Going Shopping in Victorian England

“GONE TO THE SHOPS”
Recent Titles in
Victorian Life and Times
Family Ties in Victorian England

Claudia Nelson
Food and Cooking in Victorian England
Andrea Broomfield
Victorian Religion: Faith and Life in Britain
Julie Melnyk
“GONE TO THE SHOPS”
Shopping in Victorian England
Kelley Graham
VICTORIAN LIFE AND TIMES

Sally Mitchell, Series Editor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graham, Kelley, 1961–

Gone to the shops : shopping in Victorian England / by Kelley Graham.
p. cm. – (Victorian life and times, ISSN 1932–944X)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978–0–275–98998–9 (alk. paper)
1. Retail trade—England—History—19th century. 2. Consumers—England—History—
19th century. 3. Shopping—England—History—19th century. I. Title.
HF5429.6.G72E65 2008
381 .1094209034—dc22 2008020082
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright
C 2008 by Kelley Graham
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008020082
ISBN: 978–0–275–98998–9
ISSN: 1932-944X
First published in 2008
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Virginia . . .
and no, we don’t have to go down every aisle . . .
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Series Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Chronology xv
1. Going Shopping in Victorian England 1

2. Shopping Traditions and Innovations 18
3. Clothes and Accessories 39
4. Food and Drink 56
5. Home Furnishings and Furniture 75
6. Other Shops 88
7. Services 104
8. Late Century Transformations 121
Notes 135
Glossary 139
Bibliography 143
Index 147
a photo essay follows page 74

SERIES FOREWORD
Although the nineteenth century has almost faded from living memory—most
people who heard firsthand stories from grandparents who grew up before 1900
have adult grandchildren by now—impressions of the Victorian world continue
to influence both popular culture and public debates. These impressions may
well be vivid yet contradictory. Many people, for example, believe that Vic-
torian society was safe, family-centered, and stable because women could not
work outside the home, although every census taken during the period records
hundreds of thousands of female laborers in fields, factories, shops, and schools
as well as more than a million domestic servants—often girls of fourteen or
fifteen—whose long and unregulated workdays created the comfortable leisured
world we see in Merchant and Ivory films. Yet it is also true that there were
women who had no household duties and desperately wished for some pur-
pose in life but found that social expectations and family pressure absolutely
prohibited their presence in the workplace.
The goal of books in the Victorian Life and Times series is to explain and
enrich the simple pictures that show only a partial truth. Although the Vic-
torian period in Great Britain is often portrayed as peaceful, comfortable, and
traditional, it was actually a time of truly breathtaking change. In 1837, when
eighteen-year-old Victoria became queen, relatively few of England’s people
had ever traveled more than ten miles from the place where they were born.
Little more than half the population could read and write, children as young
as five worked in factories and mines, and political power was entirely in the
hands of a small minority of men who held property. By the time Queen Victo-
ria died in 1901, railways provided fast and cheap transportation for both goods
and people, telegraph messages sped to the far corners of the British Empire in
minutes, education was compulsory, a man’s religion (or lack of it) no longer
x Series Foreword
barred him from sitting in Parliament, and women were not only wives and
domestic servants but also physicians, dentists, elected school-board members,
telephone operators, and university lecturers. Virtually every aspect of life had
been transformed either by technology or by the massive political and legal
reforms that reshaped Parliament, elections, universities, the army, education,
sanitation, public health, marriage, working conditions, trade unions, and civil
and criminal law.
The continuing popularity of Victoriana among decorators and collectors, the
strong market for historical novels and for mysteries set in the age of Jack the
Ripper and Sherlock Holmes, the new interest in books by George Eliot and
Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins whenever one is presented on television,
and the desire of amateur genealogists to discover the lives, as well as the names,
of nineteenth-century British ancestors all reveal the need for accurate infor-
mation about the period’s social history and material culture. In the years since
my book Daily Life in Victorian England was published in 1996 I have been
contacted by many people who want more detailed information about some
area covered in that overview. Each book in the Victorian Life and Times series
will focus on a single topic, describe changes during the period, and consider the
differences between country and city, between industrial life and rural life, and
above all, the differences made by class, social position, religion, tradition, gen-
der, and economics. Each book is an original work, illustrated with drawings and
pictures taken from Victorian sources, enriched by quotations from Victorian
publications, based on current research and written by a qualified scholar. All of
the authors have doctoral degrees and many years’ experience in teaching; they
have been chosen not only for their academic qualifications but also for their
ability to write clearly and to explain complex ideas to people without extensive
background in the subject. Thus the books are authoritative and dependable
but written in straightforward language; explanations are supplied whenever
specialized terminology is used, and a bibliography lists resources for further
information.
The Internet has made it possible for people who cannot visit archives and
reference libraries to conduct serious family and historical research. Careful
hobbyists and scholars have scanned large numbers of primary sources—
nineteenth-century cookbooks, advice manuals, maps, city directories, mag-
azines, sermons, church records, illustrated newspapers, guidebooks, political
cartoons, photographs, paintings, published investigations of slum conditions
and poor people’s budgets, political essays, inventories of scientists’ correspon-
dence, and many other materials formerly accessible only to academic histo-
rians. Yet the World Wide Web also contains misleading documents and false
information, even on educational sites created by students and enthusiasts who
don’t have the experience to put material in useful contexts. So far as possible,
therefore, the bibliographies for books in the Victorian Life and Times series
will also offer guidance on using publicly available electronic resources.
Series Foreword xi
In “Gone to the Shops”: Shopping in Victorian England, Kelley Graham

describes nineteenth-century changes not only in the way both necessities and
luxuries were bought and paid for, but also in the ways they were made, packed,
shipped, displayed, measured, transported home, and used. As in so many other
areas of daily life, developments in the Victorian period form the prehistory
of a world still with us. At its beginning, many goods were sold from outdoor
stalls or the front room of an artisan’s dwelling; by its end, department stores
filled entire urban blocks with enticing displays and new services that lured
middle class women to spend hours looking, having a meal, borrowing books,
and planning changes to their wardrobes and homes. Chain stores had appeared;
so had canned goods; and advertisements filled both streetscapes and women’s
magazines.
Yet other women still walked daily, with baskets over their arms, to the
grocer, greengrocer, baker, butcher, and dairy; working people without time or
money to cook bought fast-food from street vendors; and small shops special-
ized in everything from telescopes and sporting goods to valentines, pet food,
and black-bordered mourning stationery. Many stores, both large and small,
required unmarried employees to live on the premises. Generous examples and
quotations from Victorian sources create a vivid picture of the pleasures and
dangers—for customers, owners, and workers alike—of going to the shops in
nineteenth-century England.
Sally Mitchell, Series Editor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are only so many times people will listen to small but interesting
stories about shopping. I quickly learned this when I started paying attention
to shopping twenty years ago. Thanks, first and foremost, to Sally Mitchell for
allowing me to contribute to this series, giving me a place to put all of this
information. She is generous with her time, enthusiastic about the material,
and is always the teacher and writer I wish I were. Her friendly advice made
me feel as if I could write this book even when I was sure I couldn’t.
My colleagues at Friends’ Central School have been supportive in many
ways: a Farraday Summer Stipend bought books and other research materials,
and I am grateful to David Felsen and the committee for their generosity;
Bill Kennedy and Grant Calder generously offered additional funds for books;
my colleagues in the history department—Gary Nicolai, Joel Dankoff, Jim
Rosengarten, and Frank Fisher—offered encouragement and covered my classes
when I needed time to write. Lydia Martin located the school copy of Charles
Dickens’ Dictionary of London, and Marilyn Lager, our librarian, promised to
buy a copy of my book. The discovery of the one and the promise of the other
helped me to finish writing. Everywhere I went on the campus, someone was
sure to ask how the writing was coming and if the book was done. I began to be
afraid that I would disappoint you, but I really appreciated the encouragement.
And yes, it’s done.
My students helped me to clarify some of my ideas about shops and shopping.
The students in Capitalism & Consumption this year startled me with their
readiness to listen to general chapter outlines, as well as the fascinating history
of linoleum and tea. You are all shoppers whether or not you want to believe
it, and I am grateful for your help.
xiv Acknowledgments
My family and friends have been enormously supportive and patient. My

partner Virginia Lloyd has tolerated increasingly slack housekeeping and a
threatening tower of books from amazon.com, without complaint. My sisters,
Kristen Graham and Marjorie Graham, who shopped with me from the very
start and under trying conditions, know as well as I do that you don’t have to
actually like shopping. It’s just something you have to do. Joan Lloyd knows
this, too, and her gentle questions about the status of this book were just the
encouragement I needed at the end Anne Brophy provided a useful ritual;
Georgie Brophy read a draft of this book, and assured me that people would
enjoy it. I hope so. Thank you, friends.
CHRONOLOGY
1813: Last guinea coin minted. Hereafter, shoppers will need to carry a
sovereign and a shilling.
1820s: First omnibuses drawn by horses facilitate shopping in London.
1830s: First draper’s shops begin to expand into additional “departments,” be-
coming proto-department stores.
The first “industrialized” shoes sold by drapers: these shoes were still
sewn by hand but according to a highly organized and efficient system
of labor, which made them very cheap. Usually, drapers sold them from
a bin, rather than boxed and in pairs like more expensive shoes.
Glass for shop windows began to be cheaper, and merchants begin to fill
the shop wall along the street with multiple panes of glass for light and
display.
First train lines, although they tended to cover limited areas.
1840: Penny stamp introduced: paid for by the sender, it’s fast, efficient, and
cheap.
1840s: Afternoon tea becomes a ritual for elite English men and women, and
gradually works its way down through society.
Carpets made on powered looms become available, eventually lowering
carpet prices.
Taxes on newspapers withdrawn, and manufacturing costs drop as wood
pulp is turned into paper by the addition of acid.
1844: New Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers opens the first real cooper-
ative store. They began with basic grocery items.
xvi Chronology
1848: W.H. Smith opens first railway station bookstore.

1849: Harrod’s grocery opens in London.
1850: Clipper ship Oriental arrives in London with a load of tea, delivered in a
record-setting ninety-seven-day run. The tea was still too expensive for
most people.
1850s: Several competing inventors develop a machine for stitching shoes.
Fish and chip shops begin to open, although the two foods came from
opposite ends of England. Steam ships make cheap, fresh foods available
to city dwellers.
1851: Great Exhibition in London. While this was not, strictly speaking, a
shopping experience, people were inspired by the massive display of
manufactured goods. At the same time, it was an important step in the
development of travel and tourism, and attracted visitors from across
England.
1860: First Food and Drug Act, largely ineffective because it did not require
foods to be inspected and labeled.
1860s: Linoleum (made of linseed oil and pine) introduced.
1861: Lincoln Cooperative Societies forms. Although it began with groceries,
the society expanded into multiple departments and essentially was a
department store.
1863: Whiteley’s Department Store opens. Known simply as Whiteley’s, the
store continued to expand as owner William Whiteley tried to be “the
universal provider.”
North of England Co-Operative Society, later the Cooperative Wholesale
Society, forms to serve other smaller cooperative societies with groceries,
clothing, and household goods.
1864: Harrod’s Department Store opens.
Post Office Supply Association forms, serving government clerks.
1868: Post offices add telegraph services.
1869: Le Bon Marché in Paris begins massive building project, completed in
1887, which serves as inspiration for English department stores.
1871: Army and Navy Cooperative Society forms, opening their store the next
year. Everything from patent medicines to books, boots, and clothing
were sold in their stores.
1874: Sugar Tax withdrawn, and the commercial manufacturing of candy and
sweets begins to expand.
1875: Arthur Liberty opens his East India House in London.
William Morris and his firm move to London and open a shop selling
only “what is useful and beautiful.”
Chronology xvii
1880: Liberty and Company begins to offer furniture along with their silks and
imported Asian wares.
1880s: Cheap meats imported from around the empire introduce meat into the
diet of working class English people. “Tinning,” or canning in metal cans,
helps to make this possible.
Tea shops offer women of all classes a place to eat and rest safely.
1883: Fire destroys Harrod’s store, just before the Christmas rush. Undeterred,
the store manages to fill Christmas orders and begins expansion the
following year.
1884: Liberty and Company begin to offer dressmaking services.
1885: Grocer William H. Lever introduces Sunlight Soap.
1886: American Henry Heinz brings his sauces and condiments to Fortnum &
Mason in London.
1888: Dorothy Restaurant opens its first location, offering working women
cheap meals in an all-female environment.
1891: Thomas Burberry’s London shop opens, selling coats made from his
patented waterproof cloth.
1
Going Shopping in Victorian England
Shopping is, in a sense, one of the oldest of human interactions: from the
earliest days of civilization, humans have traded for what they need. Great
empires rose out of this need to trade, and historians see trade as the principle
means by which ideas, technology, and goods made their way between cultures.
At the same time, shopping is one of the most obscure of human interactions:
people rarely recorded more than the barest details of how they shopped, and
even then, their accounts of shopping are usually coincidental to something
else. Shopping is also a dynamic human experience, constantly changing, and
unrecognizable from one generation to the next; some of what we once knew
about Victorian shopping is lost and must be pieced back together from small
references. Finally, historians have only recently begun to ask questions about
shopping, preferring to look at the big picture of economic history. In the past,
“studying the market” meant studying how goods were made and the general
way that they were exchanged, rather than the specifics of the marketplace. As
a result, there are still gaps in what we know about shops and shopping.
This book is concerned with shopping in England from just before Victoria
became queen to the period just after her death. Shopping changed tremen-
dously in the course of this time. Over the course of the century, people were
increasingly able to buy goods, especially food and clothing, which they had
made at home. They found not only more shops selling traditional wares, but
also new types of shops offering novel goods and services. Shopkeeping became
more regular and predictable, and also more common as shopping became a
regular part of some women’s lives. Shopping also became more impersonal as
the processes connecting the producer to the consumer grew longer and more
complex. Some older and traditional forms of shopping continued, but increas-
ingly only in smaller towns and rural areas. This was a consumer revolution
2 “Gone to the Shops”
and it meant that the shops that took down their shutters in 1837 were vastly
changed at the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE VICTORIAN

CONSUMER REVOLUTION
Many factors contributed to this consumer revolution but the most important
was the industrial revolution. “Industrial” production meant a higher volume
of goods, which also meant lower retail prices. Envelopes, for example, were
originally cut and folded by hand, the largest factory producing only a thousand
in a day; the introduction of a powered folding machine could increase that
ten times over. Powered production could also mean more goods of greater
intricacy and quality. Powered lathes, for example, made it possible for even
the humblest of Victorian furniture to have curves and bulbs which midcentury
customers found so appealing. Finally, better organized production and lines of
supply and distribution (aided by other technologies like the railways) lowered
prices for some goods and so put them within the reach of a greater range of
English people. Perhaps of equal importance was the new class of professional
managers and overseers, which developed as a result of industrialization: their
higher wages and disposable income raised them into the new class of shoppers
and helped to fuel demand.
This model of economic expansion due to industrialization was best demon-
strated by the revolution in textiles, especially cotton. Cotton manufacturing
was the first and most fully mechanized industry in Britain in the late eigh-
teenth century, and cotton was the chief British export for the first half of
the nineteenth century. Production expanded, new technologies for weaving,
printing, and dying cotton offered consumers an expanded range of choices.
As production increased, the cost of cotton fell. People began to wear more
layers of cotton clothing, changing their clothing more often. Eventually they
began to wear underclothes, which were changed fairly often. People bought
more cotton both by the yard and in some finished clothes, and they shopped
for patterns, sewing notions like buttons and trim, and eventually sewing
machines.
Other factors worked with industrialization to shape Victorian shopping.
Urbanization for example, expanded the climate of “looking,” a vital part of
shopping. Women played a large part in this culture of looking: their role in
English society had begun to be that of consumer rather than producer. While
working class women still worked for wages, middle and upper class women
had more time to devote to more elaborate meals, furnishing their homes,
dressing themselves and their families: shopping for family and home was a
legitimate way for them to spend time. “Looking” also literally meant “window
shopping,” as shops in the cities and towns added expensive glass windows to
their shop fronts. “Looking” also meant that as the population surged into these
same cities and towns, people had greater opportunity to observe the clothing
Going Shopping in Victorian England 3
worn by fashionable people. Increased literacy and the revolution in the press
meant that from the end of the eighteenth century, those with the means could
learn about the latest styles in home furnishings, fabrics, and other goods.
New means of transportation—stagecoaches first, followed by canals, and
then trains—allowed goods to travel to distant cities and rural retailers to
travel to major cities to buy fashionable goods. Raw materials and finished
goods could be more easily transported, and eventually this transportation
network included people traveling specifically for shopping. The transportation
revolution made possible the development of new industries, and the expansion
of older industries, such as pottery. Reliable, safe transport on the canals in the
early part of the nineteenth century allowed for a kind of “pottery revolution,”
as pottery became both less expensive and available in increasingly elaborate
sets of tableware. Transportation vastly affected everything, even the food
on the plates: fresh fish was carried inland to cities and small towns, and
fresh fruits and vegetables made their way quickly from the farms to large
urban areas. Finally, the process of wholesale and retail marketing became more
regular and money-driven, rather than casual, personal, and based on barter. A
beautiful description of how the market may have worked before this revolution
comes from Thackery’s sympathetic description of a late eighteenth-century
schoolboy in Vanity Fair:
Dobbin was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of
all Dr. Swishtail’s young gentlemen. His parent was a grocer in the city:
and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted to Dr. Swishtail’s academy
upon what are called “mutual principles”—that is to say, the expense of
his board and schooling were defrayed by his father in goods, not money;
and he stood there—most at the bottom of the school—in his scraggy
corduroys and jacket, through the seams of which his great big bones
were bursting—as the representative of so many pounds of tea, candles,
sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which a very mild proportion was supplied
for the puddings of the establishment), and other commodities.1
Perhaps the last great factor in the consumer revolution was the growing
British Empire, which gave English consumers access to new and unfamiliar
goods. Charles Dickens summed up English delight in foreign wares in a passage
from Dombey and Son in 1848: “Just round the corner stood the rich East India
House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones, tigers, elephants,
howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins . . . ”2 This imperial con-
nection introduced new and exotic goods to English shoppers including curry,
bananas, and paisley prints.
This description of the consumer revolution, however true, requires a caveat
or two. That there was an industrial revolution and it raised the overall standard
of living in Britain by century’s end, there is no doubt. English people were
larger and better-fed in 1900 than they had been in 1800. Despite this, the
benefits of the industrial economy were uneven, and a large part of the popu-
lation continued to be poor. Historians estimate that for much of the century,
one-half to two-thirds of the population could be classified as poor, either
through lack of work or other complications, and these English people cer-
tainly did not enjoy the range of consumer choices available to those with more
money. At the same time, we know that most people in Britain during Queen
Victoria’s reign shopped, even if infrequently. We know that women shopped
more often than men did, and that the middle classes shopped more often than
the poor, but most people, no matter what their status, shopped for basic things
like food and clothes. Throughout the century some goods were mass-produced
and others were custom-made or “bespoke,” which literally meant ordered in
advance. There were shops that catered to the poor just as there were shops
that catered to the middle classes and the rich. Charles Dickens’s description of
a poor neighborhood in The Old Curiosity Shop captured this quite well: “The
shops sold goods that only poverty could buy, and sellers and buyers were
pinched and griped alike.”3 The poor, in particular, shopped for things they
would resell, including fish or baked goods just slightly past their prime, or a
plate or bowl from a broken set. The farthing or two profit might not attract
other sellers, but the poor street seller was more motivated than most.
A further caveat about class: the Victorian class system was fairly complex and
dynamic throughout the sixty-four years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Historians
talk about not one but several “middle classes” and “working classes,” whose
membership, income, values, and practices of each changed throughout the
period. At the very top of the social scale, accounting for perhaps just over 5
percent of the population, there were the elite members of society, rich and
sometimes noble. Below them there was a larger class of people described as the
middle classes, accounting for somewhere between a quarter and a third of the
population. There were people described as “upper middle class” and “lower
middle class,” as well as people in a sort of general middle class. The term
“middle class” might describe the family of a doctor with an active practice, a
comfortable farmer, or a schoolmaster with his own school. Among the workers,
there were the highly skilled and generally well paid men whom historians call
the “labor aristocracy,” and there were unskilled workers whose jobs might
be limited to tending machines or lifting and hauling. “Working class” might
describe the family of a highly skilled and prosperous stonemason, or the
impoverished family of a worker in a ribbon factory. They varied not only in
their buying power, but also in their access to shops, their expectations about
food and clothing, and their views on shopping. Further below the working
classes are the poor, which could also be divided into two groups: the working
poor and the destitute. The working poor worked for very low wages, and could
count on having weeks or even months of every year with no employment.
They might expect to receive some sort of charity, as did the destitute poor.
These last two groups probably had limited experience with shopping, and yet
even they needed to buy food and perhaps clothing.
SHOPPERS AND SHOPKEEPERS

So, once the pieces were in place, how did English men and women shop?
Perhaps the best place to start is with a reminder that shopping is a public
experience: the shops, even if close by, represented a world separate from the
home. Descriptions of shopping often began with some sort of preparation for
doing business with the outside world: a woman removed her apron, put on
her coat and hat, and changed her shoes and put on her pattens. Taking up her
market basket, or her list if their shops delivered most of the goods, she was
armed for a morning of shopping. If she were new to the neighborhood—and
able to read—she might consult a street directory to find specific merchants.
Most shopping was done by women as a natural extension of their work in
the home. Homes had to be furnished and supplied with provisions, and who
better to make the selection than the woman who cooked, cleaned, and mended
what was brought into the house? Women of all classes were the guardians and
workforce for the home: most people believed that women’s nature—demure,
deferential, kind, loving—meant that home was the safest place for them.
Middle class men and women cherished this belief, and worked hard to create
private worlds where women stayed at home. Working class women could not
afford to live by this fiction: they worked for wages, and the historical evidence
shows that they often cooked and cleaned in addition to working outside the
home. The idea of women’s “second shift” was a reality for probably half of
the women in Victorian England.
Shoppers were most likely to encounter male shopkeepers, even in trades
that sold groceries and clothes. Men owned most shops, although women could
and did own shops in their own right or as widows. Men were legally allowed to
own property and sign the contracts with other merchants who supplied them.
For most of the century people believed that women should not be merchants:
they lacked the brains, the stamina, the competitive drive, and they were better
suited to work in the home. Despite this, many women were shopkeepers
in businesses that extended from their work as milliners, seamstresses, and
dressmakers. Women could also be the casual street sellers, carrying goods in
a basket or working a stall to sell goods they bought wholesale—oysters, wine,
fruit, needles—and they sold goods they had made themselves—gingerbread,
tonics, and flowers.
The shopper of the 1830s knew two great “rules” for the shops, both of which
would be broken by the end of the century. The first of these rules was that the
goods were usually not priced: a customer asked “how much?” and the shop
assistant gave a price. This allowed some haggling between the customer and
the shop assistant. It also allowed the shopkeeper to raise prices for an especially
prosperous looking customer, or to drop the price if the transaction faltered.
The second great rule was that the shopper could not touch or examine the
goods without an intermediary—usually the shop assistant. All of the goods
were behind the counter, out of the customer’s reach in drawers or on shelves in
boxes. Anyone who has read the first Harry Potter novel will recognize this sort
of traditional shop in the wizard’s wand shop: behind the counter, the shelves
were lined floor to ceiling with boxes of wands, and the seller offers wands to
Harry one by one until he finds just the right match.
A kind of shopping revolution occurred in the 1830s, and both rules began
to change. At the time, some shops began to place their goods on open counters
with prices marked, like the Mad Hatter’s hat in Alice in Wonderland, “In this
style, 10/6.”4 Goods might be arranged within the customer’s reach on open
shelves or on the counter, or in open bins on the shop floor. Readily marked
goods meant that fewer shop assistants were needed; they continued to staff
the counters, advise customers, wrap purchases, stock shelves, and take the
customers’ money.
Over the course of the century shops became larger, brighter, and more
concerned with display. One of the biggest factors in this transformation was
the increasing use of windows with small glass panes at the front wall of
the shop, which seems to have begun in the eighteenth century. Windows
gradually became bigger, with more panes, and more goods displayed to the
street. Victorian shoppers would have recognized the description of a humble
“curiosity shop” in Charles Dickens’ novel of that name: “A part of this door
was of glass, unprotected by any shutter; which I did not observe, at first, for
all was very dark and silent within . . . ”5 The shop window was, in addition,
a virtual clock for customers before the era of regular shop hours. When the
shutters were taken down, the shop was open, and it would remain open until
the shutters were replaced late in the evening when most people were going to
bed. A bell at the door of the shop alerted the shopkeeper and his assistants,
who might be on call for twelve hours a day.
Window-shopping was a well-established practice by the start of the nine-
teenth century: women, in particular, spent a good deal of time looking. Society
placed women in a different position from men. People tended to see shopping
as an activity for middle class women—who else had the leisure to look?—and
as now, were willing to enjoy the fruits of that shopping in a comfortable home
while at the same time deriding women for wasting time in the shops. Satirical
directions for shopping appeared in the humor magazine Punch in 1844:
Ride all the way till you come to the shopping-ground in a coach, if you
can; in an omnibus, if you must; lest you should be tired when you get
there. If you are a lady of fashion, do not get out of your carriage; and
when you stop before your milliners, particularly if it is a cold, wet day,
make one of the young women come out to you, and without a bonnet,
in her thin shoes, stand on the kerb-stone in the damp and mud.6
The article continued to develop a caricature of the lady shopper which endured
into the twentieth century: she was idle, lazy, and selfish; she wasted her
husband’s money without buying for anyone but herself; she was obsessed
with trivial things like ribbon color, and generally wasted time—her own and
the shopkeeper’s.
Men made problematic shoppers, that is, there were certain things they had
to shop for, but they seem to have been happy to let their wives, mothers, or
daughters shop for them the rest of the time. When men had to shop, they
presented a contradictory—and humorous—picture of disinterest, anxiety, and
masculine air of mastery, which confirms the idea that women were better suited
to shopping. Charles Dickens caught this comic image perfectly in Dombey and
Son: the trip to the shop was akin to a military maneuver, the shop girl was a
potentially hostile foreigner, and the “silks and ribbons” were volatile goods to
be handled with care.
The pride Captain Cuttle had, in giving his arm to Florence, and escorting
her some two or three hundred yards, keeping a bright look-out all the
time, and attracting the attention of everyone who passed them, by his
great vigilance and numerous precautions, was extreme. Arrived at the
shop, the Captain felt it a point of delicacy to retire during the making of
the purchases, as they were to consist of wearing apparel; but he previ-
ously deposited his tin canister on the counter, and informing the young
lady of the establishment that it contained fourteen pound two, requested
her, in case that amount of property should not be sufficient to defray the
expenses of his niece’s little outfit—at the word “niece,” he bestowed a
most significant look on Florence, accompanied with pantomime, expres-
sive of sagacity and mystery—to have the goodness to “sing out,” and
he would make up the difference from his pocket. Casually consulting his
big watch, as a deep means of dazzling the establishment, and impressing
it with a sense of property, the Captain then kissed his hook to his niece,
and retired outside the window, where it was a choice sight to see his
great face looking in from time to time, among the silks and ribbons,
with an obvious misgiving that Florence had been spirited away by a back
door.7
That the captain presented his money in a tin canister further confirmed his
alien status in this shopping world.
There was a rhythm to the shopping day, as there is now. Shops commonly
opened at daybreak, as early as 6 a.m. in the summer and 8 a.m. in the winter.
In the early morning, servants crowded into the shops. By midmorning the
shops tended to be more crowded with middle-class women doing their own
shopping, including those lucky enough to arrive in their own carriages. These
women would very likely to shop for much of the day, heading home in the
afternoon to avoid being out past sunset. A well-bred woman kept out past
sunset would expect that one of her servants would be sent to escort her home.
Most shoppers would be gone for the day by early evening, although shops
commonly remained open during the dinner hour.
DELIGHTS AND DANGERS IN THE MARKETPLACE

In some ways, nineteenth-century shopping was very much like shopping
in the twenty-first century. Then as now, there were harried holiday shoppers,
as Charles Dickens described in A Christmas Carol: “The customers were all
so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled
up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and
committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible.”8 There
were crowds, long lines, and inattentive or incompetent shop assistants, and
inconsiderate fellow shoppers.
But there were also unquestionable dangers in the Victorian marketplace.
There were thieves and pickpockets and other criminals who made their living
preying on shoppers. And shoplifting, which is probably as old as shopping
itself, exploded in surprising ways as startled authorities found that an increas-
ingly number of their arrests were well-dressed middle-class women caught
shoplifting. Victorian shops presented an enticing display—the full shop win-
dows, the goods alluringly hung above the counters like fruits from beautiful
trees, the counters and cases below them filled with neatly arrayed things. Full
skirts presented the means to surreptitiously hide a stolen umbrella or a piece of
jewelry. It must have been a terrible temptation to take something from a stall
in a crowded market, or from a department store counter when the assistant’s
back was turned, and yet so easy to do.
Those on the other side of the counter also faced certain dangers. Young
women working in the shops were liable to receive unwanted sexual approaches
from male customers, and had only limited protection from their employers
against it. A curious belief persisted through the century that if a young woman
worked in a shop she must be sexually available. This was perhaps driven by
the reality that shop girls’ wages were low, like those of factory girls, and some
women did in fact prostitute themselves to survive.
Customers faced other less harrowing dangers. Merchants gave short mea-
sure; purchases could be mislabeled, delivered late, or not delivered at all. Even
the most innocuous of goods could have hidden dangers, like the infamous
Scheele’s Green, a pigment invented in the late eighteenth century, which used
toxic copper arsenate to give its vivid green color. Nineteenth-century manu-
facturers used Scheele’s Green to dye toys, food, paint, wallpaper, fabric, and
soap. The last of these promised to not “wash” clothes, which meant take out
the color. In fabric and wallpaper, the chemical, released in tiny flakes, fell into
the air, and was inhaled. In the twentieth century, its toxicity led to its use as
an insecticide.
Victorian shoppers, like their modern counterparts, worried about being
cheated in the marketplace. In his study of London in 1851, Henry Mayhew
identified a number of shams and frauds practiced in and around London. One
of these was the trade in smuggled and stolen goods by “duffers.”9 In fact, the
goods were neither stolen nor smuggled, but the duffers were able to attract
shoppers’ attention with the suggestion of an illicit bargain. Another type of
fraud was the “screever,”10 which was a letter soliciting funds for investment or
charity, similar to modern “phishing.” To these perils were added the traditional
fears of counterfeit money, adulterated foods, and other dubious tricks of the
marketplace.
Victorian shoppers protected themselves in a number of ways. Perhaps the
best thing for shoppers to do was to regularly shop in the same stores, and build
up a relationship with the tradesmen. They could, by century’s end, buy some
goods prepackaged from the manufacturer. This eliminated fears of adulteration
and short weight by the grocer, and shoppers began to trust the “brands” or
makers’ marks on their products, although packages made it harder to check for
spoilage. Parliamentary regulation guaranteed some things, like milk, against
adulteration, although this offered limited assurances.
Royal warrants were another way a shopper might be assured of the quality
of their goods. Royal warrants began in the sixteenth century and were a sign
that the tradesman had provided high-quality goods to the royal household
for a fixed number of years. This gave the tradesman the right to display
the appropriate coat of arms in their shop and on their stationery. Statements
attesting to the warrant were included on packaging later in the century. Queen
Victoria and her family granted over 2,000 warrants during her lifetime to a
diverse group of artisans and shops. An 1879 city guide by Charles Dickens, Jr.,
The Dictionary of London, listed dozens of makers and merchants providing
services to the Queen and Prince of Wales, and Dickens’ introduction makes
clear the link between quality of goods and royal custom:
Many visitors to London, amidst the wilderness of excellent shops for

which the metropolis has so high a reputation, must often experience
considerable difficulty in making a convenient and judicious selection. No
doubt a classified list of some of the principal firms should frequently be
of great and obvious utility. The responsibility, however, of undertaking
to compile such a list is, it will be readily seen, not one that the Editor
of this work would safely or wisely undertake. It has, however, been
thought that a list of the tradesmen of Her Majesty the Queen and of
their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales might in some
measure answer the required purpose. Application was therefore made
to the Lord Chamberlains office, and to the Controller of their Royal
Highnesses households, and by the courtesy of the respective office we
are enabled to append the following complete lists . . . 11
The list included both the mundane suppliers which any household might
require, such as coal-merchants, hatters, hosiers, linen- and silk-drapers, iron-
mongers, tea-men, butchers, and buttermen; suppliers for a great house,
such as opticians, brush-makers, bit-and-spur makers, fruiterers, jewelers, and
silversmiths; and suppliers for the most elite households, such as harp-makers,
bell and brass founders, dispatch box makers, or gold lacemen. One of the more
curious was Professor Tennant, listed as the “MINERALOGIST” to the Queen
and Prince, who no doubt helped to supply, identify, and classify rocks gathered
by royal collectors.
PRICES AND MONEY

Once dressed, the Victorian shopper needed money. Coins were probably the
most common means of paying for goods. Checks were available, but not always
trusted. “Banknotes” were issued by private banks, and were not always trusted
for regular shopping: notes could be forged, and banks could fold up, leaving
their paper notes worthless. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 novel Cranford, one of
the principle characters witnesses a clerk’s refusal to honor a note from her bank:
The shopman was examining the note with a puzzled, doubtful air. “Town
and County Bank! I am not sure, sir, but I believe we have received
a warning against notes issued by this bank only this morning. I will
just step and ask Mr Johnson, sir; but I’m afraid I must trouble you for
payment in cash, or in a note of a different bank.”
I never saw a man’s countenance fall so suddenly into dismay and
bewilderment. It was almost piteous to see the rapid change. “Dang it!”
said he, striking his fist down on the table, as if to try which was the
harder, “the chap talks as if notes and gold were to be had for the picking
up.”
Miss Matty had forgotten her silk gown in her interest for the man.
I don’t think she had caught the name of the bank, and in my nervous
cowardice I was anxious that she should not; and so I began admiring
the yellow-spotted lilac gown that I had been utterly condemning only a
minute before. But it was of no use.
“What bank was it? I mean, what bank did your note belong to?”
“Town and County Bank.”
“Let me see it,” said she quietly to the shopman, gently taking it out
of his hand, as he brought it back to return it to the farmer. Mr Johnson
was very sorry, but, from information he had received, the notes issued
by that bank were little better than waste paper.
“I don’t understand it,” said Miss Matty to me in a low voice. “That is
our bank, is it not?—the Town and County Bank?”
“Yes,” said I. “This lilac silk will just match the ribbons in your new
cap, I believe,” I continued . . . But Miss Matty put on the soft dignified
manner, peculiar to her, rarely used, and yet which became her so well,
and laying her hand gently on mine, she said—”Never mind the silks
for a few minutes, dear. I don’t understand you, sir,” turning now to the
shopman, who had been attending to the farmer. “Is this a forged note?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. It is a true note of its kind; but you see, ma’am, it is
a joint-stock bank, and there are reports out that it is likely to break. Mr
Johnson is only doing his duty, ma’am, as I am sure Mr Dobson knows.”12
Government banknotes did not come into circulation until the twentieth cen-
tury, and even then, were probably not commonly used for regular shopping.
For much of the Victorian era, a surprisingly large number of things—bootlaces,
meals, rooms at an inn, ribbons, vegetables, toys—could be paid for in small
domination coins, and most shopping may have been done this way. Some mer-
chants traded exclusively “for ready cash,” and others offered lower prices for
cash purchases. Merchants had certain other options for the cash transaction:
for example, the “change pin sheet,” a sheet of fifty or so straight pins given in
lieu of a farthing, a coin worth a quarter of a penny.
Some shopping—the regular weekly marketing at the green grocer’s or the
butcher’s, or the suit bought from the tailor, for example—was paid for on
account by regular customers. Merchants kept large ledgers with running to-
tals of what their customers bought, and billed them at agreed-upon intervals.
Bills were sent out weekly, quarterly, or even yearly, although there are fa-
mous examples of bills allowed to run for years if the customer were famous or
important: the merchant weighed the cost of carrying the account against the
amount of business brought in by association with a famous writer or important
politician. Sometimes, even if the account was never paid, the merchant found
that a long-standing debt to a famous person worked out to their benefit. The
poor and working classes sometimes were allowed a little credit over a short
span—a week, or perhaps a month—by a sympathetic and familiar shopkeeper.
This system required a great degree of trust between tradesman and customer,
and indeed, the cost of carrying these accounts could ruin a shopkeeper. Re-
gardless, it is interesting that the practice of shopping on account was available
at both ends of the social scale. Ultimately, though, most transactions in shops
and in the street took place using coins. Even fairly large accounts closed at the
end of the year might be settled using coins.
The growth of trade meant that merchants had to find new ways of taking the
customer’s money and returning their change: moving cash around the store
could be risky, and thefts and holdups were not unknown. Sometimes it was a
direct exchange: the customer handed over the cash and received their goods.
Small boys might be employed as “runners” to take the cash to a central cash
desk, but this had some element of risk. Cash registers were not commonly
used until the very end of the century, and most smaller stores used a simple
wooden cash tray with carved bowls to hold the coins. A metal screen on the
counter prevented customers from reaching into the tray. Larger shops with
multiple counters needed a better way to take in cash more efficiently. One
innovation was the miniature cash “railway” system which carried the bill of
sale and the money over the heads of customers to a central cash desk. Another
was Lamson’s Cash Ball, a patented design, which was a hollow wooden ball,
which opened up to take the bill and money, and was rolled down an inclined
track to the cash desk. Harrod’s department store chose, from their first day
of opening in 1864, to place a number of cash desks throughout the store, and
simply directed customers to pay at one of the desks.
Shoppers at the start of the century may have carried their money in a pocket
or pocketbook, which originally had been a sort of pouch tied around the waist
and worn below the skirts or inside breeches. These early “pockets” as they were
called, like the one lost by Lucy Locket in the early children’s rhyme, were often
embroidered and quite beautiful, and were worn outside of a woman’s skirt.
Later shoppers began to carry a bag called a reticule in their hands. These
could be silk or cotton, embroidered or plain. Later bags became slightly larger
and more varied, and a frame and clasp replaced the earlier drawstring. Both
men and women might carry a “miser’s purse,” which was a short knitted or
crocheted tube with metal rings to keep the contents inside. It was small and
lightweight enough to be worn around the neck.
Shopping required many small coins, as well as some sharp math skills.
The coinage system was based on the penny, but there were also several coins
representing fractions of the penny. Twelve pennies made a shilling and twenty
shillings made a pound, although there were coins representing two, four, and
six shillings. Twenty shillings made a pound, also known as a sovereign, and
there were half-sovereign and sovereign coins.
There was also the guinea, a somewhat fictitious coin not minted after 1813.
The idea of the guinea, however, continued to be used by shops selling luxury
goods, or by important doctors and other professionals. The guinea was worth
twenty-one shillings—or a pound plus a shilling—and makers of luxury goods
announced their prices in guineas rather than pounds. A rich customer who
paid the guinea price had the indulgent experience of paying the extra shilling
to show that paying did not matter at all. A guinea was also the weekly pay
offered to Robert Peel’s first one thousand “New Police” officers in 1829, which
may have imparted some prestige to the new force.
So, if you went shopping in Victorian Britain, you might bring plenty of
coins, and jingled as you walked. Your pocketbook might contain any of the
following:
Farthing, copper and bronze coin worth one-fourth of a penny, written 1/4 d.
Halfpenny, or ha’penny, also of copper and bronze, written 1/2 d.
Penny, also of copper and bronze, written 1d.
Twopence, or tuppence, made of silver, written 2d.
Threepence, or thruppence, made of silver, written 3d.
Groat, or four-penny coin, made of silver, written 4d.
Sixpence, worth six pennies, written 6d.
Shilling, or “bob” worth twelve pennies, made of silver, written 1s.
Florin, worth two shillings, made of silver, written 2s.
Double Florin, worth four shillings, made of silver, written 4s.
Half crown, worth two shillings and sixpence, made of silver, written 2s. 6p.
Crown, worth five shillings, made of silver, 5s.
Half sovereign, worth ten shillings or one-half pound, made of gold, and
written 10s.
Sovereign, worth twenty shillings or one pound, made of gold and written
£ 1.
Prices were written with slashes to indicate the number of pounds, shillings,
and pence an item cost: the Mad Hatter’s hat in Alice in Wonderland, for which
the placard announced “In this style, 10/6,” would have cost ten shillings and
sixpence. A fine steel pen made early in the century costing two shillings would
be written as 2/. There would be no need to put a number in the “pence” place.
British coins were minted by the government according to fairly strict met-
allurgic requirements and standardized size and weight, which benefited banks
and large shops that worked with bags of coins: the bags could be weighed
instead of counting the coins. This made perfect sense: two sixpences weighed
the same as one shilling, which was their monetary equivalent.
It is surprising, given the rarity of gold coins today, to think that sovereigns,
and their lesser companions, half-sovereigns, would have been in ready cir-
culation during the Victorian era. Because banknotes were in fact issued by
banks and became worthless if the individual bank failed, gold coins were pre-
ferred for large sums of money. Carrying gold coins could be humorously
inconvenient, as Charles Dickens’ character Sam Weller in The Pickwick Pa-
pers learned: Sam wanted to cash a large check “in nothing but sovereigns; but
it being represented by the umpires that by so doing he must incur the expense
of a small sack to carry them home in, he consented to receive the amount in
five-pound notes.”13 Some people kept their gold in a small leather purse called
a sovereign case. Some sovereign cases held a few sovereigns in a flat leather
sheet with pockets for individual coins, and the sheet folded up into a square
and snapped shut. Other sovereign cases were round, with the gold coins rolled
up in leather like a tube. No matter how they were carried, gold coins presented
some problems—they were bulky and could not realistically be used for small
purchases. Fortunately, most people probably never saw a sovereign or needed
to carry a quantity of them for regular shopping. At the end of the century,
the gold-carrying classes were able to solve some of their shopping problems
with a mechanical gold coin changer. Closely calibrated for the weight of a gold
coin, the machine had a slot on one side to take in the gold coin, dispensing the
twenty shillings into a small drawer on the other side.
SABBATH AND SABBATARIANISM

