Tony, Thought this might be interesting!
My Grandmother lived in the East End of London as a child. The following is an extract from her memoirs regarding shopping! It is entitled “The Daily Search for Food…â€
Now, as we got older, round about eight, nine or ten, eleven, twelve and thirteen, because we left school at fourteen, mother got us up very early in the morning and if it was one of my brothers, that was all right. She sent him with tuppence for his fare on a bus, penny there and a penny back, with threepence for the meat he had to ask for in the market.
We used to go over London Bridge and on to Leadenhall Market for three penn’orth of pieces and we used to do all right. We got all the cuttings from the meat, lots of fat of course, but that didn’t matter. It all went in the pie anyway! We did all this before we went to school and we wouldn’t dare be late or you got a black mark against your name in the book.
The girls went also, but she had to send two of us, being girls. I didn’t know it then, but I know now why she did that. Even in those days they were sex cautious.
Well, that was all carried out in the week, but on Saturdays, it was somewhat different. There was always two of us went on a Saturday, because we had a lot more to get. She gave us a sack to put the stuff in. Mostly it was all giblets. The giblets were the heads and necks and all the insides of the chickens. All this was thrown into a big iron drum, so we waited around until the man fetched out the rubbish, then we made a dive at it, falling in as well sometimes!
I know I fell in once, I screamed the place down. When I got home, I told my mum I had swallowed some chicken heads.
“Good!†she said, “Now you won’t want any, will you, when they are cooked!â€
It took longer to get back home because we had a sack full of giblets and we had to drag them all over London Bridge before we could get on a bus that had no top to it, only a kind of cover to put over your knees if it rained, so getting on the bus with that wanted some doing.
“You’re not going to fetch that on, are you?†The bus conductor said at first, eyeing the sack.
“Of course I am!†I replied.
He didn’t like it, but as he was a kind man, he let us on. How we got upstairs I shall never know. I sent my younger sister on first, and while the bus bumped up and down I could only hold on myself with one hand and try to get the big heavy wet sack up one step at a time while the bus was jogging along.
I was still trying to get it up when the bus conductor had finished getting his fares down below, so when he wanted to get up the stairs himself he had to help me get the sack up. He said all the sweet words of music you could think of. He got blood all over his shoes and trousers.
He said, “God! You’re not going to eat this in the sack, are you?â€
Well, I know I was only twelve or thirteen years, but I was very cheeky, so he got a good answer to that one. He had a good laugh though, and pretended to heave up, and he even helped me to get off the bus with the sack of giblets, so he turned out to be very kind. After that he got to know us a bit and helped us to get on and off the bus. I’ll never forget that man.
