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“Leisure was built into the whole shopping experience” | Annie Gray on the history of the high street
Ellie Cawthorne talks to Annie Gray about how the evolution of the high street has been a story of growth, specialisation and diversification – but also of entertainment and enduring appeal
What can looking at a high street in any given era tell us about that period? So much. If you walk down any high street, you’ll see the things that people want and need on an everyday basis. So if you were strolling down a high street in, say, 1903, you’d have saddlers and leather workers, and specialist shops selling pork and different meats. You’d see a lot of shops selling cloth, because ready-to-wear clothing wasn’t around then. And you’d encounter lots of items that we simply don’t have a role for in our lives today – tiny little bits of ironmongery and things like that. Read more | A history of the high street Alongside the quotidian stuff, high streets have always been relatively prestigious areas for leisure shopping, featuring the likes of jewellers, swordsmiths, clockmakers and lace merchants. Luxury goods such as these are often imports, so they can tell you a lot about Britain’s place in a global context. Take tea for example: it was first sold in china shops, then in high-end grocers, then – as it became cheaper – everywhere. Just following the journey of tea reveals so much about the way in which people interacted with the global landscape of commercialisation. When did a cluster of shops that we might recognise as a high street first appear in British towns? The evolution of the high street was a really gradual process. The market was still the most important place to shop – certainly for the working classes – well into the 20th century. Market day was always the busiest day in town. But between 1650 and 1750, most towns in Britain begin to have some fixed shops, usually around or leading from the market. One of the first types of shop to move into fixed premises was the butcher. That kept mess away from the main shopping area, and enabled butchers to lock up stock and install cold stores. Read more | A brief history of shopping Traditionally, the market square was also a gathering place – somewhere people went to enjoy entertainment, to jeer at criminals in the stocks or to hear political proclamations. Slowly, these aspects became features of the high street, too. It was where you’d find sex workers, beggars, people ranting on street corners, hustlers drumming up custom for the bear fight being held the next day – that kind of thing. In my book, The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street, I argue that the high street isn’t just about shops. It’s a place for the community to come together. What items have been enduring staples of the high street? The most significant products sold there have been clothing and food, but the ways those things are sold have changed hugely. In 1700, a typical grocer would offer raisins, dried ginger and spices, but it would also sell you a couple of nails and maybe a bit of cloth as well. Gradually, shops became more and more specialised. In the 19th century, high-end grocers emerged calling themselves ‘Italian warehouses’. They sold Italian products such as olive oil and jars of preserves, but also the name just sounded more exotic. Then, in the second half of the 19th century, chain grocers such as Lipton’s, the Maypole Dairy and Home & Colonial were established to serve the lower end of the market. When the first Sainsbury’s shop opened in Drury Lane, London in 1869, it sold only eggs, milk and butter. There was a lot of money to be made in these early chain grocers, many of which sold just a small range of products. By the postwar period, multiple chain grocers were operating, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose, all expanding their offering on high streets. Then Britain saw the rise of the out-of-town supermarket – which is modelled on the market, only supersized – and the start of a move away from food shopping on the high street. What are some of the most interesting high street shops now lost to time? The fabric shop is a fascinating example of something that has all but disappeared. The story of clothing on the high street began with the sale of cloth, then cut cloth, then almost ready-to-wear – then, finally, truly ready-to-wear clothing. That final step didn’t really happen until the 20th century. Even when I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a popular chain of fabric shops called Gordon Thoday; I remember my mum spending hours in one. Just within my lifetime, fabric shops have virtually vanished from the high street, apart from some very small independent outlets. I think that if you told someone from 160 years ago, or even 60 years ago, that today we all buy off-the-peg clothes in randomly assigned sizes, they would have been flabbergasted. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion There was also a level of real specialism on the high street that I think we’ve now lost. You might have a lawnmower shop next door to a piano shop next to the oil man, who sold oil paints and different types of oils for cooking or fuel. It’s very rare to find really specialist shops anymore, especially given modern rent pressures. That said, one of the success stories of the past few years is the bookshop. Booksellers have always been prevalent, and in the early days of the high street they were a mark of a well-appointed town. People would stroll past to look at the prints in the window, each one displayed in its own pane of glass. Booksellers were usually printers, too. Inside you could tell them which book or collection of poems or sermons you’d like, and then you would choose your own binding. Some booksellers would also operate as circulating libraries. These were quite relaxed, exclusive spaces where you could sit and browse. Leisure was very much built into the whole experience, and bookshops embraced the idea of shopping as a pleasure to really lean into. When did shopping become seen as a leisure activity rather than just another chore? It always has been, to some extent. Even before the 17th century, if you were wealthy you would delegate the task of going to the market, but you might still go along to a selling fair. A lot of those still exist in a changed form: think of the Goose Fair in Nottingham, or the Midsummer Fair in Cambridge. Today these are big entertainment events with rollercoasters and candyfloss, but when founded they were international selling fairs. They would last up to a week, and you would spend a lot of time discussing possible purchases, which would be brought out and spread before you to inspect. You might even have salespeople come to your home. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-2167573986-da782fd-e1732096503419.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A confectionery shop and livery stables just off Putney high street, 1897. Since the 19th century, people have fretted about small-scale grocers being forced out of business by ‘Big Shops’ (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" title="A confectionery shop and livery stables just off Putney high street, 1897. Since the 19th century, people have fretted about small-scale grocers being forced out of business by ‘Big Shops’ (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" /> The idea that you would go out to spend a day just having fun shopping in town really took off in the late-17th and early 18th century – and it caused a lot of concern at the time. Many people hated the idea of browsing – a notion that, unsurprisingly, was widely associated with women. Quite clearly, men were just as guilty, but women were the ones who took the flack. It was known as ‘tumbling’, in reference to women who would grab at bolts of cloth, tumbling the fabric all over the place without buying anything. Shopping was seen as a game into which you entered with whoever was selling. Most places didn’t have fixed prices until the mid-18th century, so you needed to bargain. Trying to get a good price – to get the better of the shopkeeper, as it were – was treated as a kind of intellectual exercise. Napoleon supposedly called Britain a “nation of shopkeepers”. How have shopkeepers been regarded over time? For much of history, shopkeepers were not regarded as society’s most upstanding members. If you go back to the medieval period, there was a really strong idea that you should shop directly from the producer, often a farmer – which all sounds very idyllic and organic and local. But, even back then, that idea was utter rubbish. Read more | The medieval marketplace: a time traveller’s guide to shopping in the Middle Ages In the Middle Ages, there were people buying stuff from producers, then selling it on. Such on-sellers were widely hated, considered immoral and profiteering. Gradually, people began to realise that producers aren’t necessarily very good at selling, and that maybe people who are really good at making cheese should just make really good cheese, while a specialised salesperson, perhaps with a network of agents, should sell that cheese. People came to appreciate that, though there might be a bit of profit in on-selling, those profits ultimately find their way into the system, so it’s quite good for the economy overall. What can you tell us about the rise of the department store? The concept is not actually very old. It was only from the 1860s onwards that the ‘Big Shop’ – a brilliantly descriptive term – emerged on the high street. Such establishments weren’t called ‘department stores’; when that term did start to be used, it was a pejorative Americanism for something that was seen as a bit shabby and downmarket. A lot of the early Big Shops evolved out of other, more specialist shops that just started selling additional items. For example, mercers originally sold only silk, but then many mercers became drapers, then the drapers started to sell furniture, then carpets and clothes and homewares. They might move into ready-to-wear, and add some toys, and perhaps an entire house-fitting service. Then, before you knew it, you had yourself a Big Shop. A lot of the early Big Shops extended into adjacent premises, ending up with a real mishmash of buildings. When department stores became established, they often sported glorious, usually neoclassical frontages that you could spot a mile away: think big columns, huge atriums with multiple floors, and massive windows. Many department stores also had staff quarters on the top floor, because the shop assistants would live in. The idea of the window display was really driven by department stores. Selfridges displayed a monoplane, and Lewis’s of Liverpool placed a hand excavated from Pompeii in its window. Another innovative sales technique introduced by department stores was the big marketing stunt. Read more | What can the streets of Pompeii reveal about daily life in ancient Rome? Gordon Selfridge – very brash, very American – was well known for this. He thought British high streets were incredibly backward, and even had the law changed in order to build his massive store on Oxford Street. But the golden age of the big department store stunt was the interwar period. Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames was great at such affairs. When the first hoover was launched, a giant hoover was installed in its atrium. On another occasion, it had a Swedish diver called Anita Kittner plunge from the mezzanine into a tiny swimming pool five storeys below. The floor had to be reinforced because of the velocity with which she hit that pool. Alarmingly, she lost her swimming costume on the way down. Other stores would hold cookery demonstrations, and catwalk shows were common up until the 1970s. It was all about bringing people in through the door, making the department store a hub for more than just shopping. What refreshments were on offer for hungry shoppers? As they are today, refreshments have always been a huge part of the high-street experience. In the modern context, I’m not fond of a chain cafe, but it’s important to acknowledge that early examples were crucial to the development of the high street. Take Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms. Cocoa was traditionally associated with institutional living – workhouses, hospitals – and Lockhart’s was squarely aimed at the poor. You could bring your own food, and sit in one all day. So I think they deserve an honourable mention, though I wouldn’t necessarily want to go and spend all day there, sipping cocoa and eating a sausage. Read more | 9 ways our food shopping habits have changed since 1947 Some street-seller offerings from the past are really interesting, too – things such as saloop. Very few people in Britain today have heard of saloop, but it’s still a popular drink in the Middle East [where it’s now commonly called salep]. Made from powdered orchid root, it’s a pick-me-up that was frequently served on street corners in 18th-century Britain. So I think a mug of saloop would have been worth stopping for. What debates about high streets have raged over the centuries? People have always been concerned about the high street. First of all, they were worried that shopping was immoral, and that everyone would waste their hard-earned money. Then, when shops became more established and we all realised that we loved them, concerns shifted to the issue of small shopkeepers being driven out of business by Big Shops. People have been arguing over that since at least the 1850s. In the early 20th century, the debate focused on the ‘death of the grocer’ – the idea that small-scale specialist grocers would be forced under by Big Shops with food halls and unskilled workers. That took a lot longer than people at the time thought it would, but it has undeniably happened. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/EE0F1J-dce56e8-e1732096569520.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Thomas Rowlandson’s early 19th-century depiction of people enjoying hot saloop, once a popular drink served on street corners in Britain (Photo by Penta Springs Limited/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Thomas Rowlandson’s early 19th-century depiction of people enjoying hot saloop, once a popular drink served on street corners in Britain (Photo by Penta Springs Limited/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The class aspect – whether a high street is being gentrified or is in slow decline – has long been a topic of debate. Ethically, too, there are many choices to make when shopping, because another argument that has raged forever concerns the treatment of producers. There was a huge boycott of slave-produced sugar from the late 18th century, while in the 1890s people were concerned about dressmakers being worked to the bone. We still have debates today about working conditions and modern slavery in terms of how our products are made. Many people have talked about the ‘death of the high street’. Should we be worried? I think we should bear in mind the idea of ‘use it or lose it’, but actually I believe there’s more hand-wringing than there needs to be. So long as we still have a community hub, it might not be such a bad thing if the high street constricts. I do think, though, that we would definitely lose something if our high streets disappeared entirely – and modern surveys reveal that 98 per cent of the population agrees with me. We can’t turn back the clock, but even though we’ve got fewer shops now, history shows us that all previous predictions about the disappearance of the high street have been confounded. Annie Gray is a historian, cook, broadcaster and writer specialising in the history of food and dining in Britain since around 1600. Her latest book is The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A History of the High Street (Profile Books, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why is the shopping day after Thanksgiving called ‘Black Friday’?
On the shopping day known as 'Black Friday', millions descend on the shops to spy out the best bargains. How did the day get its name?
Black Friday has been adopted as the unofficial opening to the Christmas shopping period. It all began in the United States as a day of ‘doorbuster’ sales the day after Thanksgiving but increasingly, Britain is getting into the swing of things – sometimes literally, as brawls and all-out fights are quite common among scrapping shoppers. Retailers love the day of discounts as billions are spent within a matter of hours, but there is one organisation for whom the day brings nothing but despair: the police. Read more | A brief history of shopping In 1966, the Philadelphia Police Department grew so frustrated by the congested streets, traffic jams and regular tussles that, it's believed, they coined the name ‘Black Friday’ in the hope of dissuading people from heading to the shops. It completely failed, but the name stuck. Understandably, retailers weren’t keen on the name – it had strong associations with the Great Depression of the 1930s, signalled by Black Thursday – so they tried to reinvent the image of the Black Friday frenzy. The ‘black’, it was argued, referred to the ledgers used by retailers. For the majority of the year, shops would be ‘in the red’ (losing money) but Black Friday indicated the moment when most retailers would start making a profit, or going ‘in the black’. So that is how Black Friday got its name. There is no evidence to the regularly espoused theory that it went back to a 19th century tradition when slave owners would sell their weak or elderly slaves at low prices. Fortunately, that story is purely apocryphal. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine
The medieval marketplace: a time traveller’s guide to shopping in the Middle Ages
How much did average items cost in a medieval market? And what was for sale? Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, takes us on a shopping trip in a 14th-century marketplace, from the sights and smells to how to avoid being conned out of your wages…
The poet WH Auden once suggested that, in order to understand your own country, you need to have lived in at least two others. But what about your own time? By the same reckoning, you need to have experienced at least two other centuries. This presents us with some difficulties. But through historical research, coming to terms with another century is not impossible. We can approach the past as if it really is ‘a foreign country’ – somewhere we might visit. And we do not actually need to travel in time to appreciate it – just the idea of visiting the past allows us to see life differently, and more immediately. Come shopping in the late 14th century and see for yourself. The medieval marketplace “Ribs of beef and many a pie!” you hear someone call over your shoulder. Turning, you see a young lad walking through the crowd bearing a tray laden with wooden bowls of cooked meats from a local shop. All around him people are moving, gesturing, talking. So many have come in from the surrounding villages that this town of about 3,000 inhabitants is today thronged with twice as many. Here are men in knee-length brown tunics driving their cattle before them. Here are their wives in long kirtles with wimples around their heads and necks. Those men in short tunics and hoods are valets in a knight’s household. Those in long gowns with high collars and beaver-fur hats are wealthy merchants. Across the marketplace more peasants are leading in their flocks of sheep, or packhorses and carts loaded with crates of chickens. Medieval misconceptions: 12 myths about life in the Middle Ages – busted Crowds are noisy. People are talking so much that chatter could almost be the whole purpose of the market – and in many ways it is. This is the one open public area in the town where people can meet and exchange information. When a company performs a mystery play, it is to the marketplace that they will drag the cart containing their stage, set and costumes. When the town crier rings his bell to address the people of the town, it is in the marketplace that the crowd will gather to hear him. The marketplace is the heart of any town: indeed, the very definition of a town is that it has a market. What can you buy? Let’s start at the fishmongers’ stalls. You may have heard that many sorts of freshwater and sea fish are eaten in medieval England. Indeed, more than 150 species are consumed by the nobility and churchmen, drawn from their own fishponds as well as the rivers and seas. But in most markets it is the popular varieties which you see glistening in the wet hay-filled crates. Mackerel, herring, lampreys, cod, eels, Aberdeen fish (cured salmon and herring), and stockfish (salt cod) are the most common varieties. Crabs and lobsters are transported live, in barrels. In season you will see fresh salmon – attracting the hefty price of four or five shillings each. A fresh turbot can cost even more, up to seven shillings. Next we come to an area set aside for corn: sacks of wheat, barley, oats and rye are piled up, ready for sale to the townsmen. Then the space given over to livestock: goats, sheep, pigs and cows. A corner is devoted to garden produce – apples, pears, vegetables, garlic and herbs – yet the emphasis of a medieval diet is on meat, cheese and cereal crops. In a large town you will find spicerers selling such exotic commodities as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, liquorice, and many different types of sugar. What time of the day did medieval people eat? These are only for the wealthy. When your average skilled workman earns only two shillings (2s) in a week, he can hardly afford to spend four shillings (4s) on a pound of cloves or 20 pence (20d) on a pound of ginger. The rest of the marketplace performs two functions. Producers come to sell fleeces, sacks of wool, tanned hides, furs, iron, steel