The modern concept of weekend would have meant little to Victorian shop-
pers. Most businesses and schools were open Monday through Saturday, or at
least through noon on Saturday. This was a fairly traditional workweek which
dated from medieval times: the calendar had been richly studded with saints’
days and holidays, which supplemented Sunday as a day of rest. After the Ref-
ormation had been established in England and well into the early modern era,
craft workers established the practice of extending their Sunday time off with a
next-day tribute to “St. Monday,” enjoying something like a modern weekend,
but it was highly discouraged. Later in the century, factory workers who paid
tribute to “St. Monday” could be fired.
This informal weekend was challenged in the early part of the nineteenth
century by a group of Christian reformers loosely identified as Evangelicals,
who called for the strict regulation of Sunday as a day of religious observance.
They viewed shopping as a particularly offensive affront to the sanctity of
the Sabbath, mixing vanity and love of finery with the crass realities of the
marketplace. For the middle and upper classes, this presented no problem:
women in these households could shop during the week, and had no objection to
Sunday closing. The poor, on the other hand, found the Sabbatarian movement
especially hard. Their only day off was Sunday, with perhaps a half-day on
Saturday for the fortunate few. All working class shopping—for groceries,
clothes, haircuts, or whatever—had to be concluded between close of work
on Saturday night and noon or one in the afternoon on Sunday, although
some businesses were slow to shut down even after putting up their shutters.
Ultimately Sabbatarianism had only limited effect on England as a whole:
museums and other institutions offered Sunday hours to allow the better-
dressed workers some exposure to art and other refinements. But as far as
shopping was concerned, Sunday remained a day of limited access until the end
of the twentieth century.
GETTING THERE, AND GETTING IT ALL HOME AGAIN

The principle shopper of the nineteenth century was the woman who ran the
household. In many ways, this shopper resembled the female in early hunter-
gatherer societies. Putting on her hat and taking up her shopping basket, she
foraged daily or at least several times a week for food for her family. In the
shops, she carefully examined the quality of the goods, inquired about prices,
and weighed what remained in her budget against market prices. Household ex-
perts urged women to do the shopping themselves and to examine food closely
before buying, or to send only a trusted servant to do their shopping. In fact,
most middle class women probably allowed their servant to order groceries and
household necessities, only venturing out to the shops to order food for a special
meal or dinner party. Isabella Beeton’s 1861 Book of Household Management,
the bible for middle-class women for all things related to home and housekeep-
ing, urged that “the mistress should herself purchase all provisions and stores
needed for the house. If the mistress be a young wife, and not accustomed to
order ‘things for the house,’ a little practice and experience will soon teach her
who are the best tradespeople to deal with, and what are the best provisions to
buy.”14 What was seasonal and reasonably priced determined what ended up
on the table. She shopped somewhat less often, perhaps seasonally or annually,
for the other things her family needed: clothing or fabric to make clothing,
dishes, cleaning and polishing supplies, soap, candles, flowers, plants, furniture
and cloth for bedding, books and paper, and even pet supplies.
Middle class women and those above them, the people whom historians like
to describe as the “servant-employing” class, would expect to have most of their
purchases delivered to their homes, taking only the smallest, lightest packages
with them. They would call at the shop and order the food to be delivered later
in the day. Many larger homes had special delivery or “tradesmen’s entrances”
hidden off to the side or back of the house, and entering directly into the kitchen.
Delivery was done once or twice daily by the shop boy, who might deliver on
foot, by horse-drawn cart, or at the start of the twentieth century, by bicycle.
The Victorian shopper faced a number of difficulties in her trip to and from
the shops. One of these was the fact that streets were not always paved, and if
paved with cobblestones or brick, could be slippery and dangerous. The horses
and other large quadrupeds which pulled the carts and omnibuses added to the
street hazards. Mud, rain, and ice further complicated her weekly trips to the
store. Middle class women probably did most of their daily shopping close to
their homes, and walked to the shops. Familiarity with the stock of their local
shopkeepers, as well as price and quality, may have kept them loyal to local
sellers. Unusual purchases—for furniture, special food, or important clothing
purchases—meant leaving the local shopping district and traveling to a bigger
shopping district or a larger town. Omnibuses ran regular routes by the 1820s,
but the fares were based on distance and could be quite expensive. Hansom
cabs, small and relatively fast, were also too expensive for most people to use
for regular shopping. In the 1860s, the London underground railways offered
shoppers in better neighborhoods quick, fairly direct transportation. Poorer
women probably shopped close to home carrying a basket to the shops, and
then carried their purchases home with them.
Of course, sometimes the shop came to the shopper: certain kinds of sellers
came with a cart or basket to the residential parts of the great cities and the
smaller towns, “crying” their wares. These included fresh fruits and vegetables,
milk and dairy products, breads, fish, and meats. While these traveling sellers
carried a more limited range of goods, there were a great many of them, meaning
the shopper could get much of what she needed without leaving the house.
IN THE SHOPS
Victorian shops could be dark, ill-ventilated, and awful places, or they could
be neatly arranged, elaborately decorated, and carefully lighted places, with
comfortable chairs for waiting customers. There were also shops at every level
in-between. They usually had a common layout: a glass door or set of windows
lighting a small retail area with some sort of a counter, a small supply of goods
on display, a stock of other goods behind the counter, and in the back of the
shop known as the store, and a staff of some sort to show the goods and take in
money.
Depending on the size of the shop—from the smallest tobacconist’s shop to
the great department stores—the staff behind the counter might be the owner,
his wife, or one of his children, or perhaps an apprentice or employee called
a shop assistant. Early shops were usually small, and had fewer than a half-
dozen people working there. Later in the century, larger and more elite stores
might have hundreds of employees, including special employees called shop
walkers. These were a cross between a security guard and a personal shopper:
they greeted customers as they entered the store, and escorted them to the
appropriate counter, seated them, and called for a counter assistant to serve
them. If the customer declined to buy, the shop walker would escort them back
to the entrance of the store.
Victorian shops had one final quality which distinguished them from shops
of the twenty-first century. This was their uniqueness: Victorian shops could
be very different from each other, even if they were the same type of shop. Vic-
torian shops, large and small, had different suppliers and different inventories.
They were willing to take a chance on new and untested products, and to buy in
small quantities to meet a special part of their customer base in ways, which the
modern retailer will not. A twenty-first-century shopper dropped into any one
of a dozen a modern department stores will find the same women’s clothing,
shoes, and accessories, differentiated, perhaps, by price and quality. Sizes are
standardized, and each year’s fashion colors are mutually agreed upon by an
international board of color experts. But there is something missing.
There was a delicacy about Victorian shopping that is sadly absent from
modern shopping, whether it is the tastefully appointed, marble-clad rooms for
ladies’ rest and recuperation, or the restaurants, serving real and not ready-
made, microwaved meals. Ladies wear—dresses and shoes and lingerie—were
always placed at the second floor or above so that no male shopper, however
lost, would blunder into a scene that might embarrass him. Stores required
their employees to work hard—in fact exploited them with long hours and
hard work—but they knew their wares and could genuinely help the shopper,
whether they needed a spool of thread or a suite of furniture for the dining
room. The modern process of shopping is more streamlined and efficient—
people know they wear a size 7 hat, and a size “L” shirt, and usually where to
find what they need without the help of a clerk—but Victorians were measured
for their clothes, rather than the other way around. Most larger stores included
workrooms, which allowed clothes and other goods to be customized as well
as repaired. Larger stores also did wholesale as well as retail trade, supplying
smaller shops in distant towns as well as local street sellers.
Victorians shopped in a world that presented stock and services tantalizingly

different from our own. Shopping was also more time-consuming, perhaps, and
probably exhausting. At the same time, with little legislation to protect them
and no consumer labels to inform them, shoppers developed marvelous skills
and strategies that our modern shops have rendered obsolete.
2
Shopping Traditions and Innovations
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people

of customers, may at first sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of
shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shop-
keepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced
by shopkeepers.1
—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS
Sixty years before the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, Adam Smith had written
that England was a “nation of shopkeepers,” to emphasize that trade, not land,
was the source of the nation’s wealth. What Smith anticipated—and indeed
seems to suggest at the end of his observation—was that the shopkeeper would
eventually be recognized for the vital role he played in trade, which Smith knew
was the real “wealth of the nation.” Smith wrote at a time of flux, when newer
forms of selling and shopping took their place along the traditional.
Looking around him Smith saw that trade was enmeshed in every aspect
of life in England: “A dwelling-house in England means every thing that is
contained under the same roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of
Europe, it frequently means no more than a single storey. A tradesman in
London is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his
customers live. His shop is upon the ground floor, and he and his family sleep
in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his house-rent by letting the
two middle storeys to lodgers.”2 Smith’s point is that the whole of the house
was dependent on the trade—in shoes, in metal work, or cloth—taking place
on the first floor. The tradesman makes no effort to hide his work, and indeed
Shopping Traditions and Innovations 19
this is how his neighbors know him: he is the jeweler, the tailor, the baker, or
the chandler. Pity his short-changed and hardworking family huddled in the
garret: their lives are subservient to the work in the shop on the first floor, but
Smith’s tradesman was proud of who he was and what he did.
Outside the trading classes, however, there was a tradition of disdain for those
who owned shops. This may be traced to the shopkeeper’s obsequious manner
toward his customers in which, even as the master of his shop, was close to
that of a servant. The very practice of serving the “carriage trade,” in which
the shopkeeper brought a selection of goods from the shop to the well-heeled
customers still seated in their carriage, seemed to confirm the lowly status of
the shopkeeper. Or perhaps because the shopkeeper was still associated with
the workshop, he was assumed to have sawdust and straw still about him. In
any case, Victorians found humor in the merchant’s certainty of his place in the
world, as with Charles Dickens’s pompous character Mr. Dombey. As Dombey
mused over the birth of his son and future partner, he knew, “The earth was
made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to
give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave
them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars
and planets circled in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they
were the centre.”3
Even being a shopkeeper’s relation could be an embarrassment: at a tea
party in Elizabeth Gaskell’s imagined village of Cranford, the nervous hostess
deftly dealt with guest’s revelation that her uncle kept a shop in Edinburgh:
“Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession with a terrible cough—for the
Honorable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at a card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and
what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with
a shopkeeper’s niece!”4 Her uncle, the proud guest assured the company, had
the best selection of Shetland wools in town! Her shattered hostess quickly
proposed music to create a diversion. At the same time, being in trade was not
an irredeemable fault. In Thackery’s Vanity Fair, Mrs. Sedley mused about her
son’s marriage to an artist’s daughter, thinking about her own forebears, “We
was only grocers when we married Mr. S., who was a stockbroker’s clerk, and
we hadn’t five hundred pounds among us . . . ”5 Of course, the Smedley family
loses their fortune soon after, but up until that time, they enjoyed considerable
social standing.
FROM CRAFTSMAN TO SHOPKEEPER

Many medieval shopping traditions survived into the Victorian era: the “sea-
sons” for certain goods, the units in which they were sold, even the cries used
by the street sellers. Perhaps the strongest tradition was that of the tradesman
who was primarily the maker of things—rope, baskets, cloth, or nails—but who
also sold to the public and other tradesmen through some regular shop. This
shop might operate on the same premises as the workshop, but the better part
of the craftsman’s time was spent in making goods rather than selling them.
The end of the eighteenth century was an era of transition. Goods were still
sold predominantly by craftsmen in shops near or adjacent to their workshops,
and although there were some purely retail shops, like drapers’ and haber-
dashers’ shops, they were in the minority. For the most part the “shop” was
adjacent to the “workshop,” and included space for display and meeting with
customers. These included watchmakers, silversmiths, goldsmiths, hatters and
milliners, and confectioners. Shoppers might be served by the craftsman, or an
apprentice or a member of his family. The shopper met the maker, who was
also something of an expert in the goods he sold.
Manufacturing was changing at this point, a transition historians call indus-
trialization: water and steam power, as well as new, more productive ways of
organizing hand labor increased output. Some craftsmen included in their work
goods that had been partly finished elsewhere, perhaps by “cottage labor” or
in small factories. Industrialization sped production and increased output, and
a new type of retail establishment began to appear. This was the warehouse,
which sold many types of a single type of item—fans, shawls, baby goods,
or perhaps tartan cloth—which had come from several different factories spe-
cializing in the same type of product. Warehouses were run by people called
factors, which essentially meant a dealer, rather than a manufacturer. Factor-
ing in England began with the medieval wool trade but expanded due to early
colonial trade: colonial Americans grew tobacco or cotton and shipped it back
to England for sale to factors who resold their crops at the wholesale level.
Some of the money generated from this financed industrial expansion and the
first great warehouses. Sometimes these warehouses were offshoots of older
established shops, especially drapers’ shops. Warehouses could be risky ven-
tures, and required both considerable capital as well as expertise in the industry
concerned.
Early craftsmen’s shops often resembled a medieval workshop: the family and
assistants may have lived and worked together, beginning with the assistant’s
arrival in the shop as an apprentice. In the course of the century, as shops
became larger, the relationship between shopkeepers and employees grew less
personal and more anonymous, and workers lived in dormitories rather than
boarding with the shopowner and his family. The department store Debenham
& Freebody established such a dormitory for their male employees, where
they lived under especially paternalistic protection, opening the shop at 6 a.m.,
closing at 9 p.m. In their off-hours, they were warned against smoking in public,
or frequenting dance halls and other amusements where they might meet
unsavory company. The company’s requirement that assistants also contribute
a guinea a year to the church may have made this an unusually strict work
environment.
In rural areas, shoppers continued to get some of what they needed at weekly
markets. Most good-sized towns had a regular market day for farmers to sell
their goods, and workshops were closed on those days so that the craftsman
could take a stall and sell his goods. Different towns had different market
days, but most had a special section of the town set aside for these temporary
markets. Rules for market hours, honesty in weight and measure, and other
aspects of the market place were strictly regulated. However useful, the weekly
or fortnightly market must have been a great interruption to regular town life.
Rural inhabitants and those living in very small towns might fall within the
orbit of larger “market towns,” requiring a long walk to sell their produce, as
a farmer’s daughter in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford recalled: “I thought I was
such a fine young lady when I was nothing but a country girl, coming to market
with eggs and butter and such things. For my father, though well-to-do, would
always make me go on as my mother had done before me, and I had to come
to Cranford every Saturday, and see after sales, and prices, and what not.”6
Farmers and artisans would set up stalls selling everything from eggs and milk
to cakes and woven baskets. This was an effective distribution system for sellers
who were still producers for five days out of the week.
By the end of the eighteenth century, shoppers in small towns were also
feeling the effects of industrialization on their shopping. They found what they
needed not only in the markets but also in a newer sort of village shop, a
retail establishment close to the traditional American country store. Supplied
by wholesalers in London and other manufacturing centers, the shop offered
a variety of household needs—pins, ink, china dishes, and fabric—and some
grocery items, like cheese, and sugar, sold in blue, paper-wrapped cones.
As the economy of England shifted, it was not uncommon to find tradespeople
who had a regular employment in one field and worked at a second trade
to make ends meet or make extra money. Rural people seem to have been
especially flexible and resourceful in this way, and they often had the time
and space in their homes to take on a second odd job. A woman might take in
washing, or work as a seamstress. She might sell things made in her kitchen,
like the enterprising wife of midcentury cutler: she made and sold ginger pop
to her Sheffield neighbors. The cutler himself made extra money by keeping
a garden to sell chicken, geese, pigeons, pigs, and canaries at the local market.
Children, too, were urged to show entrepreneurial spirit and contribute wages
to the family coffer by selling goods on the street: mothers whose livelihood
depended on this extra income were among the loudest critics of required school
attendance at century’s end.
FAIRS, AUCTIONS, AND STREET SELLERS

Fairs were a traditional form of shop with medieval origins, which persisted
well into the Victorian era, dating from the time of the recovery of trade in
medieval Europe. Trade had all but disappeared in the early feudal period. The
economic system called manorialism, which took the place of trade, meant that
most goods—tools, cloth, pottery—were used by the same people who made
them. The recovery of trade, and the return to shops and shopping, began with
fairs in the twelfth century. Because there were no regular, permanent markets,
fairs brought together merchants who could buy from one another and bring
the goods back for distribution. These goods—cloth, mirrors, jewelry, food—
made their way from these “depot” fairs, and were then carried off by itinerant
sellers called packmen to be resold at progressively smaller and more regional
fairs, where they might join goods of more local manufacture.
The packman’s medieval origin as the distributor for the great fairs meant
that he was a familiar sight in rural England. By the nineteenth century, the
packman’s long walk probably started in London where he might collect his
goods and carry them away on his back or in a small cart. The packman’s range
of goods was legendary: spoons, ribbons, charms, lengths of fabric, pins, dishes,
pull toys, dried fruit, thread, whistles, etc. By the early nineteenth century a
special kind of packman called a tallyman had become common. The tallyman
sold goods on a system of installments, making it possible for the poor and
working classes to buy cheap manufactured goods like fabrics, ribbons, dishes,
and toys. He would sell the goods and enter the transaction in a talleybook,
making regular stops over the next months to collect on the purchase, or to try
to retrieve the goods if payments were not forthcoming. Women, too, could
carry a pack, although they were more often depicted in engravings as carrying
their wares in a basket in their arm or head, indicating that they walked shorter
distances with smaller stock.
Fairs had a dual identity. They were first economic depots, collection and
distribution points for goods and labor. Some early- nineteenth-century fairs
were a kind of labor exchange places, in which workers could find jobs or young
apprentices. This was a vital resource for poor workers who could not travel
further than they could walk to search for work. Workers stood in groups with
symbols of their trade: the cook carried a ladle, the aspiring housemaid a broom,
a would-be milkmaid, her metal pail. Fairs might also be a collecting point for
livestock driven across the region for slaughter, as with the fair held in the
section of London eventually known as Mayfair.
The secondary role of fairs was to provide regular, seasonal entertainment, in
the form of drinking, sporting events, fortune-telling, etc., as well as a chance
for people to buy things. At the start of the nineteenth century, fairs still played
an important role in the rural economy. They were held throughout the year—
usually in spring or fall—with an special emphasis on the close of the harvest
season: farmers and their families tended to have cash as a result of bringing in
their harvest and selling animals they had slaughtered.
Auctions were still common in Victorian England, although they were less
common as the century ended. Many different things might be sold in a public
auction: livestock, farms and farm implements, even labor. William Thackery’s
description of a household auction in Vanity Fair shows that this type of
auction was fairly common and equally devastating: everything from the silver
tea spoons to the piano must be sold in “one of those public assemblies, a crowd
of which are advertised every day in the last pages of the Times newspaper . . . ”7
The auction was held when the owner’s business collapsed and he could not
pay his bills: the law allowed the sale of the debtor’s private property for his
business debts. The sale would be announced in the newspaper and in small
posters attached to the front of the house, and included a list of the specific
things being sold. It is no wonder that Victorians felt some ambiguity about
auctions: they delighted in the chance to buy rare and valuable things but at
the same time, they could not have escaped the realization that their good luck
came from another’s great misfortune. “There are very few London people,
as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste for
moralizing must have thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling
and queer, of the day when their turn shall come too . . . ”8
In rural auctions the process might take place in a public house, with the
contents of several homes up for auction at the same time. The indignity of
debt was further complicated by the familiarity of debtors and buyers: the
sight of personal belongings on display in public was only slightly less jarring
than the view of neighbors handling and then carrying away your things. As
George Eliot described in The Mill on the Floss, “Kezia, the good-hearted,
bad-tempered housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her
personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a particularly vile quality,
had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low
muttering against ‘folks’s come to buy up other folks’s things.’”9 Rural auctions
included sales of livestock and land, as well as the infamous “wife sale”, which
filled the void when divorce was expensive and unavailable. Although not
legally binding, it was recognized within the community, and effectively meant
a divorce. Thomas Hardy’s 1886 novel, The Mayor of Castorbridge, included a
description of a wife auction, which took place in the 1830s:
“Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem o’
creation.”
She turned to her husband and murmured, “Michael, you have talked
this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make
it once too often, mind!”
“I know I’ve said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer.”10
The auction took place on the heels of the horse auction, which seemed to
giver the bitter and inebriated wife-seller an extra measure of pleasure.
Streetselling was probably the most enduring of shopping traditions, and the
most prevalent. Streetsellers were similar to packmen, but usually did not walk
great distances, nor did they stray from the streets of cities and towns. They
carried goods in baskets, walked regular routes, so much so that households
could depend on them for things like bread and fish and other perishables. Some
streetsellers were fairly well established, having begun with sufficient start-up
money to offer better quality wares and employ several family members. Other
streetsellers’ businesses were more marginal, selling flowers or herbs they had
picked. They might resell goods that had gone unsold at another stall, and their
profit margin was small.
Regardless of the source of their wares or the length of their route, street-
sellers had the same essential marketing strategy: they would attract buyers
with their cries, the form and wording of which continued well into the Vic-
torian era. The earliest description of the streetsellers’ cries comes from the
late medieval period in a poem called “Lackpenny.” The narrator, detailing his
walk around the city to get help retrieving his stolen property, sees all sorts of
streetsellers crying their wares:
In to london I gan me hy;

of all the lond it beareth the prise
‘hot pescods,’ one gan cry
‘strawberries rype, and chery in the rye.’
one had me come nere and by some spice,
pepar and saffron they gan me bede,
clove grayns, and flowre of Rise;
for lacke of money I might not spede . . . 11
The sellers were offering the monk peas still in their pods, strawberries, and
cherries still on their branches, none of which helped him in his quest. Later
these medieval street cries were set to music, recording an impressive number of
goods carried in the streets: fish, herbs, vegetables, fruits, drinks, food, ribbons
and laces, and clothing. These cries were sometimes simple statement of what
the seller had, for example, “Oysters!” Other cries emphasized the quality of
the goods, or their freshness: “New milk!” and “New sprats new!”
LONDON AND THE WHOLESALE TRADE

London was at the center of a wholesale trade network aided by a new
and expanding network of banking and a credit system that stretched across
Britain. By the end of the eighteenth century, coaches were regularly carrying
goods from London to smaller towns and villages. The trip could be risky:
goods sent by coach could be stolen or broken, or ruined by rain if not packed
properly. These goods—mostly cloth, metal goods, pottery, animal hides—had
been made in London or brought there and then sent out again to retail shops
across England by coach or by water. Manchester and other rising towns seem
to have played this role as well, although London offered a certain cachet to
retailers selling these goods. Retailers from small towns came to London as
modern store buyers do. They inspected the goods and placed orders, paid
accounts, and returned home with not only merchandize but also intelligence
about new styles and current fashion.
To speak of London fashion at this time meant not only the actual goods
from the capital, which were certainly of the most up-to-date manufacture, but
also an intangible and highly desired London smartness. Small-town shoppers
clamored for goods, which had come from London even though they might
not be any different from things made and sold closer to home. The ladies of
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford were prone to this delusion, and were willing to
buy their fashions from the local general shop because of the link with London:
Many a farmer’s wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barkers’
select millinery, and went rather to the universal shop, where the profits
of brown soap and moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to
(Paris, he said, until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish
to wear what the Mounseers wore) London, where, as he often told his
customers, Queen Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in
a cap exactly like the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue
ribbons, and had been complimented by King William on the becoming
nature of her head-dress.12
Interestingly, London shoppers imbued Paris-made goods with the same intan-
gible value-added. Eventually, the other great industrial cities of Manchester,
Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, and Glasgow began to compete with London as
wholesale hubs, although London never lost its reputation for desirable fashion
trends.
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND SHOPPING

Industrial organization transformed early production even before powered
mechanization. Adam Smith’s 1776 description of the industrial production
of pins in The Wealth of Nations showed that organization and specialization
could be enormously productive. Each worker specialized in one single part of
pin making—straightening the wire, attaching the head, sharpening the point—
and did the work quickly. And while Smith admitted it was a dehumanizing
work, it made very good business sense to make things this way.
Industrial organization had an enormous impact on the way that people
shopped. Shoes, for example, were probably still sold the traditional way by
the artisan who made them until the 1830s. The customer was measured and
fitted, a cast or model of the foot was created, and the customer walked away
with a pair of custom-made shoes. Indeed, the servant-keeping classes may
have continued to buy their shoes from the artisans who made them through
the start of the twentieth century.
By the 1830s it was possible for working-class customers to find readymade,
pre-sized shoes supplied to drapers as well as to more general shops. These
shoes were made by hand in small factories using industrial organization of
labor to increase output: one worker cut the leather, another did the basic
sewing, the next attached the tongue and finished the shoe. The work was
tedious, but the organization was effective and profitable: the industrial process
could increase output tenfold. Some early Victorian shoemakers responded to
growing demand by supplementing their production with outsourcing: they
would hire “jobber” shoemakers to collect partially finished shoes, or pieces of
shoes, and take them home to stitch. The finished “slop shoe” was serviceable
but of poor quality. Cut to fit a general sort of foot silhouette, these shoes
covered the foot without actually fitting, and as the leather gave and stretched
with wear, they would become uncomfortably loose. There were no standard
shoe sizes: finding a pair that fit was something of a hit-or-miss experience as
they tended to be dumped into a bin for customers to sort through. The shoes
were made of poorly tanned, second-class leathers, and the rough stitching was
vulnerable in the wet weather. Although not machine-made, these were still
“factory” shoes, which made no distinction between left and right foot.
Before industrialization, most shops, even purely retail shops, were small es-
tablishments that ran considerable risks. Their customers were probably limited
to those in the neighborhood if in a city. Those in smaller towns might draw
from a geographically larger area, but had a smaller pool of buyers with extra
cash to draw from. The physical premises of the retail shop were often limited,
as they competed for space with stock storage, as well as living quarters for the
shopkeeper and his family. If there were employees, there were probably only
one or two, and they might well board with the shop owner or in a nearby
house. Their hours were long, and they needed to be close by.
Industrialization changed shopping in other ways, including the vital creation
of an expanded middle class. Certainly there were middle-class English people
prior to industrialization, but historians identify a “new” middle class, which
sprang from the factories and expanding professions like banking. These men
managed the factories, they kept the books, they dealt in the wholesale sup-
plying of industrial England. And most importantly, they earned sufficiently
large salaries to have money to shop. Their custom helped with the growth of
new stores, like warehouses and department stores. Historians have pointed out
that department stores, with their emphasis on display and the “soup-to-nuts”
nature of their inventory, taught the new middle class what to buy. A nervous
shopper, newly married and raised to the middle class, could walk into a de-
partment store and know immediately what was fashionable for her wardrobe,
her dining room, and her new maidservant’s dress. The clearly marked prices
allowed upper working-class wives to budget for larger purchases, and to know
exactly what they could afford.
WINDOWS AND LEARNING TO LOOK

Shopping in the Victorian era expanded: a greater range of people shopped,
and shopping became a more accepted and integrated part of life. Although
men shopped for some things, and places like tailors’ and tobacconists’ shops
were male shopping preserves, women probably did most of the shopping. By
the start of the Victorian era, shopping had begun to be a more accepted way
for women to spend their time, in part because of their expanded role as keeper
of home and family. Historians point out that the decline of women’s role as
producers—baking bread, brewing beer, making textiles, dairying—coincided
with the development of commercial production of these things. No longer
required to bake, weave, brew, or make all of the goods their families needed,
women were quite literally changed from producers to consumers within a
generation or two. And as with all rapid changes, the change brought new
challenges. As shoppers, women often had the dizzying responsibility of work-
ing within a budget, while choosing the best quality foods for their table and
an economic way to dress the family and outfit the home. Advice books urged
women to take the responsibility very seriously, and to be careful shoppers.
Of course, the Victorians did not invent shopping: there have been shops
and shoppers since the start of civilization and the first exchange of goods. But
simple buying is not always shopping. Real shopping implies display, choice,
leisure to compare choices, and especially the power to buy. In the past, only
elites could enjoy shopping: they alone could enjoy the range of choices, the
leisure to buy rather than to make, as well as purchasing power to actually shop.
Historians agree that shopping developed in part because of an expanding desire
to prove status: more people had more money, and they needed the goods to
prove this to their neighbors. Historians date the start of shopping to the reign
of Elizabeth I. Men, and to a lesser extent women, at Elizabeth’s court began to
buy clothes, jewels, and scented gloves, as well as other goods to impress others
at court and perhaps catch the queen’s eye and win favors. They had the means
to shop and the desire for novel and impressive things like bigger and more
tightly curled starched ruffs for their collars, and breeches, which grew larger
and puffier with each season. If the breeches could have slashes with brightly
colored fabrics sewn into them, flashing as the wearer strode about, so much
the better. For the first time, it was not only princes who shopped, but men who
had made fortunes in the woolen trade or in wholesaling tobacco. Like a spring
released and unwinding outward, the number of craftsmen, shopkeepers, and
consumers expanded over the next two centuries. Shopping was well established
by the start of the nineteenth century, but industrialization and urbanization
further democratized it. Eventually, anyone with a penny could walk into a
shop and buy a newspaper, a paper full of candies, or a handkerchief. More
importantly, there were more people who had a penny to buy.
“Shopping” for the Victorians meant more than a visit to a shop for a specific
purchase. It meant visiting multiple shops to gather information, to compare
prices and quality, to investigate new products and new styles, and to confer
with the new resident experts, the merchants in their shops. It was a chance for
social interaction: walking among the shops and stalls, people saw their friends
and neighbors, and developed networks, which included trusted and favored
tradesmen and shopkeepers. As the humor magazine Punch explained in 1844,
“SHOPPING is the amusement of spending money at shops. It is to a lady

what sporting is to a gentleman; somewhat productive, and very chargeable.”13
It was a kind of entertainment: part treasure hunt, part tribal display. It was a
chance to be indulged and pampered by obsequious and plainly dressed shop
assistants, and a chance to learn what you could aspire to.
Despite this, Victorians had mixed feeling about shopping. They enjoyed
novelty and new things, but they worried about the morality of being con-
cerned with display and material things. They also complained about the cost
and trouble of shopping, the crowds, the walking and the inconvenience of
transportation, the need to set aside a whole morning or afternoon to shop.
Some people found both the vanity and materialistic focus of shopping to be
humorous and not a little sad.
A central part of shopping in Victorian Britain was the chance to see goods on
display, and the most important part of this display was the window. Lighting
was an integral part, and shops were among the first to make use of limited
indoor gas lighting. Shop windows with smallish panes had been common since
the eighteenth century, but with the mechanization of glass production in the
1830s, panes became larger and cheaper. Merchants enlarged their windows
with more panes to make a more enticing display of goods to lure shoppers. By
the 1860s, full-length windows running from the sidewalk to the top of the first
floor were introduced, giving merchants an enormous space to display goods or
signs with prices. Shop windows could be bowed out into the street, creating a
tableau of goods which could be seen from three sides. Windows could also be
concave, creating a sheltered place where a shopper could come out of the rain
and study the display at the same time. In Sketches by Boz, Charles Dickens
described the development of this sort of window display as a kind of window
mania, manifested among drapers in London in the 1830s.
Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the
linen-drapers and haberdashers. The primary symptoms were an inor-
dinate love of plate-glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The
disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet,
dusty old shops in different parts of town, were pulled down; spacious
premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters, were erected instead; floors
were covered with Turkey carpets; roofs supported by massive pillars;
doors knocked into windows; a dozen squares of glass into one; one shop-
man into a dozen; and there is no knowing what would have been done, if it
had not been fortunately discovered, just in time, that the Commissioners
of Bankruptcy were as competent to decide such cases as the Commis-
sioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement and gentle examination
did wonders. The disease abated. It died away.14
Dickens joked that once the drapers had improved their premises, a similar sort
of madness overtook the other merchants in their turn: first the chemists, and
then the hosiers were overcomed with the desire to upgrade their shops. What
Dickens described in this ridiculous, fevered embellishment of simple shops is

nothing more than the development of the first department stores, expanding
by swallowing up their competitors.
FROM BAZAARS TO DEPARTMENT STORES

One of the most important innovations in Victorian shopping was the de-
partment store, that is, a store under a single owner offering a wide assortment
of several types of unrelated goods, and several different qualities of goods.
Although the term department store was not commonly used until the twen-
tieth century, there were some shops in the early Victorian era that met the
description. Although historians still debate the date for the first department
store, and different cities claim to have seen the first department store, it seems
likely that by the 1830 there were several small establishments that met the
requirements. Historians call these “proto-department stores,” many of which
began as draper’s shops, although some establishments began as warehouses,
bazaars, and grocer’s shops.
A bazaar was nothing more than an indoor market set up in a building
with stalls and assigned selling space, rented to individual merchants by the
week or year. The individual merchants in the bazaar had to agree to rules
that guaranteed the integrity of the establishment: stallholders agreed to hold
regular hours, to sell only the type of goods specified in their contract, and to
have someone at their counter during regular business hours. Prices were to be
clearly marked or “ticketed,” and no haggling was allowed. Counter staff were
to be neatly dressed, accommodating to the customers, and circumspect in their
behavior: they were not to gossip or snack behind the counters. Only people
of good character might be admitted as stallholders, and in some bazaars, men
and women were housed on different floors to guarantee propriety. Finally, the
bazaar was overseen by a beadle, a kind of private policeman, who enforced the
rules and levied fines.
From their start in the early nineteenth century, bazaars offered middle class
shoppers a more controlled and respectable shopping experience: the bazaar
was usually cleaner and more pleasant than open-air markets, which might
include animals for sale or counters selling meats. The other shoppers in the
bazaar tended to be better dressed than those in the open markets, and better
behaved. Prices in the bazaar tended to be somewhat higher than in open-
air markets, and this, along with the absence of bartering, may have deterred
working-class shoppers. Eventually some arcades, like the Burlington Arcade
described by Augustus Sala in his sketch of London 1859, focused on emphasized
luxury goods, which as he sardonically observed, or “things we could not do
without.”
Boots and shoes are sold there, to be sure, but what boots and shoes? var-
nished and embroidered and be-ribboned figments, fitter for a fancy ball
or a lady’s chamber, there to caper to the jingling melody of a lute, than
for serious pedestrianism. Paintings and lithographs for gilded boudoirs,

collars for puppy dogs, and silver-mounted whips for spaniels, pocket
handkerchiefs, in which an islet of cambric is surrounded by an ocean of
lace, embroidered garters and braces, fillagree flounces, firework-looking
bonnets, scent bottles, sword-knots, brocaded sashes, worked dressing-
gowns, inlaid snuff-boxes, and falbalas of all descriptions; these form the
stock-in-trade of the merchants who have here their tiny boutiques.15
Sala’s dismissal of the arcade—things we could do without, indeed—reflected

the well-developed male disdain for shopping. But his boredom with the arcade
really is not relevant: this market was not meant for him but for the woman
of the new middle class. She needed to shop in order to dress as the symbol of
her husband’s income, so her friends and neighbors knew that she had the time
and the means to shop.
Some bazaars had open spaces for art galleries and other displays, and the idea
of combining shopping and entertainment proved to be very popular. Bazaars
offered services too. Sala included hairdressers in his description, suggesting
that they were strange, grasping foreigners who were more interested in selling
their dubious products than cutting hair.
There are hairdressers’ shops too; but I will be bound that their proprietors
would not be content with trimming a too luxuriant head of hair. They
would insist upon curling, oiling, scenting, and generally tittivating you.
They would want you to buy amandine for your hands, kalydor for your
hair, dentifrice, odonto, vinaigre de toilette, hair-brushes with ivory backs,
and tortoiseshell pocket-combs with mirrors appended to them. They
would insist that you could not live without pommade Honqroise and
fizatures for the moustaches, or Frangipani for the pocket-handkerchief.16
Although Sala dismissed these beauty products—dentifrice, or toothpaste in

powder form, hair pomade, and hand creams—as foolish products, most of these
goods were standard stock in the chemists’ shops at the end of the century.
Drapers’ shops could also become department stores. Drapers usually dealt
in a specific type of fabric such as woolens or linens for clothing and home
furnishings. Drapers naturally expanded into other things associated with cloth
and furniture: buttons, ribbons, fabric tape, and eventually rugs, finished drap-
ery, pillows, and other things. Fabric from the mills came faster and cheaper as
the century progressed, and the profits from these sales financed the expansion
into still more departments: children’s wear followed ladies’ wear, and hosiery,
furniture, and mattresses came soon after.
The department stores of the second half of the century were, however, far
more than very large draper’s shops. They offered liberal policies designed to
keep customers happy and willing to shop there regularly. These included local
delivery and delivery by mail to distant customers, and returns, so long as the
goods were not damaged. Shoppers were encouraged to stroll through the shop
and look at the goods without feeling pressured to buy. Prices were clearly
marked and firm: shoppers were assured that prices were fair and already as low
as they should be. But the chief attraction of the department stores was their
selection: they could, with the exception of food, provide most of what people
needed to clothe themselves and outfit their homes. Debenham & Freebody
were pleased to offer the public more than twenty departments in their 1870
store:
Silks Children’s clothes Mantles

