain – grain imported from the United States and Canada was a godsend. These territories had experienced their own railway revolution, enabling the vast granaries of the western prairies to send their produce eastward to Atlantic ports for shipment. Australia was to join these suppliers by the end of the century. The availability of this grain effectively meant that, for the first time in history, Britain was free from the danger of famine. Although the population was increasing alarmingly, the availability of food kept pace and shortages could be avoided.

  The other part of this process concerned the shipping of meat, and this was an even greater breakthrough. The preservation of food, first in sealed glass jars and then in metal cans, had been achieved by the second decade of the century, though food packed in this way was initially too expensive to command wide sales. Gradually a canned-meat industry developed (from 1868 cans were made by machine and not by hand, enabling huge ‘canneries’ to operate) and the cost fell, but because manufacturers came only slowly to understand how the canning process killed bacteria, the contents of tins were often rancid when they were opened. Not only meat but fruit and vegetables were preserved and shipped in these containers, but there might be hidden dangers: it is thought that members of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition were poisoned by the lead used to seal their canned supplies. Canned meat initially came from Australia, and was so unappetizing that only its cheapness made it acceptable. By the seventies, when America began seriously to compete in supplying Britain, the killing of bacteria had been perfected and canned food was part of everyday life – though no one could pretend that it tasted like the fresh variety. Tinned mutton was derisively known as ‘Fanny Adams’ in reference to a young woman murdered – and chopped up – by her lover in 1867.

  Even this was not the end of developments, however. In 1877, for the first time, a cargo of frozen meat was brought to England from Australia, three months after a similar cargo had crossed the Atlantic from Argentina to France. Shortly afterwards, New Zealand lamb also arrived by sea. By that time the ice machine was already known throughout the world, and there were ice-making factories. The use of refrigeration on ships was a new venture, and one that was successful from the beginning. Though the transport of carcasses from the Antipodes represented a tremendous achievement, it was more expensive than American meat, which therefore gained a greater share of the market. Fruit and vegetables could come by the same means, and for the first time pineapples and bananas could be bought cheaply, when earlier only hothouse specimens would have been available. Steadily, gradually, more and better food was becoming available to a greater number of people.

  New kitchen equipment also made a noticeable difference. Stoves had begun to replace the open fireplace with its range of spits. A British diplomat, Benjamin Rumford, used his observations of artillery – which grew hot after sustained firing – to formulate a theory of heat conservation that enabled him, in 1795, to design a stove for cooking. Over sixty years later stoves, or ‘ranges’, were cheap enough to be widely available to householders, and to become an essential part of kitchen equipment. In the eighties gas cookers began to be used, and in the following decade the electric version arrived, though its use was extremely limited until the next century.

  By this time yet another revolution had taken place. The rising middle class was interested in food because of the social rituals that surrounded it. The giving of dinners was not simply a matter of impressing one’s neighbours with the skill of the cook – who was often hired only for the occasion – but of showing off the sophistication of one’s kitchen and dining-room and one’s knowledge of correct form. Since, as always, many members of this class were unsure about such matters, there was an opportunity for qualified authors to assist them. The result was the bestselling cookery books that not only told readers what to offer their families and their guests, but also gave information about how to entertain. Two of the best-known appeared in quick succession. One of them, Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) by Eliza Acton, made a household name out of a lady whose original desire had been to be published as a poet. The Modern Cook by Charles Francatelli (1846) commanded respect because the author was employed by Queen Victoria (though he was dismissed for hitting one of the maids!). The third seminal work on the subject of middle-class entertaining – and the one that eclipsed all others – was Mrs Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861. This, as its title suggests, was not simply a cookbook (Mrs Beeton championed simple English cooking rather than French) but a veritable bible for housewives, including as it did a great deal of information on the mechanics and finances of running a home. She listed, for instance, thirty-seven ‘articles required for the kitchen of a family in the middle class of life’, including one pair of brass candlesticks, one cinder-shifter, one bread-grater and six spoons. She tells readers where to buy them (Messrs Richard & John Slack, 336, Strand) and exactly how much it should all cost: £8 11s 1d. She also informed her audience of what meat, fish, fruit and vegetables were in season during every month: in January, dace, eels, flounders and lampreys were among the fish that could be offered to guests, while in February ‘cod may be bought, but it is not so good as in January’. She warned that ‘in very cold weather, meat and vegetables touched by the frost should be brought into the kitchen early in the morning and soaked in cold water.’ Armed with such a wealth of detailed advice, what young wife could go wrong? Not all of her advice would seem to us sound, or necessary. She cautions, for instance, that ices, a standard finale to a dinner, should not – because their coldness may be a shock to the system after several hot courses – be eaten by elderly people, children (!) or those of delicate constitution.