and tin for resale further afield. The other function is to sell manufactured commodities to local people: brass and bronze cooking vessels, candlesticks and spurs, pewterware, woollen cloth, silk, linen, canvas, carts, rushes (for hall floors), glass, faggots, coal, nails, horse shoes and planks of wood. Planks, you ask? Consider the difficulties of transporting a tree trunk to a saw pit, and then getting two men to saw it into planks with only a handsaw between them. Everyone in medieval society is heavily dependent on each other for such supplies, and the marketplace is where all these interdependencies meet. Medieval kebabs and pasta: 5 foods you (probably) didn’t know were being eaten in the Middle Ages Haggling Essential items such as ale and bread have their prices fixed by law. Yet for almost everything that’s been manufactured you will have to negotiate. Caxton’s 15th-century dialogue book is based on a 14th-century language guide, and gives the following lesson in how to haggle with a cloth vendor: “Dame, what hold ye the ell (45 inches) of this cloth? Or what is worth the cloth whole? In short, so to speak, how much the ell?” “Sire, reason; ye shall have it good and cheap.” “Yea, truly, for cattle. Dame, ye must me win. Take heed what I shall pay.” “Four shillings for the ell, if it please you.” “For so much would I have good scarlet.” “But I have some which is not of the best which I would not give for seven shillings.” “But this is no such cloth, of so much money, that know ye well!” “Sire, what is it worth?” “Dame, it were worth to me well three shillings.” “That is evil-boden.” “But say certainly how shall I have it without a part to leave?” “I shall give it ye at one word: ye shall pay five shillings, certainly if ye have them for so many ells, for I will abate nothing.” And so you open your purse, which hangs from the cords attached to your belt and find five shillings. Except that there is no shilling coin in the late 14th century. The smallest gold coins are the half-noble (3s 4d) and the quarter-noble (1s 8d), so if you have one each of these, you can make up the sum. Alternatively you will have to make it up from the silver coins: groats (4d), half-groats, pennies, halfpence and farthings (¼d). How much did medieval shopping items cost? Prices in the 1390s* Ale, ordinary: ¾d–1d per gallon Wine from Bordeaux: 3d–4d per gallon Bacon: 15d per side Chicken: 2d each Cod, fresh: 20d each Sugar, loaf of: 18d per lb Apples: 7d per hundred Eggs: 33d for 425 A furred gown: 5s 4d * Prices from the account books of Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby. Wages/salaries in the 1390s The king’s physician: £40 per year Officers in the royal household: £20 per year Mason: £8 per year (6d per day) Carpenter: 4¼d per day Thatcher: 4¼d per day Labourer: 3¼d per day Valets in a lord’s household: £1 10s per year Manservant in a yeoman’s household: £1 per year Maidservant in a yeoman’s household: 10s per year In old money, there were 12 pence (d) to the shilling (s) and 20 shillings to the pound (£). Regulations A well-run market is crucial to the standing of a town. Thus it is heavily regulated. The actual policing tends to be undertaken by the town’s bedels or bailiffs, who enforce regulations like “no horses may be left standing in the marketplace on market days” and “every man is to keep the street in front of his tenement clean”. Most towns have between 40 and 70 regulations, and those breaking them are taken to the borough court and fined. There are reasons to be grateful for the supervision of trade. Short measures are a notorious problem, and turners normally have to swear to make wooden measures of the appropriate size. Clerks in borough courts will tell you of cooking pots being made out of soft metal and coated with brass, and loaves of bread baked with stones in them to make them up to the legally required weight. Wool is stretched before it is woven, to make it go further (but then it shrinks). Pepper is sold damp, making it swell, weigh more, and rot sooner. Meat is sometimes sold even though it is putrid, wine even though it has turned sour, and bread when it has gone green. The genius of medieval science: from medicine to mechanical clocks If you are the victim of malpractice, go straight to the authorities. The perpetrator will be pilloried – literally. The pillory is the wooden board which clasps the guilty man’s head and hands, and shamefully exposes him to the insults of the crowd. A butcher selling bad meat can expect to be dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle and then placed in the pillory with the rotten meat burnt under him. A vintner caught selling foul wine is dragged to the pillory on a hurdle, forced to drink a draught of the offending liquor, and then set in the pillory where the remainder is poured over his head. The sweetness of the revenge makes up for the sourness of the wine. Shopping in the 14th century will often remind you of how much we have in common with our medieval forebears. It will likewise alert you to the huge differences between us. We are not the same as our ancestors. Look at how young they are – the median age is just 21 – and look at the meagre diet of the poor, their rotten teeth as they smile, their resilience in the face of death. Consider how rough and smelly the streets are, and how small the sheep and cattle are in the marketplace. When a fight breaks out over some stolen goods, and the bedels rush to intervene, you may see how the spirit of the people is so similar to our own and yet how much the process of managing that spirit has changed. For if the stolen goods are of sufficient value, the thieves will be summarily tried and hanged the same day. This is what makes history so interesting – the differences between us across the centuries, as well as the similarities. At dusk – just before the great gates of the city are closed for the night, and you see everyone leaving the adjacent taverns – you may begin to think that Auden was on to something. To understand ourselves, we must first see society differently – and to remember that history is the study of the living, not the dead. Dr Ian Mortimer is best known as the author of The Time Traveller’s Guides, namely Medieval England (2008), Elizabethan England (2012) and Restoration Britain (2017) This article was first published in the October 2008 issue of BBC History Magazine
Has there always been panic buying? And when have people panic shopped through history?
Despite vehement calls from governments and retailers alike for people not to stockpile, coronavirus fears are driving many people to the supermarkets to empty the shelves of supposedly essential goods, like toilet paper and tinned food. But what drives this behaviour? And have people always responded this way? Jonny Wilkes explores the history of panic buying…
The behaviour seen in cases of panic buying is – as psychologists are currently popping up on all the news outlets to explain – a very human reaction. It may not be wholly rational at times, but it is understandable. At times of an imminent disaster, such as storms or flooding, it satisfies a need to prepare for however long the problem lasts. Incases like coronavirus, when there are so many unknowns, panic buying is an extreme attempt to take back a sense of control and proactivity at a time of great anxiety. These needs and the resulting ‘herd behaviour’ are nothing new for humanity, and history is replete with examples of panicked groups hoarding supplies. It is easy to imagine that during the Black Death in the 14th century, everyone in Europe would have felt a little more protective over their next meal. When was toilet paper invented and what did people use before? When did panic buying, as we know it, begin? But panic buying could be seen as a relatively young phenomenon, born in the 20th century thanks to the combination of several factors: populations with expendable income; a degree of comfort among those populations, to the point of complacency, that supply and access to everyday goods would remain unbroken; and tools of widespread communication so people learn of a disaster about to hit in advance. The Wall Street Crash: what happened? During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the tensest-of-tense Cold War standoffs precipitated by the Soviets installing nuclear weapons on Cuba, there may not have been social media to spark panic like today – but daily news reports certainly did the trick. Following US President John F Kennedy’s address to the nation on 22 October in which he informed the nation that there were Soviet missiles (located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida), Americans in major cities began stockpiling canned goods and bottled water in their basements to help see them through an attack. Unscrupulous salesmen also enjoyed a roaring (if short-lived) trade by flogging off fallout shelters to a desperate clientele. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/03/GettyImages-53379593-de18b4e.jpg" width="1024" height="771" alt="People watch President John F Kennedy's TV announcement during the Cuban Missile Crisis in a department store. (Photo by Ralph Crane/Life Magazine/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)" title="People watch President John F Kennedy's TV announcement of the Cuban blockade during the missile crisis in a department store. (Photo by Ralph Crane/Life Magazine/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)" /> The queues of panic buyers are not always for food, however. Runs on banks, as seen in the USA at the outset of the Great Depression, are a result of people trying to stockpile currency, and whenever a crisis has hit the supply of oil in the last 50 years, it has inevitably led to long lines of cars outside petrol stations. In 1973, the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposed an oil embargo on countries said to be supportive of Israel, causing the price of a barrel of crude oil to quadruple. This was repeated by a ‘second oil shock’ in 1979, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution as oil output stalled. And many in the UK will still remember the fuel shortages of the 2000s, which were caused by protests at rising petrol and diesel prices. Jonny Wilkes is a freelance writer specialising in history
Shop ’till you drop: a brief history of Christmas shopping
When it comes to exploiting Christmas for all its commercial possibilities, the Victorians take some beating. Mark Connelly looks at how our forbears turned the season of goodwill into an orgy of consumption and shopping