Stockings Gloves Shawls
Parasols Furs Upholstery fabric & curtains
Costumes Dresses Embroidered muslins
Ball dresses Ribbons Trimmings
Printed muslins Lace Haberdashery
Fancy goods Millinery Dressmaking
India outfits
The last was a clever innovation, meant to offer woman, bound for the far
posts of the empire, a complete set of clothes and accessories for a tropical
climate. It is interesting that the wardrobes for the tropics were essentially
what were being worn in England: multiple layers, long sleeves, and skirts. The
only difference was that these clothes were made out of lighter material. There
were also “Australia,” Japan,” and “China” outfits for women. Men, too, could
find complete “wardrobes in a box” with appropriate accessories.
Display was paramount in the department store, although it was not until
the later part of the century that they perfected the really sophisticated displays
which made the department stores legendary. Early department stores favored
a “quantity” display with large quantities of similar items crowded together.
Shop assistants probably spent as much time straightening these tight, closely
packed shelves and counters as they did waiting on customers.
Historians believe that for the new middle class, these early department stores
were both supplier and teacher. The newly expanded middle class was eager to
be sold sets of china outfits and dresses in the latest style: the department stores
taught these new consumers what was fashionable and how to recreate fashion
in their own homes. Store-bought wares ensured a fashionable home, which
could be admired and helped to cement the shopper’s feeling of having arrived.
The needs of the urban working classes, on the other hand, were met by the
new cooperative stores, which at first tended to offer more basic goods, and only
gradually began to resemble the grander and more expansive department stores.
The first real department store may have been Whiteley’s, founded in London
in 1863 by William Whiteley. Whiteley’s department store began as a draper’s
shop with a modest staff of three: two shop girls and a boy for deliveries.
Whiteley’s aim was to recreate the expansive display of goods seen at the
Great Exhibition of 1851, but with the goods for sale. He began expanding the
premises of his fancy goods shop, swallowing smaller adjacent shops. By the
1870s the store included more than a dozen different departments. By 1885, his
shop had separate departments for men’s clothes (hats and caps, gloves, ties,
socks, and tailoring), and women’s clothes and outerwear (silks, dress mate-
rial, shoes, hosiery, mantles, and shawls). Other departments included jewelry,
drugs, perfumes, umbrellas and sunshades, a trimming department featuring
feathers and ribbons, stationery and printing departments, and a hairdress-
ing salon. Clearly this new kind of store was more than just a draper’s shop.
Calling himself the “Universal Provider,” Whiteley was very nearly that. His
store offered not only goods but services: a house agent’s department, a “re-
freshment room” (which may have been the first restaurant within a depart-
ment store), laundry and dyeing services, a decorating department, an oriental
department selling goods from Asia, as well meat and grocery departments.
Whiteley boasted that his store could provide anything “from a pin to an ele-
phant,” and an article in the New York Times at the time of his murder in 1907
noted:
As the business developed anything imaginable in trading could be pur-

chased there, from a paper of pins to a first-class yacht, fully equipped and
manned. Everything needed from birth to death was promptly furnished,
including medical attendance and funerals. There was even an employ-
ment agency, which supplied actors, governesses, couriers, and help of all
descriptions, and the establishment did an extensive express business. In
fact, there was no line of business too large or too small for it to engage
in.17
Smaller grocers and drapers were infuriated by the Whiteley’s hegemonic

takeover of local shopping, and there is some suspicion that the repeated fires
which plagued the store may have been arson; in fact, the store was completely
destroyed by fire in 1897, only to be rebuilt along more expansive lines. The
shopkeepers in the Bayswater part of London certainly held a number of public
meetings to protest his department store, and burned him in effigy, without
making a dent in the Universal Provider’s reputation.
Whiteley was careful with customer service: the store offered a liberal returns
policy and staffs were strictly warned against pressuring customers to buy.
A generous delivery policy further helped his reputation: within London, he
offered twice daily deliveries of purchases in his own vans: his fleet included
145 vans and 320 horses. Customers in more remote areas had their purchases
sent by train or coach, free of charge. Whiteley did his own advertising, using
circulars with lists of goods, and free almanacs, which combined advertising
for the store with a calendar and miscellaneous information: it gave postage
rates, phases of the moon, poetry, historical facts and dates, and planting advice
for farmers. He popularized a number of self-promoting slogans that wormed
into everyday speech, including the remarkably persistent “If you want to buy
anything, go to Whiteley’s.”
The shop prospered, and Whitely continued to expand the premises. By the
end of the century, the staff had grown to over 600, most of whom lived in
store dormitories and were fed foods produced in Whiteley’s farms and food
factories. Shop hours were from eight in the morning until ten at night, but
the staff needed to be in the shop for an hour before opening and for an hour
afterward, six days a week, and behavior was strictly regulated.
COOPERATIVE STORES
Although department stores were popular and prospered throughout the
century, there was considerable opposition to them. Smaller tradesmen com-
plained that the “universal provider” robbed his single-trade shop of customers:
the big stores undercut his prices and offered shoppers too convenient access
to other departments. Some people felt that the department stores’ artificially
high prices caused prices in all shops to rise, which was unfair to customers
of all classes. The cooperative store movement developed in part as answer to
these objections, and from a genuine sense of self-worth and class consciousness
among its founders.
Cooperative stores were formed to give working class customers an alterna-
tive to the high prices and questionable quality of goods found in the commercial
grocery and street seller’s stall. Selling groceries for cash only, the cooperative
store (the lone “store” in a world of “shops”) promised full weight and the best
unadulterated goods possible. More importantly, members received a yearly
dividend of the profits based on the amount of goods they had bought during
the year: members understood that loyalty to the store was to their benefit.
Cooperative stores bought in large quantities which allowed them to be selec-
tive about the quality of their goods as well as to offer very low prices. They
also invested in food manufacturing—mills, bakeries, slaughterhouses, farms,
and dairies—which further lowered prices and allowed them to set their own
standards. The movement was usually quite successful, and often, individual
societies were able to expand to multiple locations. Although most began as
cooperative grocery stores, they quickly expanded their range of goods so that
they more closely resembled middle class department stores selling clothes,
shoes, and home goods.
The first cooperative stores were an important part of working class shopping.
They originated in the shops associated with Robert Owen’s New Lanark mills.
Workers could buy their basic grocery items at low cost in this nonprofit shop,
and at considerable savings compared to regular grocer’s shops. Others were
inspired by this model, and in 1844, a group of weavers formed the Rochdale
Society of Equitable Pioneers. They gathered the considerable sum of £28 to
buy their original stock of groceries (butter, flour, sugar, oats, candles, and a
short while later, tea and tobacco) which they sold to members who had bought
shares for £1. At the end of the year, profits were divided up and offered as
dividends based on an individual member’s purchases for the year.
Other cooperative societies followed the Rochdale Society, offering the work-
ing class shoppers a reliable alternative to the commercial grocery. Indeed, the
“cooperative” part of the title was meant to be a challenge to the idea of the
profit-driven private grocery. There was sufficient demand among the better-
paid and more reliably employed workers to support a national movement,
which came in 1863 with the creation of the North of England Co-Operative
Society, later the Cooperative Wholesale Society. The society owned factories
to manufacture goods for member stores, farms and tea plantations to provide
groceries, and its own architects and builders to create new stores for members.
One of the most successful of later cooperatives was the Lincoln Coopera-
tive Societies, founded in 1861. In the first year of operations, the committee
employed a lone shopkeeper to keep the store open six days a week from seven
in the morning to eight in the evening, and made deliveries in the evenings
themselves. As membership expanded, the store was able to afford a staff of
regular employees, including delivery boys and horse-drawn delivery vans. The
Lincoln Society was one of the most successful of cooperative stores, expanding
from grocery staples to coal and other goods. By the 1870s, the society had
separate drapery, furniture, and shoe departments, as well as a savings bank,
bakery, butcher’s shop, and a drug store selling patent medicines. It owned
farms, slaughterhouses, and mills to supply its stores. The society repeatedly
expanded its premises, and opened satellite branches in cities and villages where
there was a sufficient working population to support them. In fact, the society
often financed the building of new housing, selling the new houses to members.
While most cooperative societies served the interests of the working class
shopper, several societies formed in the second half of the century for the
benefit of middle class shoppers. Middle class cooperative societies were usually
created by white collar or professional workers in a single field. Building on a
similar type of cooperative principle as the older workers’ cooperative societies,
members of professional societies owned shares, enjoyed low prices and high
quality dividends paid annually, and participated in the operation of the early
shops. Although modeled on the working class cooperative movement, by the
later part of the century these were largely “cooperative” in name only: within
a few years of formation, they were indistinguishable from regular middle class
department stores in terms of their stock, services, and staff.
One of the more successful of these middle class societies was the Post
Office Supply Association, established in 1864 by a group of postal clerks: they
originally clubbed together to buy a chest of tea which, when divided up, saved
the original members ninepence per pound. The association later expanded
to include all civil service workers, renaming itself the Civil Service Supply
Stores in 1866. In its earliest days, the association sold only groceries but had
arrangements with other retailers to give its members discounts on clothing and
other necessities. The store was both modern and minimalist, and must have
resembled a modern warehouse discount store: customers filled out an order

form listing what they needed, added in the prices, and submitted the form at
an order desk where they could also pay. The goods were collected behind the
counter, and customers collected their packages at the check-out counter.
This association has been formed for the purpose of supplying members
of the civil service and their friends with articles both for consumption
and general use at the lowest possible prices. Tickets may be obtained by
all Civil servants upon payment of 2s, 6d. for a period of one year, and
10s. for a period of five years. . . .The holders of such tickets will enjoy the
privilege of purchasing goods at the stores and from the firms connected
with the association. . . .A limited number of the friends of members can
obtain tickets upon payment of 5s. yearly, provided they are introduced
by a member of the association.18
Within ten years the store’s stock rivaled that of any department store, offering
almost anything that a household could require: clothes, shoes, stationery,
jewelry, clothing, and hardware. At about the same time as Whiteley billed
himself as the “universal provider,” the store boasted stock including “anything
from a blotting pad to a bicycle or a billiard table, and from ginger beer to carte
blanche champagne.”
The Army and Navy Cooperative Society began in 1871 when several offi-
cers clubbed together to buy cases of wine at wholesale prices, opening their
cooperative stores in 1872. Membership was originally limited to officers and
widows of officers. The stock began with groceries and expanded to include
clothes and patent medicines, as well as guns, all of which were listed in an ex-
tensive catalogue printed in their own printshop. A restaurant served breakfast
and lunches, and officers returning to England from the distant empire found
a welcoming atmosphere. Eventually the Army and Navy Stores were estab-
lished around the empire, and in 1879, a splinter group of members formed the
new Junior Army and Navy Stores.
The cooperative movement was still thriving at the end of the century: the
Port of London Cooperative Society, the Agricultural and Horticultural Society,
the International Exhibition Cooperative Wine Society, the Coal Cooperative
Society, and the Ladies Dress Association were among the better known stores.
Although numerous, the cooperative stores probably served only a small por-
tion of the population.
CATALOGUES AND ADVERTISING

Catalogues were an important part of nineteenth-century shopping, in part
because of the quality of mail service and the low cost of mailing things after the
invention of the Penny Post. People in villages and rural areas could shop for
special goods this way. Catalogues were also an efficient way for shopkeepers
to show the range of their inventory without having to keep all of their goods
on hand, and they could easily fulfill special orders for customers who came to
the shop and browsed the catalogue. Early catalogues were often quite simply
printed lists, like the bookseller’s catalogue, which offered just the titles of used
books and their condition. Some had illustrations, for example the dressmaker’s
catalogue of dress illustrations or fashion plates. In the last quarter of the cen-
tury, larger stores were able to offer catalogues detailing their entire inventory,
often with simple drawings or descriptions, as the price of printing came down
and people became accustomed to distance shopping.
The last of the great innovations which changed Victorian shopping was
advertising. While print and sign advertising had been in England for as long
as there were shops, there was an advertising revolution in Victorian England.
It was driven by the need to find customers in a market flooded with new
industrially produced goods, and the growth of the profession in the second
half of the century. The proliferation of shops demanded more advertising and
Victorians merchants were enthusiastic advertisers. The rest of society was less
enthusiastic and advertising was generally considered to be a nuisance, and
Parliament worked to reduce the nuisance with somewhat limited success.
The most common advertising was the shop sign featuring an image of the
goods made inside the premises. These shop signs may have been more com-
mon in poorer neighborhood for the benefit of customers who were illiterate,
although they could be found in more prosperous districts with presumably
better rates of literacy as well. Charles Dickens’s description of the shopping
part of a poor neighborhood near the docks in Dombey and Son suggested a
vista cluttered with the icons of merchants and makers:
It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses;

then came slop-sellers’ shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou’wester hats, and
canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hang-
ing up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges,
where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came
rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves
from among the scarlet beans.19
London authorities would eventually require that shop signs be placed flush
against their buildings, but the tradition of the brightly painted symbolic signs
hung above the door was carried into the twentieth century. Later shop signs
would be painted on the expanse of glass which covered the front of the store.
Some advertising came in the form of full-scale wooden figures which stood
outside the shop door: tobacconists, for example, often had men in highland
dress at the door, as Charles Dickens described in Little Dorrit:
The tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane was carried
out in a rural establishment one story high, which had the benefit of
the air from the yards of Horsemonger Lane jail, and the advantage of a
retired walk under the wall of that pleasant establishment. The business
was of too modest a character to support a life-size Highlander, but it
maintained a little one on a bracket on the door-post, who looked like a
fallen Cherub that had found it necessary to take to a kilt.20
Some of these sidewalk advertising figures were more directly related to the
products sold inside, like the early-nineteenth-century perfumer who kept a
real bear stuffed and on a wooden stand at his door to advertise his bear fat-based
hair dressing for men.
Print advertising also grew more common in the course of the century.
The oldest forms of print advertising included small handbills, printed in large
quantities and given away to passersby. These date from the time of the first
printing presses in England, and the oldest surviving piece dates from the late
fifteenth century. The handbill reached its zenith in the last quarter of the cen-
tury. Given away in the millions by grocers and department stores, they were
often brightly colored and die-cut in interesting shapes. They were so pretty
that they were prized for use in scrapbooks and often featured sentimental
pictures of babies and small animals, or patriotic scenes from history. The truly
sought-after images were those with pictures of the royal family.
Next among the traditional print advertisements were posters, commonly
called bills. Bill-posting was so common by the seventeenth century that it was
a recognized trade, and one which flourished in the Victorian era. These posters
were usually quite plain, consisting mainly of text in different sized and degrees
of “boldness.” Some had a single, simple graphic, but the main requirement of
the poster was that it had lettering large enough to be seen as people walked
by. Local governments and Parliament tried hard to regulate and reduce the
posting of bills with limited results: too often, any “blank” wall space in a town
or city would be quickly filled with bills, and possibly even posted over again,
before the first layer of glue had dried.
Newspaper advertising was well established by the start of the nineteenth
century, but was boosted by the reduction in the 1830s of the tax on newspaper
advertising, and in the 1840s by the repeal of the tax on newspapers. New forms
of printing, and especially for printing images from photos, allowed newspapers
to offer illustrated advertisements at increasingly cheap rates, which made
them all the more common. The growth of the advertising profession was
related to the expansion of the press: the first advertising agents sold space
in the newspapers. They gradually expanded their work and began creating
advertisements, a job which had formerly been done by the manufacturers
themselves. Newspaper advertising was pretty successful: it managed to keep
the product in the minds of consumers, even as public annoyance raised the
question of whether it was counterproductive. A good example of this was the
Pears soap slogan, “Good Morning! Have you used Pears?” People saw this
advertisement so often that the very phrase “good morning” seemed tainted
by advertising, and some people were simply too embarrassed to say “Good
morning,” dreading the hackneyed rejoinder, “Have you used Pears?”
Some advertisers chose cheaper routes: they might pay poor men to walk up
and down the street with sandwich boards—two large pieces of board connected
by a strap and worn front and back on the man’s body. The boards were painted
in large letters with the advertiser’s message, with additional signs tucked
into his hatband. He might further draw attention to himself (and annoy the
neighborhood) by ringing a bell and “crying.” Other cheap and effective ways to
advertise in the Victorian era included writing directly on city streets, hoardings,
and sidewalks. The work was done by men known as wall chalkers, and they
were famous for their stealth: the work was illegal, and could result in fines.
Packaging, too, increasingly began to include labels, which advertised their
product, starting in the 1870s.
Shopping in the Victorian era was a curious mix of the traditional and the
new. Even as newer forms of selling like the warehouse and the bazaar came
into practice, much older forms of selling like the traveling packman and the
“crying” of wares in the street persisted. Certainly the new tended to appear
first in great cities and towns, and the traditional forms of selling lasted longest
in the country and villages. But overall, the shopping landscape was changing
and fairly quickly, becoming more crowded with shops and shoppers.
3
Clothes and Accessories
Liberty’s soft Indian Silks are specially designed for Pyjamas, being
exquisitely soft, very light, durable, and of excellent washing qualities.
Plain, White, Cream, or Art Colors. Patterns and instructions for mea-
surement post free.
—Catalogue for Liberty and Company, 18831
Textile manufacturing was unquestionably the most fully industrialized of

business in Victorian England. It was the earliest to adapt new powered
technologies—first water and then steam—and textiles became the most impor-
tant export item of the century. Production rose and prices fell, and Victorians
found they could choose from an ever-increasing range of fabric. Not surpris-
ingly, Victorian women wore more layers of clothing in 1890 than they had in
1820, and they wore clothing of greater intricacy and complexity. At the same
time, compared to the present day, Victorians did not usually own a great deal
of clothing. Most people owned only a few outfits, perhaps one or two pieces
of outerwear, and one or two pairs of shoes, although they might own several
shirts and chemises. The majority of Victorians probably wore some used cloth-
ing or hand-me-downs. Clothing was expensive and meant to last: it could be
mended, updated, and worn parts replaced in a way that is totally unthinkable
today. A street scene of Victorian England would include people in clothes of
recent vintage and clothes from a generation past, and this was to be expected.
Charles Dickens captured this in a scene from a party in The Pickwick Papers:
There were all the female servants in a bran new uniform of pink muslin
gowns with white bows in their caps, running about the house in a state
of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The
old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown, which had not seen the light
for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen
through the chinks in the box in which it had been laid by, during the
whole time.2
Because better dresses were intricately constructed of fabric which would be

ruined by contact with water, most of them were never washed, and yet lasted
for years. In this era before detergents, clothes were washed by rubbing, and
the use of washing soda would add to the abrasion. Only clothing worn next
to the skin could be washed, although these “delicates” needed a great deal
of ironing to restore them to their original look. Housemaids’ dresses fell
into another category: they were often of lightweight printed material, less
intricately constructed, and could bear washing on a regular basis.
Styles in clothing and in cloth tended to cycle; that is, they were introduced as
a luxury item, produced in small quantities and priced beyond the reach all but
the most elite shoppers. As more manufacturers produced the style, the price
fell, bringing it within the budget of those below. A good example of this is the
printed cotton fabric noted above. Introduced in the late eighteenth century,
printed cotton was originally quite expensive, and probably worn exclusively by
upper class and middle class women. These early printed fabrics, mostly floral,
ginghams, and stripes, may not have been resistant to fading and washing could
have caused the patterns to run or fade. By the start of the nineteenth century,
as the upper and middle classes embraced a more classical look with dresses
made of white cotton, the patterned fabric became an emblem of the servant
and the working class woman, and there is considerable evidence that some
manufacturers made fabrics specifically for this market.
Men’s fashions changed gradually, and one needed a practiced eye to recog-
nize the subtle changes between one year and the next. The cut of a coat’s lapels
and skirt, the fall or tightness of trousers, or the shape and size of a shirt collar
might be all that distinguished one decade’s styles from the next. Men could,
therefore, get many years’ wear from a well-made coat and trousers, allowing
for repairs and normal wear.
Women’s clothing was more complicated and changed rapidly. Bustles ap-
peared, grew so large that they had to be collapsible or the wearer could not sit,
and then disappeared again entirely. In the last quarter of the century, dresses
became more tailored with closer fitting sleeves. Corsets tightened, loosened,
and were eventually abandoned by some. These changes meant that women
were, depending on their circumstances, under considerable pressure to keep
their clothes up-to-date as well as clean and presentable. This is the very defini-
tion of fashion: the process of continually changing the style of clothes, so that
the clothes of one season are recognizably different from those of the previous
season. Fashion meant looking at what others wore, and comparing it to what
you had available in your own closet. Fashion led women (or pressured them
or enticed them) into shopping so that they knew what was fashionable, and
Clothes and Accessories 41
where to buy the things they needed to be fashionable. This information on

fashion and style was gleaned from magazines, catalogues, the information net-
work of female relatives, or even trips to larger towns. The fashion magazines
might offer descriptions and illustrations of new fashions, and this aided both
shoppers and dressmakers in their quest for knowledge.
For much of the century, the clothing for both men and women of the
middle class was at least in part “customized,” although important clothing like
wedding dresses may have been completely made to order. Historians argue that
while midcentury department store offered some partially constructed clothes,
only in the next century could shoppers walk into a store and purchase good
quality ready-made clothes.
As with food, money was the primary factor in how well or carefully people
dressed. While a woman’s ability to dress herself depended primarily on her
husband’s income, or if she were truly fortunate, such independent income as
she might be allowed to control for herself. Notice that Isabella Beeton’s Book
of Household Management placed economy at the top of the list for choosing
clothes:
IN PURCHASING ARTICLES OF WEARING APPAREL, whether it be

a silk dress, a bonnet, shawl, or riband, it is well for the buyer to consider
three things: I. That it be not too expensive for her purse. II. That its
colour harmonize with her complexion, and its size and pattern with her
figure. III. That its tint allow of its being worn with the other garments
she possesses.3
Ultimately, though, Mrs. Beeton urged readers to go for clothing which was
suited for the long haul.
All new clothing in Victorian England depended on two things: fabric and
sewing skills. The first of these came from the drapers, or some variation of
draper’s shop such as the warehouse or department store. The second was work
with the needle, which came from a variety of skilled and semiskilled hands,
usually female. Tailor’s and dressmaker’s shops were the commercial suppliers
of this work, and women did a good deal of their own sewing. Of course, tailor’s
and dressmaker’s shops could also provide the fabric and the labor, but few
people were dressed exclusively by them.
DRAPERS’ SHOPS
The most important component of dress was fabric. From the early part of the
Victorian era, fabric was sold by the yard by a draper, either in a draper’s shop
or a draper’s stall in the smaller towns, or across rural areas by the itinerant
Scots draper who included cloth is his pack. Cloth for dresses was sold in ready-
cut “dress” lengths, or later in the century, precut and ready to be sized and
put together. While there were essentially four fabrics available—wool, cotton,
silk, and flax—these fabrics came in a great variety of weights and weaves,
from heavy duty canvas to light lawns and cambrics. Often they are described
as “stuff,” which was a generic term for any woven cloth, although the term
usually meant woolen fabric. People could choose from printed fabrics like
calicoes, which since the late eighteenth century carried prints transferred from
copper plates. There were also many weights of fabric ranging from muslin
and chiffon to cambric and heavy weight merino wools. They could choose
from a variety of finishes like flannelled cotton or glazed cotton known as
chintz. Texture and weave offered shoppers some variety, as cloth was woven
into sateen, tweed, jersey, velvet, corduroy, etc. Shoppers could choose from a
fairly broad range of colors—blues, greens, shades of tan and brown, or fust,
a kind of yellow—although the whole issue of color changed dramatically at
midcentury. These early colors came from vegetable-based dyes and tended to
fade over time. In the 1850s, the first artificial dyes introduced bold and colorfast
shades which, starting with magenta (a deep reddish purple), brought a new
vibrancy to Victorian dress.
Drapers’ shops were an already established institution at the start of the
century, a legacy of the centuries old textile industry in England. As early
as the sixteenth century, merchants were contracting with weavers for the
production of cloth, which would be sold in shops. Industrialization increased
supply, and by early part of the nineteenth century, drapers could be found in
all but the smallest of hamlets. Some shops specialized in just one fabric such as
wool or silk or linen. Others varied their stock, selling woolens, linens, and the
sewing notions like threads and needles. The haberdasher’s shop in Victorian
England overlapped somewhat with the draper. By the early nineteenth century,
these tradesmen sold a similar line of notions for finishing clothing as well as
accessories: gloves, ribbons, trimmings, lace, shawls, fans, embroidery floss, and
ladies’ shawls.
Draper’s shops were among the first to make use of larger windows to allow
customers to inspect the fabric for imperfections. They were innovative in their
displays, for example, developing a kind of clotheshorse which showed the
drape and fold of fabric as it might appear in a skirt. Historians believe that
their shops became the archetype that other merchants copied; their shops had
long counters to hold the fabric as customers examined it, seats on one side
of the counter for customers to sit while they made their choice, and space
between the counter and the wall of fabrics which let shop assistants to run and
gather merchandise. Bolts of cloth lined the walls from floor to ceiling, with
additional quantities stored in the back room.
Drapers were nothing if not versatile: they could be retail or wholesale
merchants supplying tailors and dressmakers, or some combination of the two.
In addition to bolts of fabric, their wares often included the “extras” that were
needed to provide finished clothing: buttons, trim, needles, tassels, and thread.
Later in the century, the shops might have included finished articles of clothing
like underwear, hosiery, and dress “piece goods,” which were bought and
finished by the customer. They might also offer novel and fashionable goods,
like the “moral handkerchiefs” described by Dickens in The Pickwick Papers:
“What’s a moral pocket-ankercher?” said Sam; “I never see one o’ them

articles o’ furniter.”
“Those which combine amusement with instruction, my young
friend,” replied Mr. Stiggins, “blending select tales with wood-cuts.”
“Oh, I know,” said Sam; “them as hangs up in the linen-drapers’ shops,
with beggars’ petitions and all that ‘ere upon ‘em?”4
Drapers were the original agents for the American paper pattern maker But-
terick, who set up shop in London in 1873. The patterns were tremendously
popular with the women who sewed their own clothes or did so with the help
of a seamstress. Umbrellas, too, made their way into the draper’s shop at the
end of the century.
DRESSMAKER’S AND TAILOR’S SHOPS

The second component in Victorian dress was skill with a needle: women of
all ages and classes were expected to know the basics of or mechanics of “plain”
sewing, all of it by hand. Mechanical sewing machines were not available for
the home until the late 1850s. Middle class women did some or all of the sewing
for their own and their children’s clothes, and very likely some of the sewing
for their husbands, such as shirts. For the servant-owning classes, household
linens—towels and sheets, napkins, tablecloths—were also “sewn” by women
for their homes: they cut down fabric bought by the yard, and hemmed the
edges. Women would expect to do varying amounts of work on their own
clothes, either by hand or later and later, with a sewing machine, although
this work might be supplemented by the work of a dressmaker or traveling
seamstress.
Women had four ways to acquire clothes. First, they could make their own
clothes, using lengths of cloth called “dresses” and patterns that were printed
in magazines and later sold. Second, they could have an entire outfit made by
a dressmaker, although this option was usually only available to the women
of the middle class and above, and even then, they might expect to make some
of their own clothes. Third, women could buy dresses partially made: the skirt
was ready-made, and they could sew or buy the top, the jacket or bodice. And
finally, women could buy, inherit, or be given used clothes.
Sewing, especially “plain” sewing, was part of women’s traditional education.
Girls learned to sew simple hems and straight seams by hand, and most women
would expect to do some form of basic sewing and repair work on their family’s
clothing on a regular basis. The woman who sewed her own clothes probably
needed a fair amount of skill as well as patience. Two technologies simplified
the work. First, the introduction of patterns in the 1830s and given away in
magazines, allowed women without a “dressmaker’s eye,” to size up and copy

the intricately constructed fashionable dresses. Second, the introduction of the
sewing machine in the 1850s would eventually relieve some of the tedium
of sewing, although early machines were fairly expensive, and their industrial
look made some middle class women reluctant to have sewing machines in their
homes.
Dressmakers were a vital part of this process, proving at least a small part of
the female population with a portion of their wardrobes. Dressmakers some-
times had their own shops, offering fabric and the services of fitting and sewing
to their well-heeled customers. Their inspiration came from Paris via the fash-
ion plate, although there is some evidence that they also created their own
designs. By 1830, they were able to work from paper patterns designed for
professional dressmakers.
The successful dressmaker was a highly skilled professional who had spent
several years as an apprentice. Her shop included a showroom, fitting room,
and workshop. She might have a number of assistants and seamstresses in her
employment: they would measure the customer, take down the information
about fabric choice, and make adjustments during the customer’s “fittings.”
The dressmaker’s services were expensive: only very well-off women could
have all of their clothes from a dressmaker, and many women made do with a
dress professionally made every few years. Victorian diaries and letters show
that many women agonized over their desire for new dresses and the negative
impact on their budgets of paying a dressmaker. Dressmakers, like a number of
other professionals, sometimes drew up catalogues—actual booklets, or more
commonly broadsheets—from which customers could choose their clothes. This
saved the dressmaker from the cost of keeping a large inventory of anything
ready-made.
A little further down the scale were dressmakers who worked from their
own home, or traveled to their customers’ homes for fitting—this was probably
more common than the elite dressmaker with a large shop and list of illustrious
customers. Dressmaking was difficult, taxing work, often ordered against a
deadline. Customers might not pay when the clothes were ready, and the
dressmaker might have to carry the cost of the fabric and time lost. This
dressmaker might do some of the really intricate sewing for a customer, but
leave the simple sewing like hems and sleeves for the customer to finish by
herself.
Women who could not afford to patronize the shops of well-established
dressmakers might make do with the services of a seamstress who traveled to
their homes, and even with this extra help, they expected to do a good portion of
their own sewing. Some sewing, of course, was done outside the home, by often
ill-paid overworked, “sweated” workers. Usually young and female, they were
employed by dressmaker’s shops, tailors, and later department stores to do con-
tract work sewing. They collected unfinished shirts, towels, pants, aprons, etc.,
from the shops or warehouses and took them home to sew. This sweated work
was uncertain—they might not get the money they were promised, and there
were seasonal layoffs and work shortages—and exploitive, but nonetheless, it
supplied the shops which dressed Victorian England.
From about the middle of the century, some women were able to buy partially
completed ready-made dresses, and the customer expected to finish the hem,
neck, and sleeve, and to add their choice of trimmings. Even with these partially
made clothes, the shop might offer fitting and sewing services to individualize
the fit: standard sizing in women’s clothing had not yet become universal.
Victorians showed remarkable thrift in their reuse of clothing and it is sur-
prising how rarely anyone got clothes which were truly new. Women might
remake a dress to suit the demands of a new season, changing the fall of the
skirt or the placement of the waist, adding or removing a ribbon or a flounce.
Worn parts of clothing—the collar of a shirt, the sleeve of a dress—could be
“turned” or detached and resewn so that the worn part no longer showed. Re-
ally determined women might even “turn” their sheets: the sheet, worn at the
center, was split at the center and the fresher edges sewn together to make a
new center. Mothers routinely remade their clothing to fit their daughters. And
finally, fabric which began life as a dress for mother might be cut down to fit the
smallest child, with the odd parts of the dress recycled around the house, finally
coming to rest as dust cloths or sold to the ragman. The gifting of servants with
old clothes was another aspect of this recycling of clothes: they were prized for
not only the quality of fabric but even more for their fashionableness.
Laces and trims were a vital part of the process of updating and reinventing
clothing, whether the clothing changed hands or not. Lace was used principally
as trim at the sleeves and neck of women’s clothing; it was sold by both lacemen
who oversaw it manufacture, and drapers and dressmakers. While lace had its
origins in medieval handwork, the English lace trade was transformed by the
introduction of machine-made lace by 1813. Finer laces continued to be made
by hand and were often imported. Special types of lace like blonde enjoyed a
revival at midcentury: this was a lace made in France from unbleached white
Chinese silk. There was also lace called “black blonde,” which was made from
black silk threads.
Tailors’ shops made clothing for men, including coats, trousers, and outer-
wear. Men relied on their tailors to do some of their sewing: updating their
clothes as styles, or their figures, changed, as well as repairs, although some
things like shirts might be sewn by a wife or a daughter. Men could bring their
fabric of choice to the tailor and have it made up into a coat, or have the tailor
provide the fabric as well as the measuring, fitting, cutting, and sewing. As with
dressmakers, there were probably only a few truly talented and famous tailors
who had rich clients and charged quite high prices for the labor. Lesser tailors
might have a less distinguished shop but still cater to middle classes men. At
the bottom of the scale were itinerant and “jobbing” tailors who did the rough
sewing for trousers and waistcoats for tailor’s shops, much as seamstresses did
for dressmakers. Interestingly some tailors would also offer what were called
“ladies’ tailoring,” which was women’s riding attire: the similarities betweens
men’s and women’s riding habits made the crossover quite logical.
DEPARTMENT STORES
Although there were proto-department stores as early as the 1830, this type of
store really developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Department
stores combined the services of tailors and dressmakers and drapers—indeed,
many of the first department stores were started by drapers. The development
of department stores—a later American term, not used at this time—is a logical
outcome of the increased production of the mills that supplied drapers. With
increased production came lower prices, and the draper who once dealt only in
woolens could easily expand his offerings to include linens and other textiles.
Department stores offered ready-to-wear clothing, partially made clothing,
and custom-made dresses and outerwear from fabric and patterns chosen by
the customer in the dress department. They sold hats, belts, handkerchiefs,
shoes, or almost anything a woman or a man might need to get dressed. They
offered an extensive list of the sewing notions found in other stores. More
importantly, they also offered the accessories and notions sold by milliners and
haberdashers in their extensive and often very busy haberdasher departments:
pins and needles, laces for stays and boots, buttons, belts, veils, scarves, thread
for sewing and embroidery, cotton for crocheting, hem weights for skirts,
braids, tassels, and so on. The haberdashery counter was usually found near the
front of a department store, and according to contemporary descriptions, was
maddeningly busy most of the time. The store profits in this department might
be small—how much profit could be made on the sale of a spool of thread, even
if it were in just the right shade?—but shoppers who came in for the thread
often moved to other departments. Quality and service in the haberdashery
department was actually a very shrewd retail strategy.
Department stores not only sold in breadth including many sizes and styles
of clothing for women, men, and children but could also sell in quantity. The
tradition of giving gifts of clothing to servants meant that every Christmas
season stores moved vast quantities of cardigan sweaters, handkerchiefs, dress
lengths of cotton fabric (for servants to make their own uniforms), stockings,
and other necessities with which to mark the festive season. Great households
might easily order and expect for timely delivery of dozens or even hundreds
of these items like stockings for their servants, and department stores prided
themselves on being able to furnish great quantities. Servants’ uniforms and
liveries could also be purchased at specialty stores called servants bazaars found
in larger cities across the country.
Department stores also had the capacity to offer preassembled collections of
clothing for women. One of these was the trousseau, or clothes for a bride. Like
the dowry, the trousseau was a gift from her father to ensure that she would
be fed, clothed, and made comfortable when she legally left his household and
joined another. The custom dated to the ancient Greeks, who took trousseaux
quite seriously. The oikos or great families of Athens were strangely hostile to
a new daughter-in-law, suspecting that she might be too loyal to her father’s
house and insufficiently loyal to their own. New wives might be underfed and
underclothed in their new homes, and the dowry and trousseau were meant
as protections against this. Victorians were probably a little less harsh in their
estimation of brides, but still insisted on the importance of the trousseau. Guide
books and department stores provided model lists for what a woman needed at
marriage, and the list was surprisingly long: chemises, nightdresses, drawers,
petticoats, camisoles, dressing gowns, stockings of various kinds and weights,
handkerchiefs, corsets, towels, and an assortment of odds and ends including
ribbons and laces. The trousseau included an astonishing number of each item—
a dozen of these, half a dozen of something else—creating the impression that
the bride might never need to shop for clothes again. In fact, multiples of key
items made it possible to always have a fresh item when laundry might be done
only every few weeks. Trousseaux were sold in different qualities determined
by the fineness of the material and the type of workmanship. Entry-level
trousseaus had machine-made clothing. The highest quality trousseaus had
underclothes which were hand-sewn, the very best of which were “convent-
made,” often from Ireland. Women were told that the level of trousseau—good,
better, best—should be determined by her new husband’s position in society,
whether small shopkeeper, banker, or great politician. Even though the cost
was not covered by the husband-to-be, his income level guided its quality. The
clothes were meant to last for the first year, and, hopefully, beyond, so solid
materials were essential. Nor should the clothes be too ornate, since changing
styles would made them seem outdated quickly, and that was not thrifty.
The competition with older shops was sometimes fierce, especially as some
department stores began to expand and open additional branches. Small stores
could not compete with the department store’s range of goods, nor could they
handle the risk involved in selling expensive items like furs. The appearance of
the department store consequently created the feeling that the world of retailing
was changing forever. As early as the 1850s, critics warned that the department
store’s ready-made men’s clothing was putting small tailors out of business:
like many dress-makers, tailors worked long hours and were not paid much
for their labors. For the most part, the department store continued to serve the
expanding demands of the middle classes, while urban workers were more often
served by branches of cooperative stores.
MILLINERS AND HATTERS

One of the most important shops for women was the milliner, the tradi-
tional suppliers of women’s accessories. Milliners dealt primarily in hats, but
their stock included gloves and scarves, fans, and stockings. They sold finished
hats—sometimes elaborately so—as well as plain hats and the ribbons, artificial
flowers, feathers, and other trimmings to adorn them. The milliner might be
a woman or a man, and especially if the former, the shop might include the
services of dressmaker and corset-maker. Corsets were an important part of
most women’s clothing: their clothes were cut and fitted with a corseted figure.
Most women could not fit into their clothes unless they wore the corset, and
they wore them from young adulthood through pregnancy, and into old age.
Only the small group of woman who took up aesthetic dress or “rational” dress
abandoned the corset before the Great War.
Hats were a near-universal part of women’s clothing in the nineteenth cen-
tury as they had been since the medieval period. In the first part of the century,
women of all classes wore caps indoors to keep their hair tidy while cooking and
cleaning. Even after indoor caps disappeared, they wore hats outside the house
to protect their hair, to complete their outfit, and to make a statement: it was
the easiest part of an outfit to update and make fashionable, and women paid a
great deal of attention to their own and other women’s hats.
Once purchased, a hat could be updated to last several seasons or even several
years. An interesting thing about millinery is women’s readiness to customize
their purchase, not merely to keep it current with the fashions. There was a kind
of restlessness associated with hats: women seem to have been comfortable and
ready to revise even an expensive or elaborate hat when it was brought home.
A milliner’s shop offered customers a variety of choices in ready-made hats,
caps, turbans, and bonnets, depending on the current style. They could also
choose a “blank” hat and have it decorated for them, and milliners were famous
for their knowledge of what was fashionable. Hats were essentially a work of
art, the product of an individual milliner, and not to everyone’s taste. Images
of milliner’s shops show women surrounded by mirrors and these elaborate
creations. Milliners would also send out caps to be tried on at home at the
customer’s request.
Hats were as important to men as they were to women: most men did not
go out without a hat, and even poor and working class men wore used hats or
inexpensive caps made of cloth. In workshops, men kept their heads covered
against debris with a paper hat folded from newspaper.
Hatters who were the chief suppliers of men’s hats could and did make
hats, especially fur hats, for women. Hatters also refurbished and even rented
hats. Hats were made of felt or animal pelts, which were trimmed, processed,
and shaped in the hatter’s workshop. The pelts were dampened and heated,
chemically treated, and placed on wooden blocks to be shaped: at this stage
specific modifications could be made to suit the peculiarities of a customer’s
head. A brim was created by the addition of a shellac to the edges, and the hat
was brushed repeatedly to give it a shine. A lining of some sort, often leather,
was added to the inside of the brim, and a band of silk on the outside to finish
the hat. The process was long and chemically dangerous: nitrate of mercury was
used to raise the fibers from the animal skin and without proper ventilation,
poisoned the hatter and his staff. This was the reason Lewis Carroll’s Hatter in
the Alice stories was “mad.” He was being slowly poisoned by his own trade.
This process was labor-intensive and in the last quarter of the century, hatter’s
shops were challenged by semimechanized production in hat factories: the latter
could turn out hundreds of hats in a week, whereas the hatter could turn out
only a few.
SHOES AND BOOTS

Like clothing, shoes in the Victorian era could only be made from a limited
number of fabrics. Leather was the preferred material for men’s shoes and
boots, and some women wore a kind of thick leather shoe with a buckle, which
resembled men’s shoes. Well-off women preferred something less bulky: their
fine shoes were often fabric on a thin leather or cork sole. Women protected
these delicate shoes from the rain and mud by wearing pattens: these had a
metal platform and attached to a wooden sole, and tied to the shoe with a
ribbon or leather strap. Pattens made a fairly loud clacking and were notoriously
dangerous on slippery streets or market cobblestones. Both shoes and pattens
were made and sold by shoemakers, although pattens could also be bought from
milliners, drapers, and haberdashers. Poorer women, of course, did not wear
fine cloth shoes, and probably wore wooden clog-like shoes.
The 1850s saw the start of mechanized factory production of shoes as steam-
powered stitching machines changed the process. Leather tanning became an
industrialized process, bringing down the price of shoe leather and making the
primary material for shoes for most people, although inferior quality leathers
were often used in the mass production of shoes. While richer customers con-
tinued to have their shoes made to order from shoemakers, the majority of
Victorians began to buy machine-made shoes from retail shoe sellers who
might not make any of their wares. Machine-made shoes were also available
from general merchants and draper’s shops. Just the same, working class fami-
lies often formed “shoe and boot” clubs in order to see their families in any kind
of footwear: a modest payment of a few pennies a week would enable them to
buy a pair of shoes on a regular basis. These could be passed among the family
members as they were outgrown.
Eventually powered production revolutionized shoe manufacturing, produc-
ing a more refined and substantial shoe: new processes made them lighter, more
supportive, and eventually more water-resistant. Waterproof shoes were never
really possible for Victorians, who pursued a number of options, including ga-
loshes, introduced from America in the 1840s. Rubberized, waterproof boots,
known as Wellingtons, appeared in the 1850s. These were modeled on mid-calf
leather boots, which had been made for the Duke of Wellington earlier in the
century. Most shoes, however, were not so durable, and Victorians expected to
spend money on their upkeep. Shoemakers’ shops continued to provide repairs
and refurbishing of shoes, and there were many sellers of blacking or polish,
laces and other shoe accessories.
CLOTHING FOR THE REST: USED CLOTHING AND “SLOPS”

