Ancestors At Work
Michelle Higgs looks at the lives of our ancestors who kept grocery stores – and how they dealt with the Christmas crowds
Did your relative keep a grocery store?
Before refrigeration and the advent of supermarkets, food had to be bought on a daily basis from the butcher, fishmonger, baker and so on. Dealing in dried goods, grocers were essential; they were different from greengrocers who sold fruit and vegetables.
A grocer was originally someone who bought and sold merchandise ‘in the gross’ – ie in large quantities on which to make a profit. The term ‘grocer’ soon became linked with the sale of sugar, spices and other goods because the Worshipful Company of Grocers had been founded by members of the Guild of Pepperers. Known as the Company of Grossers of London from 1348, the first reference to the ‘Grocers’ Company’ was in 1376.
Like all shopkeepers, grocers needed a combination of a small amount of capital to set themselves up, sound business acumen and a good knowledge of their customers’ needs.
By the mid-19th century, grocers stocked a dizzying array of products. They served them over the counter, weighing out loose ingredients. According to The Shopkeeper’s Guide (1853), the grocer dealt in “tea, sugar, coffee, chocolate, spices, raisins, currants, prunes, figs, &c”. Goods for sale included black tea, green tea, coffee, cocoa and chocolate, as well as sugars, fruits and spices such as mace, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, chillies and cloves. Staple store-cupboard items including rice, millet, sago, pearl barley, isinglass, gelatine and gum arabic were sold too.
At the grocery shop you could also stock up on your confectionery including orange and lemon peel, white and pink candy, lemon barley sugar, fruit jellies, preserved ginger, marmalade and peppermint lozenges.
In addition, you could pick up savoury items here such as mustard and curry powder; vinegars and salt; pickles and oils; soy, anchovy and Worcestershire sauces; and paste for sandwiches.
Cleaning products such as starch, soda, linseed, beeswax, black lead, emery powder, bath bricks, fuller’s earth, alum and turpentine could also be found at the grocer’s shop. After 1860, many grocers held licences to sell beer, wine and spirits too.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a great change in the products you could buy from the grocer. Packet teas, canned vegetables and meats; bottled condiments, fruit and biscuits in decorative tins; and preserved milk, pickles and preserves formerly made at home all became part of the grocer’s staple stock, alongside the loose traditional products. These were the first ‘convenience foods’. By 1900, provisions such as cheese and preserved meats were also becoming available.
Grocers usually knew the names of their customers, and offered credit to regulars. Unfortunately, if multiple debts were not repaid promptly, generous grocers could easily find themselves heading towards bankruptcy.
Setting Up Shop
However, not all grocers were the same – there were different types catering for distinct classes of clientele. Small ventures in mostly workingclass areas might run their business from the front room of their home or in separate premises. They generally employed family members to help out in the shop, which they all lived above. They were happy to sell small weights of everything to customers who could not afford to purchase larger quantities. It was common for a widow and/or daughter to continue to operate a grocery business after the husband or father had died. It was also possible for a spinster
‘Some unscrupulous traders adulterated their loose tea to increase their margins’
to set up a grocer’s shop in her own right – if she had some capital behind her.
Larger shops serving higherclass customers, perhaps with several branches, usually had prominent positions in the high street; they might employ a manager with assistants (also known as countermen) and apprentices, in addition to porters and delivery boys. These shops were more likely to have staff who had undertaken seven-year apprenticeships.
The memories of Harry Headey,
whose father managed a highclass grocery in Tonbridge, Kent, during the Edwardian period, are quoted in Michael J Winstanley’s The Shopkeeper’s World. The grocers “could tell any customer whatever they wanted to know… they could tell them how to cook it… what sauces to use with various things and… they could advise on wines to go with a meal… We had a staff of about twelve. They were all men.”
Wages in the grocery trade varied greatly, but by 1900, a branch manager was paid 30–60s a week; first-countermen 14–25s a week; second-countermen 10–16s a week – all with board and lodging. If staff lived out, their pay was higher.
Long Hours
Working hours were extremely long; grocers’ shops were open from 8am until 9 or 9.30pm on Monday to Thursday and until 10.30 or 11pm on Fridays. On Saturdays, most of them didn’t close until midnight. As well as serving hours, there was preparation work and cleaning to do after the shop shut.
From the 1870s, there was increasing competition from cooperatives and multiples – such as Liptons and Home & Colonial – that sold discount products, but this only really affected grocers with working-class customers. Blending loose tea generated a good profit, but some unscrupulous traders adulterated it to increase their margins. This practice declined after the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875), under which inspectors could sample food and drugs to test them for adulteration.
Only grocers who enjoyed a good reputation for counter service and high-quality products were successful. They made their shop windows attractive and well-lit to entice customers in, and were knowledgeable about their stock. Their shops had strong aromas, not least at Christmas when goods such as mincemeat were sold. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Charles Dickens described the scene at the grocers: “the blended scents of tea and coffee… the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight… the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar… the figs were moist and pulpy… the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highlydecorated boxes… everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress”.
Before 1914, small independent shops with counter service still made up 70 per cent of the grocery trade. It was not until the late 1950s that they began to decline following the introduction of supermarkets.