  One book of this type that was not aimed at a bourgeois audience came from an unusual source. Alexis Soyer, a Frenchman (which automatically conferred gravitas on anyone in the world of cookery), was head chef at the Reform Club. He had shown a compassionate nature by opening soup kitchens for the London poor, and ran similar facilities for soldiers in the Crimea, using a field kitchen of his own design. In 1855 he published a book of sensible and nutritious recipes, A Shilling C
ookery for the People. It offered no touch of clubland – or indeed French – glamour, for both ingredients and recipes were basic and somewhat lacklustre, but it provided a sound basis for healthy eating on a small budget. It sold almost a quarter of a million copies.

  The propertied classes did not stint themselves when it came to eating. It would give a modern reader indigestion just to examine some of their menus. A typical breakfast might involve bacon and scrambled eggs, chops, kedgeree, snipe and woodcock, often devoured in such quantities that one wonders how they could even get up from the table. Domestic staff in a grand house might have much the same breakfast in the servants’ hall, and at least one account describes how the footmen, having consumed a massive repast, were in the habit of filling the pockets of their livery coats with boiled eggs – to see them through to luncheon.

  The result of such consistent indulgence was, unsurprisingly, a great deal of illness and early death; many otherwise healthy young men did not survive even into their mid-forties because of a diet that was too rich and too extensive. Both ladies and gentlemen wore such tight-fitting clothes that the effects were exacerbated. Their unhealthy eating habits explain the immense and enduring popularity among Victorians of health spas and all manner of ‘cures’, for it is ironic that a people so given to sport and exercise should also have suffered from such excesses.

  Dinners in mid-Victorian households had traditionally been served in the French style, which meant that the components of the meal were all placed on the table together, cluttering its surface with tureens and serving-dishes. Meat was carved by the host at the table, and the plates passed to his guests. Gradually, this habit was replaced by what was known as à la russe dining, in which the dishes were all prepared on a sideboard and then handed to guests by the servants. This meant that the table itself was given over to ornamentation: silver set-piece ornaments, complex flower arrangements, elaborate place-settings with folded napkins and desserts on stands that were admired by the guests before being demolished.

  Menus were commonly in French. A sample one, from a dinner at a wealthy private house in London, gives some indication of how many courses there were and what they comprised:

  87 Eaton Place, Diner, du 30 mars, 1878

  Potages

  Consommé à la Doria

  Crème d’Asperges Faubonne

  Poissons

  Suprème de Saumon Richelieu

  Turbot sauce Crevette

  Entrées

  Cotelettes Hasseur aux Pointes

  Mousselines à la Princesse

  Relèves

  Quartier d’Agneau sauce Menthe

  Jambon à la Gelée et Mirabelles

  Salade assortie

  Punch au thé

  Rôts

  Ramier de Bordeaux

  Asperges d’Argenteuil sauce Maltaise

  Entremets

  St. Honore aux Pistachio

  Abricots à l’Almedorine

  Corbeilles de Glaces3

  The accompanying of each course with an appropriate wine was an important part of the ritual. A contemporary book described the rules governing this:

  Sherry is always drunk after soup, hock either with oysters before the soup or with fish after the soup, and Chablis sometimes takes the place of hock. Champagne is drunk immediately after the first entrée has been served, and so during the remainder of dinner until dessert. Claret, sherry, port, and Madeira are the wines drunk at dessert.4

  These rigid conventions were eminently risible. Thackeray, in his Book of Snobs, pokes gentle fun at them:

  Everybody has the same dinner in London, and the same soup, saddle of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, entrees, champagne, and so forth. I own myself to being no better than my neighbours in this respect, and rush off to the pastrycook’s for sweets, &c.; hire sham butlers and attendants, have a fellow going round the table with still and dry champagne, as if I knew his name, and it was my custom to drink those wines every day of my life. I am as bad as my neighbours; but why are we so bad, I ask? – why are we not more reasonable?