Many Victorians had no new clothing at any point in their lives, and most,
if they had new clothing, wore clothing which had not been made for them
specifically. Used clothing and rough, ready-made clothes called “slops” formed
the wardrobes of working class and poor English men and women.
Victorian clothes were fairly durable, and would probably be worn by several
people before being made into rags. There was a lively trade in used clothing—as
there was in rags—and used clothing merchants carried on “a perpetual round
of mutation and transmutation going on among clothes,”5 as Augustus Sala
noted in Round the Clock.
These used clothing merchants, or “brokers” as they were sometimes called,
sold all manner of second- and third- hand shoes, coats, trousers, dresses,
hats, bedclothes, curtains, and anything which could be made into clothes. The
stock came from a variety of sources: some of it was stolen, some of it was
bought from people experiencing temporary hardship. Some of the broker’s
stock could be good or fine quality clothing—top hats and ball-gowns, for
example—and they rarely fit the buyers as well as they had fit the original
owners. Contemporary descriptions of very poor people wearing such finery
provoked a mixture of indignation and laughter. Charles Dickens’s picture from
Sketches by Boz showed this lack of compassion for the poor:
We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to fit a pair

of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage, for whom, to say the truth,
they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes happened to
alight on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a shop-window, which it
immediately struck us, must at different periods have all belonged to, and
been worn by, the same individual, and had now, by one of those strange
conjunctions of circumstances which will occur sometimes, come to be
exposed together for sale in the same shop. The idea seemed a fantastic
one, and we looked at the clothes again with a firm determination not to
be easily led away. No, we were right; the more we looked, the more we
were convinced of the accuracy of our previous impression. There was
the man’s whole life written as legibly on those clothes, as if we had his
autobiography engrossed on parchment before us.6
Another kind of used-clothing merchant called a piece-broker further recycled

old clothes. Piece-brokers bought and took apart the most worn clothing for
salvable bits to resell to destitute tailors for patching material. Clothes that had
gone beyond any kind of redemption were sold to the ragman.
The other great source of clothes for the poor and working classes was “slops.”
Slops were roughly sewn trousers and short jackets made of coarse material—
canvas was preferred—which were fairly durable and cheap. The product of
sweated labor, these were probably the most common clothes in Victorian
England, worn in the factories, on the docks, in the mines, and in the rail yards.
Because sizes were not standardized until the end of the century, men had to try
on the clothes or trust their wives to guess what would fit. As a result, they were
famously ill fitting, as seen in this description of a coat from Charles Dickens’s
The Pickwick Papers. “Like a general postman’s coat—queer coats those—made
by contract—no measuring—mysterious dispensations of Providence—all the
short men get long coats—all the long men short ones.”7
MOURNING
Mourning-wear deserves special mention in a book about shopping for two
reasons. First, death was a common occurrence in Victorian England. Disease,
accidents, difficulties in childbirth, malnutrition, poor medical and surgical care,
epidemics, and the dirty conditions of a heavily industrialized society all made
life a risky thing indeed. Second, the custom of personal mourning developed
and became more embedded in the culture over the course of the century, result-
ing in new attitudes and practices. Chief among these was the custom of mourn-
ing-wear: special clothes and accessories worn by the entire family and their ser-
vants. Mourning-wear meant that the whole family and servants needed to be
outfitted quickly in dark clothing which unmistakably indicated bereavement.
As with most customs in Victorian England, there were rules for mourning,
although people of more modest means could not follow all of them. Length of
mourning was ruled by a mourner’s proximity to the person who died: wives,
for example, were expected to mourn for two full years after the death of their
husband. The death of a parent or child might also lead a family to mourn for
a year or more. Distant cousins and in-laws, too, got their briefer period of
mourning. Public mourning might be declared at the death of a famous person,
and England went into a three-month official mourning at the death of Queen
Victoria. There were also gradations of mourning which changed over time,
indicated by the shade of mourning color and the type of fabric worn. “Deep”
mourning began with black, moving to purple, with lightening shades, and
eventually ending with mauve. Usually mourners moved from one color to
the next in six-month increments. Mourning fabric had to have a dull, light-
absorbing finish, like crepe, bombazine, and heavy black cotton. Deep or “first”
mourning began with clothes covered in black crepe, and then, as the months
went by, clothes in somber colors edged in black crepe and black ribbon. The
borders became narrower as time passed and one moved into lighter mourning.
This system meant that a stranger could see someone in mourning and judge
more or less where they were in the process of mourning, and adjust their
conduct accordingly.
For women and children, the whole wardrobe changed for mourning, in-
cluding underwear. Cassell’s Household Guide gave extended guidance on all
aspects of mourning, including a timeframe for women’s mourning wear:
After the funeral deep mourning is worn by the widower or widow for
about a year. The same is also the case with mourning for a father or
mother, sons or daughter, sister or brother. Occasionally, at the end of

that period, half mourning is worn by the widow or widower for about
six months longer. During the period while mourning is worn it is cus-
tomary to employ envelopes and note-paper edged with a deep border of
black.8
For men, mourning generally meant plain black clothes and a black armband,
as well as a piece of black crepe on the hat with the width of the band indicating
the wearer’s closeness to the deceased. The band might be as wide as seven
inches for a spouse, or five inches for a parent or child.
While any clothing draper could make up clothes for a mourning family, the
need for multiple sets of clothing on very short notice called for a special shop:
the mourning warehouse. Only these shops stocked the huge range of women’s
and children’s mourning wear in a sufficient range of styles and sizes to outfit
a household, ready made and partially made, and could deliver them quickly as
custom demanded. They might carry special black fabric called bunting, which
could be placed around the home. One London shop specializing in mourning
wear was said to keep a van—horses and drivers at the ready—filled with black
cloth, patterns, and prepared mourning attire along with two seamstresses ready
to be dispatched to any household which experienced a death. Most importantly,
they delivered the goods to the family’s home, which allowed them to pass into
mourning without the stares of strangers.
For those who came to the mourning warehouse to be fitted, the atmosphere
was somber and respectful: carpeting covered the floors, the rooms were softly
lit, and the assistants spoke in soft tones. Of course, behind the main rooms
where customers were greeted, there were workrooms where seamstresses
turned out the huge volume of clothes in sweated conditions, as suggested
by Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield:
I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a

shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR,
HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, & c. It was a close and stifling
little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including one
window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little back-
parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work on
a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table, and little
bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor. There was a good
fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black crape - I did not
know what the smell was then, but I know now. The three young women,
who appeared to be very industrious and comfortable, raised their heads
to look at me, and then went on with their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At
the same time there came from a workshop across a little yard outside the
window, a regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT -
tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, without any variation. “Well,” said
my conductor to one of the three young women. “How do you get on,
Minnie?”“We shall be ready by the trying-on time,” she replied gaily,
without looking up. “Don’t you be afraid, father.”9
Mourning wear announced that a death had occurred, and let the community
know that the family would neither receive nor pay calls for some time. People
attired in mourning wear received special consideration from the rest of the
community. Blinds were drawn and mirrors covered: vanity and brightness
were literally banished from a house in mourning.
Different accessories, too, were required for mourning. Mourners still wore
jewelry, but favored black stones like jet (a kind of obsidian) and dull met-
als like pewter. The custom of creating special mourning jewelry—rings,
bracelets, rock-crystal buttons, and pins—from the hair of the dead person
persisted through most of the Victorian era. Black hats were required for fe-
male mourners, although the flowers adorning them were allowed to be of
a lighter shade as the months passed. Widows wore a special cap with a veil
which covered their hair and face—the idea was to protect her from the stares of
strangers.
Mourning warehouses, as well as stationers, sold special paper in black for
letter writing by mourners and their friends. The letters were sealed with black
wax, and the size of the black border around the paper indicated the degree
of mourning. Memorial cards were also provided by stationers and mourning
warehouses. These listed the name, age, date of death as well as an appropriate
verse of scripture, and were given to people at the funeral. Stones for graves
were apparently one of the few things not handled by the mourning warehouse.
Instead, the statuary and marble masons provided tombs and stone monu-
ments, as somewhat scathingly described by Augustus Sala in Twice Round
the Clock:
Then there was the funeral monument shop, with the mural tablets, the
obelisks, the broken columns, the extinguished torches, and the draped
urns in the window, and some with the inscriptions into the bargain, all
ready engraved in black and white, puzzling us as to whether the tender
husbands, devoted wives, and affectionate sons, to whom they referred,
were buried in that grisly shop—it had a pleasant, fascinating terror about
it, like an undertaker’s, too.10
CLOTHING INNOVATIONS
New technologies in clothing, especially in the second half of the nineteenth
century, solved some of the problems associated with the wet and damp of the
English climate. Victorians seem to have discovered the outdoors in the second
half of the century, as men and women took up walking, climbing, cycling, and
swimming. Demand for waterproof and athletic clothing grew along with the
development of these outdoor pursuits, and shopkeepers were eager to offer

them.
Waterproof coats, eventually called ulsters, were a particular goal for man-
ufacturers. For much of the century a rubberized fabric called gutta-percha
was made into clothes, but it could only be worn for a short time: the fabric
did not breathe and the wearer would sweat uncomfortably. New and better
waterproofing technology was developed by the draper Charles Macintosh in
Glasgow based on an earlier discovery that a chemical from coal tar could dis-
solve hard but essentially waterproof India rubber. This was applied to woolen
fabric and by the 1830s, Macintosh had begun selling a waterproofed woolen
fabric made into raincoats which were popular despite the smell of tar coal
they tended to give off. A better version of waterproof cloth was patented
in 1879 by Thomas Burberry. Burberry’s London shop opened in 1891 sell-
ing coats which had been made waterproof through a two-step process, the
cloth being treated before and after weaving. His tailored waterproof coats
became known as “trench coats” due to their use by British officers in the
Great War.
In the 1880s, a German doctor named Gustave Jaeger began promoting his
sanitary—as in generally healthy, rather than clean—clothing made entirely
of undyed wool at his shop in London. His belief was that only natural animal
fibers belonged next to the skin, and that plant fibers like cotton and linen could
be harmful. Wool, he said, was warm in the winter and let the skin breathe
in the summer. His clothes were very popular, however sketchy the science
behind them. Jaegar sold suits of long-sleeved long underwear and hosiery
with articulated toes, which made the feet look like they were wearing gloves.
The cloth created by Authur Lasenby Liberty in the last quarter of the century
was another important innovation, although it was notable for its look rather
than its technical qualities. Although Liberty & Co. eventually became a kind
of department store and furniture maker, his first great triumph was his silk
cloth in signature “Liberty” colors. Inspired by the 1862 exhibition of Japanese
goods, he eventually produced a very unusual line of Japanese-inspired hand-
printed silks, decorated with stylized flowers and birds. The colors, however,
were what really distinguished Liberty fabric. These were muted, watery shades
of blue, red, and green which were instantly recognizable as a repudiation of the
vibrant chemically rendered colors offered by most makers. Liberty’s flowing
and unstructured dresses were known as “gowns” as they were loose fitting
and were not worn with the traditional corset.
Liberty’s work was part of the aesthetic movement which inspired a new
way of dressing and decorating. At its center was the rejection of the “soulless”
goods made by machine in favor of goods which were made by artisans, or
at least looked like they were. In fact Liberty’s other goods were very often
made by machine. Liberty’s greens were especially popular and so iconic that
they were lampooned in Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1881 opera Patience, in which
two young women describe their ideal beau. One dreamed of a poet of aesthetic
inclinations, and her description is more or less based on the goods which
represented the aesthetic style:
A most intense young man,

A soulful-eyed young man,
An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical,
Out-of-the-way young man!
A Japanese young man,
A blue-and-white young man,
Francesca di Rimini, miminy, piminy,
Je-ne-sais-quoi young man!
A pallid and thin young man,
A haggard and lank young man,
A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery,
Foot-in-the-grave young man!11
The term “greenery-yallery” became a shorthand way of mocking the exag-

gerated quaintness of the style, and the aesthetic movement as a whole.
While not, strictly speaking, an innovation, the costumer or dealer in fancy
dress clothes deserves some mention. Fancy dress was a tradition with elite
members of society: they had long held special parties where guests reenacted
scenes from history or dressed like historical figures, these costumes were
custom-made like the rest of their clothes. The fancy dress became increas-
ingly popular during the second half of the century as middle class men and
women expanded their entertainments, but often these revelers would rent
their costumes. Fancy dress could be drawn from history or mythology—Zeus
or Plato—or characters from literature. In the 1830s a special fondness for the
medieval period developed, inspired in part by the literature of Sir Walter Scott
and a growing unease with industrialization. Revived medievalism culminated
in an elaborately created jousting tournament, widely publicized but ultimately
rained out: this was the famous Eglinton Tournament of 1839.
4
Food and Drink
‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy—bu-u-uy!’ cries the butcher.1

—Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor
One of the most astonishing things about Victorian Britain was its extensive
food chain: the expanding population was served by a vast and largely unreg-
ulated network which linked farm and factory with consumer, and put food
on most tables. While there were persistent inequalities of both quality and
quantity of food in Victorian Britain, and perhaps a third of the population
earned too little to feed themselves sufficiently throughout the year, histo-
rians agree that people were better fed in 1901 than they had been in 1837.
Britons ate more and enjoyed better overall nutrition by century’s end, and
historians cite the rise in average height of Britons throughout the century
as evidence of this. A number of factors brought this about: new forms of
transportation meant quicker transport for fresh foods. Greater demand from
an increasing population made it more profitable to grow and sell food, which
meant increasing amounts of cheaper, fresher food. The reduction of the Corn
Laws and the importation of cheap meat and grains from America, Canada,
New Zealand, and other parts of the empire helped to reduce prices. Prices
fell throughout the century, albeit irregularly: there were also short periods
of remarkable and damaging inflation. Wages sometimes increased at a rate
above that of inflation, but not for all workers. What matters in the history of
shopping is that the buying power of the penny increased over the course of the
century.
The second really surprising thing about shopping for food in Victorian
England was the specialized nature of the shops. Meals, at least for the middle
classes and above, were fairly complicated affairs lasting several courses. Grand
Food and Drink 57
affairs like large dinner parties were even more complicated with a dozen or
more courses, and the people of means who entertained this way could call on
professional caterers for help. While most people ate meals simple enough to
be prepared at home, they were still fairly complex meals which required a
great deal of shopping. To prepare a week’s worth of meals, a shopper might
hypothetically visit or receive a visit from a grocer, a greengrocer, a dairy, a
butcher, pork butcher, a fishmonger, and possibly even a baker’s shop. Consider
the “Plain Family Dinner” for a week in July offered by Isabella Beeton in her
household guide of 1861:
Sunday: 1. Salmon trout and parsley-and-butter. 2. Roast fillet of veal, boiled

bacon-cheek, peas, potatoes. 3. Raspberry-and-currant tart, baked custard
pudding.
Monday: 1. Green-pea soup. 2. Roast fowls garnished with water-cresses;
gravy, bread sauce; cold veal and salad. 3. Cherry tart.
Tuesday: 1. John dory and lobster sauce. 2. Curried fowl with remains of
cold fowls, dish of rice, veal rolls with remains of cold fillet. 3. Strawberry
cream.
Wednesday: 1. Roast leg of mutton, vegetable marrow, and potatoes, melted
butter. 2. Black-currant pudding.
Thursday: 1. Fried soles, anchovy sauce. 2. Mutton cutlets and tomato sauce,
hashed mutton, peas, potatoes. 3. Lemon dumplings.
Friday: 1. Boiled brisket of beef, carrots, turnips, suet dumplings, peas, pota-
toes. 2. Baked semolina pudding.
Saturday: 1. Cold beef and salad, lamb cutlets and peas. 2. Rolled jam
pudding.2
While this menu made extensive use of leftovers, Sunday dinner alone would
require a visit to the fishmonger, the butcher, the grocer, the greengrocer, and
possibly the baker. Some of these would be actual shops, but others might be
street sellers, or perhaps an open market. Careful shoppers knew that some
shops carried better quality and offered better prices than others, and they
knew the importance of maintaining a good relationship with tradesmen. At
the same time, there was considerable overlap between types of shops: there
were greengrocers who also sold oysters, and chandlers who dispensed coffee
and sugar along with candles. Shoppers had to know their neighborhood and
their merchants to find what they wanted more so than in the era of the
twentieth-century supermarket.
While “marketing” might seem like a better term for this kind of food shop-
ping, this term minimizes the range of choices and variability of the Victorian
food market. There were so many options, and so much of it on display on
the streets and in the windows; the Victorian shopper had as many choices for
the table as she did for her wardrobe. She needed to be an informed consumer,
aware of her market, aware of prices and quality and ingredients, and most
importantly, what was in season: her family’s very health depended on her
knowledge and skill as a shopper.
The chances for change of food also resulting from the practice is by
no means the least boon. Nothing is so likely to undermine the health
as sameness of diet, and if the mistress of a house stays at home from
one week’s end to another, she is liable to fall into a stereotyped set of
orders, and to lose all knowledge of the varied produce each season affords.
Under the impression that certain provisions are equally dear all the year
round, she refrains from ordering what, in her opinion, are luxuries, not
reflecting that a glut in the market of choice and seasonable provisions
is constantly occurring at unexpected times. It is on these occasions that
what might otherwise be prohibited luxuries may be enjoyed by all who
have money to spend on ordinary food. The only thing necessary to
prevent making bad bargains is to possess a knowledge of every article
offered for sale.3
BUDGETS AND FOOD SHOPPING

Certainly income and class were the biggest factors in how Britons shopped
for their food, and food shopping required certain strategies as to cost and
season. The budget was one of these strategies, and books containing “model
budgets” calibrated to different income levels were published from the start of
the century.
Victorian households at all levels of society budgeted their money for a
variety of reasons: men were paid weekly, or monthly, or even quarterly. For
those in the middle classes and above whose wives and children did not work,
men’s income determined the family standard of living. So much was allotted to
the wife, and she must feed and clothe her family and manage the household on
that amount. People who lived entirely on income from investments—widows,
for example—would also need to budget as their income would be fixed. Isabella
Beeton’s 1861 Book of Household Management, a popular guide to all aspects
of housekeeping and child care, was firm on the need to “keep accounts” to keep
spending within the budget:
A HOUSEKEEPING ACCOUNT-BOOK should invariably be kept, and

kept punctually and precisely. The plan for keeping household accounts,
which we should recommend, would be to make an entry, that is, write
down into a daily diary every amount paid on that particular day, be it
ever so small; then, at the end of the month, let these various payments
be ranged under their specific heads of Butcher, Baker, &c.; and thus will
be seen the proportions paid to each tradesman, and any one month’s
expenses may be contrasted with another. The housekeeping accounts
should be balanced not less than once a month; so that you may see
Food and Drink 59
that the money you have in hand tallies with your account of it in your
diary.4
The account book not only allowed the shopper to stay on budget, but also
allowed her to make sure that tradesmen charged her correctly for what she
received. She needed to weigh packages on her kitchen scales, record the price
paid for them in her account book, and finally compare her account with that
sent by the tradesman at the end of the month. Mrs. Beeton was quite firm
that either the lady of the house or the housekeeper should order the food and
supervise its delivery. Middle class women might allow a servant or housekeeper
to do most of the regular shopping, but venture into the shops to choose foods
for a special meal or dinner party. She also believed that the lady of the house
should exercise fiscal oversight especially if she employed a housekeeper: “Then
any increase of expenditure which may be apparent, can easily be explained,
and the housekeeper will have the satisfaction of knowing whether her efforts
to manage her department well and economically, have been successful.”5
Working class families had a similar dynamic but more limited means. The
man was the primary wage earner, and also controlled the wages earned by his
wife and children. He would allot a certain portion of the collective wages to
his wife to feed and clothe the family, keeping back some money for his beer
and tobacco. The law gave men this power to control family wages: for much
of the century men legally owned the wages of his wife and children, and he
had the right to decide how much he kept back for his own expenses. But even
after women gained some control over their money, there persisted a tradition
of allotting women a fixed sum and allowing them to budget that sum to cover
the family’s weekly needs. Indeed, the paying out of the weekly household
money to the woman of the house was an important working class ritual: some
contemporaries describe husbands standing on the doorstep of their homes to
pay out the weekly household money to their wives with whole neighborhood
as witnesses to ensure fairness. In certain mining communities at the end of the
century, observers described miners turning over their entire payback to their
wives, who then returned a small sum for the miners’ weekly beer and tobacco.
Workers’ income could vary a great deal due to slack seasons and periods of no
work at all: this made any kind of budgeting all the more difficult. In working
class as in middle class homes, however, the sum allotted for food was probably
both inelastic and carefully calibrated.
WRAPPERS, PACKETS, AND BOTTLES

Most food in Victorian England was sold in bulk, measured out for the
customer and wrapped in one of several types of paper kept in rolls behind
the counter. It was then tied up with string dispensed from a hollow metal
sphere and cut with a counter-mounted string cutter. The system was versatile
and efficient, although confusing: a morning of marketing might mean sorting
through a basket filled with a dozen paper packages of similar shape. There were
certain exceptions. Meat, for example, was wrapped in a kind of waxed paper
called grease-proof paper. A paper cone could hold loose things like coffee beans
or pieces of candy. Paper envelopes stored loose but light things like powder
and small amounts of drugs. Paper tubes could hold pills, pastilles (a special
kind of hard candy), and pastes. Some products required extra processing as
part of the wrapping. Butter, for example, was kept in the shop in a large lump;
the customer asked for so much, and it was cut from a large block and shaped
into a smaller block with wooden butter pats, and then wrapped in paper. Bulky
items like apples could be carried in a paper bag, although Victorian paper bags
usually were roughly constructed and did not have a flat bottom which made
them stand up.
Wrapping individual quantities in the shop had certain advantages: bulk
buying and individual wrapping meant that shoppers could buy exactly the
amount they needed, and kept waste to a minimum. Charles Dickens’s David
Copperfield was able to walk into a grocer’s shop and buy just “an egg and a slice
of streaky bacon,”6 apparently without any difficulty. Waste was an obsession
for Victorian shoppers: cookbooks and household guides emphasized creative
ways to recycle food from one meal into something interesting and tasty for
the next.
Another benefit to bulk buying was the security it offered: customers could
see the food being measured out, and have some small assurance against it
being adulterated, or a cheaper grade of goods being substituted. Shoppers were
expected to visually examine the food, to hold it, and perhaps even smell it.
They checked it for quality and to ensure that it had not begun to spoil. Even
so, adulteration was nearly universal for some food products. Coffee, as Mrs.
Beeton warned, was almost never sold in pure form: shoppers should either buy
their coffee in whole bean form and grind it at home, or, if buying it already
ground, they should not be surprised to learn that it had been thinned with
chicory. Fears about adulteration were sparked in part by the 1820 publication
of a study called A Treatise on the Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poisons.
It revealed that there were a number of industries stretching their products with
unhealthy additives: bread could be thinned with alum and chalk and bulked
up with sawdust; pickles could be made greener and more appetizing by the
addition of copper salts; and milk, most famously, could be thinned with water
and colored with chalk. People could get very sick from their food; death by
poisoning from commercially produced food was not unknown. Despite the
report’s grim finding, regulation was slow to arrive and difficult to enforce.
It took Parliament until 1860 to pass the first Food and Drugs Act, although
effective protection did not come until a second act passed in 1872, requiring
inspection of foods.
One way to deal with the likelihood of adulteration was to be proactive.
Shoppers sometimes found that even a trusted tradesman might give them
less-than-desirable quality. Switching shops might be an effective way to avoid
Food and Drink 61
this, as Mrs. Beeton suggested: “It may be added, that it is a good plan to change
one’s baker from time to time, and so secure a change in the quality of the bread
that is eaten.”7
STREET SELLERS AND STREET FOOD

An astonishing quantity and variety of foods was sold on the street in Victo-
rian England—drinks, desserts, fresh foods, preserved foods, and ready-to-eat
foods known, not surprisingly, as “street food.” Fish, for example, was sold
fresh (or “wet” as the street-criers would describe it), preserved in brine, dried,
salted, or even fried and ready to eat. Precooked food was a necessity for work-
ers in crowded industrial areas with limited resources. Living in small quarters
and regulated by long factory hours, workers often had little time to cook, had
limited space or kitchen accoutrements, and no spare money to pay for coal for
cooking. Street-selling was highly seasonal, and included what modern shop-
pers would recognize as impulse buys, like the strawberry potte, which was a
few strawberries arranged in lettuce and sold for a penny. While streetsellers
might sell to anyone, they were perhaps the primary “shop” for the poor. Reg-
ular brick-and-mortar shops had higher prices and could be intimidating to a
poorly dressed customer.
Costermongers sold food in the streets, working from a stationary stall in
the street or by pushing a barrow around a neighborhood. The word is derived
from the medieval words costard, a kind of large apple shaped like a head,
and monger, which meant a trader of some sort. Henry Mayhew’s midcentury
study London Labor and the London Poor reveals a surprising number of men
and women costermongers selling an astonishingly large amount of raw and
prepared foods. Historians have since cast doubt on certain aspects of Mayhew’s
work, especially his characterization of the people he interviewed. However, it
seems reasonable to trust some of the general observations he made about street
selling: first, the general types of food being sold in the streets, and his general
observations on the manner in which it was sold.
Mayhew described a process which began with a daily stop at the wholesale
markets, which might be Covent Gardens for “greens” and flowers or Billings-
gate Market for fish. Loaded with their wares, they were ready to provide food
for London’s poor and working classes:
The shopkeeper supplies principally the noblemen and gentry with the
necessaries and luxuries of life, but the pedlar or hawker is the purveyor
in general to the poor. He brings the greengrocery, the fruit, the fish, the
water-cresses, the shrimps, the pies and puddings, the sweetmeats, the
pine-apples, the stationery, the linendrapery, and the jewellery, such as
it is, to the very door of the working classes; indeed, the poor man’s food
and clothing are mainly supplied to him in this manner. Hence the class of
travelling tradesmen are important, not only as forming a large portion of
the poor themselves, but as being the persons through whom the working
people obtain a considerable part of their provisions and raiment. . . .The
street sellers are to be seen in the greatest numbers at the London street
markets on a Saturday night. Here, and in the shops immediately adjoin-
ing, the working-classes generally purchase their Sunday’s dinner; and
after pay-time on Saturday night, or early on Sunday morning. . . .8
Mayhew divided these costermongers into two groups: stationary, who sold
from a stall, and itinerant, who traveled with a barrow or cart to sell along
a regular route. Stationary costermongers would sell their goods by setting
up a stall—this was a trestle covered with several boards or a long tray to
display the goods. Mayhew described the fish sellers’ stalls as being covered
with newspapers, or in some cases, a thin marble slab.They might also have
one of their children or a young employee take up a basket and go around the
immediate neighborhood with a small selection of wares.
These stallsellers had, according to Mayhew, suffered from recent city reg-
ulations, which required that their stalls be taken down each night, causing a
serious degradation of the look and cleanliness of the stalls. Whereas before
they were brightly painted semipermanent structures, they became collapsible
stalls made of flimsy material, perched on a street corner claimed early in the
day.
There are hundreds of stalls, and every stall has its one or two lights; either
it is illuminated by the intense white light of the new self-generating
gas-lamp, or else it is brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-
fashioned grease lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddock with a
candle stuck in a bundle of firewood; his neighbour makes a candlestick
of a huge turnip, and the tallow gutters over its sides; whilst the boy
shouting “Eight a penny, stunning pears!” has rolled his dip in a thick coat
of brown paper, that flares away with the candle. Some stalls are crimson
with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chestnut stove;
others have handsome cathedral lamps, while a few have a candle shining
through a sieve: these, with the sparkling ground-glass globes of the tea-
dealers’ shops, and the butchers’ gaslights streaming and fluttering in the
wind, like flags of flame, pour forth such a flood of light, that at a distance
the atmosphere immediately above the spot is as lurid as if the street were
on fire.9
Women customers, wrapped in shawls and carrying their market baskets, picked
their way among the stalls and carts and could assemble the ingredients for a
meal without having to step inside a brick-and-mortar shop.
Mayhew’s itinerant costermongers had regular routes that they covered
daily. They carried any of dozens of regular or seasonal food items: butter and
eggs, fish, muffins, oranges, candies, or cakes. The length of the route might
Food and Drink 63
be from anywhere from two to ten miles, depending on whether their route
included a densely inhabited urban street with many customers, or a more
open suburban neighborhood with more territory to cover. They carried their
wares in a cart pulled by a donkey or pony. Occasionally, the costermonger’s
route included a “chance” round: it might be to a neighborhood with a fair
or a special event like a horserace. In addition, the costermonger might spend
the spring and summer working a “country round,” which could take them
from up to a hundred miles from their base in London. As one proud fish seller
proclaimed, “I’ve fresh herringed a whole village near Guildford, first thing in
the morning. I’ve drummed round Guildford too, and done well. I’ve waked up
Kingston with herrings. I’ve been as welcome as anything to the soldiers in the
barracks at Brentwood, and Romford, and Maidstone with my fresh herrings;
for they’re good customers.”10 Women might work alone as sellers of light,
highly perishable herbs and small greens like watercress: poor women could
collect these things themselves and sell them on the street.
The sales patter or “cry” was an essential tool of the costermonger, or in-
deed any street seller. Some cries emphasized price and quality: “Now’s your
time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.”11 Other cries had a more showman-like
tone: “‘Come and look at ‘em! here’s toasters!’ bellows one with a Yarmouth
bloater stuck on a toasting-fork.”12 The cry for “new” fish in fact meant
fresh, as opposed to dried or salted. Costermongers’ boys, employed to help
with all aspects of selling, joined in the cries for trade: “The man with the
donkey cart filled with turnips has three lads to shout for him to their ut-
most, with their ‘Ho! ho! hi-i-i! What do you think of this here? A penny
a bunch—hurrah or free trade! Here’s your turnips!’”13 While they sold
goods all week long, much of the costermongers’ trade was done on Satur-
day night or early Sunday morning, which was the “weekend” enjoyed by
the working classes. By one in the afternoon their business had largely shut
down.
Street-food—precooked food which could consumer on the spot be carried
away—was an important part of working class life. Most middle class people
would have been uncomfortable standing in the street eating a bag of hot chest-
nuts, but the working classes and poor were more pragmatic: long, demanding
hours of work and minimal means for all meals to be taken at home. Street
food, like modern fast food, filled the gap. It tended to be portable, not too
messy or complicated a recipe, and something that could be cooked and kept
eatable with a minimum of fuel. Drinks, too, were part of the street menu; they
included lemonade, hot wine, peppermint water, and sasparilla, according to the
season. Desserts, including gingerbread, cakes, muffins, tarts, and eventually
ices and ice cream were popular, although one of Henry Mayhew’s interviewees
lamented the decline of sweet treats in summertime, “when people love to buy
any cool fresh fruit instead of sweetstuff.”14 Street sellers also offered slightly
more nutritious foods, like curds and whey, sandwiches, rice milk, oysters, and
certain kinds of fish, eels, pickled whelks, and meat pies.
GROCERS AND GREENGROCERS

Although many grocers and greengrocers began as sellers of specific type of
food—tea merchants, for example, frequently expanded into the more general
grocery business, as did wine merchants—they were the most general sellers
of food in the Victorian era. Their wares often overlapped with those of more
specialized sellers: one might buy eggs, for example, not only from the grocer,
but also from the poulterer, the dairy, or sometimes the butcher. Cheese might
come from the dairy or the cheesemonger or the grocer. Shoppers might get
some common vegetables like turnips from the grocer, and they might buy
their asparagus and their lettuce from the greengrocer. One constant for the
grocery and greengrocery seems to have been this: the larger the town, the
more specialized the shop and the narrower the range of merchandize. That is,
groceries in London had to compete with more specialized stores like dairies
and butcher shops, florists and poulterers, and were unlikely to carry many
of these goods. In the little town of Cranford, imagined by Elizabeth Gaskell,
the grocery had less competition and had to be all of those shops and more.
“The part of the principal shopkeeper of Cranford, who ranged the trades from
grocer and cheesemonger to man-milliner, as occasion required, that the spring
fashions were arrived, and would be exhibited on the following Tuesday at his
rooms in High Street.”15
Greengrocers carried fresh fruits and vegetables that they called “green
fruit,” no matter what color it was. They also sold dried fruit and nuts, herbs,
and sometimes flowers. Many of these things were also sold in small quantities
by street sellers. Their wares were highly seasonal, and many were imported
and quite expensive. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol described the green-
grocer’s shop as it prepared for the holiday:
There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining

in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from
their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced
demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered
high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s
mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts,
mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the
woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there
were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the
oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons,
urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and
eaten after dinner.16
Dickens’s delight with the scene is evident. But in all likelihood, this was
an exceptional greengrocer’s shop in a prosperous neighborhood. Customers
Food and Drink 65
in poorer neighborhoods would not have been able to buy enough of these
expensive wares to keep the shop in business. The oranges and lemons are
especially telling: the working class children in a large family described in Flora
Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford were given one orange at Christmas to
be shared among them. They each got a segment of the fruit and a piece of the
peel. Later, the children carried a bit of the dried peel as a reminder of the rare
treat.
Fruit was probably the most expensive of all the greengrocer’s wares, and
yet had a long history: oranges were sold on the street by orange-wives during
the reign of Elizabeth I. Fruit was often imported: oranges, lemons, bananas,
and pineapples, for example, really could not be grown in England, except
in a hothouse, which made them prohibitively expensive. Domestic fruit was
varied—cherries, black currants, raspberries, strawberries—but only available
in season. Fruit merited a special appearance on the table in a special serving
dish called an épergne: this centerpiece, often silver-plate and crystal, had a
bowl of fruit at the center and delicate arms ending in smaller crystal bowls,
and literally presented the fruit to diners.
Grocers sold things which we call kitchen staples: sugar and salt, flour and
meals, yeast, vinegar, butter, cheese, fresh and preserved or “potted” meats,
condiments and relishes, preserves and spreads, dried beans, coffee and tea,
bread, gingerbread treats, and some of the more common fruits like grapes,
and dried fruit like currents and raisins. Grocers also carried a good deal of
everything else for the household, including crackers and bread, cheese and eggs,
soap and candles, washing soda, mousetraps, and stove polish. In a prosperous
neighborhood, where the grocer knew he could sell his stock without risk,
the shop could well resemble this scene from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas
Carol:
The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters
down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone
that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were
rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of
tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so
plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon
so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so
caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. . . .17
Not all grocers’ shops were this full or could offer this range and quality of
goods, and grocers in poor neighborhoods could probably offer only the most
basic of staples. Some groceries in poorer neighborhoods operated quite casually,
perhaps in the front room of a house. Some shops might sell goods which had
been stolen: tea, sugar, and spices were among the favorite contrabands, as they
were so easily stolen at the dock where they were unloaded and otherwise too
expensive for poor customers.
MEATS, POULTRY, AND FISH

For most of the century, meat was brought to major cities in England alive or
“on the hoof,” and was slaughtered in the city in less than hygienic proximity to
the place where it was sold. Shoppers in rural areas and villages were probably
able to buy meat from animals that had been raised and then slaughtered
nearby, and indeed, a butcher’s shop was one of the establishments to be found
in almost all towns. Rural people might poach or rear and slaughter their own
meat. Pigs seem to have been the livestock of choice, perhaps because of their
omnivorous eating habits and easy disposition. Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to
Candleford described the communal nature of raising pigs: neighbors inquired
after the pig’s health as well as the family’s, and shared the work of slaughtering
the animals in the late fall. All but the poorest families kept pigs in a special
part of the garden called a piggery, feeding them with whatever leftovers and
scavenged food (like acorns and wild greens) they could. Keeping a pig, in
a sense, kept the family: the family would dine on the trotters (feet), hams,
bacon, and other parts of the pig throughout the winter. Fall was the traditional
time for slaughtering of animals, although lamb and veal were traditionally
available in the spring and early summer. By midcentury, butchers were able
to offer most meats throughout the year.
Butchers might slaughter their own animals, but increasingly they would
buy carcasses and make cuts according to customer orders. People traditionally
mistrusted butchers, perhaps because meat was expensive and butchers could be
deceitful: they might pin extra fat to the meat or leave the blood in the meat to
give it extra weight, or they might sell the carcass of one animal as something
more expensive, for example cat or dog for rabbit. This is why display was so
important: the carcasses were usually hung so that the ribs of the animal could
be clearly seen and identified as the animal in question.
Butchers’ clean white aprons emphasized their disconnect from the slaugh-
tering of animals. They displayed their wares on marble slabs, which kept the
meat cold and slowed spoilage—and indeed, spoilage was among the princi-
ple concerns associated with meat. Ice was available—cut in Norway or North
America and shipped to England—but expensive. Customers preferred to in-
spect their meat carefully, and this display was part of the butcher’s need to
secure their confidence. Isabella Beeton warned her readers, “During the sul-
try summer months, it is difficult to procure meat that is not either tough or
tainted. It should, therefore, be well examined when it comes in, and if flies have
touched it, the part must be cut off, and the remainder well washed. In very cold
weather, meat and vegetables touched by the frost, should be brought into the
kitchen early in the morning, and soaked in cold water.”18 Salting, drying, and
curing could all help to preserve meats, and some prepared meats, like bacon
Food and Drink 67
and certain kinds of sausages, were so processed that little was required to keep
them from spoiling.
The butcher offered a variety of cuts of beef, mutton, and pork, as well
as processed meat products like black pudding, sausages, and hams. Almost
all of the animal was eaten in some form. For those who could afford them,
there were basic roasts and chops. Household and cookery books suggested
moneysaving ways of cooking these meats: sheep’s trotters (available from
the butcher with the skin and hair removed), sheep’s feet (also available as a
pâté), pig’s feet, calf’s liver, sheep’s liver, bullock’s heart, bullock’s kidney, cow
heel (also known as neat’s foot), calf’s cheek, tripe, and sheep’s head. Some
butchers dealt exclusively with these parts of the animal considered less useful.
Of course, there were limits, and there were parts of the animals that could not
be eaten, as this recipe for “calfs cheek soup” confirms: “Remove the eye-ball
and the cartilage of the nose; shorten the jawbones, so as to get rid of the teeth,
but leaving the meat which covered them, and throw them away. You would
get no good out of them, they only take up room in the boiler.”19 Meat prices
rose and fell, but for the most part, cooks tried not to waste what they had.
Middle class menus usually called for the meat to first appear at the table in
the form of a roast, then later as a cold meat, and finally minced, spiced and
reheated as hash. Working class cooks would take any leftover meat and form
“faggots” for dinner—this was meat minced, seasoned, and formed into cakes
for frying.
Imported meats were readily available by the end of the century and often
cheaper than domestic meats. English consumers, however, were curiously
reluctant to give up their preference for Scottish beef and Welsh lamb. A
household guide from the 1880s warned them, “American meat has of late
years been largely introduced in England. Some of this is exceedingly good, and
housekeepers who refuse from prejudice to buy meat simply because 2d. per
pound less than the expected price is asked for it, may very likely be gratified by
paying the higher price for exactly the same kind of meat at a more pretentious
shop.”20
Victorians were fond of various kinds of poultry and game, including chicken,
duck, goose, woodcock, and occasionally turkey. Poulterers, grocers, and some
butchers might offer any of these according to the season as well as feathers and
down for bedding, eggs for cooking, eggs for hatching, and live birds for raising
at home. Mrs. Beeton’s guide offered recipes for these and more, along with
information on selecting fowl for the table. Since anyone with a small garden
could keep birds for their eggs as well as for slaughter, her guide included
information on raising birds which could also be applied to shopping for them.
Fish and shellfish were as important to the British diet as meat and fowl, but
selling them presented greater problems for the fishmonger and the shopper:
fish was highly seasonal—certain types of fish only “ran” in certain seasons—
and it was an industry prone to shortages and spoilage. Because of these risks,
fish and shellfish were well suited to being sold in small by itinerant sellers who
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Copyright(C) by Foxit Software Company,2005-2008
68 For Evaluation “Gone
Only.to the Shops”
kept a small stock and had a quick turnover. At the same time, fishmongers
offered a remarkable variety of creatures from the sea, rivers, and lakes: oysters,
crab, shrimp, lobster, limpet, periwinkle, whelk, mussels, perch, pike, eels,
turtles, skate, cod (including cod heads, which were often sold separately at
a much cheaper rate for use in pie), mackerel, and herring, both plain and
red.
Fish cooked easily and quickly. It was versatile—it could be boiled, broiled,
or baked using a minimum of fuel, and most varieties were easily digested. It
was generally cheaper than meat. Henry Mayhew’s study of the London poor
made particular reference to herring as being cheap and nutritious, and his
costermonger sources favored sprat for their poorer customers: “‘Ah! sir,’ he
began, in a tone according with his look, ‘sprats is a blessing to the poor. Fresh
herrings is a blessing too, and sprats is young herrings, and is a blessing in
portion.’ ”21
In the 1850s a particular kind of shop selling cooked fish appeared: this was
the fish and chip shop, which began offering fried fish, often cod or haddock,
and cooked potatoes to the working classes in London and Lancashire. Historical
sources seem to agree that the trend began in London with fried fish, and the
trend moved northward to meet the fried potatoes, originally served with fried
tripe, spreading southward from Lancashire. The development and spread of the
fish-and-chip shop was, without doubt, made possible by new technologies: the
trains which brought the day’s catch from port cities to the rest of England,
and by the steam-powered trawlers which assured a sizable catch. These two
factors helped to lower prices, and by the end of the century, fish and chip shops
numbered in the thousands. Most were modest, family-run establishments,
often run out of the front room of the family home, or a stall. Since the
supplies were minimal—a pot of some sort, and a ready supply of oil—selling
fish and chips was a business which attracted entrepreneurs of modest means.
At the same time, the smells of fish and chips frying together in a pot tended
to put some people off—the trade was listed as an environmental hazard or
“offensive smells” industry until the early twentieth century.
Another important seafood in the British diet was the oyster, although its
fortunes changed just after midcentury. The oyster shop in Charles Dickens’s
Old Curiousity Shop presents the oyster-based meal in all its glory:
Kit, walking into an oyster-shop as bold as if he lived there, and not so

much as looking at the counter or the man behind it, led his party into
a box—a private box, fitted up with red curtains, white table-cloth, and
cruet-stand complete—and ordered a fierce gentleman with whiskers,
who acted as waiter and called him . . . “sir,” to bring three dozen of
his largest-sized oysters, and to look sharp about it! Yes, Kit told this
gentleman to look sharp, and he not only said he would look sharp, but
he actually did, and presently came running back with the newest loaves,
and the freshest butter, and the largest oysters, ever seen. . . .22
Food and Drink 69
Originally plentiful and cheap, oysters and the oyster-shop were staples of
poor and working class neighborhoods. Sam Weller, a character in Dickens’s
Pickwick Papers, mused on the connection:
“It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, Sir,” said Sam, “that poverty and
oysters always seem to go together.” “I don’t understand you, Sam,” said
Mr. Pickwick. “What I mean, sir,” said Sam, “is, that the poorer a place
is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s
a oyster-stall to every half-dozen houses. The street’s lined vith ‘em.
Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of his
lodgings, and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation.”23
Overharvesting in the 1860s created short supply and drove prices outside the
reach of many, and the oyster shops disappeared. They were replaced in some
ways by the fish and chip shops, which could be more flexible about supply.
BAKERS AND CONFECTIONERS

Bread was the cornerstone of the English diet for the poor and working classes
in the nineteenth century as it had been for centuries. For many families, meat
made a rare appearance on the table, perhaps weekly, and the remainder of
the weeks meals was centered around bread. Sold in four-pound “quartern”
loaves, the bread might be served with drippings, or broken up into soup, or
even eaten plain. Bread was one of the first food products to be protected by
legislation forbidding adulteration. Children of all classes ate a great deal of
bread, and particularly plain bread or bread crusts. Experts warned against
other “stronger” foods, as suggested by Cassell’s Household Guide’s chapter
on child rearing:
Home-made or country bread is far preferable to bakers’ bread, if it

can be procured, for children as well as adults. A more general use of
soup, thickened with any of the farinaceous articles described, is to be
recommended . . . Vegetable soups in which slices of bread are crumbled
are infinitely superior to tea or coffee, which too often constitute the
nursery breakfast and tea from one year’s end to the other. At dinner,
toast-and-water or simple water should be a child’s beverage only; but let
it be filtered, and be very careful whence it comes.24
Bread was at the center of the diet for most of the population, and the baker
was perhaps the most important shopkeeper in the lives of the urban working
classes.
At the start of the century, middle class women and great households baked
their own bread, as indeed they had brewed their own beer and washed their
own laundry. The great houses in the country continued to do so, keeping to
the traditional manorial economy with specialized rooms for baking, washing,
making beer and cordials, butchering their own meats, and soap making. But
in the cities, women of all classes were, by midcentury, buying their bread and
beer.
Historians have identified several broad trends that caused the decline of
these home industries. First, the growth of commercial concerns offered the
bread, beer, and clean clothes at an economical rate. The second seems to have
been related to urbanization: women did not have enough room in their homes
for the specialized laundry, still rooms, and bake ovens needed to produce
what they needed. New houses were simply built without these rooms. The
last factor may have been the rising price of fuel, which made baking a loaf
or two rather than a dozen at a time somewhat wasteful. While some older
houses might still have a brick-lined bake oven, and bread could certainly be
baked in the modern stove, decreasing cost made commercial breads seem more
tempting for middle class women. The urban poor and working classes were
especially hard-pressed: they had neither the time for baking bread nor the
money for the extra fuel required. The baker filled in, providing not only bread,
but also the oven for cooking the occasional joint of meat or the meat-pie.
Isabella Beeton urged women with the resources—the oven and a ready supply
of coal—to let the baker do the hard part of mixing and preparing the dough
for bread: “If you are not in the habit of making bread at home, procure the
dough from the baker’s, and, as soon as it comes in, put it into a basin near the
fire; cover the basin with a thick cloth, and let the dough remain a little while to
rise . . . 25
There was some overlap between the baker and the confectioner. Some bakers
in better neighborhoods offered more than just the daily bread: they might
have rolls, buns, cakes, and certain kinds of basic pastry. The baker might make
certain special seasonal goods like puddings and “cross buns” for Easter. The
baker’s cakes tended to be plain, or with a little icing, and enlivened with fruit:
the modern fruitcake is still made along these lines. The confectioner was more
often found in better neighborhoods, offering expensive goods which required
a great deal of fuel and work: candies, for example, like among the hard candies
known as boiled sweets, and chewy candies like caramels. Their trade sometimes
included baked goods like cakes with elaborately decorated icing, something far
beyond the baker’s more ordinary goods. Some confectioners sold drinks of all
kinds, from lemonade to wines, and occasionally champagne, as well as light
snacks like sandwiches.
DAIRY AND CHEESEMONGERS

