Deliveries to your door? It’s nothing new
THE notion of everyday essentials being delivered to your door no doubt seems bang up to date to those who today shop on-line.
But long before the term internet had even been coined people with horse drawn carts, on bikes, or in overladen lorries were a familiar sight on our streets, offering for sale everything anyone could possibly need.
One such was Albert Lusty, whose truck can be seen in the photograph of Cheltenham’s lower High Street taken at around the time that Cliff Richard was in the charts with “Move it” and considered a threat to the moral wellbeing of the nation’s youth. In other words, the late 1950s.
Albert Lusty toured the town and outlying parts in a converted Austin K2 lorry that might well have been surplus to army requirements at the end of the Second World War. Just as a snail carries its home on its back, Mr Lusty’s split windscreened truck bore everything for the home in the way of cleaning requisites and ironmongery.
Yard brooms, dusters, mouse traps and Brasso, lead blacking for the grate, or a plunger for the bunged up sink, Albert had the lot, along with polishes, dish cloths, whetting stones and paraffin. The latter (bom-bom-bom-bom – Esso Blue) was still essential in many country homes where electricity was yet to be installed and the gas mains had never reached.
Albert’s oppos in Gloucester were the Finch Brothers who had a mobile hardware lorry familiar to city households. For a reason unknown, hardware was well represented in the mobile business business.
William Giles had a housewares and ironmongery shop in Winchcombe and introduced a horse drawn sales van. Later Dobbin was replaced by the splendid open shelved emporium on a Model T Ford chassis that you see in the photo, which catered to the needs of villagers in further flung parts.
Yet another mobile seller of zinc baths, pots, pans and ironmongery can be seen in the picture taken around 1950 in the Cotswolds. You’ll notice the sign over the shelves reads Hardware Merchants, just in case anyone wondered what kind of goods were on offer.
Until his retirement in 1970, Ernie Miller’s mobile grocery shop did the rounds of Tuffley, Matson, Barnwood, Hucclecote, Longlevens, Longford and Hempsted.
In the 1950s and 60s Fred Stevens delivered fish and vegetables every Friday from a cart pulled by his grey mare named Daisy. Fred’s shop was in Gloucester’s Barton Street, an open fronted premises, as were most wet fish sellers, with cod, hake, huss and other fishy fare displayed on the white tiled slab over which handfuls of ice were thrown at regular intervals.
Daisy and the cart were kept at stables in the High Street, Tredworth, a premises shared with the local building firm of E G Carter. His day’s work done and a thirst on him from all that delivering, Fred sometimes popped into the India House for a small libation. Daisy waited patiently outside and knew her way home if Fred came over tired and snoozed at the reins.
If the daily gold top to pour on your cornflakes was delivered by the Co-op, you put out plastic tokens by way of payment. But it wasn’t only milk that came to the door. The bread van pulled up laden with split tops and bloomers (and drippers if you were lucky).
Children hopped excitedly from foot to foot as a chinking of bottles heralded the Corona pop man and beer at home meant Davenports.
The coalman’s horse-drawn cart clopped to your front gate, where Dobbin was left to munch at the nose bag, while sack loads of nutty slack were heaved into your bunker.
Meat was delivered by the butcher’s boy, or girl by bike and another regular visitor was the Kleenezee caller with polishes and detergents.
The arrival of the rag and bone man was heralded by an incomprehensible cry and for many people Friday was pig man day, when your vegetable peelings and unwanted leftovers were whisked away to please the porkers.
In and around Cheltenham there was even a mobile pet shop.
This unlikely venture was the idea of Edgar Piper, who was a familiar character about town.
He sold birds, small animals and food for both from a pitch in the Prom where he parked his tricycle.