  If we receive great men or ladies at our houses, I will lay a wager that they will select mutton and gooseberry tart for their dinner; forsaking the entrees which the men in Berlin white gloves are handing round on the Birmingham plated dishes. Asking lords and ladies who have great establishments of their own, to French dinners and delicacies, is like inviting a grocer to a meal of figs, or a pastrycook to a banquet of raspberry tarts. They have had enough of them. And great folks, if they can, take no count of your feasts, and grand preparations, and can but eat mutton like men.5

  Herbs and Spices

  Something very familiar to us appeared at Victorian tables, and that was curry. The British connection with India dated back more than two hundred years to the founding of the East India Company, and many thousands of families had members or acquaintances who had been to the sub-continent. They brought back with them some of the eating habits they had acquired, and one was the use of spicy powder to sharpen the taste of meat or vegetables. As with so many imported foods (‘chop suey’ is another example), the ‘curry’ consumed in Britain would not have been recognized in its place of origin. The term itself is thought to have been a corruption of the Tamil word karbi, meaning sauce, and it came to be a general term for any Indian food that was prepared with sauces. Curry powder – a blending of more or less whatever spices were available in an Indian kitchen – was a British invention, and is likely to have horrified Indian cooks. Curries had been an accepted part of the national diet in the eighteenth century, and by the 1860s commercially produced powder, as well as curry paste, was widely available in the shops. A New York chef described how the powder should be made:

  One ounce of coriander seeds, two ounces of cayenne, a quarter ounce of cardoman seeds, one ounce salt, two ounces of turmeric, one ounce ginger, half an ounce of mace and a third of an ounce of saffron.6

  And Mrs Beeton advised on how to prepare the dish:

  Put all the ingredients in a cool oven, where they should remain one night; then pound them in a mortar, rub them through a sieve, and mix thoroughly together; keep the powder in a bottle, from which the air should be completely excluded.7

  Another cookbook then recommended:

  Two tablespoons of meat curry paste, a tablespoon of curry powder, and as much flour as may be required to thicken the quantity of sauce needed.8

  A similar national institution was chutney. This means of preserving fruit or vegetables by a form of pickling (the difference was that in chutney the ingredients were pounded rather than left in large pieces, and that sweet ingredients were included) was actually used by Indians, although the British took it home and made it their own. Once again, British firms quickly produced a range of these products (and at least one such Victorian firm, Sharwood’s, is still in business), which became a familiar sight on the shelves of grocers.

  Many other products also became familiar, for with developments in printing the possibilities for producing, at small cost, colourful and elaborate packaging greatly increased. Whether on paper bags, cardboard packets or tins, eye-catching slogans, detailed pictures (showing the product itself or some other image) and striking lettering began to command the attention of shoppers. Some products – such as Lea and Perrin’s Sauce or Lyle’s Golden Syrup – have kept their Victorian labelling to this day. Many items that we still consume had their origins in the Victorian era, as did some of the places from which we buy them (Sainsbury’s, for instance, began trading in 1869). A glance at any picture of a nineteenth-century streetscape will show, through a wealth of placards and posters on walls and on the sides of buses, the power of advertising and the extent to which products were thrust into public awareness: Fry’s Chocolate, Keen’s Mustard, Keiller’s Dundee Marmalade, Bovril and Oxo. The era of mass advertising, as well as the world of standardized food products in which we ourselves unquestionably live, began with the Victorians.

  Ready Meals

  ‘
Convenience food’ was as much a characteristic of Victorian times as of our own. There were both sit-down dining-rooms in which quick meals could be consumed, and kerbside stalls at which refreshment could be taken standing. These were hugely popular, not just because they were fast and cheap but because for many thousands of the poor there was no alternative way to eat.

  A great proportion of the urban poor had no cooking facilities, and in the cramped, highly inflammable buildings in which they lived the risk of accident would outweigh the benefits of lighting a cooking fire. Vegetables could be had cheaply, but could not easily be prepared. Thus people bought hot or cold food in the streets or bought ingredients and paid someone else to prepare them. Because whole generations had grown up in this way, there were numerous families in which not even the mother possessed basic cooking skills.

  Street Food

  To serve the needs of this vast group of customers, there were thousands of street vendors selling both food and drink, luxuries and necessities. The men and women who dealt in comestibles might walk through a city, selling as they went, or set up a stall, a barrow or a pitch at some strategic place and wait for custom. Sellers of fruit or watercress (the latter were usually little girls) would need only a tray or a basket, while those who sold pies, gingerbread, chestnuts or potatoes would have to carry not only the viands themselves but the means – usually a charcoal oven – of preparing them. There was a hierarchy among street-traders, and those who merely carried a basket were at the bottom of it. The owners of stalls and complex equipment, who might be helped by family members or even paid assistants, were at the top. Some of these tradesmen had followed their specialist calling for a considerable time; Charles Spurgeon photographed in 1884 a ‘champion pie-maker’ whose sign claimed that he had been in business for ‘upwards of 50 years’. Henry Mayhew, who made a study of these itinerant vendors in the London streets of the 1850s, described how: