Eat like a Peasant?

[diamond lil]

Fabulous discussion

[GillyBee]

It is sobering when we are sharing stories from our grandparents and parents. It really isn't so long ago.

Dad grew up in Portsmouth in the 30s. His family had a stable income and generally did OK but in other homes the rule was: "Dad eats first so he has enough strength to work tomorrow and keep earning. Kids eat next. Mum eats whatever is left (if anything)" Apparently some women were known to have died of starvation because there was simply not enough to go around the whole family.

[ForgeCorvus]

Wow, it looks like I started something here

Both my parents grew up during rationing and in my Dad's area especially there were some foods that you just didn't eat (Nan never ate a raw tomato in her life for example), it took a stint in the Navy to break him of some of those prejudices.
In the Black Country at that time it seems that a lot of the men (and to a lesser extent women) supplemented their calorie intake with beer, it was normal to have a couple of pints on the way home*1 from work with your colleagues, eat at home and then go out at least some evenings with your mates.
For working men weekends were spent on the allotment or in the company of other working men.... Beer may of been involved
In that area both beer and milk*2 were sold in crown capped pint bottles and nearly all the older (pre-war) houses had cellars that were used for food storage*3

A big part of the problem historically was basically food snobbery.
The perception was that rich people had meat, white flour, sugar and spices (these all being expensive foods) and poor people had to survive on vegetables, wholemeal flour, grains & pulses and milk products.
There was a series a little while back about bakers through the ages, some of the garbage that was put into bread to make it dense and white was scary. People still bought this foul stuff rather then 'lower their standards' and eat wholemeal.


*1 Iron Puddlers would supposedly walk into their local and have three pints already set up for them, because they were so dried out by standing by the furnace all day that they had to drink the third before they could ask for another.

*2 Most of the milk sold around there was Sterilised, a process similar to UHT. Where the milk is boiled and then put in a sealed container , in this case a narrow necked bottle with a crown cap.
Nan had to order Pasteurised milk when we visited due to the different taste.

*3 My Great Aunt stored milk on the cellar steps, today's delivery would go in the space left from yesterday and she would use the bottles on the next step up (unless it was the top, in which case she'd get the ones on the bottom most ). This meant she was using milk nearly two weeks old!.

[jansman]

Wow, it looks like I started something here

Both my parents grew up during rationing and in my Dad's area especially there were some foods that you just didn't eat (Nan never ate a raw tomato in her life for example), it took a stint in the Navy to break him of some of those prejudices.
In the Black Country at that time it seems that a lot of the men (and to a lesser extent women) supplemented their calorie intake with beer, it was normal to have a couple of pints on the way home*1 from work with your colleagues, eat at home and then go out at least some evenings with your mates.
For working men weekends were spent on the allotment or in the company of other working men.... Beer may of been involved
In that area both beer and milk*2 were sold in crown capped pint bottles and nearly all the older (pre-war) houses had cellars that were used for food storage*3

A big part of the problem historically was basically food snobbery.
The perception was that rich people had meat, white flour, sugar and spices (these all being expensive foods) and poor people had to survive on vegetables, wholemeal flour, grains & pulses and milk products.
There was a series a little while back about bakers through the ages, some of the garbage that was put into bread to make it dense and white was scary. People still bought this foul stuff rather then 'lower their standards' and eat wholemeal.


*1 Iron Puddlers would supposedly walk into their local and have three pints already set up for them, because they were so dried out by standing by the furnace all day that they had to drink the third before they could ask for another.

*2 Most of the milk sold around there was Sterilised, a process similar to UHT. Where the milk is boiled and then put in a sealed container , in this case a narrow necked bottle with a crown cap.
Nan had to order Pasteurised milk when we visited due to the different taste.

*3 My Great Aunt stored milk on the cellar steps, today's delivery would go in the space left from yesterday and she would use the bottles on the next step up (unless it was the top, in which case she'd get the ones on the bottom most ). This meant she was using milk nearly two weeks old!.

I watched the programme about bakers on YouTube only yesterday. It’s interesting what you say about bread adulteration. When I was an apprentice,most of the older customers ( many of whom would have been born in the late 19th century) were extremely suspicious of what went into sausage, and tended to stick with the same, trusted butcher, although I think that was a hangover from rationing. We did weekly orders for sausage for the regulars.I must say though,that back then if we were short of pork,it wasn’t unknown to make it with a percentage of unloved breasts of lamb and a bit more rusk than was legal .That all changed in 1991 with proper legislation.Even now, we get the odd question about “what goes in your sausages?”, which can offend my rather younger colleagues,as we have to adhere to strict regulations!