Nowadays it is often said by both clergy and members of the general public alike that Christmas is no more than an orgy of consumerism, and that the message of Christmas has been drowned in a frenzy of competitive present-buying and consumption on an almost obscene level. However, this complaint is by no means new. In fact, it stretches back to the last quarter of the 19th century, a time when many of us believe Christmas, infused by the spirit of Charles Dickens, was more homely, wholesome and spiritual. Did Charles Dickens invent Christmas as we know it today? Christmas carols: the history behind 5 festive favourites Another much repeated ‘fact’ about Christmas is that it was invented by the Victorians, and Charles Dickens in particular. While there is no doubting the fact that the Victorians, partly inspired by Dickens, were fascinated by the celebration of Christmas, they didn’t invent it. Rather they reinvigorated it and brought together the many Christmas customs of Britain and threw themselves into the season in a way not seen before. Being a nation of manufacturers, industrialists and shopkeepers, it was not long before Victorians realised that Christmas, with its emphasis on generosity and hospitality, could be exploited for commercial possibilities. With the growth of a department store culture in Britain from the 1870s, the scene was set for a fusion of sentiment and shopping to arrive every year in late November, and it wasn’t long before some began to complain. Listen | Pen Vogler explores Victorian food through the life and works of Charles Dickens Dickensian delights Buying for Christmas was not entirely a development of the late 19th century, however. Before the late 1870s to early 1880s there was additional purchasing for Christmas, but much of this shopping was centred on exotic and special foods. Gift giving was important, but its general profile was relatively low. In A Christmas Carol (1843) Dickens mentions toys bought as children's gifts, but they come a poor second to the heart of early 19th-century Christmas shopping – culinary delights: "The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts... There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions... There were pears and apples... there were bunches of grapes... piles of filberts... there were Norfolk pippins... The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'!... the blended scents of tea and coffee... the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon... the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar... the figs were moist and pulpy,... the French plums blushed in modest tartness... everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress: [and]... the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day." Provisions were obviously very important, far more so than the idea of browsing for presents, or the as yet unknown glory of picking Christmas card designs. A time traveller’s guide to medieval shopping A handbook to shopping in ancient Rome But as the number of department stores grew, symbols of an ever greater consumerism, fuelled by the increasing resources of a growing middle class, so did the Christmas shopping obsession. By the turn of the century, festivities commenced when the shopping season began – no sooner, no later. Advent Sunday, Christmas Eve, the First Night of Christmas, Twelfth Night, the dates by which the church signalled and measured the season, were pushed aside by the new development of mass consumerism. The clarion call of Christmas was being heard earlier and earlier thanks to the desire of retailers to maximise their profits. A tale in the Christmas Story-Teller of 1878 shows how far popular culture took the shop as its calendar: "Christmas was coming. There were indications everywhere. The grocers, the butchers, and fancy emporiums, all proclaimed Christmas was coming". Tokens of goodwill According to the Lady's Pictorial of December 1881, Christmas announced itself through the transformation of shops: "Christmas cards in almost every window, in the companionship of the attractions of the toy-seller, the wares of the draper, the irresistible temptations of the milliner, and of their more legitimate comrades in the show-cases of the stationer – from everywhere have these pretty little tokens of good-will and kindly thoughts been peering-out and seeking the attention of the passer-by." A history of the high street A brief history of Harrods In EM Forster's Howards End (1910), Mrs Wilcox prevails upon Margaret Schlegel to help her with her Christmas shopping: "I thought we would go to Harrod's or the Haymarket Stores... Everything is sure to be there". One ex-employee of the Bon Marché in Brixton wrote of her memories of the shop in the 1930s: "To many the Bon Marché was always the starting point for Christmas shopping, and this was so for me. The Post Office was in Bon Marché, and so after drawing out some savings, I would start out complete with a list in one hand and a shopping bag in the other". Department stores had created a new Christmas custom, that of obsessive shopping – and sought new attractions to lure consumers in. In 1888 JP Robert of Stratford, West Ham, unveiled the first Santa’s Grotto in his store, and with it he inaugurated a vital Christmas tradition. By the turn of the century all children wanted to sit on Santa’s knee, and all store owners wanted to induce their mammas to bring them in. The desire to entice custom instigated another new tradition – in the increasingly sophisticated art of window-dressing. By the 1880s the great department stores were putting enormous efforts into outshining their rivals’ Christmas displays. Peter Jones in Sloane Square made sure that its Christmas window displays gave “one the impression of having been well thought out and carefully planned well in advance”. Gordon Selfridge was one of the great impresarios of Christmas windows. His apprenticeship in Marshall Field of Chicago had given him the keenest eye for glamour and presentation. Indeed it was Selfridge who coined the phrase “only X shopping days to Christmas”. Selfridges: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the department store 6 Christmas party tips from the past According to The Times, 1923 was a vintage year in the art of Christmas window dressing: "The shop windows everywhere this Christmas show a great advance over former years in the matter of setting and display. Last week long after closing time there were crowds of people who seemed to be 'touring' the great shopping centres, where windows were lighted up to about 10pm". In November 1924, the Drapers' Record paid a visit to F Parsons and Son of Stoke Newington, designers and builders of ship fittings. They were busy working on their latest creation for a Christmas bazaar. A huge mock-up of medieval London was to be built telling the story of Dick Whittington. History advent calendar: 24 facts about Christmas in the Tudor period How did the Romans celebrate ‘Christmas’? The commissioning store was not only getting a pantomime tale, but was also buttressing one of the romances of English history. The children were to enter via a perfect, scale model of the original Aldersgate as it appeared in the 15th century. Just the other side of the gate was the Lord Mayor’s Coach which would then take a dozen or so children for a ride up a hill for about one hundred feet. At this point Father Christmas was to greet them, then they passed by a series of “realistic tableaux depicting in turn a panoramic view of the City, showing St Paul’s and Bow Church, with the bells pealing in the distance; the Docks of London, with their old-time ships; the King and Queen at the Palace; the Lord Mayor’s Show; and, finally the Banquet in the Guildhall”. A brief history of Santa Claus Christmas songs – the oldest ones are the best There's little doubt that such displays had the desired effect. Massive crowds touring the opulent windows became as much a part of the British Christmas as crackers and plum pudding. As The Outlook of December 1898 pointed out, to go Christmas shopping at the end of the 19th century was to throw yourself into "a vortex of would-be buyers". The vortex was described thus: "In Swan and Edgar's this morning, for example, the hubbub on the staircase was simply deafening. A continual stream of 'sightseers' wended their way up and down... I leave Evan's and retrace my steps as far as Oxford Circus. The windows in Peter Robinson's are so enthralling it seems a pity to go in... I stand for a moment at Marshall and Snelgrove's window, and my feminine heart begins to pine for the beauties behind the glass." Such was the magnetic pull of the shop windows at Christmas that the crowds sometimes reached dangerous levels. During Christmas 1909 the police had to be called to Swan and Edgar because the weight of people at the windows on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Regent Street had entirely blocked the road bringing the traffic to a standstill. By the 1930s the great retailers had managed to inculcate an atmosphere of expectation. Everybody was keen to know what the designers had dreamt up – and so a self-perpetuating phenomenon had been created. Indeed, the mania was so intense that customers were urged to consider the strain on shop-workers. At Christmas 1898 the Drapers' Record urged all shoppers to buy early in order to make life easier for shop assistants. Writing to The Times in December 1913, the chairman of the Early Closing Association stated that: "within a few weeks Christmas will be upon us, and those bent on Christmas shopping can in great degree relieve this strain by making their purchases – so far as possible – early in the day and early in the month". Royal examples The great and the good added their weight to this campaign. In 1923 The Times noted that: "The Queen and Princess Mary, Viscount Lascelles, have done a considerable portion of their shopping already. They began the buying of toys (of which both make large purchases each year) some weeks ago, and last week the Queen did a good deal of general buying, and thus set a good example to the rest of London." But this creeping commercialism, which seemed to dominate Christmas more with every passing year, was not without its critics, and was satirised brilliantly by George and Weedon Grossmith in Mr Pooter and his Diary of a Nobody (1892). Retaining the royals: why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived? 7 facts about Buckingham Palace Christmas finds Mr Pooter having to buy a good many cards as a result of his “going out in Society and increasing the number of our friends”. He went to shop in Smirkson’s in the Strand, nominally a drapers, but “this year have turned out everything in the shop and devoted the whole place to the sale of Christmas cards”. But the industry of Christmas cards had already taken on a coarse attitude, as the fastidious Pooter was about to find out: "I had to buy more and pay more than intended. Unfortunately I did not examine them all, and when I got home I discovered a vulgar card with a picture of a fat nurse with two babies, one black and the other white, and the words: 'We wish Pa a Merry Christmas.' I tore up the card and threw it away". He is equally disgusted by his son’s habit of scribbling a higher price on the corner of each card, so people will think he has paid much more. Forster explored the link between this new commercial Britain and Christmas in Howards End. For him it was almost as if it was impossible to come close to the true heart of Christmas, and the English Christmas especially, in the commercial excesses of London's department stores. He noted that Margaret "felt the grotesque impact of the unseen upon the seen, and saw issuing from a forgotten manger at Bethlehem this torrent of coins and toys. Vulgarity reigned". In Wynyard Browne's 1950 play, The Holly and the Ivy, the Reverend Martin Gregory bemoans the fact that the true meaning of Christmas had utterly disappeared over the years. "The brewers and the retail-traders have got hold of it. It's all eating and drinking and givin' each other knick-knacks." It was a condemnation of the season that many could identify with. The Second World War and the austerity years of the late Forties and early Fifties put the brakes on the commercialisation of Christmas, but certainly did not bring it to a halt altogether. Then, as rationing was relaxed in the Fifties and Britons entered a period in which they “had never had it so good”, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan so famously put it, the spending spree recommenced. 10 ways Christmas was celebrated during the First World War Did the First World War Christmas truce football match really happen? This was given an even greater impetus by the advent of commercial television and the speed with which advertising firms created special Christmas TV adverts for their clients. By the 1970s most Britons knew that ITV broadcasting at Christmas would be dominated by gift product advertisements rarely seen during the rest of the year. Nowadays, of course, it seems that no sooner has the sun set on another summer than the seasonal spending spree gets under way – confirmation that the spirits of Gordon Selfridge, JP Robert and all those other pioneers of the shopping orgies of Christmases past are alive and well today. Inside the Victorian department store at Christmas The Christmas season in one of the great Victorian department stores such as Whiteley’s of Bayswater or the Glasgow Polytechnic would have been a truly wondrous sight. Store managers took enormous pride in the vivacity of their Christmas displays. Huge Christmas trees often dominated the main entrance hall, strung with bells, candles and flags. The prevalence of the flags of the United Kingdom and the wider British Empire reveal the way Christmas was intimately associated with patriotism – something that was further reflected in the products stocked for Christmas. The toy departments were laden with lead soldiers, toy warships and military uniforms. In 1888, the London store Shoolbred’s displayed “an Egyptian camel corps similar to that which Wolseley used in the Soudan”, while across town Barker & Co were specialising in boys’ military suits with “arms and armour complete”. Girls were offered a huge range of dolls’ houses, and accessories including prams. The expansion of the empire also meant that exotic luxuries such as dates and figs were stocked alongside large selections of port wines and Madeira, all of which pandered to the British sweet tooth. Being a people obsessed with innovation, the Victorians loved to shop for the latest gadgets including cork-screws, pen-knives and portable grooming sets. With shop-workers’ costs relatively low, stores employed large numbers of assistants, ensuring that a Christmas shopper was indulged and flattered into parting with every penny. The Dickensian dream of Christmas Charles Dickens has had an enormous impact on British culture, but it is his association with Christmas that is most pronounced. Published in 1843, A Christmas Carol was an immediate smash with the public, and quickly spawned a range of 'pirated' copies forcing Dickens into a number of legal actions to protect his creation. Even as dour a figure as Thomas Carlyle, the Calvinist historian and philosopher, was moved to throw Christmas dinner parties thanks to the inspiration of Dickens's tale. The early cinema quickly latched on and no fewer than nine different film versions had been made by 1914. The association of Christmas with Dickens started during his lifetime and gathered pace after his death. “Dickens, it may truly be said, is Christmas,” said the literature scholar, VH Allemandy, in 1921. However, important though he undoubtedly was, Dickens did not create Christmas. Rather, he reflected a general early 19th-century interest in the season and was part of a widespread, particularly middle-class, desire to reinvigorate its ancient customs. At the time Dickens was writing his now world famous story he could have consulted an ever-burgeoning number of popular histories of Christmas such as TK Hervey's Book of Christmas (1836), and his A History of the Christmas Festival, the New Year and their Peculiar Customs (1843) and Thomas Wright's Specimens of Old Carols (1841). Dickens, being perfectly in-tune with Britain, therefore published his story at precisely the right moment. He was a massive player in a revival that was already under way, but he was not the sole instigator of it. Mark Connelly is professor of modern British history at the University of Kent and author of Christmas: A Social History (IB Tauris, 1999). His other works include Steady the Buffs! A Regiment, a Region and the Great War (OUP, 2006) This article was first published in the December 2008 edition of BBC History Magazine
Where is Britain's oldest shop? And was Selfridges really the first department store? Julian Humphrys serves up four facts about our shopping culture...
Where is Britain’s oldest shop? The site with the strongest claim appears to be the Boxford Stores in the Suffolk village of that name. Records suggest that this partly medieval building has been open for business in one form or other since the reign of Henry V. If you want to see what a medieval shop might have looked like, check out the merchant’s house in French Street in downtown Southampton. Built at the end of the 13th century for a local wine merchant, it features a vaulted cellar for stock, accommodation for the family and a shop at the front of the property. When did shopping malls arrive? The shopping mall has a surprisingly long history. London’s Royal Opera Arcade, completed in 1818, and Burlington Arcade (1819) sought to woo well-to-do shoppers away from the city’s muddy, crowded streets into a more genteel environment. Looking back even further, the trading floor of London’s Royal Exchange, opened by Elizabeth I in 1571, was in 1660 surrounded by a two-storey shopping mall featuring 100 kiosks and shops. A brief history of Harrods Christmas shopping: Shop ’till you drop A time traveller’s guide to medieval shopping Was Selfridges the first department store? Though Harry Selfridge’s Oxford Street store, opened in 1909, was perhaps the first to sell shopping as a pastime rather than a chore, Britain’s first true department store had begun trading over a century earlier. Harding, Howell & Co’s Grand Fashionable Magazine, which opened on Pall Mall in 1796 with four departments selling furs and fans; haberdashery; millinery; and jewellery, ornaments and perfume. When did we go self-service? Though the world’s first true self-service store – the intriguingly named Piggly Wiggly – opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916, it wasn’t until after the Second World War that the idea caught on in Britain. Sainsbury’s first self-service store opened in Croydon in 1950. As Alan Sainsbury found out to his cost, the concept wasn’t universally popular. When one customer realised that the days of simply handing over a shopping list were numbered, she reputedly showed her disapproval by taking the wire basket she’d been given and throwing it at him. This article was first published in December 2015.
If you fancied some serious retail therapy in the ancient world then, as Claire Holleran reveals, the streets of Rome were the place to be...
Ancient Rome was a cosmopolitan city, drawing in people and products from across the Mediterranean world and beyond. By the late first century BC, there were as many as one million inhabitants in Rome, an urban population figure not reached again in the western world until London in around 1800. Like most urban residents, the people of Rome relied on retailers to provide them with food, clothing and other goods. Our ancient evidence points to a thriving retail trade in the city and, for any ancient visitor, the sheer number of retailers and shoppers must have been one of the most striking aspects of the Roman cityscape. Retailers were found in the busiest areas of the city. Small shops and workshops lined the main thoroughfares, spilling out over their thresholds into the streets and colonnades. The poet Martial remarked that until the emperor Domitian issued an edict banning this practice, Rome looked like one big shop. A brief guide to Ancient Rome & the Romans How ethnically diverse was Roman Britain? Roman medicine: 6 ways people stayed healthy in Ancient Rome Market traders, street sellers and ambulant hawkers also tended to be found in central areas. They clustered around temples, bathhouses, forums, circuses, amphitheatres and theatres, attracted by the commercial opportunities offered by large gatherings of people. Sellers at temples offered votive offerings such as flower garlands, while those at the amphitheatre may have sold gladiatorial programmes of the type mentioned by Cicero in the mid-first century BC. Perishable items that could be eaten straight away were also a common sight on Rome’s streets. Prepared foods such as bread, hot sausages, pastries, and chickpeas were perfect for a busy Roman on the run. Reliefs and paintings, drawn mainly from Pompeii and from Rome’s port city of Ostia, are our best evidence for the appearance of Roman stalls. Temporary stalls are visible in a painting (shown right) from Pompeii of a riot in its amphitheatre – a depiction of a historical event that the historian Tacitus tells us took place in AD 59, when the residents of the nearby city of Nuceria descended on the doomed town. In the foreground of the picture, we can see stalls set up under awnings strung between trees or on stakes in the ground. Painted messages on the outside of the amphitheatre also record the location of stalls. Another Pompeian painting shows a tableau of everyday events in the forum. Scattered within scenes showing legal judgements, the corporal punishment of school pupils, and people chatting and reading public notices, we can make out traders hawking their wares. Some have their goods lying on the floor around them – such as a man selling metal vessels, or a hot-food trader standing by a large cauldron suspended over a fire. Caged animals Others have more elaborate sales areas. A shoe seller sets out wooden benches for his customers and marks out his place of sale with curtains hung between columns. Bread and vegetable vendors display their wares on wooden