Secrets of the brown paper bag

All good things came in paper, which also gave handy camouflage, writes Ian Cole

DISCUSSIONS about supermarkets and paper bags caused my thoughts to turn to school lunches for a whole generation, years ago. Most of us took our lunch to school in a brown paper bag.

Lunch boxes were not on the radar in those times because most kids opened their brown paper bag at lunchtimes, undid the lunch wrap and got stuck into their sandwiches. These days lunch boxes for kids come in all shapes and sizes and even are compartmentalised to separate the contents.

Brown paper bags had the advantage of not disclosing the contents to nearby kids such that the more affluent kids with roast beef sandwiches wouldn’t be aware of those with sandwiches of bread and dripping and vice-versa.

Brown paper bags were all the go and were apparently invented by Margaret E. Knight in the US in 1870 to hold groceries and afterwards they became a standard for generations.

Groceries here also came in them and men coming home from work in the 1950s and 1960s used to disguise their couple of bottles of beer in some taller bags as they walked home. Despite the disguise, all the neighbours knew what was in them. Brown paper itself was widely used where shops would wrap up larger items in sheets while schoolkids were encouraged to cover their schoolbooks similarly.

When school lunches in the US began to be increasingly provided by the school, Congressman Charles Mathias saw in it the demise of an American tradition — the loss of the brown paper bag at lunchtime.

Of course, one item that didn’t come in brown paper in those days was fish and chips. Early on, chips always came in newspaper, but later due to health reasons, in white paper. To save your threepences to buy a shilling’s worth of chips was a real treat. The only way to eat them was to tear off the top of the wrapped white sheets, let the steam out and then get into the big chips at the top. The crunchy ones at the bottom were OK as well. Chips were never in bags and were best from shops with water running down the windows.

One can only wonder what brown paper may have had uses for, way back. In the nursery rhyme, when Jack and Jill went up the hill and Jack fell down and broke his crown, he ended up in bed, mending his head with vinegar and brown paper. Not sure about that one! The story also goes that Abraham Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, wrote his original copy of the Gettysburg Address in pencil on the back of a brown paper envelope. So, it can be surmised that brown paper was not just an Australian fixation. Back in the sixties, Julie Andrews intimated that brown paper had worldwide popularity. She sang in the Sound of Music that one of her favourite things was “brown paper packages tied up with strings”.

BROWN PAPER BAGS HAD THE ADVANTAGE OF NOT DISCLOSING THE CONTENTS ... THE MORE AFFLUENT KIDS WITH ROAST BEEF SANDWICHES WOULDN’T BE AWARE OF THOSE WITH BREAD AND DRIPPING AND VICE-VERSA