Victorians were not great drinkers of milk perhaps in part due to the tra-
ditional view of cow’s milk as a risky product. It spoiled easily if carried any
distance since there was no refrigeration, and people knew that it was highly
liable to go “off” even if they did not yet understand the idea of contami-
nation. Traditionally, people who drank milk did so from cows which were
Food and Drink 71
close by, or they got their milk in some more solid, and reliable form, like
cheese.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, due to better supply and trans-
portation, milk and milk products played an important part in the English diet.
Milk, including curdled milk and buttermilk, was used in cooking, and as an
ingredient in the diet of invalids and infants. Cheese was often sold along with
milk at a dairy, as were eggs, but both could be fairly expensive. Urban dairies
were common in England in cities before trains allowed country dairies to de-
liver their product quickly. Certain parts of London had not only dairies selling
cow’s milk, but also exceptional dairies that carried asses’ milk. The animals
were stabled on the premises, and customers could buy the milk by the glass or
in larger cans. Dairies might sell dishes of curds and whey along with glasses
of milk. Dairyman also brought milk to the neighborhoods in a can and poured
it into a family’s jug. In either case, the dairies of the early century were not
terribly reliable: the animals were kept in squalid conditions, with improper
ventilation, and were often given feed contaminated by the unsanitary condi-
tions. Real understanding of how milk should be treated and stored did not come
until the end of the century after Pasteur’s ideas on bacteria and preventing its
growth in food had gained wide acceptance.
Fears about the quality of dairy products, especially for urban customers who
could be quite distant from the dairies and the processing, were fed by the 1876
report on an industrial practice called “reclaiming” butter: dairies were taking
rancid or adulterated butter, melting it down and then selling the “reclaimed”
product to consumers. Even Beeton’s guide suggested that this transformation
from rancid to sweet was possible, and the reality was quite troubling. Worry
about the state of dairy products was probably second only to similar concerns
about meat.
Rural people had better access to fresh milk, either through a dairy farm
or through their own cow kept in the garden. Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to
Candleford offered the charming example of the country dairy overseen by a
somewhat simple dairymaid: she charged a penny for milk, no matter what size
jug or can her customers presented. The increasing size of containers presented
could not deter her from her penny rule.
Cheese was a trickier issue, requiring skill and extra resources like rennet and
special pans and molds. Victorians might buy their cheese from several places,
including the cheesemonger, the grocer, or, on occasion, from a dairy. They
had a marvelous selection of cheeses to choose from: Stilton, cream, smoked,
Cheshire, cayenne, Gruyère, Parmesan, and Gloucester. Victorians ate toasted
cheese sandwiches, cheese fondue, cheese puffs, and even macaroni and cheese.
DRINKS
Hot drinks had been served in shops in England since the seventeenth cen-
tury, starting with chocolate. This New World drink was somewhat different
from its modern version, being spicier and probably not as sweet. It was also
fairly expensive: while there were chocolate houses which specialized in the
hot beverage, by the eighteenth century it was more commonly sold by cof-
fee merchants. Coffee had come to England in the seventeenth century, and
coffee merchants, originally known as Turkey merchants for importing coffee,
would sell both bowls of coffee and the fresh bean. Customers could buy the
bean roasted and ground, but many households had the means to roast and
grind their own coffee beans as needed. The coffeehouses of the eighteenth
century played a vital role in the development of several major industries, be-
ing places where businessmen came to drink their sobering brew: insurance,
literature, journalism, and politics were all aided by the habit of men of like
minds gathering at the coffeehouse.
The last great hot beverage to enter England was, of course, tea. More ex-
pensive than either coffee or chocolate, tea was introduced in the eighteenth
century, and remained the most popular of the three. It was fairly expensive
in the early Victorian era, so much so that rural people made do with herbal or
mint “tea,” or they might be lucky enough to be given the used leaves from the
local gentry. In the 1840s the ritual of afternoon tea began in elite households,
gradually working its way across society. To give an idea of tea’s value as a
luxury item, consider the case of the first clipper ship to deliver a load of tea to
England in 1850: this was the American ship The Oriental, which made the trip
from Hong Kong to London in ninety-seven days with a cargo of 1,600 tons of
tea on board. The value of that tea at the time was approximately $48,000, or
just under what it cost to build the ship.
In the last part of the century, reduced tariffs lowered the price of tea,
so much so that housekeeping manuals recommended using wet tea leaves
for cleaning carpets. Eventually tea became more accessible to the working
classes, and central to the British diet. Allowances for tea and sugar began to
replace the beer allowance traditionally given to household servants, although
they could opt for a cash payment as well. At century’s end, a new kind of
“chain” tea shop spread across England, catering to travelers and the working
classes.
Like coffee, tea was originally bought from a merchant who might also be
the importer. Tea shops also offered the loose leaf as well as bowls, and later
cups, of the brew. By midcentury, shoppers could still buy from importers, or if
they lived in a smaller town like Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, they could buy
from the importer’s authorized seller:
Why should not Miss Matty sell tea—be an agent to the East India Tea
Company which then existed? I could see no objections to this plan, while
the advantages were many—always supposing that Miss Matty could
get over the degradation of condescending to anything like trade. Tea
was neither greasy nor sticky—grease and stickiness being two of the
qualities which Miss Matty could not endure. No shop-window would
be required. A small, genteel notification of her being licensed to sell tea
would, it is true, be necessary, but I hoped that it could be placed where
Food and Drink 73
no one would see it. Neither was tea a heavy article, so as to tax Miss
Matty’s fragile strength. The only thing against my plan was the buying
and selling involved.26
Shoppers could also buy their loose tea from a grocer, although there was
considerable debate as to whether quality of “grocer’s tea” was equal to that
of the tea merchant. And as always, there was the worry that the tea leaves
had been adulterated by the addition of other, inferior leaves. The drinking of
tea, coffee, and chocolate would, of course, spawn a secondary trade in drinking
accoutrements, including urns for hot water, china tea sets, coffee and chocolate
pots, and cups and saucers.
Other drinks had their shops, including wine, beer, and distilled drinks.
Like coffee and chocolate, alcoholic drinks could be bought on the street in a
single serving—as with cups of hot spiced wine, or some carbonated drinks—
or in shops which sold single servings as well as bottled drink to take home.
Carbonated beverages were, at first, expensive: they required special, football-
shaped bottles, and even with a special cork needed to be stored on their side to
keep from bursting open on the shelf. Later corks included a kind of metal wire
guard over the top to prevent explosions.
Wine was an important part of Victorian eating and drinking, and those
classes who could afford it served a wine with every part of a good dinner,
including dessert. Wine could be bought at a wine merchant’s shop or at a
grocer’s shop. Although there had been vineyards are various times in England
since the Roman occupation, Victorian wine merchants were chiefly importers,
blending and bottling German, Spanish, and French wines which arrived in
barrels.
Some drinks could be more problematic, especially the beer and wines served
in public houses, and more powerful distilled liquors sold in dram shops. The
public house was the older of the two, being an outgrowth of a perfectly re-
spectable and important part of the English diet. Customers in a public house
originally took their beer, and often their meals, along with the family who
lived in the house. Only gradually were the public drinkers and family mem-
bers separated and served in different rooms of the public house. Public houses
could be found in small villages and towns as well as great cities, and this was
where the working classes came for both food and drink. The pub became an
increasingly important social and political institution, connected not merely
with the social aspects of drink but also the workers’ political agency.
Distilled liquor became common in the late eighteenth century, and the power
of these drinks to render its customers senseless was, from the beginning, seen
as a problem. By all indications, liquors were a more urban phenomenon,
although certainly rural drinkers could and did buy distilled liquor in their
local public houses. Reformers worried about the impact of gin, rum, and other
potent liquors, and their descriptions of different types of dram shops betray
their agenda. Charles Dickens, for example, wrote in Sketches by Boz about
dangerously comfortable gin shops found in excruciatingly poor neighborhoods:
You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The
hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the
commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the
fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass
windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights
in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the
darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the
exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends
the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great casks,
painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such
inscriptions, as “Old Tom, 549;” “Young Tom, 360;” “Samson, 1421”—
the figures agreeing, we presume, with “gallons,” understood. Beyond
the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels,
with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished. On the counter,
in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets
of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top with wicker-
work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it,
are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the
spirits and “compounds.” They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor
of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much on
one side to give him a knowing air, and to display his sandy whiskers to
the best advantage.27
Dickens’ point was that gin shops robbed the poor of what little money and drive
they had, and were a direct cause of poverty. But this gin shop seems to have
been unusual, as most gin shops—which also sold other distilled liquors—were
small shops selling very cheap goods and catering largely to very poor people.
Water was also a problematic issue for Victorians. From early in the nine-
teenth century they understood that water could be unsafe, but it was not until
late in the century that they understood why. People living in crowded cities
and deeply industrialized areas suffered the worst, although there are known
examples of wealthy people sickened and killed by impure water. Water for the
urban poor came from pumps, which were easily contaminated. Some pumps
were shut off for hours or days at a time, leaving the poor to go without or
pay the high prices of the water carrier. Towns usually had water fountains for
people and troughs for horses and dogs located in some central spot.
Overall, Queen Victoria’s subjects were better fed in terms of quantity and
quality at the end of her reign than they had been at her accession. Nutrition was
still very imperfectly understood—the role of fresh vegetables being especially
cloudy—but efforts were underway to regulate food and end the worst kinds
of adulteration. Protein, especially in the form of meat, played a larger role in
most diets by the end of the century, even if it was canned and not fresh meat.
Reticule: An early kind of handbag for a well-off woman,
this printed flowered cloth reticule was essentially a small
sack, carried on the wrist or in the hand. The drawstring
closed the bag and became the handle. [Printed reticule,
early nineteenth century (block-printed cotton), English
School, (nineteenth century) c Leeds Museum and Art
Galleries (Temple Newsam House) UK / The Bridgeman
Art Library International.]
Shop Shutters: Shop assistants remove the heavy wooden shutters which protected the expensive
glass windows. A small cutout at the top of the shutter would have allowed some of daylight or light
from the street lamp to light the store after hours. Assistants tidy the mannequins in the window
while another assistant on a ladder polishes the glass for the best possible view of the goods inside.
[London Street Scene, illustration to ‘Twice Round the Clock’ by George Augustus Sala (1828–
1896) 1859 (pencil on paper) by William McConnell (fl.1850–1890) c Private Collection/ c
Christopher Wood Gallery, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
Warehouse: A traditional, and yet transitional sort of shop, in this case moving from specializing
in a certain type of preserved food in to a more general line of luxury foods. The first floor has retail
space and perhaps the offices for the shop and some storage. The small, flat windows indicate that
this shop dates from the early part of the century. A neat display of bottles and jars sit on narrow
shelves on the inside of the windows, easily reached by counter staff. The upper floors were for
storage, accessed on the side or back of the building using a crane. [Façade of John Burgess & Son,
Warehouseman to the Duchess of Gloucester (w/c on paper), English School, (nineteenth century)
/ City of Westminster Archive Center, London, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
The Village Shop: Part general store, part government office,
this shop allowed people in small towns a great many goods
and services: stamps and groceries, telegrams and savings
accounts, as well as the chance to socialize. Often a small shop
like this was open from early morning until early evening and
the staff waiting on customers at both the post office window
and the shop counter, but the cash was kept separate. The
small shop window allowed only a little display: this village
shop was probably a house originally and turned into a shop
and post office much later. [The Village Shop, 1887 by James
Charles (1851–1906) c Johannesburg Art Gallery, South
Africa/ The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
China Shop: The popularity of blue glazed “china” from Asia helped domestic pottery
manufacturing to develop. By the start of the Victoria era, it was possible to purchase
large sets of dishes for serving and eating with identical decorations. The decorations
were often done by an image engraved on a copper plate and then transferred to paper,
and transferred again to the dish. This china shop storage room seems to be on an upper
floor—there are large gas lights to light the room along with a large window which
seems to fall below the floor, and a railing on the back wall indicates stairs—confirms
the popularity of the blue and white dishes. [The Interior of a China Shop, c. 1836
(w/c), Best, Mary Ellen (1809–1891) / Private Collection, c Dreweatt Neate Fine
Art Auctioners, Newbury, Berks, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
Street Sellers: Informal “stalls” like these served most of the needs of the working class
shopper. The stalls stand along side the pavement, making it possible for pedestrians to pass
on one side and carriages on the other. The round baskets to the right of the photograph were
probably used to bring the goods to market. The small boy at the left of the photograph was
an important part of the stall system: boys provided cheap labor—or free labor, if his family
ran the stall—walking along the street ‘crying’ goods when trade was slow, taking cash when
business was brisk, and generally minding the stall when called on. [Street Traders in London,
The New Cut, 1893 (b & w photo), Martin, Paul (1864–1942) / Private Collection, The
Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Art Library International.]
Old Clothes: Clothes were recycled at every level of so-

ciety, sometimes within a household, oftentimes through
stalls and dealers in used clothing. This photograph shows
an assortment of shirts, petticoats, and dresses on dis-
play in a street stall. [The Old Clothes Shop, Seven Di-
als, from “Street Life in London, 1877–1878 (Wood-
bury type),” Thomson, John (1837–1921) / Victoria &
Albert Museum, London, UK / Bridgeman Art Library
International.]
The Poulterer: The poulterer sold a variety of fowl—in this case, goose for the Christmas
market—including chickens, ducks, geese, and perhaps more exotic smaller fowl. The birds
were displayed with their feathers on, and the shopper might expect to clean her own bird and
save the feathers for household use. [The Poulterer, from ‘The Book of Shops,’ 1899 (colour
litho) by Francis Donkin Bedford (1864–1930) c Private Collection/ The Stapleton
Collection/ The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
The Sporting Goods Shop: An increase in leisure time allowed middle class men and women
to try a variety of new sports like bicycling as well as older and more traditional ones—golf,
archery, hockey, rugby. [The Sports Shop, from ‘The Book of Shops,’ 1899 (colour litho) by
Francis Donkin Bedford (1864–1930) c Private Collection/ The Stapleton Collection/
The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
The Tea Shop: The tea shop was a largely female environment, with a female wait staff and female
customers. It was an important part of the expanded shopping experience at the end of the century:
a middle class lady could safely visit the tea shop during a day of shopping. The menu included light
meals and various kinds of sweet things in season: “ices” in the summer, pastry, and soups. [The Tea
Shop, from “The Book of Shops,” 1899 (colour litho), Bedford, Francis Donkin (1864–1930) /
Private Collection, The Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library International.]
5
Home Furnishings and Furniture
OF THE MANNER OF PASSING EVENINGS AT HOME . . . Where

there are young people forming a part of the evening circle, interesting
and agreeable pastime should especially be promoted. It is of incalcula-
ble benefit to them that their homes should possess all the attractions
of healthful amusement, comfort, and happiness; for if they do not find
pleasure there, they will seek it elsewhere. It ought, therefore, to enter
into the domestic policy of every parent, to make her children feel that
home is the happiest place in the world; that to imbue them with this
delicious home-feeling is one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.1
—Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management
Victorian houses could be grand, consisting of dozens of rooms and extensive

grounds, or modest, two-story cottages with strategic partitioning to create
rooms. People cared deeply about their homes, furnishing and decorating them
as best as they could. No matter what the size, homes required furnishings to
make the family feel comfortable: the furnishings needed to be beautiful and
clean and well cared for, but the overall effect must be welcoming and in a sense,
enveloping. Charles Dickens’s middle class readers would have recognized the
instinct perfectly in this loving description of a ‘poor but honest’ working class
home from The Old Curiosity Shop:
The furniture of the room was very homely of course—a few rough chairs
and a table, a corner cupboard with their little stock of crockery and delf,
a gaudy tea-tray, representing a lady in bright red, walking out with a
very blue parasol, a few common, coloured scripture subjects in frames
upon the wall and chimney, an old dwarf clothes-press and an eight-day
76 “Gone to the Shop”
clock, with a few bright saucepans and a kettle, comprised the whole.
But everything was clean and neat, and as the child glanced round, she
felt a tranquil air of comfort and content to which she had long been
unaccustomed.2
Of course, Dickens’ middle-class readers would have smiled at the room’s lack of
taste, but what mattered was that the correct feeling offered by the furnishing:
comfort, and a sense of being welcome.
Homes were also a part of the process of looking. Friends and neighbors
examined each other’s homes when they visited and believed they learned a
great deal about the homeowner. Homes and their furnishings displayed how
much money men earned, and how skilled women were at managing the portion
of the budget allotted to housekeeping. The work became harder as the outside
world became dirtier: urban areas were crowded and often had factories close to
homes, but even the better, purely residential neighborhoods suffered terribly
from the sulfur and dust given off by burning coal in homes. Keeping things
visibly clean was very hard work which never seemed to end: in addition to
regular dirt and dust, housekeeping was further complicated by the sulfur and
other gasses given off by the coal burned for cooking and heating. It tarnished
the silver and ruined fabrics. Women kept their homes neat and tidy not only to
prevent germs and vermin, but as literal upkeep of their investment in furniture
and rugs and china. What good, they might ask, is a £20 Turkey carpet if the
housemaid allowed dirt and dust to obscure its sheen and color? Her neighbors
and visitors would see the carpet, and she knew they would see the carpet, so
the carpet must be cleaned.
Homes, and things for the home, were definitely on the rise throughout the
nineteenth century. Home building was one of the major industries of the era,
increasing more than sixfold between the middle and the end of the century.3
Demand for housing grew so steadily that it was common for middle class
investors to build or buy houses and rent them: the safety of the investment
was why a sure thing was “safe as houses.” Cities expanded into the rural areas
surrounding them. Slum clearing produced space for new urban neighborhoods,
and the creation of new city-adjacent suburbs was made possible by railways.
With new homes came a call for home furnishings, both “durable goods” which
lasted for more than a year, and “nondurable” goods, which were consumed
within a year. Historians estimate that by the early twentieth century, 6 percent
of all money spent by consumers was on goods for the home.4
In general, the houses of the early nineteenth century had a somewhat spare
look to them: furniture tended to be kept against the wall and pulled to the
center of the room when needed. Furniture was light, and if in the style called
regency or Georgian, had delicate, spindly legs and light upholstery. Often the
legs ended in delicate brass or wooden castors to make it easier to move. Walls
could be painted, or, less often, covered by expensive wallpaper. Pictures were
apparently carefully chosen and hung in small groups or singly.
Home Furnishings and Furniture 77
By the end of the century, Victorians seem to have preferred a fuller look to
their rooms, which indicated both a change in taste and the dramatic drop in
prices for manufactured items like wallpaper and fabric. Furniture and acces-
sories of different styles were commonly mixed. Walls were papered or painted
and crowded with framed prints and watercolors, the latter perhaps done by the
daughters of the household. Deeply upholstered couches and chairs crowded
the room, ready to accommodate large families and their guests. Furniture be-
came more hefty and heavy in appearance: wood was often painted or stained
in dark colors. Victorians believed that shelves cried out to be filled and ta-
bles were made to be covered. Rooms often had a large table for working on
puzzles or scrapbooks, and several smaller tables crowded with family pho-
tographs, china figures, and collections of rocks, birds’ eggs, or seashells. The
fanciest house in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cranford could offer this display of
tables:
There was a japanned table devoted to literature, on which lay a Bible, a

Peerage, and a Prayer-Book. There was another square Pembroke table
dedicated to the Fine Arts, on which were a kaleidoscope, conversation-
cards, puzzle-cards (tied together to an interminable length with faded
pink satin ribbon), and a box painted in fond imitation of the drawings
which decorate tea-chests.5
This was a carefully contrived display meant to convey the breeding and
good taste of the owner. Cranford’s narrator found the calculation behind
to be somewhat silly—the art on the table was not really art at all—but
the table’s owner was proud of her identity and taste, and happy to cram
as many symbols onto the table as possible. As with all things, these are
changes applied only to those families with sufficient income to stuff their
homes: workers and the poor probably saw only limited changes to their
homes.
Caring for these interiors was a full-time job for women: choosing the proper
furnishings, updating, and maintaining them took up whatever time was not
eaten up by cooking, cleaning, and child care. Fortunately for women, there
were shopkeepers of all kinds ready to assist.
FURNITURE
At the start of the century, most new furniture was bought from a cabi-
netmaker’s shop. Customers could order their furniture to be made according
to drawings in a catalogue or they could select from the ready-made pieces
on display in the shop. The practice of working from a catalogue of designs
was a result of the popularity of Thomas Chippendale’s book, The Gentleman
and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, first published in London in 1754, and George
Hepplewhite’s later Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, published in
1786. The plates allowed customers to choose their furniture, and Chippendale’s
precise directions for measuring and “perspective” allowed the cabinetmaker to
adjust to any scale. Chippendale’s book was enormously popular—several later
editions were published, with additional plates—and the cabinetmakers of the
late nineteenth century were still using his plates to create furniture for their
customers. Later furniture makers continued this tradition, offering printed
catalogues and broadsheets of different models for their customers to choose.
In the late eighteenth century, a specialized type of cabinetmaker called an
upholsterer began to set up shop. Historians explain the split of the furniture
making trade as an aspect of the growing demand for comfort. While uphol-
stered chairs and benches had existed for several centuries, they were difficult
and expensive to make, and only the very rich could afford them. The demand
for comfort began to expand in the eighteenth century, and this supported the
trade in upholstered furniture. In many ways, the upholsterer was the more
influential of the two types of furniture makers. Upholstered furniture tended
to dominate Victorian rooms: fabric with vivid, oversized patterns and com-
peting colors seem to have been favored for much of the century. Plain wood
furniture, however large and dark, only made an interesting background. Up-
holsters, too, were active in advising their customers in the selection of fabric
and the planning of the room’s overall look: they were, in fact, the first interior
designers.
Cabinetry was done by skilled craftsmen who shaped, turned, carved, and
assembled furniture with remarkable precision. The chair framer, for example,
had to bore holes for spindles in the wooden seat of a chair at just the right
angle, one hole at a time. A slight variation in the angle of one threw off
the rest. Industrialization changed furniture manufacturing as it had other
industries: faster work meant greater production. At first, parts of the process
were industrialized, as with the turning of the legs and stretchers: powered
lathes turned them more quickly, and with greater intricacy, than had been
possible with handwork. Specialized machinery like the seat boring machine,
introduced into the manufacturing of Windsor chairs, bored all of the required
holes at once, faster and with greater accuracy than the best chair framer could
achieve.
Midcentury middle class customers could buy new furniture at several places,
depending on the size and style they wanted. Drapers sold smaller pieces like
footstools and small benches. Shoppers could also find furniture in department
stores, which could afford to keep a stock of the more expensive sets of matched
furniture called suites. Often furniture and mattresses were found on the top
floor of the department store in a long gallery lit from above by skylights as well
as regular gas lamps. Specialized furniture stores called house furnishers were
found in most larger towns: an example of this was a London firm called Heal
& Son, who specialized in mattresses and beds. Their 1852 catalogue offered
sixty-seven different models of beds, including cribs and the less popular four-
poster beds. They sold ready-made mattresses, ticking, and wool and horsehair
for stuffing mattresses. Their showrooms featured the new spring mattresses
as well as the coveted matching suites of bedroom furniture. These last were
prized by some shoppers because they proved you could afford to buy your
furniture all at once instead of one piece at a time.
Shoppers therefore had a great deal of choice in home furnishings. They
might purchase one or two items from cabinetmakers, who were by this time
selling wholesale to department stores, and find the rest of their furniture in
retail shops featuring bedroom furniture or specialized furniture galleries like
the Pentechnicon in London. Originally a bazaar, the Pentechnicon became a
furniture showroom and furniture storage warehouse whose distinctive large
vans became a generic term for delivery van.
By the 1850s furniture making had become, like tailoring, a partially sweated
trade. By this time, almost all furniture sold in London was made by self-
employed cabinetmakers called garret-masters, who made single pieces of fur-
niture, which they then sold to drapers and department stores. Individual pieces
might take days or weeks to complete, and the garret-master had no money for
his work until he found a buyer, and were generally quite poor. The quality,
not surprisingly, was also watered down: the new furniture used veneers in
preference to hardwoods, and nails and glue for construction rather than dove-
tailing. The pressure to produce pieces quickly and cheaply was a confirmation
of the growing demand.
The less well off seem to have simply made do with less furniture, or with used
furniture. Like clothing, a significant amount of furniture in Victorian Britain
was bought used. Understandably, there were more distinguished furniture
shops and more desperate furniture shops, depending on the neighborhood.
Homeowners could readily find brokers to come and take away their old or
outdated furniture and then resell it as “new” furniture. Brokers also bought
up whole lots of furniture, as when someone died or went bankrupt. Charles
Dickens’s description of these “second-hand furniture repositories” in Sketches
By Boz manages to give an idea of what the shops looked like as well as an idea
of what his readers hoped they looked like:
When we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange places, and that if an
authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish
many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is neces-
sary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we
make use of the term ‘Brokers’ Shop,’ the minds of our readers will at
once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective
of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany
wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and
hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps
they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furni-
ture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that
street at the back of Longacre, which is composed almost entirely of
brokers’ shops; where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-

looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by
a bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished with the pleasing
device of a mail-coach at full speed, or a strange animal, supposed to have
been originally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his
mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers.6
Brokers’ shops were “strange places”, which could have just about anything
among their wares. But they were also a very important part of the working
class economy: they were a place to raise ready money, and a source of basic
furnishings for working class homes.
A variety of materials were used in furniture, most notably mahogany, oak,
walnut, and rosewood. Wicker became a popular choice in the second half of
the century, although its use was limited to small tables and hanging shelves.
Marble, brass, and other materials were used for decoration and shelving, and
painted and “faux” finishes were popular. Furniture was increasingly viewed as
having a specialized identity according to its placement or the person who would
use it: there were hall chairs (seen by the family, but only used by servants),
ladies’ chairs (lower, more often upholstered), and children’s furniture known
as nursery furniture (not merely smaller versions of adult furniture, but painted
and decorated to appeal to children). Most furniture stores also offered a range
of furnishings for servants’ bedrooms: this was usually plain, made of a cheap
wood like pine (called “deal”), and without any decoration.
A considerable amount of furniture was needed to create the “comfortable”
home which most Victorians wanted. Cassell’s Household Guide gave extensive
directions on painting, papering, and furnishing a house to help the perplexed,
and included a list of the furniture needed for an “average” house: in the hall, a
carpet or floor cloth, a small chair, umbrella stand, a table and a mirror, although
a single piece combining these was preferred; in the drawing room and dining
room, a couch, several upholstered easy chairs, two tables, including one with
eight plain chairs, and a chiffonnier, or chest with or without glass front, a
bookcase with leather strips along the tops to keep the dust off the books, a
mirror and fender for the fireplace; in each of the bedrooms, bed of wood or
brass, a chair, table, washstand, a storage ottoman for dresses, a chest for shoes,
a mirror, and a wardrobe; in the servant’s bedroom, a bed with a pillow, bedding
(three blankets, two sheets, and a bedspread) but no carpeting, a chest of drawers,
a mirror, washstand (with white pottery ewer and bowl), an eight-day clock
(not an alarm clock—they were too easy to ignore) in a locked glass-fronted
cabinet, and a chair. Separate instructions explained how the kitchen should be
furnished, starting with the stove. The Guide wanted shoppers to think of these
things as the basics required for comfortable living: they were all available in a
range of qualities and materials to fit every budget, so there was no excuse for
your house to be without the required number of chairs, tables, and carpets.
Perhaps, as time went on and things wore out, they could be replaced with
better quality things. Cassell’s cardinal rules were that the furniture should be
in scale with the size of the room, within the budget of the household, and plain,
without too much carving, which required too much work for the servants.
CURTAINS AND CARPETS

Fabric was an important part of Victorian homes, although sometimes a
problematic one: keeping fabrics clean was very difficult, especially after bet-
ter lighting made it easier to see the dirt. Heavy curtains kept out the noise
and dirt of the outside world and protected other fabrics from fading. Carpet-
ing on the floors muffled noise and helped to keep rooms warm, but needed
to be shaken or beaten regularly to clean and was originally quite expen-
sive. Carpets and yards of household textiles could originally be bought in a
draper’s shop, although by midcentury they could also be bought in department
stores.
By the 1840s, shoppers could buy cheaper carpets, which had been made on
powered looms, and by the 1870s, they were able to buy rugs with a Jacquard or
pattern texture woven in. Shoppers had many grades of carpeting from which
to choose, although even the most modest carpet was beyond the means of
the working classes. The finest carpets were woolen rugs from Brussels with
a velvety pile, and really fine Turkish were highly treasured for their woven
“tapestry,” but not commonly used. A plainer and more economical type of
carpet was called Kidderminster, and Cassell’s Household Guide praised them
as “indestructible.” These carpets had a flat, woven pattern on both sides so
they could “turned” when worn on one side.
For much of the century, carpets were fairly expensive and used sparingly
in important rooms. Like other valued furnishings, they were cleaned carefully
and protected from light and fading, as in this description of Cranford from
Elizabeth Gaskell:
The greatest event was, that Miss Jenkyns had purchased a new carpet
for the drawing-room. Oh, the busy work Miss Matty and I had in cha-
sing the sunbeams, as they fell in an afternoon right down on this carpet
through the blindless window! We spread newspapers over the places
and sat down to our book or our work; and, lo! in a quarter of an hour
the sun had moved, and was blazing away on a fresh spot; and down
again we went on our knees to alter the position of the newspapers.
We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss Jenkyns gave
her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out and stitching
together pieces of newspaper so as to form little paths to every chair set
for the expected visitors, lest their shoes might dirty or defile the purity
of the carpet. Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in
London?7
Gaskell’s narrator, Mary, tells the story with tongue in cheek, and a great deal of
affection for her friend. And while people in London probably did not put down
newspapers to protect a new carpet, she knew her readers could understand how
the purchase of an expensive carpet could be a “great” event.
Rather than carpets, people of modest means could buy floor cloths, also
known as oilcloths, which were painted pieces of canvas bought from an up-
holsterer’s shop. Servants complained that they were slippery and cold, but
they were durable and useful for entryways. They could be placed in halls and
other high-traffic areas, with or without a felt beneath them to take some of the
wear. In the 1860s, a new type of flooring called linoleum (a mixture of linseed
oil and pine product) was introduced, forming a durable and brightly colored
alternative to tiled flooring.
HOUSE STYLE
The Victorians were not merely great builders but also innovators of style
and design Architectural Styles cycled through Victorian England, reviving old
styles including several styles of Gothic, Renaissance, and Elizabethan archi-
tecture. Each of these styles called for a particular interior design, and those
with the means to do so would change their furnishings to fit the new style.
None of these “revived” styles was an authentic reproduction of the past, but
rather an interpretation which suited the designers. This was in keeping with
the larger aesthetic movement’s principle of “art for art’s sake” which meant
that a thing could be beautiful and connect with the soul without it having a
rational meaning: authenticity was not the issue.
The arts and crafts movement had a significant impact on home furnish-
ings beginning in the 1880s. The style was embodied in the rejection of a
machine-driven commercial age and its goods: machine-made goods were seen
lacking in soul and quality. The style was based on the twin ideas of the su-
periority of artisan-made goods and an appreciation for the preindustrial era.
People who embraced the movement believed that the artisan-made object,
whether a roughly forged door hinge or a clay pot, was inherently superior.
For this reason, many of the designed had a somewhat rustic or medieval
look.
The leading light of the movement was William Morris, who with a group
of like-minded artisans formed the firm, “Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.”
which began making furnishings in Kent in 1861. Describing themselves as
“Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving, Furniture and the Metals,” they
offered furniture, carved wood fittings for the home, stained glass windows,
jewelry, and wallpaper made using traditional techniques. Later productions
included pottery and wall tapestries. Morris’ distinctive designs, best demon-
strated in his hand-woven tapestries and hand-blocked wall papers, showed
stylized flowers and plants in repeating patterns. The colors were muted and
favored blues and greens, but had bright bits of bright red or yellow as contrast.
The firm moved to London and by 1875 began selling to a much larger
audience: one of his goals was to make furnishings that workers could afford.
Morris’ motto, “Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful
and believe to be beautiful,” struck a chord with middle class people who were
frustrated with the constraints of respectable Victorian society. Demand for the
arts and crafts style was popular and many other companies borrowed Morris’
ideas.
The arts and crafts movement was very influential to the development of
the other great merchant of the style, Arthur Liberty. Inspired (and initially
supplied) by a display of art and craft from Japan, Arthur Liberty opened a
shop in 1875 which offered Japanese-inspired textiles for the home. Later his
wares included wallpapers, clocks, vases, dishes, decorative tiles, and furniture.
In 1884, Liberty added dressmaking services to supplement his sales of fabrics.
The fabric for dresses and upholstery had stylized images of flowers and plants
in watery, muted colors. Women who chose Liberty designs for their dress
and their home were demonstrating their advanced thinking: everything about
them suggested a break from traditional thinking. While Liberty furniture had
some connections to the arts and crafts movement, it was sometimes mass-
produced. Although this rejected one of the fundamental principles of the arts
and crafts movement, this brought the style to more homes than artisan-made
processes might.
Liberty furniture used lighter woods than most furniture makers of the
day, often inset with glass, metal, or semiprecious stones. The pieces included
tables and chairs, bedroom sets with beds and wardrobes. The silhouette of
the furniture was often curved and the line softened, which called to mind
the imaginary flowers and plants. Liberty furniture appeared graceful when
compared to the more solid pieces.
WATER AND TOILETS

Anxiety about cleanliness drove the midcentury Victorians to develop and
install new and better ways of dealing with water supply and sanitation, and
for a very good reason: the old system of dumping waste into rivers and other
waterways simply no longer worked. When summer heat made the rivers fall,
waste of all sorts was left on the banks. In heavy rains, the water backed up
and again, spilling human waste on to the banks. Fresh water supplies were
uncertain and could easily be contaminated. Something had to be done to fix
this system of “drainage” as it was called. In the 1850s sewage systems were
created and new buildings were required to empty waste in the sewers, but this
was not effective.
As with many things, the technology was there, but unpopular and expensive:
flush toilets with overhead water tanks were available in the late eighteenth
century, and were fairly common by the 1830s. The problem was that they were
expensive, and allowed waste water to enter directly into the general water
supply. Gradually, as the urban sewer and water systems began to be more
available and reliable, some people added toilets, fitted baths, and water taps
to their houses. Interestingly, it was more often the prosperous middle classes
who took up this new labor-saving technology. The upper classes had enough
servants to be indifferent to the new plumbing’s advantages and continued to
bathe in portable basins with hot water carried into the room, and to rely on
servants’ labor to deal with the chamber pots.
Called “sanitary fittings” by its manufacturers, toilets were usually located
outside the main house in a little shed attached or close by to the main house:
people worried that fumes from the drain would come out of the toilet, caus-
ing disease or death. New houses built at the very end of the century were
more likely to have toilets installed, and increasingly in specifically designed
rooms which combined the earlier water closet and bathroom. While tiled
and decorated toilets were available, there seems to have been a preference
for plain white porcelain. Manufacturers of these large porcelain pieces of-
ten maintained showrooms with sample toilets and other fittings—sinks, tubs,
etc.—in larger towns for customers to choose from, much as they do now.
People could also buy them from the builders and plumbers who would in-
stall them. Coppersmiths made household plumbing pipes. Sanitary paper,
sold in packages of square sheets and later in rolls and sold in chemist’s
shops and groceries, was another late-century addition to the water closet or
toilet.
Furniture for bathing was fairly regular by the start of the Victorian era:
most people with access to water washed face and hands twice daily, and people
stood at a washstand for their daily bathe. The washstand consisted of a wooden
table with an inset and removable washbowl, a matching jug for water, a soap
dish, a bowl with a draining pan for the sponges, and an assortment of glasses
for rinsing and holding the toothbrushes. They might buy the stand itself
at any of the places selling furniture, and the china fittings at a china shop.
People stripped to the waist for their wash, and then washed below the waist
as well as they could without removing their clothes entirely. Rural women
joked that they managed to get their bathing done only when the house was
empty, but only “as far down as possible, and then as far up as possible—poor
Possible!”
People in the middle classes and upper working classes were more likely to
be able to afford the cost of fuel for a weekly bath. For much of this part of the
population, bathing was done in a shallow, portable tub called a hip bath, with
hot water brought from the kitchen where it was heated in the stove. The first
water taps—water which did not need to be carried in from a street pump—
entered the house through the basement, and had to be carried to the kitchen
for heating along with the tub. Working class people bathed in the kitchen,
while people of means might bathe in a bedroom. While fitted bathtubs with
hot, cold, and tepid water taps were available by the end of the century, they
were by no means common.
KITCHEN FURNISHINGS
The ironmonger was the most important merchant for outfitting the kitchen.
Like a modern hardware store, his shop sold everything from nails and hinges
to the very long list of things which made it possible to cook a Victorian
meal: ladles, roasting forks, mechanical roasting spits, canisters, sugar nippers,
saucepans, boilers, strainers, food molds, knives, grills, grinders, graters, mortar
and pestle, and scales and weights. This last entry, a scale with weights, makes
sense if we remember that Victorians cooked, for the most part, by weight
and with regular household spoons as measures: Mrs. Beeton’s recipes gave
their measures in pounds and ounces (“six ounces of flour”), a soupspoon of
this, a teaspoon of that, a salt-spoon of something else. She recommended glass
measures, but these were less common and did not come from the ironmonger
but the chemist’s shop. They offered Victorian cooks an unfamiliar amount of
accuracy: “[T]hey save much trouble. One of these, containing a wine pint, is
divided into 16 oz., and the oz., into 8 drachms of water; by which, any certain
weight mentioned in a recipe can be accurately measured out . . . ”8 Beeton’s
guide provided new householders “in the middle class of life” with sample
shopping list for their first kitchen which she drew up with help from an iron-
monger’s shop in London. She observes that some families might need more, or
less, than what is on the list, but interestingly, she notes that her ironmoger has
produced a catalogue, provided free, for shoppers to make additional choices.
s. d.
1 Tea-kettle 66
1 Toasting-fork 10
1 Bread-grater 10
1 Pair of brass candlesticks 36
1 Teapot and tray 66
1 Bottle-jack 96
6 Spoons 16
2 Candlesticks 26
1 Candle-box 14
6 Knives and forks 53
2 Sets of skewers 10
1 Meat-chopper 19
1 Cinder-sifter 13
1 Coffee-pot 23
1 Colander 16
3 Block-tin saucepans 59
5 Iron saucepans 12 0
1 Ditto and steamer 66
s. d.
1 Large boiling-pot 10 0
4 Iron stewpans 89
1 Dripping-pan and stand 66
1 Dustpan 10
1 Fish and egg-slice 19
2 Fish-kettles 10 0
1 Flour-box 10
3 Flat-irons 36
2 Frying-pans 40
1 Gridiron 20
1 Mustard-pot 10
1 Salt-cellar 08
1 Pepper-box 06
1 Pair of bellows 20
3 Jelly-moulds 80
1 Plate-basket 56
1 Cheese-toaster 1 10
1 Coal-shovel 26
1 Wood meat-screen 30 0
The Set £8 11 19
The ironmonger sold the polishes and waxes for kitchenware—most of the
kitchenware was copper or brass, lined with tin—and the rest of the house,
along with candlesticks, grates for the coal, and irons or firedogs for logs in a
traditional fireplace. He sold screws and nails and hammers, as well as locks and
keys: he might be a locksmith as well. He was an important resource for all
sorts of household repairs, especially if a tinsmith were not nearby. He could
mend a broken drawer pull, re-tin cooking vessels, repair holes in a pan, and
reshape a dented pot.
“China” is a generic term for the ceramic cooking containers and serving
pieces for the household, as well as pots for plants and vases. Victorians believed
they needed a great deal of it—enough plates and serving pieces to have twelve
people at the table were not uncommon, and sets could be bought in even
larger lots. Households with several servants might have separate china for
them: their china was usually more utilitarian, with less decoration and made
of more durable material. Special china plates were used for certain parts of
the meal, for example, dessert plates: these were smaller than dinner plates,
larger than luncheon plates, and were often especially elaborate or beautiful.
China required special care, including storing plates horizontally in racks rather
than stacking to avoid breakage. Mrs. Beeton noted in her household guide that
“breaking glass and china is about the most disagreeable thing that can happen
in a family, and it is, probably, a greater annoyance to a right-minded servant
than to the mistress.”10 Broken china could be mended using a recipe for glue
found in many household guides or bottled glue sold in shops. China shops also
provided repair services for important pieces.
The term “china” originated with the fine porcelains imported from Asia in
the eighteenth century, which the west only gradually learned to imitate and
make in mass quantity. Certain technologies aided the development of ceramics
in England, including the creation of hard and soft paste slip which could be
poured into moulds for intricate and delicate pieces. The copperplate transfer
system allowed intricate and multicolor images to be printed on pieces of all
shapes and sizes: the work began with a copperplate engraving of an image or
pattern. The engraving was inked and printed on a piece of paper, which was
then pressed into the surface of the dish, and fired. “The Potteries” refers to
the area around Staffordshire where this industry was centered.
China could be heavyweight and durable earthenware for use in the kitchen,
or it could be finer, lighter, and more expensive “bone” china, quite literally
made using powdered animal bones, used for serving pieces and tableware. Like
fabrics and food, china could be bought in several places. Some heavierweight
cooking pieces might be found in an ironmonger’s shop. China merchants
might sell several qualities of ceramic goods in their shops, although only the
most exclusive dealt in the very fine, nearly translucent porcelains preferred
for teacups and very good dinnerware. Drapers, of course, dealt in everything
for the household, and often included china in their long list of goods, as did
the department stores that came after them.
Fine and durable china was available in large sets with matching serving
pieces from the end of the eighteenth century. By midcentury, china and pot-
tery manufacturing was a crowded field with large-scale factories: Crown Derby,
Copeland, Worcester, Spode, and Wedgewood. This last maker, Josiah Wedge-
wood, was influential not only for the decorative and utilitarian dishes he made,
but also for his ability to shape tastes. Wedgewood was a pottery inventor who
began making various types of useful and decorative pottery in 1759. He also
developed new forms as well as processes for pottery manufacturing. Historians
have cited Wedgewood as innovator, too, of modern marketing techniques: he
created new forms and styles of pottery and not just to sell products but also to
influence taste and trends.
Households of all sizes relied on a variety of shops to furnish their tables
and chairs, their dishes and draperies. As with clothing and food, the range
of products available expanded throughout the century, and people were pas-
sionate about making just the right choices for their homes. Even people of
modest means seem to have embraced the idea of the home as the manifesta-
tion of family, and found the goods they needed to make their homes more
comfortable.
6
Other Shops
He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set of chess-men
from China. The pawns were little green and white men, with real swords
and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles were on the backs
of elephants . . . These chess-men were the delight of Georgy’s life, who
printed his first letter in acknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa. He
sent over preserves and pickles, which later the young gentleman tried
surreptitiously in the sideboard and half-killed himself with eating. He
thought it was a judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot.1
—William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Victorians did a great deal of shopping beyond food and clothes and furniture.
Their custom supported many shops whose goods ranged from useful but
nonessentials like bicycles and books, to outright luxuries like perfume and
dog collars. These shoppers were driven by new ideas about making life more
interesting and comfortable, and an increasingly large pool of people had the
income to indulge these new desires. New ideas about gift giving to cement
relationships also spread downward through society, although the practice was
never universal. Holidays, in particular, were increasingly celebrated with gifts.
We know, for example, from Charles Dickens’s novels of the 1840s that shops
made regular and extensive preparations for Christmas, selling special foods
for holiday dinners, decorations for their homes, gifts, and other products not
available at other times. For example, special illustrated books called annuals
were created for Christmas giving, and were very popular with middle class
readers. By midcentury, gift giving and holiday madness had become quite
widespread, affecting even the poor, as Henry Mayhew described in his study
of the London poor:
Other Shops 89
In London a large trade is carried on in “Christmasing,” or in the sale of

holly and mistletoe, for Christmas sports and decorations. I have appended
a table of the quantity of these “branches” sold, nearly 250,000, and of
the money expended upon them in the streets. It must be borne in mind,
to account for this expenditure for a brief season, that almost every
housekeeper will expend something in “Christmasing;” from 2d. to 1s.
6d., and the poor buy a pennyworth, or a halfpennyworth each, and they
are the coster’s customers. In some houses, which are let off in rooms,
floors, or suites of apartments, and not to the poorest class, every room
will have the cheery decoration of holly, its bright, and as if glazed leaves
and red berries, reflecting the light from fire or candle. Then, look, said
a gardener to me, what’s spent on a Christmasing the churches! Why,
now, properly to Christmas St. Paul’s, I say properly, mind, would take
50l. worth at least; aye, more, when I think of it, nearer 100l. . . .Even the
ordinary-sized inns, I was informed, displayed holly decorations, costing
from 2s. to 10s.; while in the larger inns, where, perhaps, an assembly-
room, a concert-room, or a club-room, had to be adorned, along with other
apartments, 20s. worth of holly, &c., was a not uncommon outlay. . . .2
What was happening was this: an expanding group of Victorian shoppers

was redefining the idea of “need.” What might have once been extraordinary
purchases—Christmas greenery, ivory chess sets, scarves—were now seen as
fairly routine. They merited a heartfelt thank you note, but they were not re-
ally exceptional. Shopkeepers could comfortably stock these items because they
knew that shoppers would be willing to buy them. Historians view this as a
change in “consumption,” a transformation in the beliefs that drove shopping.
Popular definitions of “need” and luxury were changing, and this had an impact
on how and what people bought. Some Victorians were overwhelmed by the
obligations of the new gift giving and the abundance of choices in the shops,
and complained even then about the way that shopping took the joy from the
season.
There were shops of all types and sizes to meet this growing demand. While
there were some very big department stores, especially in London and other
large cities, the majority of shops were quite small. Their business was usually
focused on one type of stock, but their stock of goods could be quite varied. The
optician, for example, dealt in glass lenses, but the stock in a successful shop
might include glasses, glasses with colored lenses, opera glasses, magnifying
glasses, telescopes, microscopes and prepared slides, and specialty services like
repairs and special orders. Opticians were really unable to fit glasses in any way
but had the customer try on dozens of pairs, asking, “Is this better or worse?”
This meant that opticians needed to have hundreds of pairs of glasses in the
shop ready for customers to try. Shop premises were usually quite modest:
many were only the width of a house, with a small retail space and storage at
the back, below, or above. These small shops were crowded, with every inch of
their shelves and cases filled with goods. These small shops were much more
common than the great emporia of the later part of the century with their
expansive aisles and vast displays. Larger shops made the news by expanding
and swallowing up smaller stores or by building enormous new facilities, but
were the exception rather than the rule.
Some shops had a very clear identity, like the booksellers, although their
shelves might have a mix of new and used books. Others had a delightfully
mixed character like the shop at the center of Charles Dickens’s The Old Cu-
riosity Shop: it was part antique store, part thrift store, and part museum. It
was a poor shop in a poor neighborhood, but Dickens marveled at the treasures,
which lay unappreciated around the shop:
The place through which he made his way at leisure, was one of those
receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners
of this town, and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in
jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in
armour, here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish clois-
ters; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted figures in china, and wood,
which might have been designed in dreams.3
Presumably the suits of mail and carvings were sold by people of means who
had come down in the world. But they beg the question, who in this poor
neighborhood would buy these wonderful objects? The shop was an economic
dead-end: Dickens seemed to emphasize not only the shop’s loneliness and the
shopkeeper’s poverty, but the way that poverty prevented the neighborhood
from appreciating these beautiful things.
BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS AGENTS