tables and in baskets on the ground. A marble relief from Ostia shows a vegetable seller with a large basket and a stall made up of a wooden trestle table, while another relief (shown on page 30) depicts a woman stood behind cages containing her stock of chickens and hares. On the counter are two bowls of fruit, probably containing figs, and a barrel containing snails. There are even two monkeys on the stall to attract and entertain customers. Other sellers were more mobile, carrying their wares on trays or in baskets around their necks, as shown in a funerary relief from Narbonne. Some pictures show retailers holding one hand aloft as though addressing a crowd, while the other hand touches their produce, inviting customers to do the same. Not only were Roman retailers highly visible, they were also very audible, disturbing the residents of the city with their distinctive sales cries. Seneca, for example, complains about the hawkers who frequent the bathhouse below his apartment in first-century Rome, describing the noise of the “pastry-cooks with their varied cries, the sausage dealer and the confectioner and all the vendors of food from the cookshops selling their wares”. Other writers liken the poor poetry or speeches of their competitors or enemies to the shouts of retailers, the proverbial ‘fishwives’ of their day. Martial likens the wit of a friend to that of a “vendor of boiled chickpeas”, or the slaves of the fishmongers, or the “bawling cook who hawks smoking sausages round stuffy bistros”. Our ancient literary sources are written by upper-class Romans who almost universally condemn retail as a deceitful practice and repeatedly call the quality of goods into question. Galen is particularly scathing, claiming that some unscrupulous retailers had been known to use human flesh in dishes in place of pork. He observes that human and pig flesh must taste and smell remarkably similar, since the unfortunate customers were unable to tell the difference! A fifth-century AD author also alleges that some retailers displayed food items such as eggs and onions floating in glass bowls of water so that they looked larger than their actual size. Rome’s December shopping spree The Christmas markets now so popular in British towns and cities may be a German import, but December markets were a tradition in ancient Rome too. Towards the end of the month, Romans celebrated the festival of Saturnalia in honour of the god Saturn, a time of year that the poet Catullus called “the best of days”. The toga was discarded in favour of more comfortable clothes, time was spent eating and drinking, slaves were allowed their liberty, at least temporarily, and friends exchanged presents. Invention or adaptation: what did the Romans really do for us? Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past? Saturnalia: the origins of the debauched Roman 'Christmas' Traditionally, gifts took the form of sigilla, small clay figurines. These gave the market its name, the sigillaria. Traders sold gifts from temporary stalls or canvas booths in the Campus Martius, the ‘Field of Mars’, in the centre of what would later become the medieval city. We know that in the early empire the market was held in the Porticus Argonautarum, built by the general Agrippa in 25 BC. The satirist Juvenal writes that women, always anxious to keep up with their neighbours, demanded crystal vases and diamond rings from the stalls in this market. Just as today, the December markets must have added to the holiday atmosphere in the city, with adults giving children money to spend on treats. This tradition allowed Emperor Tiberius to dismiss his nephew Claudius’s political ambitions by giving him money to spend at the sigillaria market rather than political office. Selling to survive Men and women mixed freely in the Roman retail environment, working as both buyers and sellers. There was, however, some economic segregation. On the one hand, street traders sold everyday food at low prices and probably catered primarily for customers of relatively limited means. Many of these traders would probably have themselves been poor, retailing on a small scale in order to survive. On the other hand, wealthy shoppers who wanted to buy food to impress their dinner guests could visit the macellum, a purpose-built luxury food market. Here large single fish were auctioned off to the highest bidder. Prized items, such as red mullet, could command incredibly high prices. Bankers would even have been on hand to lend money to those who could not cover the costs of their bids. The imperial biographer Suetonius records the disgust of Emperor Tiberius that three mullets went for 30,000 sesterces – more than 30 times the annual wage of a legionary soldier. Alongside fish, shoppers could also find meat for sale, some of which was sourced from animal sacrifices (Christian shoppers had to try to avoid this). Other Roman delicacies available from luxury markets included songbirds, dormice and snails. The wealthy were visited by retailers in their own homes, sometimes speculatively. Ovid regarded this as a nuisance for the lover, since, he complained, sellers always seem to come when your mistress is in a buying mood, beseeching you to shower her with gifts. And claiming to have no money wasn’t always a defence, as the seller would often take a credit note. Poets also joked about the sexual threat posed by retailers calling on elite women desperate to relieve the boredom of their domestic lives. The retail trade was one of the most visible sectors of the urban economy in ancient Rome, with retailers locked in a fierce competition to relieve customers of their money. In this sense at least, Rome was a very modern metropolis. Claire Holleran is lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter. This article was first published in the Christmas 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine
9 ways our food shopping habits have changed since 1947
They reveal the trends, tastes and spending habits of the times, and now the items in our shopping baskets are being used to chart the culinary history of the UK since 1947. Here, food journalist Andrew Webb reveals nine ways in which our food shopping habits have changed over the decades: from postwar austerity to the rise of frozen foods…
In 1947 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) began recording the prices of everyday items on a ‘national shopping list’, to help calculate inflation. Through to today the list is updated every year: new products are added, while others are quietly dropped. As the prices of the various items in the basket change over time, so does the total cost of the basket, thus movements in consumer price inflation indices represent the changing cost of the shopping basket. By looking into these imaginary baskets we can build up a picture of the changing shopping and eating habits of postwar Britain. Here are some of the highlights… Wild rabbit anyone? That first list from 1947 contains such things as small white loaf, wild rabbit, tin of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, prunes, tea, cocoa and condensed milk. It also features Sild, or small herrings, which were sold in tins. Cold comfort for cans In the 1940s hardly anybody owned a fridge, so tinned food was enormously popular. This explains the presence of canned fish and condensed milk in the basket. Food such as fresh meat and bread, meanwhile, were shopped for daily by the housewife, and carried back home by hand. Baked beans appeared in the first basket (in 1947) alongside other tinned ingredients such as peas. By 1974 canned tomatoes were also present, as was plenty of canned fruit. But by 2009 the only cans on the list were tomatoes, sweetcorn and baked beans, marking the can’s fall from grace. It’s always time for tea Unsurprisingly, tea has appeared – in one form or another – in every basket since 1947. Initially this was in the form of loose-leaf tea – teabags did not appear in the basket until 1980. Sadly, loose leaf was removed in 2002, reflecting a decline in sales. Herbal and fruit teas were added in 2001, but remained for just one year. By 2003 there were only plain old teabags in the basket. A slice of history Corned beef in cans was present in the first basket in 1947, and by 1980 appeared as two distinct versions: sliced and canned. By 1993 it was gone, replaced by the suspicious-sounding ‘canned meat’. This reflected the move from tinned and potted meats to items such as pâté, pies and charcuterie. Jam on your Weetabix? Breakfast cereals first entered the basket in 1952. In 1987 oats were taken out and replaced by muesli, perhaps reflecting the 1980s obsession with fibre and jogging. Muesli was quietly dropped in 2006, however. Perhaps the strangest thing I uncovered while making the programme is that when products like Weetabix and Shredded Wheat were launched, they were intended almost as a bread substitute. Consequently, their early packaging recommended serving with jam or cheese, or in Shredded Wheat’s case, a poached egg. You’ll have to listen to the programme to find out what I thought of this serving suggestion… Bread goes garlic Another staple that’s been in the basket right from the beginning is the white, sliced loaf. In 1962 ‘sliced and unsliced’ were added, and in 2006 brown bread appeared. Pitta breads were added in 2000, only to come out in 2010 and be replaced by garlic bread. The baguette was added in 2001, only to come out four years later. A fresh perspective Yoghurt first appeared in the 1974 basket, later joined by fromage frais in 1993, flavoured milk in 1997, and chilled pot dessert in 2001. Baby milk formula was added in 2003, and pro-biotic drinks in 2008. Losses in the dairy section over the years include UHT milk, TT (Tuberculin Tested) milk, and reduced-cost welfare milk. For mash get Smash! Invented in the 1960s, Smash appeared in the 1974 basket due to a huge increase in sales driven by the famous adverts featuring Martian puppets. In my programme you can hear an exclusive interview with production designer Peter Richardson, who reveals a little-known fact about them. Smash was removed from the basket in 1987, replaced with frozen oven chips. Sea food and eat it These first appeared in the 1962 basket, alongside other processed and canned fish such as kippers and sardines. Frozen prawns were added in 1987, but removed a year later, and were not seen again until 2002. By the 1990s canned tuna appears, alternating with canned salmon. As you can see, the story of what’s in each year’s basket isn’t just about inflation, or even economics, but the products we’ve always adored, and those we loved and left. Behind this are massive social and technological developments that changed what we ate, and how we shopped. It is the story of us, in a basket. The Inflating Shopping Basket airs on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 18 January at 1.30pm. To find out more, click here. To read more from Andrew, visit www.foodjournalist.co.uk.