We live in a 120 year old cottage, and we are fortunate to have the original walk- in pantry ( every one of the neighbours has done away with theirs) along with the stone thrall.I keep my beer on it,and no matter what time of year,it is a steady 11 degrees. I drink proper beer by the way,not the freezing cold maidens water that parades as ‘beer’ When we first moved here,one of the outbuildings had dried up onion ropes hanging from the roof. I learned how to tie those ,just as a nod to tradition each year! Our predecessors still ,obviously, grew and preserved some of their own food.

[grenfell]

Urban working class people had a hard time of it until the 1950s or so.

Touches on something i've said for a long time. The living conditions of most people had changed very slowly up until then. Ok there may be electric lights and other small technological improvements but essentially someone between the wars wasn't that much different to someone living a hundred years earlier. So what was the difference by 1950? There's an old saying that people with full bellies don't rise up in revolt and by then two of the largest nations on earth , Russia and China had by then seen revolutions and it's my theory that those revolutions gave the impetus for our living standards to improve. More food , better toys and gadgets and a better richer lifestyle will stop us rising up ourselves.

[Le Mouse]

Touches on something i've said for a long time. The living conditions of most people had changed very slowly up until then. Ok there may be electric lights and other small technological improvements but essentially someone between the wars wasn't that much different to someone living a hundred years earlier. So what was the difference by 1950? There's an old saying that people with full bellies don't rise up in revolt and by then two of the largest nations on earth , Russia and China had by then seen revolutions and it's my theory that those revolutions gave the impetus for our living standards to improve. More food , better toys and gadgets and a better richer lifestyle will stop us rising up ourselves.

Round here, the big change around 1950 was the 'Homes for Heroes' council housing project and the slum clearance in the city. Made a massive difference to one side of my family who had lived in the old yards and courts with one shared pump and no loo to speak of. I grew up in council housing and my old home was a pre WWII job. It was disintegrating by the time we moved in and not long after I left home, Mum was moved out because they were demolishing them. Mum however grew up in one of the 'Homes for Heroes' and Nanny lived there for well over 50 years till she was too old to manage the stairs. Those houses are all still there, really well built.

The difference between urban poor and rural poor I think was quite stark. Although I suspect Nanny was quite spoiled by her slightly posh Mum who had very much 'married down', I never get the impression that her family or anyone in the village did that badly for food. My great grandfather was a labourer who worked anywhere he could get work and would cycle for miles to do so. They were quite poor financially. But they were never hungry. My dad's family however lived in the city, in the slum courts and the other poor areas until they got moved out to council housing and from what he's told me they were regularly hungry.

A really good read that demonstrates exactly how my dad's Mum grew up is this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seventeenth-Ch ... 1904006302.

[featherstick]

Urban working class people had a hard time of it until the 1950s or so.

Makes you think; we have been relatively well off for quite a short period of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ ... 2%80%93191

UK GDP was USD5000 or so in 1900 - this translates to an enormous USD150,000 at today's prices. Yet the working class could barely put bread on the table. Who got all the money then?

(ETA "politics" in a very broad sense)

[Arzosah]

UK GDP was USD5000 or so in 1900 - this translates to an enormous USD150,000 at today's prices. Yet the working class could barely put bread on the table. Who got all the money then?

(ETA "politics" in a very broad sense)

Income inequality, it's a real thing, not a political point.

featherstick, I think you've missed some noughts off the figure you quote in the first sentence. I've no idea how many belong there but I'm fairly sure there should be more.

[featherstick]

UK GDP was USD5000 or so in 1900 - this translates to an enormous USD150,000 at today's prices. Yet the working class could barely put bread on the table. Who got all the money then?

(ETA "politics" in a very broad sense)

Income inequality, it's a real thing, not a political point.

featherstick, I think you've missed some noughts off the figure you quote in the first sentence. I've no idea how many belong there but I'm fairly sure there should be more.

Sorry, that's GDP per capita. It's an astonishing sum and I went back and checked a couple of times. But the UK was at the centre of a massive and massively-wealthy empire at the time, so while the poor suffered malnutrition and degradation, all that wealth went to the 1%. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

[Arzosah]

Wow! That's horrendous As you say, plus ca change ... rats, you know how to put accents and cedillas on, and I still haven't learned, all these years. Hey ho. Thanks for that.