Books and good bookshops seem to have been more closely associated with
London and larger towns, although in the second half of the century they were
more common in smaller towns. Booksellers were originally also publishers,
and their shops might include the services of bookbinders. They also might sell
newspapers, almanacs, and magazines along with their stock of books, both new
and used. In the first half of the century, books were expensive and publishing
them was a risky business venture. High publishing costs were passed along
to the consumer, and few people could afford many books. Books were often
financed in part by their authors to offset the cost of printing. As comparative
luxury items, books would not have been stocked by stationers in small towns,
but ordered individually. Booksellers’ shops were usually found only in larger
towns. Lending libraries also supplied books, renting new releases and selling
used copies of older books, but their catalogues could be limited, and the cost
of books meant that the cost of a subscription could be beyond the means of
Other Shops 91
any but the most affluent. Some, like the London-based Mudie’s Select Library,
offered only literature which could safely be read aloud to the family circle.
Even at the middle of the century, books were printed in fairly small runs, and
most shops carried only a limited number of titles both used and new. Hunting
down a specific title was a fairly time-consuming part of a book buyer’s day,
although one of a bookshop’s services was helping customers to build a library
by tracking down titles. As the heroine Florence Dombey in Charles Dickens’s
Dombey and Son learned when she tried to duplicate her brother’s school
reading list, even the most devoted shopper needed extra help.
The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops was,
either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them, or
that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great
many next week. But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise;
and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a
library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him
such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost,
if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her to return home in
triumph.4
Many schools expected students to provide their own textbooks, so schoolbooks

were an important part of the bookseller’s trade. The bookseller’s uncooperative
attitude in this case may be due to the fact that Susan, a servant, was buying
Greek and Latin textbooks, which he thought she had no right to do.
The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of the
printed word as more and more people had the leisure, the money, and the
inclination to read. This was brought about by three large changes. First, there
was the development of literature designed for mass tastes. The middle class,
as well as upper parts of the working class, was able to find accessible literature
like Charles Dickens’ novels in serialized form, and light reading caught on.
The first railway station bookstore was opened in 1848 by W.H. Smith, further
connecting with middle class readers.
Another big factor in the expansion of reading was that printing costs fell
dramatically. Parliament’s repeal of the taxes on newspapers in 1840 probably
gave the biggest boost to the press: the new papers cost a penny or two, and
were an expense that many working class people could afford. Papermaking
had undergone a two-part revolution in the nineteenth century which further
lowered costs and increased the supply of paper for newspapers. The first of
these was the industrialization of traditional papermaking. This process began
with a mushy pulp created from cotton and linen fibers, usually reclaimed rags.
Powered machines beat the pulp created by soaking the fibers, and pressed the
pulp into usable paper. In the late 1840s a second and more important revolution
allowed paper to be created from wood pulp. Acids were used to break down the
wood into the mushy pulp which could be pressed into paper. This new paper
could be produced in unlimited quantities, and further pushed down the cost of
paper industries.
Following the repeal of taxes on the press, the last factor in the expansion
of reading was probably the segmentation of the market: publishers began to
produce periodicals specifically for different groups of people. There were pe-
riodicals for women, especially women who did their own dressmaking and
cooking and who, with a single servant, ran the household. There were peri-
odicals meant for the whole family (unlike early novels which might hint at
sex or include unsavory plot lines), which could be read out loud—Dickens’s
Household Words was a good example of this type. There were also periodicals
for working class readers, like The Penny Magazine, started in 1832, which had
the express purpose of “improving” the better class of skilled workers and their
families. New technologies for printing, and especially printing pictures, made
weekly newspapers both cheaper and more appealing as the century went on.
In the last quarter of the century, there was a periodical for almost every taste:
children, sports enthusiasts, farmers, and shop girls sold in large quantities as
demand and literacy spread.
INK AND PAPER

Letter writing was probably the chief means of communicating by distance:
although the telegraph was available by midcentury, and the telephone by the
1890s, they were expensive and not used for general conversation. The newly
literate could find books with model letters, including letters of thanks, con-
dolences, and even requests for money. The penny stamp introduced in 1840
made letter writing cheap, and people felt freer to converse with longer and
longer letters. The stationer was the chief supplier of things associated with
letter writing, selling paper, ink, steel pens, blotting paper, sealing wax and
wafers to seal the letters, and, in the 1840s, the deeply controversial envelopes,
which were viewed as wasteful or indelicate—fastidious recipients objected the
sender’s saliva on the gummed sealant. Premixed bottled ink was another in-
novation. Traditionally people made their own ink from the “gall” and vinegar,
or bought it from a peddler called an ink-man, who carried powdered ink in a
barrel.
Stationers also did considerable business in art, selling engraving and prints,
and essentially could be said to function as art dealers. They also sold artists’
supplies for the amateur enthusiast. Greeting cards and postcards, too, formed
part of their stock and helped to popularize their use. Charles Dickens’ humor-
ous description of the effects of an early Valentine’s Day card in The Pickwick
Papers may help to date their start:
Mr. Weller should have paused before a small stationer’s and print-seller’s
window; but without further explanation it does appear surprising that
his eyes should have no sooner rested on certain pictures which were
Other Shops 93
exposed for sale therein, than he gave a sudden start, smote his right leg
with great vehemence, and exclaimed, with energy, “if it hadn’t been for
this, I should ha’ forgot all about it, till it was too late!” The particular
picture on which Sam Weller’s eyes were fixed, as he said this, was a
highly-coloured representation of a couple of human hearts skewered
together with an arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire, while a male and
female cannibal in modern attire, the gentleman being clad in a blue coat
and white trousers, and the lady in a deep red pelisse with a parasol of
the same, were approaching the meal with hungry eyes, up a serpentine
gravel path leading thereunto. A decidedly indelicate young gentleman,
in a pair of wings and nothing else, was depicted as superintending the
cooking; a representation of the spire of the church in Langham Place,
London, appeared in the distance; and the whole formed a “valentine,” of
which, as a written inscription in the window testified, there was a large
assortment within, which the shopkeeper pledged himself to dispose of, to
his countrymen generally, at the reduced rate of one-and-sixpence each.5
While these expensive “valentines” were probably out of the reach of most
people, the cost came down by the end of the century. Cards became more
common and more elaborate as inexpensive die-cut and lithographed printed
cards were introduced.
As with many shops in Victorian England, there was considerable crossover
in the retail paper market. A bookseller, stationer, newsagent might all sell
the same things: books, periodicals, paper for writing letters, postcards, diaries,
calendars, ink, pens, pencils, erasers, etc. Newspapers, too, might be carried by
a bookseller or newsagent, or sold on the street. Street sellers sold ink, paper,
greeting cards, and pens for writing. Further complicating the identity of shops
were innovators like Jesse Boot, the chemist who pioneered low-cost drugs at
the end of the century. His chain of shops sold and rented books as well as
selling stationery, postcards, and artists’ materials.
MEDICAL SHOPS
Not surprisingly, medical care in Victorian England varied greatly according
to training, experience, and most importantly, income. As late as the 1880s
when licensing of doctors became standard, it was still possible to be treated by
someone calling themselves “doctor” who had no formal training but a great
deal of experience. Physicians were élite practitioners whose training included
a university degree, and as a result, their fees were higher than most people
could afford.
Most people were treated by apothecaries, who effectively functioned as doc-
tors. They mixed the medicines and also gave medical advice. They could also
get training in surgical techniques and call themselves apothecary-surgeons.
Charles Dickens described a likely scene of emergency health care in The Pick-
wick Papers, where the characters pass “a chemist’s shop, when a drunken
man, who has been run over by a dog-cart in the street, is undergoing a sur-
gical inspection in the back-parlour.”6 Apothecary shops sold both proprietary
medicines made up on the spot and patent medicines, which arrived ready-made
in bottles or boxes.
These patent medicines could be a problematic part of health care, in part
because they were often sold in grocery shops and by newsagents: there was
very limited regulation at first, and fairly strong medicines were sold by shops
without any real sense of their danger. Parliamentary testimony by a chemist
revealed the dangers of patent medicines, including, Godfrey’s Cordial, sold as
a remedy for children. The bottle, which contained opium and treacle, was sold
as a cure for teething pain and digestive problems, although it was very likely
used as a sedative to quiet children by their exhausted mothers or indifferent
babysitters. Children loved Godfrey’s Cordial, but became addicted quite eas-
ily. A London apothecary told the Parliamentary committee that the distinctive
brown bottle with a long neck was a terrible temptation in his shop: children
would grab the bottle, bite off the cork, and down the contents. Another phar-
macist told the committee that mothers often bought the bottle themselves
because their children would down the contents while still in the shop. It was
especially dangerous if children drank the last bit at the bottom of the bottle:
the method for suspending the ingredients in liquid had not been perfected,
and the opium tended to collect in the last few doses. The drink could be toxic,
or at least highly constipating. Not surprisingly, apothecary shops also sold a
variety of medicines to treat constipation in children, including castor oil and
licorice root.
The poor had the least recourse to medical treatment; a few were treated
by the apothecaries who offered reduced rates or hours when they would see
charity patients. Much of their medical care came from the local herbalist, a
more traditional healer whose catalogue of remedies dated to medieval monastic
work on the power of herbs. Herbalists’ training was through an apprenticeship
which taught them what to pick, how to preserve, and how to mix herbs.
Herbalists tended to be popular because they were cheaper than other medical
forms, and the poor and working class patients tended to trust them more than
other medical practitioners.
Jesse Boot was an herbalist who expanded into prescription drugs at very low
cost for working class customers. Boot’s first shop was an interesting transition:
he believed that apothecaries exploited their monopoly on the mixing and
dispensing of prescriptions and kept prices too high for working class customers,
so he hired a chemist to create medicines for his shop. This “chemist’s shop”
approach proved very popular with his working class customers, who also found
a mixture of patent medicines and low-cost household supplies in his shop. He
gradually expanded his shops along the model of the department store: his
Other Shops 95
shops often featured a lending library, cafes, and departments for stationery,
perfumes, and toiletries. Boots the Chemists became one of the largest chains
of drug stores by the end of the century with more than 180 stores across the
country. The firm employed not only an architect to design new stores, but a
team of builders to design and build shop furniture and fittings.
Women could and did practice medicine, but usually in a way different from
men. Only a handful of women became successfully licensed doctors. Women
more commonly practiced medicine as herbalists and midwives. While some
middle class women preferred a doctor to deliver their babies, most working
class and poor women had midwives at their side during delivery. Trained
through several years of apprenticeship to an older practitioner, the midwife
was usually part of her patient’s community and might even be a neighbor.
Midwives’ care included comfort during a long delivery, and support and advice
after the baby was born.
ANIMALS AND PETS

Victorians could be appallingly cruel to animals as demonstrated by the 1835
Martin’s Act, which attempted to protect domesticated animals, and they could
be fairly indulgent and kind. Historians view Martin’s Act, and subsequent
legislations passed throughout the century, as a reflection of a new view on
animals. As urbanization moved more people further from farms and the source
of the meat for their table, their tolerance for violence toward animals declined.
Middle class reformers were motivated further by violent sports using animals,
such as dogfighting and bearbaiting. Overall, and most importantly for the
history of shopping, people in the cities increasingly kept pets.
Almost any small animal could be kept as a pet, including mice, guinea pigs,
squirrels, and birds of all sorts: parakeets, parrots, and macaws. Some animals
were sold on the street, including rabbits, birds, and dogs. Augustus Sala’s ac-
count of London in 1859 wrote a description of the disreputable dog sellers hang-
ing around fashionable Oxford Street, hoping to sell lapdogs to the ladies who
shopped.
Thick-necked and beetle-browed individuals, by courtesy called dog-

fanciers, but who in many cases might with as much propriety answer
to the name of dog-stealers—forbidding-looking gentry, in coats of vel-
veteen, with large mother-o’-pearl buttons, and waistcoats of the neat
and unpretending moleskin - lurk about the kerbs of the purlieus of Re-
gent Street and Waterloo Place (the police drive them away from the
main thoroughfares), with the little “dawgs” they have to sell tucked
beneath their arms, made doubly attractive by much washing with
scented soap, and the further decoration of their necks with pink or blue
ribbons.7
Sala’s customary bitter tone probably does not reflect his sympathy for the
animals but rather his disgust with both the sellers and the buyers of the little
“dawgs.”
More highly prized animals, including those bred for eating, could be bought
from breeders. Breeding and showing animals attracted men from the middle
and working classes, and was one of the more democratic intersections of the
different classes in Victorian England. Considerable professionalism associated
with the development of new breeds and maintaining of the old. This applied to
horses, dogs, pigeons, and surprisingly, chickens. Chickens were especially pop-
ular because their eggs were expensive, and they could be kept by anyone with
a small yard for the chickens to walk and scratch—this included suburbanites
and town dwellers. The last may have been why Mrs. Beeton’s guide explained
how to breed chickens, and informed her readers on the specific breeds, like the
Cochin, introduced from China in the 1840s.
THE COCHIN-CHINA.–About fifteen years ago, the arrival of this dis-

tinguished Asiatic created in England as great a sensation as might be
expected from the landing of an invading host. The first pair that ever
made their appearance here were natives of Shanghai, and were presented
to the queen, who exhibited them at the Dublin poultry-show of 1818.
Then began the “Cochin” furor. As soon as it was discovered, despite the
most strenuous endeavours to keep the tremendous secret, that a certain
dealer was possessed of a pair of these birds, straightway the avenues to
that dealer’s shop were blocked by broughams, and chariots, and hack
cabs, until the shy poulterer had been tempted by a sufficiently high sum
to part with his treasure. Bank-notes were exchanged for Cochin chicks,
and Cochin eggs were in as great demand as though they had been laid
by the fabled golden goose. The reign of the Cochin China was, however,
of inconsiderable duration. The bird that, in 1847, would fetch thirty
guineas, is now counted but ordinary chicken-meat, and its price is regu-
lated according to its weight when ready for the spit. As for the precious
buff eggs, against which, one time of day, guineas were weighed. . . .8
A surprisingly large number of street sellers carried pet foods and pet supplies.
Henry Mayhew listed among his street sellers both sellers of “cats-meat” and
“dogs meat,” or sellers of food for cats and dogs. Sellers also cried collars for
cats and dogs, wicker baskets, and whips for dogs. Songbirds were very popular
pets, and street sellers provided cages and seed as well as the birds themselves.
Birds were so popular that there were taxidermists called “bird stuffers” who
specialized in preserving feathered pets.
Victorian England had a great many working animals, most notably horses
who pulled the trams, the hansom cabs, and private carriages of all descriptions.
Of course, donkeys did some of the pulling. Horses had their own shops, in a
sense: the blacksmith’s shop, which shoed horses along with selling harnesses,
Other Shops 97
bells, and other accoutrements for working animals. London had perhaps the
largest number of tradesmen and professionals catering to these working ani-
mals: there were saddlers for the leather saddles and reins, specialized makers
for bit-spurs, and whip makers, and veterinary surgeons. The last may be some-
thing of an innovation, or an exception—”Surgeon (veterinary)” comes from
the 1879 list of royal warrant holders. Less distinguished animals in villages and
rural areas may have been treated by the local apothecary or surgeon. Knackers
might remove animals to the slaughterhouse.
JEWELERS, GOLDSMITHS, AND SILVERSMITHS

Victorian England was an overall prosperous place, and jewelers found many
ready customers. Then, as now, there were different qualities of jewelry for
different incomes. There were jewelers selling goods of their own manufacture,
and jewelers selling cheap goods created in sweated shops. There were jewels
made of precious stones and metals, and semiprecious stones and plated metals.
There was also a kind of costume jewelry with “paste” stones and base metals.
Women, and some men, tended to wear a great deal of jewelry all at once:
a woman could wear several pins or brooches, bracelets on her arm, pins in
her hair, and several rings, and no one would think it odd. Perhaps it was the
fondness for quantity which made lesser quality acceptable: much of the gold
jewelry worn by Victorian women was nine-karat, meaning only nine parts
gold and fifteen parts another metal.
Victorian women’s jewelry came in many forms still common in the twenty-
first century: earrings, sometimes called ear-drops, rings, large brooches and
pins, chains, and special chains called chatelaines. This last item was a chain
with a ring on the end worn around the waist by important ladies of the
household—the chatelaine, as medieval women might be called—to hold the
keys to important storerooms. Victorian women usually did not need to carry
more than a key or two, so many of the items on their chatelaines were decora-
tive or were related to the sewing that many women did: chatelaines included
a small pair of scissors, a needle case, or perhaps a tiny photograph in a frame.
Men’s jewelry is a little less familiar to us, since most of it had to do with
holding shirts together. Men wore shirt studs to fasten the front of the shirt,
and cuff links to close the cuffs. Wristwatches were being sold by the 1880s,
but not as an accessory for women until the earliest aviators discovered how
useful they were. Men’s watches were worn on a chain looped across the body
and kept in a waistcoat pocket. This meant that men needed a watch and a
watch chain; the latter hung with small keys, and fobs or seals. These last items
were decorative charms with intaglio engraving. Men also wore mourning fobs
containing bits of hair from a deceased loved one. Very fancy men might wear
extra jewelry, including diamond pins on their shirtfronts.
Victorian shoppers could buy their jewelry in a variety of shops ranging from
the humble pawnshop to the more august silversmith’s and goldsmith’s shops,
which tended to carry the highest quality pieces. The pawnshop was a vital
part of poor and working class communities, offering “loans” against jewelry,
clothes, or anything of value. Items not claimed would, of course, be sold. The
goldsmith’s shops might sell finished jewelry as well as unset stones, and create
and repair jewelry. A part of their trade was in resetting inherited or “family”
jewelry which might be unfashionable. Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz had
this interesting observation of a jeweler’s window sign: “A jeweller appeared,
and not content with exposing gilt rings and copper bracelets out of number,
put up an announcement, which still sticks in his window, that ‘ladies’ ears may
be pierced within.’ ”9
Some jewelry was sold on the street at stalls, but shoppers had to be careful: as
the patter of one “cheap jack” seller of miscellaneous goods said, “Here’s a beau-
tiful guard-chain; if it isn’t silver, it’s the same colour—I don’t say it isn’t silver,
nor I don’t say it is—in that affair use your own judgment.”10 The rest of his pat-
ter compared the merits of his chain to that sold in shops: his chain was priced at a
third of the shop’s price, and looked so fine that the wearer “will always be shown
into the parlor instead of the tap-room; into the best pew in church. . . . ”11 Street
goods, unless they were stolen, were unlikely to be hallmarked for their qual-
ity. Gold and silver had been hallmarked or stamped as a guarantee of their
content since the thirteenth century. This mark was also known as an assay
mark, meaning the official smiths had assessed or assayed the purity of the
metal. Platinum was not hallmarked until the late twentieth century.
Silversmiths usually dealt in plate and table pieces including tureens, coffee
and tea services, trays, jugs, and candlesticks. The fondness for the look of silver
on the table meant that Victorians were eager for cheaper substitutes. The most
common of these was Britannia metal, a “white metal” used for inexpensive
serving pieces and tea ware. It could also be used as the base metal for plating, in
which thin coats of silver were applied to a base metal. The new middle classes
also embraced a higher caliber silver plate called Sheffield plate for their serving
pieces. This was a heavier and more durable piece of plate with either thin sheets
of copper and silver joined together, or a “sandwich” of two thin sheets of silver
covering a copper filling, fused together with heat. The Sheffield technique was
developed in the late eighteenth century and was more expensive than Britannia
metal, but less so than pure silver. In the 1840s, an electromagnetic method of
plating metal with silver was developed. This deposited only a very thin layer
of silver, but brought the cost down even further.
TOY SHOPS
For many reasons, toy shops were a development associated with the second
half of the nineteenth century. There were, certainly, a few toy shops before
1837, but they were exceptional, with very small customer bases. And while
there were also toys—dolls, puppets, and tiny versions of drums, for example—
they were either very expensive or very, very cheap, and offered too little
Other Shops 99
profit to support a toy store. Often toys were imported, most commonly from
Germany, which had a long history of toy making. They were either sold in
a special toy shop which catered to rich families, or were so cheap that they
could not form the principle stock of a store, and were sold on the street or as
part of a bigger store’s stock. Haberdashers, for example, often included a small
selection of cheap toys in their stock.
Real dedicated toy shops needed several ideas to come together: first, a new
view of the child as a special person who needed play to develop, and who was
worthy of the expenditure on toys. Second, childhood needed to be viewed as a
separate time of life from adulthood and work: prior to the start of the industrial
age, children of all classes worked from the time they were four or five years old.
They tended flocks of geese, carded wool, or helped their parents by minding
younger siblings. Girls worked alongside their mothers and learned to cook and
weave and make the various products that a preindustrial home needed: bread,
candles, soap, medicines, liquors. Boys worked with their mothers until they
were six or big enough to begin shadowing their fathers, and then they might
be apprenticed a few years later. Historians note that in medieval England,
parents routinely found informal apprenticeships for their daughters and sons
in other people’s households, often the households of the local gentry. The
gentry, too, sent their children to other houses, perhaps those belonging to the
local nobles. Children might be out of their parents’ home for several years
while they waited at tables and learned household manufacturing and farm
skills from other adults. And while medieval households usually had children,
they were usually someone else’s children. There was, therefore, nothing really
traditional at all about the Victorian view of childhood.
This changed in the first part of the nineteenth century when a new view
of the family, inspired in part by the Enlightenment and the writing of Jean
Jacques Rousseau and by the changing industrial economy, began to rewrite
the rules of childhood. Although working class and poor children continued
to work, those of the middle class were treated differently. They were usually
given a few years of schooling, although boys might still be entered into an
apprenticeship in a business or trade when they were in their early teens. They
wore clothing which distinguished them from their parents. They tended to
be treated a little more gently than children of previous generations, although
certainly, parents and teachers still beat their charges. Victorians professed to
adore their children, and gradually special products were developed for them:
toys, furniture, books, and other amusements like plays and pantomimes. Of
course, working class children did not enjoy this kind of childhood, and probably
had only “found” amusements: rag dolls, paper toys, and games, which required
no pieces.
Hamley’s was one of the toy shops which predated the new market for
children’s things. It was established in London in 1803, and sold mostly wooden
toys. Among their early stock was the Noah’s Ark, complete with a set of
wooden animals. Because the toy was based on a story from the Bible, children
in strictly religious homes were allowed to play with it on Sundays when other
toys were off-limits. Later stock included small soldiers made of lead or tin,
rocking horses, wooden puzzles, hoops, dolls with wax or porcelain heads, and
simple like the “Walking Postman.” This toy was a model of a postman pushing
his mail barrow, powered by a rubber band. In 1901, Hanley’s introduced a game
they called Gossima, which caught on with children and adults and eventually
became known as ping-pong.
TOBACCONISTS’ SHOPS
In theory, only men in Victorian England smoked, and smokers were both
privileged and constrained in their habit. Smokers took considerable pains to
make sure they did not smell of smoke: upper class men in particular smoked
while wearing special smoking jackets rather than their regular coats, and wore
special tasseled smoking caps to keep the smell and ash out of their hair. Very
fine houses had special smoking rooms, often decorated on a loosely interpreted
“Turkish” theme with tiled walls, which could easily be washed.
Men without smoking rooms might do their smoking outside after dark—
it was not acceptable to smoke in the street when people could see you—
and etiquette books insisted they should not smoke around women, nor ask
the women to smoke with them. Men had special places where they could
smoke—their clubs, for example, or public houses, depending upon their class.
For readers of Conan Doyle’s The Man with the Twisted Lip, the following
description of Sherlock Holmes at rest must have been the epitome of the
masculine privilege of smoking:
With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched

himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches
laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there,
an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner
of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless,
with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.12
Tobacconists’ shops sold a variety of tobacco products, but their primary stock
was probably loose tobacco for pipes and cigarettes, kept in airtight canisters to
keep the different blends and cuts fresh. The tobacco might arrive in the shop
in blocks, which the tobacconist would shred or cut and blend into different
mixtures. They also sold pipes made of briar, clay, or meerschaum, a white
mineral which darkened with smoking. Cigars were another standard of the
shop, also available in different grades and blends. Cigars had their own range
of accessories sold by the tobacconist, including cases, holders, and cutters for
removing the end of the cigar. Tobacconists might also sell both the papers and
the tobacco for making cigarettes, although it seems that that new cigarettes
were not really popular until the last part of the century. An older tobacco
Other Shops 101
product, snuff, was still available, although perhaps of declining popularity. It

was inhaled through the nose and caused the user to sneeze. By the end of the
century, it was bought primarily by elderly snuff takers who had developed the
habit in their youth.
Tobacconists also sold smoking accoutrements, including pouches for loose
tobacco, canisters or jars with tightly fitting lids to store the tobacco, pipes, and
matches. Competing inventers had been trying to come up with the optimum
chemical compound for match heads—matches which were likely to ignite when
struck but not so volatile as to burst into flames while still in pocket. Popular
“Lucifer” matches were invented in the 1830s; they had a wax protective coating
on the head of chloride of potash, and ignited when struck against a rough
surface.
DINING OUT: CLUBS, TEA SHOPS, AND RESTAURANTS

Although there had been inns and places for the traveler to dine for centuries,
the expansion of shopping and travel in the second half of the nineteenth century
caused a surge of places where people, especially women, might rest or have
a meal. These new places—women’s clubs, tea rooms, restaurants, and public
lavatories—developed because middle class women were anxious about being in
public unescorted. Department stores provided middle class women with a safe
space: restaurants and lavatories were inside the building, and once inside, the
shopper need not leave until her excursion was done. The male shop assistants
were deferential, and male shoppers were elsewhere: most multistorey shops
placed their men’s departments on the first floor so that men had no reason to
enter the exclusively female enclaves on the upper floors.
A woman of means might belong to a club. Late century women’s clubs were
modeled on men’s clubs, offering members meals, a place to rest or even stay
overnight, read the papers and write letters, and place to meet other like-minded
women. Some were more political, some were more social and there were clubs
of every sort in between. Appealing mainly to middle class women, many clubs
were started in the 1880s, and their popularity extended well into the twentieth
century.
Tea shops were restaurants featuring tea and snacks which originated as an
alternative to the public house. Tea shops became very popular in the 1880s,
benefiting from the women’s expanding role in public life, the growth of shop-
ping, and the declining price of tea. The tea shops of the 1880s had some
overlap with the older confectioner’s shop in terms of menu and service, but
confectioners’ shops tended to have higher prices and more elite customers.
The tea shop offered middle class female shoppers, and in some establishments,
working class shop girls, a place to rest and have a quick meal. A number of
tea shops in London were owned and operated by women, and servers were
usually female. Male customers were served in tea shops, but men had many
more options for dining, including pubs. Tea shop customers were most likely
female, and women felt comfortable in this largely female environment. The
menus tended to be simple, featuring buns, cakes, and sandwiches and other
easily prepared and inexpensive foods along with pots of tea. Hotels and larger
department stores offered tearooms inside their establishments to compete with
the popular tea shops.
Tea shops were very popular, and several national chains were developed to
serve the needs of workers, shoppers, and travelers. The shops were far less
luxurious than the tearooms offered in the great department stores, but they
catered to a time-pressed population. The Aerated Bread Company began a
chain of A.B.C. Tea Shops in 1880, serving the lower paid shop and clerical
workers. In 1894, the Lyons Company opened their first tea shop in London,
with seventeen shops by 1896.
Restaurants were traditionally a male space, and women did not dine out in
public unless they traveled. Poor and working-class women were not limited in
this way, but middle class women, if they dined out in public, had to be escorted
by a husband or male relative. Often they were seated in a room separated from
other diners with its own entrance, or in a part of the dining room marked
off from the common area. A visitors’ guide to London from 1879 offered this
advice:
Ladies shopping without an escort, and requiring luncheon, can safely visit
any of the great restaurants—care being taken to avoid passing through a
drinking bar. In some cases a separate room is set apart for lades, but there
is practically no reason why the public room should be avoided. At some
of the great “omnium gatherum” shops, and at institutions such as South
Kensington and the Royal Academy, luncheon can be obtained while
several confectioners at the West-end particularly study the comfort of
ladies.13
The Dorothy Restaurant, owned and run by women exclusively for women,
was very much the exception. Opened in 1888 in London—and with a second
restaurant opened the following year—it offered breakfast, lunch, and dinner
at reasonable rates to shop assistants, office workers, and students.
At the end of the century there were a number of other new shops selling a
variety of cooked foods meant to be taken home and eaten, much on the model
of earlier fish and chip shops. These included sandwich shops and delicatessens
selling imported meats, chop shops, eel pie shops, beefsteak pie shops, and
oyster shops. Street sellers changed their wares with the seasons: warm weather
brought carts selling small glass “penny licks” of ice cream and gelato.
STILL MORE SHOPS

People of all classes had access to more shops than those described here. We
know, for example, that poorer neighborhoods had more casual “shops,” often
Other Shops 103
just the front room and a window of a family’s house. This shop could sell
goods created in the family’s kitchen—candy, cider, baked goods—or it might
be a place for the family to sell the birds or rabbits they bred, or the used clothes
they had collected. For many poor and working people, street selling was still
a more common way to shop than visiting an actual shop. Everything could be
bought from a street seller: firewood, scissors, playing cards, and penny toys.
Better off neighborhoods could support a greater range of shops with more
purposeful premises: barbers, hairdressers, printers, and coachbuilders, whose
goods and services made middle class life more comfortable.
7
Services
“Well;—I will be in earnest. I shall take the first that comes after I have
quite made up my mind. You’ll think it very horrible, but that is really
what I shall do. After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse.
You don’t take your house because it’s the best house in the world, but
because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it’s
very nasty you don’t take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and
if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it. That’s the
way one buys one’s horses,—and one’s husbands.”1
—Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn
Households at all levels of society depended on a myriad of services in order

to function. Some of these services were traditional, predating industrialization
and continuing through the century. Providers included dustmen (who carried
away the trash and ashes from the fireplace), porters (whose job might include
lifting and loading of carts as well as building security), builders, and delivery-
men. Others services were more transitional, providing services, which clearly
echoed older services yet were changed by technology, like the photographer
who replaced the portrait painter. Some services were transitional because of
their increasingly democratic availability: the Post Office, for example, provided
mail delivery, savings accounts, and insurance, previously available only to the
rich and powerful. Certain professions like doctors and lawyers also expanded
their customer base, becoming on occasion available to the middle and working
classes. Finally, there were services that had no real counterpart in preindustrial
England, like those of travel agents and the newspaper journalists.
Services 105
GETTING AROUND: TRANSPORTATION AND TRAVEL

From short journeys across the city to larger trips across the globe, travel and
tourism played an increasingly large role in everyday life. The middle classes
embraced new ideas about travel as an appropriate use of time and resources.
Better mass transportation aided working class commuting—in a sense, this
was a service they bought—and it allowed shoppers with the means to move
outside their normal orbit of local stores to visit.
Sedan chairs are a good example of a traditional service which did not disap-
pear with the start of the industrial age. The sedan chair provided a way to avoid
the dirt and dangers of the street, and its origins may be traced back to ancient
societies. By the eighteenth century, it was an enclosed box about the size of a
telephone booth or a very small closet. A small door allowed the passenger to
climb inside and be seated. Some chairs were open, allowing the passenger to
talk to passersby, while others had glass windows enclosing the compartment.
The sedan was carried by two chairmen, one in front and one behind, who lifted
the chair using poles and walked or jogged their passenger through narrow city
streets or traffic. Elizabeth Gaskell’s village of Cranford had enough delicate
inhabitants to support a pair of part-time chairmen:
Not long after this the maids and the lanterns were announced. Mrs
Jamieson had the sedan-chair, which had squeezed itself into Miss
Barker’s narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally “stopped
the way.” It required some skilful manoeuvring on the part of the old
chairmen (shoemakers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan
dressed up in a strange old livery-long great-coats, with small capes,
coeval with the sedan, and similar to the dress of the class in Hog-
arth’s pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally to
succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker’s front door. Then
we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street as we put
on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering about
us with offers of help, which, if she had not remembered her former
occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more
pressing.2
Chair and “drivers” could be hired by the day or for a specific trip, and although
often an uncomfortably bumpy ride, the sedan chair provided an alternative to
walking.
In the early part of the century, most long-distance travel was by coach.
Coaches were heavy, closed carriages drawn by teams of four or more horses.
Travel was slow along most routes, averaging about ten miles an hour, or about
the speed of a recreational bike ride. The coaches also made regular stops at
coaching inns to change horses and to give the passengers a chance to rest and
eat. A more expensive route was to book a seat on a Royal Mail carriage: only
four passengers were allowed to ride with the mail, and the high cost of the
ticket eliminated all but the most well-off passengers.
Whether in the city or in rural areas, most people simply walked to reach
their destinations. Some walked because there were no alternatives, and they
regularly walked distances, which would seem intolerable today. Farm workers
might walk several miles from their homes to the farms where they worked.
Factory workers who needed to live close enough to hear the factory bell prob-
ably had the shortest commute, but walked for their shopping and recreation.
Some workers’ routes varied with the job: construction workers, for example,
and railway navvies had workplaces that changed location, and might walk
several miles each way, every day.
For shoppers in London or any large city, leaving the neighborhood for
shopping depended on access to some form of mass transit. Early forms of
mass transit were drawn by horses, but they were expensive and most people
could not afford them for regular daily travel or regular shopping. Horse-drawn
vehicles of all sizes—omnibuses, hackneys, cabs, carriages, and carts—moved
through the streets of larger cities, and by the 1860s, cities also had horse-
drawn tramways, which ran on rails embedded in the street. By the early
1880s, those same trams were powered by overhead electrical lines, and the fare
was eventually lowered to a few pence. The first underground railway system
opened in 1863 in London, eventually allowing travel at a penny each way.
A fast but expensive way to travel in the city was the hansom cab, a generic
term for a lightweight two-wheeled carriage, usually small enough to be pulled
by a single horse. A small, open passenger compartment balanced over the
wheels with the driver riding high behind the compartment: the passenger
could tap on the roof get the attention, and he would open a small door on
the roof to take their directions. Very wealthy people might keep a horse and
carriage of some description—phaeton, trap, landau—but they also needed to
add the cost of paying a coachman to drive and a footman to ride on the back or
run along side the coach. This was on top of the considerable cost of stabling the
horses. It could be cheaper to hire a carriage and driver by the day or journey.
Cities and even most small towns offered public stables, but this, too, was often
more than most people could afford for daily transportation.
Rural shoppers used trains to get to major cities for shopping, and eventually
many large city shops offered mail order services with purchases sent by train.
The first train lines in England were created in the 1830s, financed by private
companies who built according to their own specifications. Gauges, or the dis-
tance between rails, were not standardized at first, which meant that goods and
passengers needed to be unloaded to switch from one line to the next. The
1840s saw the further expansion of the railways as society—and investors—
grew more confident about the technology, and travel by rail became a regular
part of middle class life. Railway gauges were largely standardized by this time
and the cars were enclosed and made more comfortable. People of means began
to travel more regularly, and could afford to travel daily to work. As more lines
Services 107
were built, they encouraged the development of suburbs, and more suburbs
fed the further expansion of train lines. Railways began to offer specialized
compartments, which reflected the sensibilities of the time: a smoker’s car for
men; a separate ladies’ car for women traveling alone; and separate first- and
second-class cars. By the second half of the century, almost every town in Eng-
land was served by rail or was within the orbit of a town, which was served by
rail.
Water travel also experienced a progression of changes, which further helped
to make tourism a part of life for the top third of society. Regular passenger
service across the Atlantic Ocean began in 1818 using clipper ships, which were
very fast sailing ships with multiple masts, large square sails, and long thin
hulls. Introduced in the early part of the nineteenth century, clippers did not
have much cargo space but were fast enough to make a profit with certain high-
markup goods, like tea or spice. Passengers, too, would pay for the chance to
travel fairly quickly across the globe, and the extraordinary speed of the ships
often made front-page news. From the late 1820s to the 1850s, clippers were
the best means of traveling to distant parts of the empire: early steam ships
could not travel further than their coal reserves could carry them. Even after
steam engines became more efficient, certain important parts of the empire
were still connected to England by these elegant and fast-moving sailing ships.
Eventually, the practice of stockpiling large quantities of coal and water for the
ships made the clipper obsolete except for competitive sailing.
Two great forces put passengers on these new ships: the need to reach imperial
outposts, and the growing demand for tourism. From India to New Zealand,
ships carried a steady stream of passengers outbound for empire or coming
“home” to England. Passengers might include men traveling out alone to Cey-
lon (Sri Lanka) to fill a government post, or a child traveling back to England
from Hong Kong to be educated. In the later part of the century, the trip could
be quick (only seventeen days, from England to India) and reasonably safe and
comfortable. Travel that was both reliable and comfortable fed the demand for
tourism and further fed the demand for steam ships.
Tourism, or travel for any number of purposes including education, enjoy-
ment, relaxation, and health, really began before the start of the Victorian era.
In the eighteenth century, English families with the means to do so sent their
sons to Europe on a “grand tour” to see the sights, learn some history, and col-
lect a few interesting artifacts. In the early nineteenth century, in part because
the Napoleonic Wars made Europe a little less desirable as a destination, people
of means were more likely to travel within England to spas or to visit family.
By the 1840s, the train allowed the middle classes to enjoy pleasure travel as
well. Elite travelers had the means to travel in small, private groups, to draw
up their own itinerary and pay for the expertise of local guides. Middle-class
travelers needed more: they needed to be told what was worth seeing, and they
needed cost-effective and comprehensive way to see the sights. The printed
travel guide and the professional travel agent aided them in their quest.
There were many travel guides for the early Victorian tourist to choose.
Among the first were the Murray’s Handbooks, which first appeared in 1836,
offered the new tourist insight and history along with more pragmatic infor-
mation. One of the most popular guides was the Baedeker series first published
in Prussia. The books were pocket-sized, distinctively bound in red leather
with gold lettering, and offered the tourist a list of important buildings, mon-
uments, specifics on hotels, transportation, prices for meals, and other things
that the budget-conscious tourist might need to know. A system of stars rated
establishments for their service.
London was always an important destination, and travelers of every sort
could choose from hundreds of city guidebooks to see what they should see.
One midcentury guide, The Handbook of London, opened with a list of “Places
which a stranger in London must see.” The book then broke the sights into
categories according to the traveler’s interests:
THE PAINTER AND CONNOISSEUR SHOULD