Juliet Gardiner is working on a new BBC series in which shopkeepers relive the high street experience from 1870–1970. Here she traces the rise and fall of what was once the nerve centre of communities across the UK
The high street is a British universal. Shopping – whether doing the shopping of necessity or going shopping for pleasure – is something that everyone does. Yet the high street in many of Britain’s towns and cities is now in what seems like terminal decline. Rows of empty shops litter our cities; the footfall of shoppers is desultory and occasional. Out-of-town supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail parks and online shopping have rendered redundant scores of the high streets that once not only served communities’ material needs but were the focus for many of their activities. They were a place of provisioning and commerce but also a meeting place; a hub of social as well as monetary exchange. What has been lost in this decline is the thread running through Turn Back Time, a six-part series airing on BBC One this month. It's an ambitious project which focuses on the Somerset town of Shepton Mallet to explore the evolution of the high street over 100 years, starting in 1870. Shops have been bought and real-life shopkeepers and their families – a baker, butcher, grocer, ironmonger and dressmaker – installed. Their role is not only to keep shop under conditions familiar to everyone from Victorian retailers through to those who worked in the Sixties consumer boom, but also to interact with the town's modern-day shoppers. In doing so, they aim to show the people of Shepton Mallet something of shopping experiences over a century and see if this could persuade them back to their former ways. As a social historian I have joined Masterchef presenter Greg Wallace and a fifth-generation baker, Tom Herbert, in the 'Chamber of Commerce' to ensure that the shopkeepers have an authentic historical experience – and to realise the maxim that the social history of Britain can be seen through its shop windows. What is the origin of the term 'High Street'? Rupert Matthews, historian and author, answers a popular question… There are thought to be about 3,000 roads in Britain called High Street, with another 2,300 having a variation on the name such as Upper High Street or High Street East. In the vast majority of cases the high street in a town or village is the main commercial or shopping thoroughfare. The name seems to have emerged in the 12th century when the word ‘high’ began to be used to indicate something or someone of a higher, or more important, status than others. At first the term high street did not apply to any one street in particular, but was a generic term used to indicate the most important road in a place. Most of the streets now known as High Street originally had another, more local name, but came to be called the more generic term as its use became widespread. During the 20th century, the term reverted to having a more generic meaning. People now often talk about ‘high street’ shops, when what they really mean is national chains of shops. As the 21st century progresses it is becoming possible for a chain of ‘high street stores’ to only have shops in out-of-town shopping centres – and not to have any shops actually on a road named High Street at all. High streets are born The roots of the modern high street can be found in the era of rural self-sufficiency when the vast majority of the populace grew their own food, and bartered for livestock and services. At this time, baking, dressmaking, cobbling, hairdressing and other tasks were part of the domestic economy. This developed into a more urban pattern with itinerant peddlers and market stall holders selling goods at prices that were haggled. Next came the move of retail into fixed-location shops selling goods at fixed prices. Well into the 19th century, biweekly markets would sell perishable local goods: dairy produce, poultry and vegetables, as well as ‘homemade’ pies and gingerbread. The stalls on these markets were usually leased from a landlord, who could prohibit any competition within five miles. Yet as early as 1688 there was as many as 50,000 shopkeepers, and by 1800 the number was perhaps 170,000. After 1850, increased urbanisation, a rising population, improvements in transport, innovative manufacturing processes and lack of tariffs all provided high-street shopkeepers with a wider range of goods to sell – and more customers to buy them. While some butchers and fishmongers continued to sell through market stalls or hawkers, other traders such as grocers and ironmongers invested in fixed premises with goods displayed behind plate glass windows and shopkeepers attentive to customers’ needs. This was a far cry from the “tumult of a thousand different cries of the eager dealers all shouting at the tops of their voices” that could be heard at a market in Lambeth. Victorians see the value of hard work The Victorian high street was characterised by independent, family-run shops, manned by shopkeepers who were increasingly regarded as respectable and skilled members of the community. Many of the products on sale were prepared on the premises so that shops continued to be part workshop, part retail outlet. Bakers worked punishingly long days. Charles Booth’s 1903 survey found that 80 to100 hours a week was not unusual. They consequently suffered poor health and often a limited life span, while their premises were described in an 1862 parliamentary report as “extremely dirty… covered in cobwebs and flour dust”. Their loaves, staples of a working-class diet, might be adulterated with alum (a chemical compound) chalk or potatoes to improve the whiteness and bulk out the volume. By 1890 “butchers in the strict sense of the word (ie those who kill their own meat) are a rapidly decreasing class,” reported Booth. Butchers increasingly bought dead meat wholesale (and frozen imports from the 1870s), displaying carcasses outside their shops and being skilled at dismembering and selling all parts of an animal to their customers. Grocers, threatened by the rise of ‘multiples’ such as Lipton’s, fought back by emphasising personal service, delivering orders to customers, cutting portions of cheese and butter from large blocks, roasting coffee beans, weighing out tea and shaving sugar from cones and bagging it up. Shop workers fight for their rights Traditionally the shopkeeper’s lot was not a happy one with long hours, and low pay. Competition was particularly fierce in working-class areas and, as long as there were customers ready to buy, shops had little option but to stay open. This could mean opening as late as midnight in urban districts on Friday and Saturday nights, though in more prosperous areas and city centres, closing hours were more likely to be 7pm and a weekly ‘early closing’ at 2pm. There had been campaigns for shorter working hours since the 1820s, but even the 1904 Early Closing Act was permissive – giving local authorities the power to enforce limited opening hours if requested by two-thirds of traders – and by 1909 fewer than 15,000 shops were covered by such legislation. Shopkeepers argued that to enforce closing hours would remove the main competitive weapon small family-run shops had against larger outlets. Many politicians – anxious not to interfere with the free play of market forces and people’s right to trade – agreed. Compulsory ‘living in’ was another complaint of shop assistants. In 1901 a strike of 13 Whiteley’s assistants, parading through Oxford Street in top hats, sparked a wave of sympathetic actions and, by the First World War, most employers had reluctantly conceded shop workers’ right to a rise in wages in lieu of board. Cashing in on war The First World War had a dramatic impact on all aspects of life in Britain – and the high street was no exception. There was panic buying and hoarding of food as soon as war was declared in August 1914. By 1918, prices had risen by 100 per cent, as imports were largely cut off and Britain’s agricultural resources could not meet demand. Shopkeepers lost staff as young men flocked to enlist, and women flooded into the retail trades to take their place. This was particularly evident in grocers and bakers’ shops where, by the end of 1917, the number of women employees had risen by 56 per cent. It was not until 1916 that the government appointed its first food controller. Lord Devonport introduced price controls, and brought profiteers to book. But some shopkeepers were still able to cash in on the war, refusing to sell scarce commodities such as tea unless customers also purchased ‘other goods’ – usually margarine. Devonport banned this practice in March 1917, yet was reluctant to impose rationing, instead appealing to the public to voluntarily restrict themselves. However, places like Liverpool, where there had been food riots, introduced their own rationing system. Finally, in February 1918, Lord Rhondda, Devonport’s successor, announced that meat would be rationed, soon followed by bacon, tea, butter and margarine. The government also restricted shop opening hours in order to save fuel – a move that passed into law after the war ended. Beating the slump Unemployment during the depression of the 1930s meant that the high street suffered. Staff were laid off, wages cut, several large department stores had merged soon after the war, while many smaller shops went out of business. Yet ironically, ‘setting up shop’ was an alternative form of employment and it could be done on modest capital or an easily obtainable loan. A fish and chip shop with secondhand equipment could be opened for a few hundred pounds. In fact, in the Midlands and the south, where jobs were to be had, the standard of living actually rose. The result was a real transformation in the growth of branded goods, the explosion of advertising and the inexorable rise of the ‘multiples’ and the ‘chains’. Far more goods were packaged, deskilling traditional trades such as grocers, yet offering more of a level playing field as customers came to trust brands stocked by retailers large and small. Female-owned fashion shops, known as ‘madam shops’, also increased in popularity. However, Currys increasingly took trade in electrical goods and bicycles away from specialist shops; Marks & Spencer and C&A challenged high-street drapers; and FW Woolworth, advertising “nothing more than 6d”, had become ubiquitous in democratising the retail aspirations of all. Bentall’s of Kingston ran mannequin parades and ‘bonny baby’ competitions; Alder’s of Croydon imported a baby elephant to advertise its ‘jumbo sale’; Selfridges displayed the aviatrix Amy Johnson’s record-breaking plane; and Derry & Tom’s in Kensington opened a roof garden replete with flamingoes – all to attract customers in to spend. Rationing stalks the land Shopkeepers were on the front line during the Second World War. Several department stores were requisitioned: Kendal Milne in Manchester housed civil servants; the basement of Arnolds in Great Yarmouth was converted into a military hospital; other stores had public shelters in their basements. Food rationing involved traders in an avalanche of directives and regulations. Customers had to register with a shop which supplied the rationed goods they were entitled to. Small shops tended to lose out to larger ones offering a wider range of goods. Rationing was gradually extended to more and more commodities throughout the war – and shoppers were soon queuing for those unrationed goods in short supply such as a bit of fish, an onion or some cigarettes. In December 1941, the government introduced a points system to offer some limited choice of non-perishable foods, depending on what happened to be plentiful at the time. Clothing rationing was introduced in June 1941 and became ever more stringent as the war progressed. Meanwhile ‘austerity styles’ regulated the design of clothes: no frills on dresses, or turn-ups on men’s trousers. The war saw a shift in the balance of power between customer and shopkeeper, as the latter could reserve a product that was in short supply for favoured customers. However, prices were regulated, and ‘profiteering’ was punished by fines or prison sentences. With most factories turned over to war production, the supply of cosmetics, toys and household goods, though never rationed, was severely limited and many shops struggled to survive the war. The rise of self-service Britain had its first proto ‘supermarket’ when David Greig briefly converted his grocery shop in Turnpike Lane, London, to self-service in 1923. In a 1942 experiment, necessitated by wartime staff shortages, a self-service shop was created on the ground floor of Co-op in Romford, Essex. It measured just 22 by 8 feet – a far cry from Michael ‘King’ Cullen’s large-scale, low-profit enterprises in the US in the 1930s. Jack Cohen, a Hackney market trader, opened a Tesco self-service store in St Albans in 1947, where the goods were supplied from a counter but paid for at a turnstile. Rationing was still in force and Cohen reckoned that self-service would cut labour costs and reduce queues – the blight of the postwar high street. By 1951 almost half of Tesco’s shops were self-service with food displayed behind Perspex left over from wartime bomber construction. In 1956 Cohen’s first proper supermarket (defined as a food retail outlet of more than 2,000 square feet of selling area) opened in a former cinema in Maldon, Essex. Three years later, the Tesco supermarket at Hatfield in Hertfordshire sold drapery, men’s shirts, sheets and towels. Alan Sainsbury also saw the potential of self-service and opened his company’s first purpose-built supermarket in Eastbourne in 1952. By 1966 Britain boasted more than 20,000 service outlets. Other multiples such as Home and Colonial, Maypole and Lipton’s were slow to embrace the new retail model, and supermarkets were not initially always popular with the housewife: She might welcome the speed and convenience, but regret the loss of personal service and sociability. Shopping goes Technicolor IN 1956 the Retail Price Index listed staples like lump sugar, rabbits, candles and turnips. By the mid-Sixties these had been replaced by camera films, telephone rentals, dog food, nylon stockings, sliced bread, fish fingers, jeans and motor scooters. After more than a decade of austerity, prosperity and plenty had arrived on the high street, followed by the affluent teenager with demands for vinyl records, frothy coffee, cheap clothes and make-up. Just as Technicolor had come to the cinema, so it had to the high street. Greys and blacks were swept aside, as a new generation of fashion-conscious shoppers chose to wear vibrant reds, greens and oranges. Men went into Burton’s menswear shops wearing three-piece serge suits and came out in blazers and lightweight slacks. Newly affluent ‘dolly birds’ sported mini skirts and Laura Ashley milkmaid dresses. And, just a few years after food rationing came to an end, chicken bricks and garlic started to make an impact on the nation’s table. Biba and Habitat were in the vanguard, but it was Marks & Spencer with over 300 outlets whose profits quadrupled and who claimed to dress both the doctor’s and docker’s wife. More and more housewives shopped in supermarkets, buying boil-in-the bag curries, instant mashed potato and tea bags. In 1960 there were six Indian restaurants in Britain. Ten years later, the number had soared to 1,200 (including takeaways). Many corner shops were transformed by immigrant entrepreneurs stocking exotic foods and staying open late. A high-street renaissance? Shoppers complain that today one high street is indistinguishable from the next – the same chains selling the same goods. Worse still, in many cases they are no longer vibrant commercial thoroughfares, instead boasting little but boarded-up premises and graffiti, only enlivened by charity shops. It seems that Britain’s consumer boom happened elsewhere. Supermarkets have expanded into out-of-town superstores (25,000 square feet or more of selling space), hypermarkets (essentially a supermarket and department store combined) or retail parks with a number of large shops. ‘Remote shopping’ via television, mail order and the internet has trebled in a decade from £9.7 to £26.2 billion, while factory outlet stores (or whole villages) vie with adventure parks and stately homes as day trip destinations. Paradoxically, farmers’ markets flourish in unpromising urban spaces such as car parks and asphalt playgrounds, and organic ‘veg boxes’ bring food direct from producer to consumer. People order weekly food deliveries as they did in Victorian times – but now they arrive not on a bike ridden by the grocer’s boy but in a large refrigerated lorry. Out-of-own hypermarkets leave traces of their former selves in pared down high-street versions (going under monikers like ‘Extra’ and ‘Local’). Quirky ‘indie’ bookstores reported a one per cent growth in sales in 2009 – a rare piece of good news for the beleaguered world of British bookselling. Does this success constitute a green shoot of recovery for the high street? Could it yet again become the focus of local communities? Juliet Gardiner's books include The Thirties: An Intimate History and The Blitz: The British Under Attack (both Harper Press, 2010). High street names that have disappeared The growth of supermarkets proved disastrous to: Dewhurst's the butchers was founded by the Vestey family in 1895, which also acquired the Oxo beef stock company and the Oxo Tower by the Thames. By 1995 competition from supermarkets meant that the family high-street butcher had disappeared. Mac Fisheries: Convinced that the Scottish fishing industry could be revived, in 1918 Lord Leverhulme, who had bought the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, started to buy a number of independent fishmongers and rebrand them Mac Fisheries. By April 1979 competition from supermarkets and frozen fish fingers meant that while some of the larger Macshops were sold to the International Stores group, the wet fish shops on high streets across the country went out of business. Home and Colonial began life on the Edgware Road in 1883 under Julius Drewe (who commissioned the last castle to be built in Britain, Castle Drogo in Devon). Selling mainly tea, it was once the largest food retailers in Britain with over 3,000 shops. It merged with the grocery chain Lipton's between 1924 and 1931. The imperial name was dropped in the 1960s but supermarket competition led to a merger with Safeway in 1986. Timothy Whites had started as a chandler's and general store in Portsmouth in 1848. In 1935 the company merged with Taylors Drug Company. Selling pharmaceuticals and household goods, Timothy Whites & Taylors had 614 high-street shops when they were taken over by Boots the Chemist. The Aerated Bread Company: (ABC) was the brainchild of Dr John Dauglish who sought to mass produce loaves that needed less hand kneading. They were thus cleaner to produce and avoided the horrors of food adulteration. The first bakery opened in the 1860s and was soon joined by a chain of tea shops – respectable public spaces that proved popular with women. After being taken over by Allied Foods, ABC disappeared from the high street in the 1980s. Shoe shops proved vulnerable to changing fashions and recession… Freeman, Hardy & Willis: (Later the '&' was dropped). Named after three employees, this outlet started selling shoes in the 1870s. A century later the chain was rebranded Hush Puppies but this did not save it from collapse in 1996. Dolcis grew from a market stall in Woolwich market in 1863 to be a fashionable and ubiquitous high-street shoe shop until it went into liquidation in 2008. Department stores fared little better… Gamages: Thomas Gamage took over a watch repair shop in the unfashionable district of Holborn in 1878 and soon his ramshackle premises could claim to be the 'People's Popular Emporium', the official outfitter of the Boy Scouts and a treasure trove of children's toys in the 1950s. Gamages closed in March 1972. Swan & Edgar opened at Piccadilly Circus in the early 19th century and its hub position made it a popular place to arrange to meet for most of the 20th century. But in 1982 it closed to become in turn Tower Records, a Virgin MegaStore and in the spring of 2010, a clothing store, Sting. Derry & Toms: In 1860, shopkeeper Joseph Toms set up in business with his brother-in-law Charles Derry. They expanded adjoining shops (including one devoted to selling mourning accoutrements) and in 1932 opened a magnificent sevenstorey art deco store on Kensington High Street with its own exotic roof garden. Derry &Toms closed in 1972 and Biba briefly took over the premises. The store is now owned by one of Britain's most popular clothes (and food) retailers, Marks & Spencer. In a category of its own… FW Woolworth: The first British branch of the US 'five and dime' store opened in Liverpool in 1909, celebrated by a brass band and fireworks. Originally selling goods worth no more than 6d, Woolworth democratised retail, offering everything from pins to cosmetics and clothes to furniture. And most adults today have fond memories of its 'pick n' mix' sweet selection. But its generalist approach proved unable to cope with harsh trading conditions. Woolworth stores disappeared from the high streets of Britain between December 2008 and January 2009, though the name has an afterlife in the realm of online shopping. This article was first published in the November 2010 edition of BBC History Magazine
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