ENDEAVOUR TO SEE:
National Gallery. Queen’s collection at Buckingham Palace . . .
Grosvenor Gallery.Duke of Sutherland’s Murillos; Earl of Arundel, by
Van Dyck . . . The Holbein, at Barber-Surgeons’ hall. The Holbein, at
Bridewell. . . .
THE ARCHITECT SHOULD SEE:
GOTHIC. The Norman Chapel, in the Tower. The Norman Crypt,
under the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. . . .
RENAISSANCE. Holland House, Kensington. . . .
The following works, by INIGO JONES: Banqueting House, White-
hall. . . .
The following works, by Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN: St. Paul’s. . . .
The following works, by GIBBS: St. Martins-in-the-Fields. . . .
By NASH: Regent-street. . . .
THE SCULPTOR SHOULD SEE:
The Elgin, Phigalian, Townley, and other marbles, in the British
Museum.
The marbles at Lansdowne House.
The bas-relief, by Michael Angelo, at the Royal Academy. . . .
THE ARCHAEOLOGIST AND ANTIQUARY SHOULD SEE:
The British Museum. The Tower. Westminster Abbey, &c.
The Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, at Somerset House.
The remains of London Wall. London Stone. . . . 3
The Guide imagined groups of middle class tourists with specific professional
and personal interests and the time and means for travel and enrichment.
Services 109
London had always been an important place for tourism, but the Great Exhi-
bition of 1851 convinced a broader range of first-generation tourists, especially
drawn from the upper reaches of the working classes, to venture to the capital.
The first travel agent was also, perhaps, the most prolific. This was Thomas
Cook, a Baptist cabinetmaker who ventured into the world of organized group
travel in July 1841. His first trip was an eleven-mile junket to a Temperance
meeting, offered at the rate of one shilling, which included the train ticket,
food, and entertainment. Within five years, Cook had abandoned cabinetmak-
ing and began booking passengers on trips to Wales and later Scotland. He
worked with the railway companies and hotels to offer lower travel prices with
group rates. Later innovations included traveler’s checks and cycling tours:
the tourist cycled a certain amount each day, certain that their luggage would
meet them at the hotel at the end of the day. Cook’s travel packages were ex-
tended to the better paid part of the working classes, who were offered group
excursions to the French seaside and the Great Exhibition. Cook popularized
the idea of travel as much as travel itself. By the end of the century, short
trips to the seaside, or “blow by the briny,” were immensely popular, aided
by cheap day rates offered by railways, and within the reach of many working
class budgets.
COMMUNICATION SERVICES
The General Post Office, a government department established in the sev-
enteenth century, was an excellent example of a transitional service. From the
early eighteenth century, the Post Office allowed people to send letters through
the Royal Mail, a system of regularly scheduled four-horse coaches, which
could also take passengers. By the early nineteenth century, the Royal Mail
had its own coaches and drivers in black and gold uniforms. This early sys-
tem was somewhat cumbersome and expensive: people dropped a letter at a
postal office, or if they were outside London, a coaching inn where the Royal
Mail coaches made regular stops. From there the letters were directed to the
appropriate coach from a central sorting station in London. Each letter had to
be tracked as it made its way through the system, which charged by the mile
and the number of sheets of paper. The system was also somewhat unreliable:
packages and letters could be stolen or misrouted, the mail coaches were targets
for robbery, and were often delayed. The recipient, not the sender, was charged,
adding a measure of inconvenience to an already expensive proposition. Even
the use of trains to move mail in 1830 did not lower the costs to consumers.
This changed in 1840 with the Royal Mail’s three-part innovation called the
“Penny Post.” First, the Penny Post offered a universal rate of one penny per
half-ounce of mail, usually enough for a letter and an envelope; second, the new
rules eventually established that the sender, not the recipient, should pay the
costs; and lastly, the Penny Post required the use first of a prepaid envelope, and
then later a small paper stamp, called the Penny Black, to collect the cost. The
Penny Post revolutionized the mails, making mail service cheaper and more
reliable. More people began to write regular letters, or have letter written for
them. Despite the rise in postal business it took more than thirty years for
the new Penny Post to make as much profit as the system had made before its
adaptation.
Beginning in the 1850s, people could mail their letters with the penny
stamp—by now a red stamp which made it easier to see the cancellation marks—
in pillar boxes inspired by similar boxes used in France. Novelist Anthony
Trollope, then working for the Post Office, recommended adoption of a “letter-
receiving pillar” to his superiors. The first boxes were made according to the
direction of local authorities and their appearance varied: they were usually
round, about four feet high, and sometimes with a fluted surface. They seem to
have been made of cast metal and painted dark colors. People complained that
the pillar boxes were ugly, so Parliament studied the problem. In 1857, the
Committee for Science & Art of the House of Lords designed a new pillar box
that was attractive, but the design omitted the slot for depositing mail: local
postal authorities had to cut out a slot, which ruined the look of the pillar. From
1859 to 1874, these boxes were probably pained a dark green color, which made
them too easy to miss. Starting in 1874, boxes were painted a bright red color.
Later boxes were hexagonal shape, with elaborate flower-like tops.
Delivery, too, was improved with trains: a special car on the train carried
the bulk of the mail to the appropriate region, and provided space where postal
employees could further sort the mail. Mail was carried to rural areas, but the
level of service was quite different from that of large cities. In rural areas, people
might have to stop at their local post office to collect their mail; often this post
office might be within the confines of another shop, and could be part of the
day’s shopping. In large cities like London, people might enjoy mail delivery as
many as eleven times a day, from the early morning to the early evening. Even
small towns offered daily delivery, including delivery on Sunday. By the end
of the century the system was wonderfully efficient. People could send a dinner
invitation in the morning mail, receive an answer in the late afternoon, and
still have enough time to arrange a dinner party for that evening. People grew
accustomed to this level of service and complained when a letter sent across
London in the morning did not arrive by evening.
The telegraph was invented in the 1840s, and its early work was associated
with the coordination of the trains. It did not become a common method for
personal communication until the 1850s, in part due to high costs but also
because letters filled most people’s needs. The two (letters and the Post Office)
were joined when the Post Office took over most telegraph companies in 1868.
Based on the Post Office’s monopoly on individual person-to-person commu-
nications it acquired the right to buy out private telegraph companies in that
year. By 1870, telegraph service reached almost all of Britain when the local post
office combined the two services, offering free delivery of telegrams within a
Services 111
three-mile distance of the post office. Flora Thompson’s description of a late-

century telegraph machine in Lark Rise to Candleford revealed the complexity
of the service.
The telegraph instrument had been installed in the parlour, where its
scientific-looking white dials and brass trimmings looked strikingly mod-
ern against Miss Lane’s old rosewood and mahogany furniture. It was
what was known as the ABC type of instrument, now long superseded
even in such small offices by the telephone. But it served well in its day,
being easy to learn and reliable in working. Larger and busier offices had
Sounder and Single Needle instruments, worked by the Morse code and
read by sound. The ABC was read by sight. A handle, like that of a coffee
mill, guided a pointer from letter to letter on a dial which had the alphabet
printed around it, clockwise, and this cam out and was read on a smaller
dial at the other end of the circuit. Surround the operating dial were brass
studs, or keys, one for each letter, and the operator, turning the handle
with one hand, depressed the keys with the finger of the other, and by so
doing spelt out the words of a telegram. A smaller dial above, known as
the “receiver,” recorded incoming messages.4
The message was written out on an official telegram form by the telegraph
operator and carried by hand to its recipient. The Post Office offered additional
services: in 1861, savings accounts were added, allowing poor people to save
small amounts and have that money guaranteed against bank failure. In 1864,
they could buy modest life insurance policies. The post office directory, which
looked like a primitive form of telephone directory, was an important service for
finding individual and business. Of course, the first telephone directories also
had no telephone numbers: the first directory for London issued in 1880 had
only 250 names, and no telephone numbers: picking up the phone connected
you with an operator, who then connected you to the address you wanted.
The telegraph was also a vital resource for the press, bringing news faster
than it could be carried by other means. In August 1844, the first news story
based on news given by telegraph appeared in The Times: this was a news on
the birth of Queen Victoria’s second son. In 1851, a cable connection to France
allowed England to tap into the continental telegraph network in time for news
of the Crimean War to be reported using these rapid dispatches. Journalist
Henry Mayhew reflected on life in the age of the telegraph, calling it “nerve-
like wires that carry our wishes from one Corner of the land to the other with
the same marvellous instantaneousness as our muscles act in obedience to our
will.”5
The newspaper had been, in a general sense, a part of English life since
the seventeenth century, but circulation of early papers was limited. High
publication costs, limited literacy, and a sense that “news” meant only political
news kept most people away from the daily papers. People routinely “clubbed”
together to buy a subscription to a paper and then circulated each issue among
them. Historians see the repeal of the Stamp tax in August 1855 as the first
important step in the development of the modern popular press. This, coupled
with the expanded use of the steam-powered press, paved the way for cheap
daily newspapers. The first of these, the Daily Telegraph, began publication
only a month after the tax was withdrawn, selling for a penny. Newspaper
technologies expanded, allowing better quality picture reproduction, and the
eventual use of photographs.
This shift toward a popular press changed the look of newspapers: by the
1890s, the news had replaced advertising on the first page, except in The Times.
News was more broadly defined to include interviews, coverage of regular as
well as special sporting events, war news, and coverage of murders and other
crimes. More titles sprang up to serve different types of readership: over four
hundred papers were in publication in London in the last quarter of the century.
Many of these were newspapers in the strict sense, while others were dedicated
to sports, financial and trade interests, or were religious papers.
Magazines were another important source of reading material available to all
but the poorest people by the second half of the century. Working class readers
could usually afford the cheap weekly papers with their sensational stories and
pictures of royalty. For middle class readers, the major novels of the age were
first available in serialized form, published weekly or monthly. Reading a long
novel on the installment system like this might take months or even several
years.
Readers could increasingly get their books from libraries as the number of
libraries expanded throughout the century aided by the falling price of printed
matter and a genuine philanthropic desire to improve people by making them
readers. Readers with means could join one of two types of libraries. The first
was a traditional subscription library, where subscribers with similar interests
raised money to purchase books of a particular type, such as a group which
chose books on political economy or science. The lending or circulating library
catered to middle class tastes allowed people to rent books after paying a high
initial fee of a guinea to join plus the cost of renting the books. This initial fee—
which was a month’s salary to a shop assistant—put most circulating libraries
outside the reach of the workers. While this was a cost-effective way to get
books—a three-volume novel cost a guinea and a half—it was still beyond the
reach of most poorer readers. The most famous library of this type was Mudie’s
Circulating Library, which opened in 1842. By midcentury it had over a million
titles kept in circulation by visitors to its London location and branches, and
by sending books by train to its readers across England. The working classes,
too, had their lending libraries, usually operating as a small division of a larger
store, like the book rentals offered by Boots the Chemist and the bookseller
W.H. Smith.
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HOUSES: BUYING, BUILDING, AND HEATING

Houses were an important consideration for the half of the population—the
better-off workers and the middle classes—who had the means to furnish their
houses, and spend time in them. Home was the embodiment of family and
status.
THE word “home” has in our language a force and a beauty which it
scarcely has in any other, and which makes it pleasant to the cars of every
Englishman. The house is not the whole of home, but, inasmuch as a
good and comfortable and well-ordered house contributes greatly to the
happiness of home, we propose to say something upon that subject. At
one time or another it is the lot of most of us to have to seek a house as
our place of residence, and also to deal with inconveniences in our actual
dwellings.6
The home mattered, and people with the means to do so made extraordinary
efforts to keep it in good repair. This required the services of a number of
professionals, beginning with the process of getting a home.
Most people in Victorian England rented rather than owned their houses.
Leases could be as long as ninety-nine years and in a sense, the householder
owned the lease rather than the house itself. The lease could also be transferred
before its term was up. House agents, like modern realtors, could act for the
owner or for the prospective tenant. The house agent could help a prospective
tenant find a house, and could help to navigate the various hazards of a new
house: unhealthy soil, poor drainage, or a faulty foundation. Household guides
were insistent that the interior and hidden parts of the house be examined by a
professional, and the builder and surveyor were frequently named for the work.
Even newly constructed houses presented dangers: they could be shoddily built,
or built of rotten materials, recovered from old houses. Buyers were told to be
especially cautious of the paperwork associated with tenancy, as they could be
liable for money owed by a previous tenant.
Few men will venture to purchase a freehold, or even a leasehold prop-

erty, by private contract, without making themselves acquainted with the
locality, and employing a solicitor to examine the titles . . . The laws of
purchase and sale of property are so complicated that Lord St. Leonards
devotes five chapters of his book on Property Law to the subject. The
only circumstances strong enough to vitiate a purchase, which has been
reduced to a written contract, is proof of fraudulent representation as to
an encumbrance of which the buyer was ignorant, or a defect in title;
but every circumstance which the purchaser might have learned by care-
ful investigation, the law presumes that he did know. Thus, in buying
a leasehold estate or house, all the covenants of the original lease are
presumed to be known. “It is not unusual,” says Lord St. Leonards, “to
stipulate, in conditions of sale of leasehold property, that the production
of a receipt for the last year’s rent shall be accepted as proof that all the
lessor’s covenants were performed up to that period. Never bid for one
clogged with such a condition. There are some acts against which no relief
can be obtained . . . And you should not rely upon the mere fact of the
insurance being correct at the time of sale: there may have been a prior
breach of covenant, and the landlord may not have waived his right of
entry for the forfeiture.” And where any doubt of this kind exists, the
landlord should be appealed to.7
Clearly, finding a home was not a job for amateurs. The middle classes were
oddly restless people and seem to have moved often, sometimes even for a
season or two. They were highly conscious of the economy of their moves,
often subletting their rented homes when they spent a season elsewhere. An
inventory taken by a valuer helped owners keep track of their household goods
when they moved houses, even if for a short time.
While the poor and working classes were limited in their choice of houses
and neighborhoods, household guides begged middle class householders to be
very meticulous. They were urged to survey not only the house, but also the
neighborhood including the shops, the quality or absence of local utilities, and
even the air and the view. Householders knew that these were the things they
leased along with their house.
Builders provided householders with several important services, including
original construction, remodeling, and repair work. They represented several
different types of workers and craftsmen, including plumbers, bricklayers, car-
penters, coppersmiths, and painters. They supervised the introduction of new
technologies into the house, such as plumbing and gas lighting. This description
of a house renovation conveys the swirl of activity associated with building:
There was a labyrinth of scaffolding raised all round the house, from the
basement to the roof. Loads of bricks and stones, and heaps of mortar,
and piles of wood, blocked up half the width and length of the broad
street at the side. Ladders were raised against the walls; labourers were
climbing up and down; men were at work upon the steps of the scaffolding;
painters and decorators were busy inside; great rolls of ornamental paper
were being delivered from a cart at the door; an upholsterer’s waggon
also stopped the way; no furniture was to be seen through the gaping
and broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing but workmen, and
the implements of their several trades, swarming from the kitchens to the
garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons:
hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and trowel: all at work together, in
full chorus!8
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There were also men derided as “speculative builders” who built subdivisions
for quick resale or rent. Given the housing boom of the second half of the
century, it is not surprising that household guides warned against their shoddy
practices: substituting rubble for fill under the foundation, selling houses before
they were finished, etc.
Victorian homes were dependent on coal for their heating and cooking. Coal
was extensively mined in deep shafts running for miles underground: contem-
poraries describe coal seams so deep it took hours to reach collier railway. About
a third of all that was pulled from the ground was used for cooking and heat-
ing in homes. Coal was a problematic fuel: it solved the fuel shortage problem
caused by deforestation, but led to massive air pollution problems inside and
outside. The chimney of a house, or chimneys as was more common, gathered
a thick crust of soot, which had to be scraped, or it would catch fire. Cleaning
chimneys required the services of a chimney sweep and his team of “climbing
boys,” although this dangerous child labor was made criminal in 1840 and more
effectively eliminated by high fines in 1864. Despite the pollution caused by
coal burning, Victorians embraced it.
I AM sitting by my sea-coal fire, and, from the clear way in which it

burns, and the peculiarly pleasant warmth it seems to give out, I have
every reason to believe that the thermometer is below the freezing point,
that the ground is hard as iron, and that before to-morrow’s sun rises,
Jack Frost will not only have lavishly strewn the earth with pearls, but
have sketched fairy landscapes innumerable on my window-panes. Ah,
well, it matters little to me . . . 9
The coal, which was small and irregularly shaped, was poured into a basket-like
bin called a grate, which sat in the fireplace or hearth. The coal grate could be
purchased at an ironmonger’s shop, and it was polished daily to keep it from
rusting.
Coal for the household was bought from a coal merchant, who bid for the
coal from a coal factor. Usually, it was bought by the ton or hundredweight,
written “cwt,” which was 112 pounds of coal, or approximately 50 kilograms
in the modern metric system. There were enough coal merchants at the end
of the century for families to shop around for the best rate. In the first half of
the century, coal was commonly brought across large distances by ships sailing
along the coast and unloaded at port cities by men called coal heavers. The coal
was unloaded from the ships and bid on by the coal merchants. Men called coal
porters filled the wagons with coal at the merchants’ site at the wharves, and
then delivered the coal to the customers, heaving it from the wagon to the coal
cellar of the house. Later the process involved unloading coal from trains and
then onto wagons for delivery. Once inside the house, a bucket called a scuttle
was used to carry the coal to the individual rooms.
STAFFING THE HOME: SERVANTS

Most homes in England had no servants at all: historians estimate that at
most, a quarter to a third of the population was middle class and earned enough
to keep servants. However, this required several qualifications: not all members
of the middle class kept servants, and most were made do with one or possibly
two. Some middle class households, perhaps in the more tenuous lower reaches
of the class, had no servants and might rely on the work of daughters to help
run the household. Poor and working-class parents relied on their children to
work as servants: very young girls were important as baby-minders and older,
stronger girls helped with cleaning, cooking, and washing. They might also
pay an older neighbor to watch their babies: child minders were a vital form of
service for working mothers.
Bigger households employed different types of servants on a regular basis,
depending on the size and scope of the household. Truly grand households
could have dozens of servants, including one set of servants for both the fam-
ily’s country estate and city home. Some of these servants would travel with
the family from one house to the other, leaving the rest behind to live on
“board wages.” The number of servants people employed was closely tied to
income, and a minimum income of about £200 was required to keep a sin-
gle servant. This income included men at the bottom of the middle class and
the highly skilled and well-paid members of the upper working class. Beyond
a maid to help with cleaning, the number of servants employed was a mat-
ter of choice and circumstance. Did the family have children and require a
nurse and nursery maid? Did they have a large house and a large family,
and require a housekeeper to organize the work of many servants? Did they
keep a horse and carriage? Keeping a horse was expensive because it could
require a male servant to do no other work than to drive the carriage, and
feed, groom, and care for the horses. His work might be aided by employing
a boy or young men to do the dirty work of mucking out the stalls and pol-
ishing the carriage, saddles, bits, and reins. If the family entertained regularly,
they probably had a cook and perhaps a scullery maid to help with the dirty
work.
Guided by their husband’s income and the portion of it allotted to housekeep-
ing, women were expected to hire and supervise domestic servants. Servants
could be hired in several ways. There were agencies which helped employers
looking for a specific type of servant, such as a cook, a nursery maid, or a
lady’s maid. In the later part of the century, people looking for work as servants
placed advertisements called “small ads” in newspapers, calling for “situations
wanted.” Charles Dickens’ 1879 London guide advised, “Servants vary even
more than most commodities. The best way to get one is to select from the
advertisements in the daily papers.”10 Employers, too, could advertise for the
specific servant they needed: governesses, maids, groomsmen, footmen, butlers,
Services 117
nurse and nursery maid, housekeepers, cooks, stewards. Servants were expected
to supply a written reference regarding their skills, work ethic, and personal
character. The last requirement, which prospective employers were urged to
scrutinize very carefully, shows that employing servants was somewhat prob-
lematic: they were often strangers, yet lived with the family, and had access to
all parts of the house and its treasures.
In 1830, approximately one out of every five workers was employed as
a servant, and most were women. Most of the people employed as domes-
tic servants were women, although male servants enjoyed greater status and
generally higher wages: Beeton’s Book of Household Management lists the
salary range for a “man cook” as being £20–40, while his female counterpart
earned only £13–30.11 Some male servants did work comparable to their fe-
male counterparts, like the valet whose work complimented that of the female
maid: brushing his master’s clothes, cleaning his shoes, trimming his hair, and
generally keeping his wardrobe in good order. Others worked in parts of the
household reserved to male servants, such as the stable. Nevertheless, male
servants, however impressive, were also viewed as troublesome: household
guidebooks emphasize their reputation for being lazy, drinkers, heavy eaters,
and most troubling, insolent.
Just over half of all women who worked for wages did so as servants. Factory
work ran a close second, and competition for labor from factories, stores, and
offices increased throughout the century. By 1900, the number of all workers
who were domestic servants had fallen to just over one in ten as competition for
workers in other trades and services increased. Several factors explain the decline
of domestic service. First, servants’ salaries were usually not very generous and
tended to remain low. Factories and stores paid more, and offered a greater
amount of freedom. Servants were commonly paid only once a year, which was
far less attractive than weekly wages offered for factory work. Second, most
servants lived in their employer’s home, which meant eighteen hour of work in
a day and a perpetual state of being “on call.” Free time was limited to perhaps a
half-day per week and a day off per month. Employers also exerted considerable
influence in the personal lives of their servants, requiring them to attend church
or household prayers. Employers could specify “no callers” in their contract
with servants, meaning that female servants could not date. Finally, men and
women who might otherwise have become servants were better educated at the
end of the century, and were more likely to look for work in offices or even
in education. The life of a servant might appear onerous but also very dull by
comparison.
Most households managed with a single female servant, called a “maid of
all work.” Hired at very low wages, she might be expected to help with ev-
erything, including cooking, cleaning, child care, and laundry. She might also
be compensated for her low wages with experience and new skills: this was an
entry-level position, and might or might not have an upward track. Elizabeth
Gaskell’s Cranford offered this description of a maid in a very modest middle

class household:
When Mrs Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of

a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a
request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone
took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world, and
talked on about household forms and ceremonies as if we all believed that
our hostess had a regular servants’ hall, second table, with housekeeper
and steward, instead of the one little charity-school maiden, whose short
ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray up-
stairs, if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now
sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she
knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she
knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread
and sponge-cakes.12
In this modest household, the routine of this “little” maid probably would not
vary, nor could she expect her salary to increase. Another entry-level position
was the scullery maid, employed in bigger households that had a cook. The
scullery maid did the dirty work of washing dishes and pans and kept the
kitchen clean. She might also be called upon to do other heavy works such as
pumping water and helping with the laundry.
Many middle class households that had a single servant also used short term
or temporary servants, such as a laundress or a charwoman. Cassell’s Household
Guide offered this advice:
The extra hand, then, should have special work to do, and nothing beyond.
She should be required to come and leave at a certain time, and her food
and wages should be a matter of distinct understanding. A washerwoman,
or a charwoman who goes out for a day’s washing, for instance, should
be kept to her washing just as a gardener, working by the day, is expected
to keep to his gardening. Everything should be ready to her hand on
her arrival. The clothes sorted, the copper-fire lighted, and the other
necessaries of the work supplied. When her task is done, she should be
required to leave the kitchen or scullery in good order, and the copper
clean and dry. The average pay of a washerwoman in and near London is
two shillings per day, provided food and beer be found; and half-a-crown
if required to “find herself.” A certain quantity of beer or gin is generally
stipulated for in the latter case. Some charwomen are willing to go out
for less pay, on condition that their food and beer are found; but in the
end it will be discovered that the cheaper and more satisfactory plan is to
pay an equivalent for all extras in money.13
Services 119
The Guide’s grudging recognition of the necessity of these irregular servants

may have stemmed from the fact they were trained to someone else’s household
standards, or not trained at all. Casual servants could be brought in, but only
when absolutely necessary: they should be brought in, allowed to get on with
their work, and then escorted from the premises.
There were some benefits to being a servant and many people worked in
service for their entire lives. Young people looking for their first job could
usually be hired if they did not object to the hard work and low pay. For
rural girls, service in local household was the only option until they were old
enough to marry: working as a maid for the local gentry taught them important
housekeeping skills. It prepared young girls for marriage and housekeeping,
and they might learn specific skills like dairying, which they had not learned at
home. In some cases, rural girls who learned the basics of housekeeping could
go on to a more sophisticated household in a larger town. Girls well placed
could not only send home money but also clothing to their mother and sisters
still at home. Service absorbed people with no other work skills, as described by
Henry Mayhew:
He was the only child of a gentleman’s coachman. His father had deserted
his mother and him, and gone abroad, he believed, with some family. His
mother, however, took care of him until her death, which happened “when
he was a little turned thirteen, he had heard, but could not remember the
year.” After that he was “a helper and a jobber in different stables,” and
“anybody’s boy,” for a few years, until he got a footman’s, or rather
footboy’s place, which he kept above a year. After that he was in service,
in and out of different situations, until the time he specified, when he
had been out of place for nearly five weeks, and was starving. His master
had got in difficulties, and had gone abroad; so he was left without a
character.14
In a rapidly expanding labor market, this traditional employment offered close

and familial contact with the employer, although the paternalism rankled with
some younger employees. Perks for work in service might include a sugar and
tea allowance, which in some cases replaced their earlier beer allowance. By the
end of the century, servants and employers alike preferred cash instead of goods.
Other traditional perks included the right to collect such things as candle ends
and drippings from roasted meat, which they could sell. The establishment
which eventually became Fortnum & Mason began with William Fortnam’s
employment in the household of Queen Anne in 1707: the royal household
replaced all of its candles daily, whether or not they were burned down. Footmen
like Fortnum were allowed to resell partly burned candles and keep the profits.
A host of other tradesmen provided essential services to the house, keeping
it clean and comfortable. Glaziers installed and repaired glass in windows and
cabinets. Itinerant razor grinders and knife sharpeners were available when the
services of a cutler were unavailable. Gasfitters sold and installed lighting fix-
tures, and “laundry engineers” had showrooms for patented clothes wringers.
Dyers and commercial laundries took care of clothes and household textiles like
draperies. Rat catchers dealt with vermin of all sorts. Dustmen took away waste
including the ashes left from the fireplace, often for free, since they made a
considerable profit reselling it. Oilmen sold paint and polish, as well as cleaning
supplies, brushes, and sponges. Undertakers, representing the makers of coffins,
winding sheets, and funeral carriages, were on call for the final service required
by householders.
8
Late Century Transformations
The hamlet’s fashion lag was the salvation of its wardrobes, for a style be-
came ‘all the go’ there just as the outside world was discarding it . . . Then
there were the bustles, at first looked upon with horror, and no wonder!
but after a year or two the most popular fashion ever known in the ham-
let and the one which lasted the longest. They cost nothing, as they could
be made at home from any piece of old cloth rolled up into a cushion and
worn under any frock . . . they wore them so long that Edmund was old
enough in the day of their decline to say that he had seen the last bustle
on earth going round the Rise on a woman with a bucket of pig-wash.1
—Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
The last twenty years of the Victorian era saw the culmination of a number
of trends that had begun at the start of the period. Most importantly, the idea
of shopping had gained validity: it was acceptable, if not desirable, for women
to pay regular visits to stores to look, to compare, to buy, and to plan future
purchases. A middle class woman might expect to spend several hours a week
shopping if she lived in a city, or if she lived in a more distant place, she might
travel and spend a whole day shopping several times in a year. Stores actively
catered to the shopping experience with services which anticipated shoppers’
needs: restrooms, for example, were installed in larger department stores along
with restaurants so that shoppers could shop for hours without interruption.
The department store in particular was a “safe” place for an unescorted middle
class woman to shop, meet her friends, or have lunch.
A kind of democratization of fashion took hold—the continual acquisition
of new goods in new styles—and while not everyone had the money to buy,
they all could look. New styles of furniture and new accessories, continually
replaced, marked out the fashionable home from the hopelessly outdated ones.
And in the last part of the century, more people than ever before were able
to participate in the pursuit of fashion. Even women who worked for wages
felt this urgency to update and upgrade: they could change hats, jackets, and
accessories as their income allowed.
There are many reasons that late-century shopping was different from shop-
ping at the start of the Victorian era. Shoppers themselves had grown more
sophisticated and harder to impress. They expected certain courtesies and prod-
ucts. Other changes were probably a natural progression of earlier develop-
ments: department stores, by then an established part of the shopping landscape,
became bigger, more elaborate, and positively unlike a traditional one-product
shop. Advertising had grown more sophisticated, colorful, and frequent. The
competition between great stores had grown, as well as the competition be-
tween smaller shops and the great stores. Each wanted to offer the service or
the product which would inspire customer loyalty. And finally, English shop-
ping was influenced by developments in America and France. The great Parisian
department store, Le Bon Marché, provided a model for the lavish displays and
customer service which became the hallmark of late century English depart-
ment stores. America, or more precisely, American innovators, contributed a
number of products which became standards in English store shelves: Kodak’s
cameras, Heinz’s baked beans, and Parker pens (with their “jointless” design,
which prevented leaks and made them easier to fill) were all American products
introduced to English shoppers before 1900.
LATE CENTURY DEPARTMENT STORES

Late century department stores were bigger and more elaborate than their
antecedents. Inspired by foreign examples, especially in France and America,
these grands magasins were sometimes large, purposely built structures with
several floors of selling space and specialized services. The great Parisian de-
partment store Le Bon Marché began expanding their building in 1869 and
finished eighteen years later, under the supervision of the engineer Gustave
Eiffel. The result was more than a massive department store, a “ladies par-
adise,” to paraphrase Émile Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Femmes, based on
the store. It was a fantasyland in which women could lose themselves browsing
departments and subdepartments of clothing, accessories, and goods for the
home. The store’s creative use of display to catch the shopper’s eye and Zola’s
description accurately described the overwhelming sense of plenty:
At the far end of the hall, around one of the small cast-iron columns which
supported the glass roof, material was streaming down like a bubbling
sheet of water, falling from above and spreading out on to the floor. First,
pale satins and renaissance satins, with the pearly shades of spring water;
lights silks as transparent as crystal, Nile green, turquoise, blossom pink,
Late Century Transformations 123
Danube blue. Next came the thicker fabrics, the marvelous satins and the
duchess silks, in warm shades, rolling in great waves. And at the bottom,
as if in a fountain-basin, the heavy materials, the damasks, the brocades,
the silver and gold silks, were sleeping on a deep bed of velvets, velvets of
all kinds, black, while, colored, embossed on a background of silk or satin,
their shimmering flecks forming a still lake in which reflections of the sky
and of the countryside seemed to dance. Women pale with desire were
leaning over as if to look at themselves . . . they all remained standing
there, filled with the secret fear of being caught up in the overflow of all
this luxury and with an irresistible desire to throw themselves into it and
be lost.2
Zola’s two images—first, of a natural world made of goods for sale, and of
women overcome with the luxury of that world of goods—seem to bear no
relation at all to the modest midcentury “emporiums.” This new department
store excited the senses and offered the unexpected: the store had concerts, free
gifts of almanacs and balloons for the children, as well as rooms where shoppers
could rest, meet friends, and socialize. The idea was to draw the customer in to
buy thread or perfume, but to do so in such a luxurious and comfortable setting
that she would not leave to have her coffee or buy her children’s shoes.
Inspired by the French example, some English department stores expanded
their premises, buying up competitors and adjacent shops. These new depart-
ment stores also offered a different, more elaborate and sensuous atmosphere,
a world apart from the hectic, crowded emporia of the 1850s. These new shops
were less focused on low prices, and more focused on leisured environment
where middle class shoppers could comfortably linger as well as buy. Goods
were artfully displayed and carefully lit: the shop’s floor was a large open
space (made possible by cast iron columns which replaced interior walls) and
customers moved unimpeded from one department to the next.
These late century department stores had more capital behind them, and
could offer new technologies and services which would have been unavailable
at midcentury: elevators, cash registers, and, at the very end of the century,
motorized delivery vans and electric lighting. The shops were often very large,
taking up large portions of a city block with expansive retail areas and work-
shops for clothing and other services. Stores that could do so expanded their
properties, buying up smaller surrounding shops and redesigning the interior.
More space was needed for the staff living quarters. These included separate
quarters for men and women, and for junior and senior staff, as well as kitchen
and cafeterias, and whatever other facilities a benevolent management chose to
provide: library, visitor’s room, bank, or activity room.
One of the best examples of this new type of department store was Harrods,
which had opened in the 1840s as a grocery store in the London suburbs,
becoming a department store with the second generation of owners in 1864.
Harrods began expanding in the 1870s, but the premises were destroyed by
fire in 1883. A new store opened in 1884 with departments for fancy foods
and poultry, Harrods’ own line of groceries (including jams and butter in
red, white, and blue wrappings), jewelry, china, and wines. Later merchandise
included diverse offerings, from pets to billiard tables. In 1894, Harrods added a
fur department, restaurant, hair salon, photography department, a realty office,
and a bank. Four years later the first escalator was installed, albeit only between
the first and second floors; attendants stood by with brandy and smelling salts
to revive shoppers overwhelmed by the experience. By the end of the century,
most midsized department stores offered some of the same services: washrooms,
writing rooms, libraries, tea rooms, and restaurants. The “ladies’ paradise”
described by Zola had become a reality, a female world where women browse
among dazzling displays, and plan what she might buy next.
Late century department stores relied heavily on decoration and display.
Shopfronts became more elaborate, and larger stores sometimes had shop win-
dows on the second story so that passengers on the new double-decker busses
could see the wares. Store facades made of cast iron competed with the win-
dow displays. Internal and external gas lights illuminated the windows even
after closing hours, and shops gradually stopped shuttering their windows at
night. Tiles became an important part of shop design, both on the floors and
walls: glazed tiles were believed to be more sanitary as they were not porous
and could be scrubbed without destroying the finish. At the shop’s entrance, a
floor mosaic of miniature tiles spelled out the shop’s name greeting customers.
Terra-cotta tiles became a popular material for store facades at the end of the
century, as did glazed tiles depicting the name of the shop or idealized scenes
of the business conducted inside.
Shop interiors also became more elaborate. Photographs from the era show
ornate lighting fixtures, gilded ceilings, polished counters, and dark wooden
shelves topped with potted palm plants. The floor were richly carpeted in pat-
terns clearly visible even in black and white photographs. Inexpensive bent-
wood chairs for customers, first created in the 1850s, were still placed along
glass counters, although photographs show female customers sitting sideways
on the chairs to accommodate their considerable bustles. The counter, too, had
been transformed: the solid wooden counter of the early nineteenth century
had gradually acquired first a glass front and eventually a glass top. Late century
stores had glittering cases with etched and beveled glass which offered an array
of goods—not just ribbon, but wide ribbon, wired ribbon, tartan ribbon, and
ribbon with woven pictures—closely arranged for the customer to make her
choice. Goods on display—identical items multiplied ten or a hundred times,
artfully arranged—appealed to shoppers for several reasons. Displays were
practical: a shopper looking for a sealskin coat knew exactly where to find one.
But display, especially of the sort described by Zola, may have triggered a kind
of biological response in shoppers: the eyes saw an assortment of beautiful silks
and satins, but the mind saw the very embodiment of plenty, and associating
it with an abundance of food. Historians argue in favor of a more complex
sociopolitical response: shoppers who walked among displayed goods enjoyed a

sense of ownership, or potential ownership. The luxurious surroundings were
meant to suggest that this was where the rich and famous shopped, which
flattered the middleclass women who made up the bulk of customers.
As stores had grown more sophisticated, a secondary industry developed to
supply display materials and shop fittings. One of the most important of these
was the dress mannequin, which probably originated in France but quickly
found a market in England. The first mannequins were the small doll-sized
fashion dolls made of wax or porcelain, popular throughout the eighteenth
century. Early nineteenth century mannequins were made of wicker and cloth,
and tended to be both cumbersome and expensive. With iron fillings in the legs
and on a cast iron base to keep them upright, they could weigh several hundred
pounds. They were also headless and armless, having small wooden knobs where
the head and arms would be, but otherwise shaped like a corseted female body.
In 1869, a French company founded by Frederic Stockman began to produce
high quality female figures made of wax and cloth which were imported to
England. The same company may have been the first to use standardized sizes
for women’s clothing, perhaps to facilitate the sale of their mannequins. In the
1880s, English manufacturers began producing their own line of mannequins
and busts to meet growing demand. One English innovation was a mannequin
with an “improver,” or adjustable bustle, which could be extended or reduced
according to the fashion that year. Movable joints, painted faces, and genuine
human hair made the mannequins even more realistic.
Wax busts were made to display smaller items like hats and shawls. These,
like their artistic cousins in marble, modeled the female body from just below
the shoulders up to the neck or head. A common form of display bust was
called the fichu stand, with a fully formed neck and head. The fichu was a kind
of triangular scarf which had largely disappeared from most women’s dress,
but its image lived on in the small bust which was light enough to sit on a
counter, and could be used to display necklaces and scarves. At the very end of
the century, some shops and dressmakers with very rich customers offered live
mannequin displays of their clothing.
Department stores were powerful agents in the development of a display
culture: inanimate display lessened the reliance on shop assistance and allowed
the customer to linger and look at goods without pressure to buy. Larger stores
had their own workshops to make stands, racks, and display fittings for every
type of merchandize. Wood and brass were the preferred materials for display
fittings, and could made attractive displays for problematically shaped objects
like fans, umbrellas, and parasols. Papier-maché was also very popular. It was
light enough to create a display on a glass counter, and could be made into any
shape needed: heads to display hats, legs for stockings and shoes, or shapely
arms to display gloves. Other new racks and display pieces included fan stands,
umbrella and parasol stands, hat stands, and tiered shelves for pyramid displays
of heavier items.
Other stores followed the department store’s lead, including grocers and
confectioners. The firm of Parnall and Sons, which advertised themselves in
1897 as the largest supplier of shop fittings in England, offered an amazing
array of shop fittings for businesses of all kinds. Their work had begun in the
1820s with scales and weights for use in shops, but by the 1880s, this new
climate of looking caused them to expand more fully into display items. For
the confectioner, for example, they offered glass urns (for candied nuts, and
other things which were susceptible to moisture), multitiered glass cake stands,
marble tables and counters, as well as counters and show cases. In the 1890s,
they began to concentrate on materials for shopfronts, including decorative
ironwork, glass and metal storefronts, as well as gates and railings.
LATE CENTURY GROCERY STORES AND CHEMIST’S SHOPS

Grocery stores, too, saw great changes in the last part of the nineteenth
century, beginning with revolutionary new foods and new ways of marketing
foods. Marketing innovations included advertising and display, multiple loca-
tion “chain” stores, and new ways of packaging and selling food. The second
aspect of the revolution lay in new types of food, including processed and quick-
cooking foods, and foods which had traditionally sold in specialty shops, like
meats, cheese, and imported foods.
Late century grocers could draw on a number of recent innovations by other
shops to market their goods: department stores had already made customers
familiar with large shop windows packed for display, bountiful in-store displays,
fixed pricing, and the habit of one-stop shopping. The new grocers added a
degree of innovation with chain locations which, because they sold in volume,
could offer lower prices than most single stores. Thomas Lipton was one of
these new grocers, and an avid user of new marketing techniques. The son of a
grocer in Glasgow, Scotland, Lipton was sent to the United States as a teenager.
He worked for several years in different businesses along the east coast of the
United States, finishing with a stint in the grocery department of a New York
City department store. He returned to Glasgow, but his work in New York
seems to have taught him to embrace a more aggressive, American style of
marketing: within a year he had opened his own grocery shop, and within ten
years of that, had a chain of twenty shops. By the end of the century, there
were over two hundred Lipton’s grocery shops across Britain. To spark interest
and draw customers from competing shops, Lipton used tricks which were both
silly and clever: he led parades to celebrate the opening of new shops, including
a parade of pigs with ribbons in their tails and a banner crying, “I’m going
to Lipton’s!” In 1881 he imported the world’s largest cheese from America,
which he claimed was made from the milk of eight hundred cows and the labor
of two hundred dairymaids. Lipton created more excitement by inserting gold
coins randomly into the cheese, which not surprisingly was sold within a few
hours of its being put on sale. Lipton’s expansion into the tea trade in the
1890s marked both the most profitable and the most daring part of his grocery
business. To undercut the price charged for tea by other merchants, he bought
tea plantations in India and sold his own brand of tea in his shops at 40 percent
below the price charged by his competitors. Brightly colored one pound, half
pound, and quarter pound boxes of Lipton’s tea guaranteed both quality and
freshness of the tea.
The revolution in packaging began with the need to preserve foods. Preserva-
tion meant essentially drying, brining, and salting foods, processes which were
useless for foods like milk. Without reliable methods of preservation, shoppers
bought small quantities and hoped that their foods were fresh. Refrigeration
was extremely expensive and limited to a system using ice. The first technolog-
ical breakthrough came with the invention of tin canning in 1810: the first cans
were actually iron with a thin coating of tin inside to protect the food. Metal tins
with lids were commonly used for food storage in kitchens, but the technology
for sealed tin cans was slow to develop. The early versions of canned food—or
tinned food, as it was called, because all cans had a thin layer of tin on the
inside—was unreliable. The food could spoil in the can if it were not sterilized
properly before packaging, or the seams could rupture, allowing bacteria to ruin
the foods. It took until the 1870s for really reliable soldering methods to make
the cans safer, and this seems to have been one of the catalysts for large-scale
use of canning to preserve meats, vegetables, and various other products. By
the 1880s, tinned food of all sorts—meat, oysters, processed vegetables—were
common on grocers’ shelves.
Sometimes canning made it possible for the product to be found on the
grocer’s shelf: Lyle’s Golden Syrup, for example, was originally sold from
large wooden casks near their refinery in London and this thick sweetener, a
by-product of sugar refining, could only be sold locally. Beginning in 1885,
the syrup was packaged in cans, making it easy to transport to groceries across
England and giving it a long shelf life. By-products of canning could also produce
new products. A Scot named John Lawson Johnston was contracted to supply
beef for the armies of Napoleon III. Traveling to Canada to buy and can the
beef, he created Bovril, a seasoned concentrated beef stock in the 1880s.
Packaging and branding were two important innovations which changed the
way late century grocers sold things formerly sold in bulk. One of the first
products to make this transition was soap. Soap had been a staple of the grocery
for much of the century, but it was a caustic soap, made using tallow and ash.
Grocers bought the soap in a long bar and sliced off as much as the customer
wanted using a wire or a knife. In 1885, William Lever began to make and sell a
gentler soap made with coconut and cottonseed oils. His soap had two additional
distinctions: it was sold in precut, one-pound bars, and carried the brand name
stamped on the package and on the soap. The branding of the soap was a
guarantee of its purity, a powerful advertising force in an era of adulteration.
Lever’s advertising emphasized the convenience of the generous one-pound
cake as well as the purity of the soap guaranteed by his name on the bars.
Convenience foods, or foods that were relatively convenient compared to

their traditional preparations, were an important addition to grocers’ shelves.
Convenience foods were sold in individual packets and turned a number of foods
from special occasion treats to part of everyday menus. Chemist Alfred Bird
had already put two of his labor-saving mixtures on the shelf by midcentury;
these were Bird’s Baking Powder (which replaced yeast in baking) and Bird’s
Custard (using cornflower rather than eggs to make it dense). But the company
continued to experiment and in the 1870s introduced their Blancmange powder
in more than a dozen flavors, and in 1895 introduced Bird’s Jelly Crystals.
Favored as a food for children and invalids, gelatin had traditionally been a
difficult and time-consuming food to make. Bird’s Crystals made the process
both quick and relatively cheap.
Imports formed a major part of what was new on grocery shelves including a
number of new American products. American companies had begun to experi-
ment with food storage, especially canning, for the Civil War and supplying of
west-bound settlers. American Henry Heinz began selling canned and bottled
foods in the 1870s, and in 1886, brought his line—tomato ketchup, pepper and
chili sauces, mustard, tomato soup, olives, pickled onions, pickled cauliflower,
sweet pickles, and baked beans—to London to be sold through the luxury grocer
Fortnum & Mason. Other products like Jacobs Cream Crackers, a kind of soda
cracker introduced in 1884, were inspired by American inventors and copied
by English manufacturers. Soda crackers used baking soda rather than yeast:
according to a somewhat primitive understanding of digestion, people believed
that the baking soda in foods could prevent indigestion and gas. In 1892, the
Scottish firm of McVites & Price invented their baking soda “digestive bis-
cuit,” and other manufacturers made similar products. Interestingly, the first
chocolate-covered digestive biscuit was not introduced until 1925. Condensed
milk, which is milk with the water removed and sugar added, was another
American invention that became available in England at the end of the cen-
tury.
Some of the newer foods that appeared in groceries were not really new, but
now more widely available. Steamships made it possible for fruits, especially
tropical fruits, to be more regularly imported and sold at reasonable rates.
Fruiters, who sold raw fruit by the piece or by the pound, would in season
offer dishes of prepared fruits like strawberries with cream or brandied cherries
to a ready market. Oranges and lemons had long been popular in England,
but steamships made them and other tropical fruits like pineapples affordable
to middle class tables. In times of plenty when prices fell, street sellers sold
them individually to working-class shoppers. Marmalade, made from oranges,
lemons, and apricots, probably dated from the end of the seventeenth century,
but became an affordable grocery staple at the end of the nineteenth century.
Grocers were able to offer marmalade because steamships brought a regular
supply at a reasonable price, which made feasible the industrial production—
or really big batches—of marmalade. Commercially produced jams using both
domestic and imported fruits became common. Bananas were a popular fruit
but their tendency to spoil made them a problematic import. The tea-importing
family firm named Fyffe’s began importing bananas from the Canary Islands
in 1888, aided in part by the steamship and their own willingness to act as
exclusive agents to growers. Meats, too, were revolutionized in the last part of
the century. The middle and upper classes continued to dine on fresh meat cut
to order, but the working classes and the poor found that imported, canned beef
was cheaper. Sauces and condiments, which were well known by the middle
part of the century, became cheaper and more readily available. Brown sauces,
which are similar to American steak sauces, were based on various types of
vinegars with added spices and fruit extracts, and helped to make the canned
meats more appetizing.
Sweets of all sorts seem to have proliferated at the end of the century, aided by
the 1874 abolition of the tax on sugar imports and the increasing use of beet root
sugar in candy making. New technologies allowed greater consistency between
batches and lower production costs as part of the process were industrialized.
Innovations like the use of metallic paper as wrapping—another idea imported
from France—allowed sticky sweets to be sold individually. Variations included
hard “boiled” candy, chewy candy-like toffee, and soft candy-like fruit “gum”
invented by Rowntree in 1893. Flavorings were traditional and leaned heavily on
herbs like licorice, aniseed, and mint. The multicolored and candy-coated licorice
bits called Allsorts were introduced by Basset’s in 1899. Like toy manufacturing,
the making of sweets and confectionaries was aided by the new romantic views
of children and childhood, although advice manuals inevitably cautioned against
allowing children to have sweets, or fresh fruit, except in very limited quantities.
One of the last sweets to be transformed was chocolate. Chocolate had tradi-
tionally been consumed as a hot drink, whether it was sold in powder form or
in small chocolate “nibs,” which were ground and melted with hot milk. Solid
chocolate for eating was mostly dark chocolate, available since the 1840s. Milk
chocolate in solid form was developed by the Swiss in the 1870s. Swiss and
French chocolate bars were available but still priced too high for working-class
consumers. Cadbury’s was the first English manufacturer to develop their own
line of milk chocolate, but the Cadbury Dairy Milk bar was not offered until
1905.
The chemist’s shop, like the grocery, expanded its offerings and added to
its traditional services. There were, for example, a number of chemists who
operated a chain of stores, like Jesse Boot’s “Boots Cash Chemists,” with ten
stores by the mid 1880s. Shoppers in a late-century chemist’s shop would
find patent medicines, medical supplies, sickroom supplies, as well as the usual
services of prescriptions made to order. Chemists also expanded into other
sidelines: toiletries and perfumes, books and magazines, and even photographic
supplies. Dentifrice, a kind of abrasive powder, was probably the dominant form
of tooth cleaner commercially available. Toothpaste, an abrasive suspended in a
cream and sold in a jar, was first sold in the 1870s. Toothbrushes were made of
bone or wood, with animal hair bristles. They were probably still too expensive
for most people, who continued to use a “tooth stick” or twig, chewed until the
fibers became like a brush. Shampoo, antiperspirant, and other staples of the
modern drug store were not widely available until the early twentieth century.
Late century chemist’s shops were further transformed by the array of new
drugs available from the 1870s on, although some were more problematic than
beneficial. Both aspirin and heroin were developed by British chemists, and
then sold in England by the German firm Bayer. Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic
acid, was the synthetic version of the pain reliever found in willow bark. It
was sold in 1899 in powder form and a year later in pill form. The year before
Bayer had introduced heroin, a synthetic form of morphine, which was used to
treat pain, morphine addiction, and coughs in children. Ultimately heroin was
found to be more addictive than morphine, and its use more strictly regulated.
Interestingly, for some time heroin could be bought without a prescription,
while aspirin required a doctor’s prescription. Following the passage of the
1868 Pharmacy Act, opiates were more closely regulated. Cocaine, an extract of
the cocoa leaf, was developed in the 1870s and became a popular ingredient in a
variety of cures: as a tonic or energy drink, for toothaches, and for stomach pain.
The late century chemist was often a medical practitioner as well, serving
customers as doctor, dentist, or even optician. Chemists, in addition to making
and dispensing prescription drugs for patients, often worked in larger chemical
applications including insecticides and their own medical preparations. They
experimented with a variety of chemical processes, including carbonation and
pasteurization and packaging.
NEW PASTIMES AND NEW SHOPS

Late century people of all classes tended to have more leisure time and more
resources to recreation. Workers benefited from new holidays established by
the Bank Holiday Act of 1871, with Monday holidays added to the calendar.
People of all classes used their free time to breed animals (pigeons, dogs, pigs,
were popular, but only the first was possible in a crowded city), to paint and
draw, to play organized sports, to play cards (bridge, a variation of the older card
game whist, became popular in the 1890s), and to walk, hike, and mountaineer.
Free-time activities were, like so many other parts of life, dependent on income
and class, and the amount of leisure time available. Music had the longest roots
of the late century pastimes, but it was revitalized by an expanding middle class
eager to sing, play an instrument, or at the start of the twentieth century, to
hear recorded music. Most people who experienced music directly probably did
so in their own homes as they or a family member sang or played an instrument.
The most important feature in the music shop’s inventory was sheet music for
these amateur musicians. As with other types of shops, there was some degree of
cross-over, and shoppers might find what they needed in several places: a music
shop might carry smaller instruments and accoutrements like violin strings and
rosin for the bow, as well as sheet music. But sheet music might also be bought
from a stationer or possibly a bookseller. There were also makers who specialized
in certain types of instruments, like violins or brasses. Larger instruments like
pianos were sold by piano makers and sometimes by department stores. Some
piano makers got their start as cabinetmakers, expanding their new line as
the demand for pianos grew at the end of the trade century. Cabinetmakers
might also offer the different kinds of music furniture—music stands and
music cabinets—which middle class consumers wanted for their homes.
The end of the century and increased leisure saw an expanded interest in
sports. People of all classes participated in sports and were spectators at sport-
ing events. Sports like tennis, golf, soccer, running, boxing, bicycling, and
cricket became more standardized in their rules, and organized sports leagues
and competitions developed, sponsored by municipalities, civic clubs, and em-
ployers. Participation in a sport not only enhanced the body but also helped
to build sportsmanship and team spirit, two things valued by the society as a
whole. Nationalism and competition came together with England’s participa-
tion in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. One result of press
coverage of the Games was a renewed interest in swimming, and swimming
clubs began to build indoor pools. Often these clubs had different pools for men
and women, or at the very least different times or days for men and women
to swim. The bathing costumes preserved a similar type of modesty, cover-
ing swimmers from neck to ankle in a light-weight knitted jersey, with broad
stripes to further disguise the body underneath.
As a result of the late century enthusiasm for sports, department stores began
to offer sports clothes and sports equipment. Those with the means to do so
could also have their sports clothes custom made by tailors and dressmakers.
For women, there were both clothes which allowed them to participate in the
sport, and of equal importance, clothes designed to be worn as spectators to
the sport. There were, for example, regatta costumes and seaside costumes—in
lighter fabric, or jaunty, festive striped material—which allowed the wearer to
enter into the spirit of the sport but not the activity itself.
Eventually, shops specializing in sports equipment and clothes began to ap-
pear, and specific outfits were worn for each sport: there were cycling costumes,
roller skating costumes, tennis outfits, and golf ensembles. The woolen Jaeger
suit seems to have been preferred by some as a sort of all-purpose athletic wear,
perhaps something akin to the modern track suit or sweats. One of the first
stores to sell these outfits and the equipment to play the sports was the London
firm of Lillywhites. The founders of the firm had been cricket players, and
gradually became involved in printing cricket scorecards. In 1863 they opened
a shop, which sold clothing, footwear, and equipment for the greater and lesser
sports of the end of the century: lawn tennis, soccer, cricket, and croquet.
Bicycling was a very popular pastime in the last decade of the century,
supported by design improvements and public fascination with the early models.
The first commercially produced bicycles were the penny farthing type with
an enormous front wheel below the handles, and a small wheel below the seat.
They were dangerous to ride and quite expensive. Cross-country bicycle races
were popular in the 1870s, although some spectators may have been drawn
primarily by the hopes of seeing a rider fall. Given the height of the seat,
and the likelihood of a rider being thrown head first over the handlebars, they
were not often disappointed. Clubs organized riders into group rides to a fixed
destination, and sending a silly telegram upon arrival was part of the fun.
In the 1880s, the first chain-driven safety bicycles were invented; the wheels
were made smaller and of a uniform size and eventually had pneumatic tires.
Eventually the chain was entirely enclosed, making it less likely that clothing
would “catch” and throw the rider. Several English makers began selling the
new safety bicycle, most notably John K. Starley, maker of the Rover Safety
Bicycle in 1885. A year later the firm, which would eventually become the
Raleigh Cycle Company, began making similar bikes, and by 1900, was selling
over 12,000 bicycles a year. Both companies later began experimenting with
motors, producing some of the first motorcycles in the early twentieth century.
Cycling was originally a sport for men, but the introduction of the safety
model made it possible for women to ride. Before this, specialized cycling
costumes called bicycle bloomers (essentially very baggy, skirt-like pants, made
of various types of woolen material) were popular with some riders, while
others chose regular skirts with a slightly higher hem which they “clipped” to
keep from getting entangled in the chain. Some stores offered special loose-
fitting cycling bloomers, which could be lined with a choice of fabrics, including
chamois. Women were offered a degree of safety when, at the end of the century,
the chain of the bicycle was finally enclosed.
Women became involved in many sports, albeit often more gentle sports,
and more often individual rather than team sports. For younger middle class
women, the freedom to participate in a sport was an important part of their
overall freedom. The young woman who took up bicycling in the 1890s rejected
older notions about the inherent weakness of her body, but more importantly
celebrated her right to ride unescorted across the countryside.
More leisurely pastimes included collecting and amateur science, although
these were pastimes were largely limited to the middle classes and above: they
required expensive specialized equipment, and a fair amount of education or
access to specialists. Collectors might be enthusiasts for anything from rock
specimens to bird’s eggs. Imagine, for example, the late century shell collector.
He or she might travel to collect specimens, either individually or in a group of
like-minded enthusiasts, and would need reference works to properly identify
the finds. Special display and storage cabinets might be called for: these might
be glass-topped tables or cabinets with stacked drawers, both available from
a cabinetmaker. Labels to identify the sample and its classification might be
ordered from a stationer, and a high caliber magnifying class from an optician.
Perhaps the collector would also photograph the shells to record and share the
information with other enthusiasts or learned societies, or bind the photographs

in an album, or frame them for display.
Photography was perhaps the last great pastime of the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Early photography had been complex, requiring bulky equipment and
work with messy chemicals. From its inception in France, photography was a
professional undertaking, involving prolonged sittings in front of the camera
and several hours work with chemicals afterward to produce a print: it was
easier and cheaper than having a portrait painted, but not really a pastime for
amateurs. In the late 1880s, American George Eastman, inspired by a maga-
zine report of British photography techniques involving dry gelatin plates, was
selling his cameras and prepackaged plates in England. In 1889 the company
set up a Kodak store in London selling American-made cameras and supplies,
and in 1891, they set up a factory in England. The cameras themselves and
the chemicals and plates could be bought from several places: from the profes-
sional photographer, from an optician or scientific instrument maker, or from
a chemist. By the end of the century, the amateur photographer could buy
film rather than plates, as well as a number of other handy innovations like
ready-made flash bulbs.
Photography greatly expanded two older technologies: the “magic lantern,”
a kind of early slide projector, and the stereoscope, a hand-held picture viewer
which created the illusion of a three-dimensional image, which were some-
times called “optical delusions.” With the advent of relatively inexpensive
photographic processes, middle class homes could spend the evening viewing
photographs of foreign cities, historical sites, dramatic scenes, tales from the
Bible, comic images of animals dressed as humans, and portraits of famous
politicians. By the end of the century, newspapers and books were commonly
using photographic illustrations.
THE END OF THE CENTURY SHOPPER

By 1880, there were more shops than there had been at the start of the
century, and more very large shops, although small shops were still more nu-
merous. There were more people shopping as incomes were overall higher and
more reliable. Transportation was cheap and regular, which helped both shop-
pers and the manufacturers whose goods filled the stores. Department stores,
emblems of a new kind of leisured shopping-as-entertainment, had continued
to expand in scope and number. Stores reached out with a new appreciation for
their customers, offering extraordinary customer service (returns, exchanges,
delivery even on very small items) and increasingly opulent surroundings to
envelope the middle class shopper with a sense of luxury, however temporary.
This is what people of the twentieth century remembered when they thought
of Victorian shopping, and the picture is worth recreating.
NOTES
1: GOING SHOPPING IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND

1. Thackery, Vanity Fair, 47.
2. Dickens, Dombey and Son, 30.
3. Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 113.
4. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 147.
5. Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 4.
6. “Directions to Ladies Shopping,” Punch July 1844, http://www.victorianlondon.
org/ (February 15, 2007).
7. Dickens, Dombey and Son, 635–636.
8. Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 35.
9. Mayhew, London Labour, 1: 313
10. Ibid., 373.
11. Dickens, Dictionary of London, 255–258.
12. Gaskell, Cranford, 122–123
13. Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 796.
14. Beeton, Book of Household Management, 6.
2: SHOPPING TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS

1. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 579.
2. Ibid., 118.
3. Dickens, Dombey, 2.
4. Gaskell, Cranford, 8.
8. Ibid., 185.
136 Notes
9. Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 209.

10. Hardy, The Mayor of Castorbridge, 9–10.
11. Bridge, The Old Cryes of London, 18.
12. Gaskell, Cranford, 60–61.
13. “Directions to Ladies Shopping,” Punch July 1844, http://www.victorianlondon.
org/ (February 15, 2007)
14. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 168.
15. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/sala-
12.htm (February 23, 2007)
16. Ibid.
17. “Whiteley Shot Dead in His Great Store” New York Times (1857–Current file),
January 25, 1907, http://www.proquest.com/ (March 3, 2006).
18. Dickens, Dictionary of London, 71.
20. Dickens, Dorrit, 208.
3: CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES

1. Adburgham, Liberty’s: A Biography of a Shop, 62.
2. Dickens, Pickwick, 391.
3. Beeton, Household Management, 5.
12.htm (February 23, 2007).
6. Dickens, Sketches, 69.
8. Cassell’s Household Guide, http://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/cassells-35.
htm (October 16, 2007).
9. Ibid.
11.htm (February 23, 2007).
11. Sullivan and Gilbert, Patience, http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/patience/patienclib.
pdf (October 16, 2007).
4: FOOD AND DRINK

1. Mayhew, London Labour, 9.
3. Cassell’s Household Guide, 1881, http://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/
cassells-34.htm (October 16, 2007).
5. Ibid.
6. Dickens, David Copperfield, 78.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 53.
Notes 137
11. Ibid., 9.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 10.
14. Ibid., 203.
16. Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 34.
17. Ibid., 35.
20. Ibid., http://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/cassells-1.htm (October 16, 2007).
22. Dickens’s Old Curiousity Shop, 291–292.
5: HOME FURNISHINGS AND FURNITURE

2. Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, 118.
3. Floud, The People and the British Economy, 1830–1914, 59–60. Floud estimates
the total expenditure on housing in 1856 at £6 million; by 1899, that figure had reached
£38 million.
4. Ibid., 60.
6. Dickens, Sketches, 163–164.
9. Ibid., 31.
10. Ibid., 999.
6: OTHER SHOPS
1. Thackery, Vanity Fair, 456–457.
3. Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, 5.
6. Ibid., 345.
7. Augustus Sala, Twice Round the Clock, http://www.victorianlondon.org/
publications/sala-12.htm (February 23, 2007).
8. Beeton, Book of Household Management, 459–460.
138 Notes

11. Ibid.
12. Doyle, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
13. Dickens, Dictionary, 127.
7: SERVICES
1. Trollope, Phineas Finn, 122.
3. Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, http://www.victorianlondon.org/
entertainment/sightseeing htm (October 23, 2007)
4. Thompson, Lark Rise, 412.
5. Henry Mayhew, “Letter 1 of Labour and the Poor,” Morning Chronicle, Friday,
October 19, 1849, http://www.victorianlondon.org/ (February 15, 2006)
6. Cassell’s Household Guide, new and revised edn vol. 1 c.1880s [no date], “House-
Hunting,” 99.
7. Beeton, Book of Household Management, 1097–1098.
9. Ewing, “About Coal,” in About London, 1860, p. 23.
10. Dickens, Dictionary of London, 232.
13. Cassell’s Household Guide, 27.
14. Mayhew, London Poor, 69.
8: LATE CENTURY TRANSFORMATIONS

1. Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 103–104.
2. Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 103–104.
GLOSSARY
Apprentice: Young employee, often but not always male, who learned the trade; he or
she may or may not be paid for their work, and gradually would learn enough to help
manage the shop or to open their own shop.
Assay mark: Stamped into things made of gold or silver, this guaranteed the quality of
the metal and indicated where, when, and by whom the object was made.
Boiled sweet: Hard candy.
Broker: Dealer in used goods, usually clothes or furniture.
Carriage trade: Wealthy customers who visited a shop in their own carriage, expecting
the shopkeeper to bring the goods to them. Traditionally rich people shopped this way so
that they would not have to enter the workshop and risk ruining their clothes and shoes;
increasingly rare in Victorian England as department stores and other shops began to
create a cleaner, brighter, more customer-friendly environment.
Chain store: Store with multiple locations, sometimes in different parts of the same city,
or more commonly in different cities.
Christmasing: Holly and other greens sold at Christmas time as decoration.
Cooperative store: Store which bought goods wholesale in order to offer members or
shareholders low prices and a share of the profits. Originally designed to give workers
fairer prices on groceries, later cooperative stores catered to middle class professionals.
Cooperative stores continued into the twentieth century.
Corset: Type of women’s undergarment laced at the back and front which drew in the
waist. Created the unnatural, but highly coveted, hourglass figure, which dominated
women’s fashion for most of the nineteenth century.
Costermonger: A type of street seller. Their goods were usually limited to fresh and
cooked foods.
Curds and whey: Something like cottage cheese, a favorite food for women.
140 Glossary
Cutler: Maker of knives.

Department store: A store with multiple departments devoted to different types of goods:
outerwear, hosiery, housewares all under one roof. Department stores offered a number
of new policies: goods had clearly marked and fixed prices, they could often be returned,
and shoppers could browse for goods. Later department stores were more elaborate
establishments with dozens of departments and extra services like dressmakers, tailors,
decorators, etc.
Dress: A length of fabric that women bought to be made into a dress.
Duffers: Street sellers who pretended that their goods were stolen to excite interest and
the feeling that the customer was getting a “steal.”
Epergne: Serving dish with several tiers of flat dishes for serving special food like fresh
fruit or candy.
Fichu stand: Lightweight bust (a small statue showing the head and chest) for displaying
scarves.
Flounce: Ruffle or extra strip of fabric or ribbon added to a woman’s skirt for decoration
and to add the appearance of fullness to the skirt.
Fruiter: Seller of expensive, and often imported, fruits and sometimes vegetables.
Green fruit: Fresh, rather than dried, fruit.
Greengrocer: Seller of fruits and vegetables of a fairly common sort. The greengrocers
might include some household items in his stock.
Grocer: Seller of a wide assortment of kitchen staples, which might include meat, veg-
etables, rice, milk, cheese, tea, coffee, etc. His stock also included household necessities
like candles, paraffin, and rattraps, and often patent medicines.
Haberdashery: Shop with medieval origins selling a variety of fabrics and accessories,
including but not limited to stockings, ribbons and trimmings, and occasionally toys.
Jobber: Type of tradesman—a tailor, or seamstress—who worked for someone else,
usually by the piece and for very small wages.
Mannequin: Model for clothes, used throughout the nineteenth century, but especially
important to large department stores where display was important. At the very end of
the century, some dressmakers had live mannequins in what were effectively the first
fashion shows.
Manorialism: Medieval economic system in which there is little regular trade, and goods
are commonly made where they will be used. Historians disagree about the extent to
which this economy was self-sufficient, but we know that it developed in part because
trade and shopping had disappeared.
Mill: In this book, mills are places where grains like wheat were ground to produce flour.
In other contexts, a mill could mean a factory where textiles were made.
Milliner: Maker of women’s hats. Usually a woman, so a man who practiced this trade
was commonly known as a man-milliner, although the first milliners had been men.
Monger: Archaic word meaning seller, so we have cheese mongers, ironmongers, etc.
Mrs. Beeton: Surprisingly young author of an important household guide, Beeton’s
Book of Household Management, first published in 1861. Her guide contained recipes,
directions for running a household, and most importantly, some advice on how to
shop.
Glossary 141
New food: Fresh foods, such as fresh fish.

Packman: Itinerant seller of goods, active from the medieval era. The packman carried
his stock literally on his back, walking great distances and selling small quantities of
goods. The packman was still active in rural areas in the nineteenth century.
Penny Post: Mail sent at the cost of a penny a half ounce, which was enough to send
a letter and an envelope. This mail delivery was relatively fast, and promised daily
delivery—or delivery up to eleven times a day within London.
Poulterer: Seller of a wide variety of dressed poultry ready to cook, and possibly live
birds, feathers, and eggs as well.
Retailer: Type of merchant who sold to regular customers, rather than a wholesaler, who
sold to other merchants.
Sabbatarianism: The idea that Sunday was a sacred day, and shops ought not to be open,
nor should there be plays or entertainment. In fact, most shops were open for the first
half of the day.
Sanitary fittings: Toilets, sinks, and bathtubs introduced at the end of the century.
Scotch draper: Special kind of packman (see Packman) who specialized in cloth.
Screever: Fraudulent letter begging for a contribution to a nonexistent charity.
Shop boy: Teenager or young man employed to run errands or make deliveries for a
shop. He might also sweep the shop, take down the shutters at night and put them up
again in the evening.
Shop girl: A young woman employed as counter-help, often in a department store. Her
work might include assisting the customers, tidying shelves, and even carrying buckets
of coal for the shop. Her hours were very long, and there were several attempts to limit
shop hours because she was overworked.
Shop walker: A fairly senior employee in a department store whose work was to greet
shoppers and escort them to the right counter. They also served as a store security,
escorting to the door shoppers who did not buy.
Shutters: Wooden planks that covered and protected the expensive glass windows of a
shop when it was closed. They often had decorative holes carved at the top to admit
some light, and could also be painted with advertisements for the shop.
Slops: Cheaply made—and usually ill-fitting—clothes usually worn by working class
men.
Sprat: A young herring fish, sold cheaply on the street.
Store: Not as common as the word “shop,” which meant a retail establishment. Victo-
rians used store to refer to cooperative stores, which recalls the idea of “storing” goods.
The word seems to have meant a type of warehouse (see Warehouse).
Strawberry pote: A few pretty berries arranged on a leaf, sold on the street.
Street food: Ready-to-eat cooked or “fast” food, sold from a stall or a cart.
Sweated work: Work done by the piece, rather than for a salary, and for very little
money. Often the work was done by women, in their own homes, at very low wages
and for many hours a day.
Talleyman: Specialized type of packman who sold goods on installment, arriving at
regular intervals to collect money owed to him.
142 Glossary
Tinned food: Canned food, only really reliable at the end of the nineteenth century.
Trousseau: A complete wardrobe bought when a woman married.
Warehouse: Early nineteenth-century retail store specializing in a single type of item,
such as mourning clothes, children’s clothes, or hats. A modern “factory outlet” store
would be comparable to the warehouse.
Wet fish: Fresh fish, rather than salted or fish in brine.
Whelk: Large, edible snail, and a popular form of Victorian “street food.” Eaten with
salt and vinegar.
Wholesaler: Type of merchant who sold to other merchants for resale to customers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A WORD ABOUT SOURCES

Shops and shopping appear frequently in Victorian fiction, although piecing together the
small bits of information can take some time. Charles Dickens’ novels have many vivid
descriptions of shop windows and shop interiors. Highlighting all of the shop references
(as I did) in A Christmas Carol, it becomes clear that Christmas in 1843 was a very
commercial event. The online versions of Victorian texts makes it easier to search for
specific references to shops and shopping, although some online texts are more reliable
than others. I have made frequent use of Lee Jackson’s wonderful Web site, Victorian
London, which posts high quality versions of useful texts.
PRIMARY SOURCES
Baren, Maurice. How It All Began: The Stories behind Those Famous Names. Otley,
UK: Smith Settle, 1992.
———. How It All Began, Up the High Street. Oxford: Past Times, 1996.
Beeton, Isabella. Book of Household Management. A facsimile of the 1861 edition. New
York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1977 [1861].
Bridge, Frederick. The Old Cryes of London. A facsimile of the 1921 edition. Boston,
MA: Longwood Press, 1978 [1921].
Carroll, Lewis [Charles Dodgson]. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. New York: Three
Sirens Press, n.d. [1865].
Cassell’s Household Guide. The Victorian London, http://www.victorianlondon.org/
cassells/cassells-35.htm (October 16, 2007).
Cohen, Deborah. Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2006.
Cunningham, Peter. Hand-Book of London. The Victorian London, http://www.
victorianlondon.org/entertainment/sightseeing htm (October 23, 2007).
144 Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz. New York: MacMillan and Company, 1892 [1836].
———. “A Christmas Carol.” In Christmas Stories of Charles Dickens. Edited by Lucas
Lexow. New York: J.H. Sears and Company, 1900 [1843].
———. The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of David
Copperfield. Modern Library Edition. New York: Random House, 1950 [1850].
———. Little Dorrit. New York: The Heritage Press, 1956 [1857].
———. Dombey and Son. Everyman’s Library Edition. London: Dent, 1964 [1848].
———. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Modern Library Edition. New
York: Random House, n.d. [1837].
———. The Old Curiosity Shop. Temple Edition DeLuxe. Philadelphia, PA: Morris and
Company, n.d. [1841].
Dickens, Charles, Jr. Dictionary of London. London: Charles Dickens, 1879.
“Directions to Ladies Shopping,” Punch July 1844. The Victorian London, http://www.
victorianlondon.org/ (February 15, 2007).
Doyle, Arthur C. “The Man with the Twisted Lip.” In The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1892].
Eliot, George [Mary Ann Evans]. The Mill on the Floss. The Riverside Edition. Boston,
MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1961 [1860].
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Oxford World’s Classic Edition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1972 [1853].
Gilbert, W.S. and Arthur Sullivan. Patience, http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/patience/
patienclib.pdf (October 16, 2007).
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Castorbridge. New York: Rhinehart and Company, 1948
[1886].
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1. The London Street-Folk.
Dover Thrift Edition, New York: Dover, 1968 [1861–1862].
Ritchie, J. Ewing. About London, 1860. Victorian London, http://www.victorianlondon.
org/publications/aboutlondon-2.htm (February 23, 2007).
Sala, Augustus. Twice Round the Clock, The Victorian London, http://www.
victorianlondon.org/publications/sala-12.htm (February 23, 2007).
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Modern
Library Edition. New York: Random House, 1937 [1776].
Thackery, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. New York: Penguin Books, 2004 [1848].
Thompson, Flora. Lark Rise to Candleford. Penguin Classic Edition. London: Penguin
Books, 2000 [1945].
Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1893.
“Whiteley Shot Dead in His Great Store,” New York Times (1857–Current file), January
25, 1907, http://www.proquest.com/ (March 3, 2006).
Zola, Emile. The Ladies’ Paradise. Oxford World’s Classics Edition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999 [1883].
SECONDARY SOURCES
Adburgham, Alison. Liberty’s: A Biography of a Shop. London: Allen & Unwin, 1975.
———. Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance. Lon-
don: Thames and Hudson, 1979.
———. Shops and Shopping, 1800–1914. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964.
Bibliography 145
Crossick, Geoffrey and Serge Jauman, eds. Cathedrals of Consumption: The European
Department Store, 1850–1939. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1999.
Cumming, Elizabeth and Wendy Kaplan. The Arts and Crafts Movement. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Floud, Roderick. The People and the British Economy, 1830–1914. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
Forty, Adrian. Objects of Desire, Design and Society 1750–1980. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1989.
Girouard, Mark. The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Harrison, Molly. People and Shopping. London: Ernest Benn, 1975.
Lancaster, Bill. The Department Store: A Social History. New York: Leicester University
Press, 1995.
Laver, James. Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson,
1988.
Lewis, Jane. Women in England, 1870–1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Change.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. Furniture: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson,
1990.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Morrison, Kathryn. English Shops and Shopping: An Architectural History. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Nevett, T. Advertising in Britain, A History. London: William Heinemann, 1982.
Rappaport, Erika Diane. Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s
West End. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Satterthwaite, Anne. Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Conse-
quences. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Translated by Anthea Bell. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Wright, Liz. Chocolate: The Food of the Gods. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books,
1993.
INDEX
Accounts, household, 58–59 Cook, Thomas, 109

Apothecaries, 93–95 Cooperative stores: middle class and
Auctions, 22–23 professional stores, 34–36; origins,
33–34
Bazaars: origins, 29, advantages for the Corsets, 48; costermongers and street
middle class customer, 29–30 sellers; cries, 16, 63, 98; types of food,
Bicycles, 131–32 61–63
Branding of goods, 9, 127 Craftsmen and shops, 19–20
Bread: baking and bakers, 69–70; role in Credit, 11, 24
the English diet, 69
Department stores: and clothing, 41;
Cabs, 106 late-century, 123–25; and middle class
Candy, 70, 129 shoppers, 31–32, 101, 121, 124, 125;
Catalogues, 35–36 origins, 29, 30–33, 46; range of goods,
China and pottery, 3; for cooking and 46–47, 122–24; services, 124; and
eating, 86–87; household, 84 sporting goods, 131
Chocolate, 129 Draper’s shops, 30, 41–43
Christmas and shopping, 88; greenery, Dresses, 40- 41; cloth for, 41–42; patterns
88–89; grocers, 64–65 for, 43, 44; ready-made, 41, 45
Clothing: aesthetic, 54–55; durability and Dressmakers and seamstresses, 43, 44–45;
long wear, 39, 40–41; mass-produced, sweated labor and, 44–45
50–51; mourning, 51–53; waterproof,
53–54 Fish: fish and chips, 68; types of, 68
Coaches, 105–6 Floor cloths, 82
Coal, 115 Food: adulteration, 8, 60–61; complexity
Coins and money, 11, 12–13 of shopping for, 56–58; imported, 65,
Coffee, 71 67, 128–29
148 Index
Fortnum & Mason, 119 Preservation of food, 66–67, 127

Furniture: buying, 78–80; makers, 77–78; Prices and price tags, 5, 6, 13
materials, 80
Fruit, 65, 128–29 Royal warrants, 9–10
Gin, 73–74 Shoes: industrial production, 25–26, 49;

Greeting cards, 92–93 traditional manufacturing of, 49
Grocers: greengrocers, 64; range of goods, Shoplifting, 8
65–66 Shopping, origins, 1, 27–28
Shops: assistants, 16, 20, 29; display and
Harrod’s, 12, 123–24 fittings, 125–26; overlapping
Hats, 47–49 inventories, 57, 64, 90, 93, 129–30,
Heinz, Henry, 122, 128 130–31; shop interiors, 5–6, 15–16, 42,
Herbalists, 94 124–25; and shopkeepers, 5–6, 15–16,
Houses: buying, 113–14; changing styles, 18–20, 89–90
76–77; as a reason to shop, 75–76, 113 Shop shutters, 6
Shop signs, 36–37
India outfits, 31 Signs and advertising, 36–38
Industrialization: and the consumer Stores vs. shops, 33
economy, 2–4; and consumer goods, 20, Sunday shopping, 13–14
28–29; and furniture, 78–79; and the
“new” middle classes, 26; and paper, Tailors, 41, 45–46; sweated labor and, 45
91–92; and shopping, 1–2 Taxes: and newspaper prices, 91, 92, 112;
Ironmongers, 85–86 and sugar, 129
Tea, 33, 72–73, 126–27; afternoon, 72;
Le Bon Marché, 122–23 tea-shops, 101–2
Lending libraries, 90–91, 112 Telegrams, 110–11
Liberty, Arthur, 54–55, 82–83 Tobacco, 100–101
Lipton, Thomas, 126–27 Tourism, 107–9
Toys, and the advent of childhood, 99
Market days, 20–21 Trousseaux, 46–47
Men and shopping, 4, 7, 35
Milk and cheese, 71, 126 Upholsters, 78
Mourning warehouses, 52
Music, 130–31 Warehouses, 20
Watches, 97
Oysters, 67–68 Whitely, William: origins of shop,
31–32; range of goods and services,
Packaging, 59–60; canning, 127 32–33
Packmen and street sellers, 22, 23, 31 Window shopping, 6, 27, 28–29
Photography, 132–33 Wine, 35, 73
Post Office: origins, 109; Penny Post, Women: criticisms of, 6–7; jewelry,
109–10 97; and shopping, 2, 5–6, 7, 14–15,
Poulterers, 67 121
About the Author
KELLEY GRAHAM currently teaches history at Friends’ Central School in

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. She has investigated different aspects of the his-
tory of the marketplace, including advertising, and currently focuses on the
consumer experience.

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“GONE TO THE SHOPS”

Family Ties in Victorian England

VICTORIAN LIFE AND TIMES

Graham, Kelley, 1961–

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

The paper used in this book complies with the

1. Going Shopping in Victorian England 1

a photo essay follows page 74

In “Gone to the Shops”: Shopping in Victorian England, Kelley Graham

Sally Mitchell, Series Editor

My family and friends have been enormously supportive and patient. My

1848: W.H. Smith opens ﬁrst railway station bookstore.

Going Shopping in Victorian England

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE VICTORIAN

SHOPPERS AND SHOPKEEPERS

DELIGHTS AND DANGERS IN THE MARKETPLACE

Many visitors to London, amidst the wilderness of excellent shops for

PRICES AND MONEY

SABBATH AND SABBATARIANISM

GETTING THERE, AND GETTING IT ALL HOME AGAIN

Victorians shopped in a world that presented stock and services tantalizingly

Shopping Traditions and Innovations

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people

FROM CRAFTSMAN TO SHOPKEEPER

FAIRS, AUCTIONS, AND STREET SELLERS

In to london I gan me hy;

LONDON AND THE WHOLESALE TRADE

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND SHOPPING

WINDOWS AND LEARNING TO LOOK

“SHOPPING is the amusement of spending money at shops. It is to a lady

Dickens described in this ridiculous, fevered embellishment of simple shops is

FROM BAZAARS TO DEPARTMENT STORES

for serious pedestrianism. Paintings and lithographs for gilded boudoirs,

Sala’s dismissal of the arcade—things we could do without, indeed—reﬂected

Although Sala dismissed these beauty products—dentifrice, or toothpaste in

Silks Children’s clothes Mantles

As the business developed anything imaginable in trading could be pur-

Smaller grocers and drapers were infuriated by the Whiteley’s hegemonic

resembled a modern warehouse discount store: customers ﬁlled out an order

CATALOGUES AND ADVERTISING

It began with the erection of ﬂagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses;

Clothes and Accessories

Textile manufacturing was unquestionably the most fully industrialized of

Because better dresses were intricately constructed of fabric which would be

where to buy the things they needed to be fashionable. This information on

IN PURCHASING ARTICLES OF WEARING APPAREL, whether it be

“What’s a moral pocket-ankercher?” said Sam; “I never see one o’ them

DRESSMAKER’S AND TAILOR’S SHOPS

magazines, allowed women without a “dressmaker’s eye,” to size up and copy

MILLINERS AND HATTERS

SHOES AND BOOTS

CLOTHING FOR THE REST: USED CLOTHING AND “SLOPS”

We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to ﬁt a pair

Another kind of used-clothing merchant called a piece-broker further recycled

mother, sons or daughter, sister or brother. Occasionally, at the end of

I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a

development of these outdoor pursuits, and shopkeepers were eager to offer

A most intense young man,