Is a sausage worth going to jail for?

and other food related questions.

A couple of weeks ago over on Instagram, I posted a newspaper article from 1894 about a young woman called Florence Brewer who used an umbrella to smash in a shop window. She had done so because ‘she was very fond of sausages’ and the man who owned the shop, a sausage maker named George Brut, refused to let her have any on credit.

In the Bow-Street Police Court Florence told the Judge that not only had Brut denied her the sausages, he ‘gave us great provocation last night by putting his thumb to his nose and putting his tongue out at us.’ Brut apparently did this to all the girls he knew on the Strand. The Illustrated Police News imagined the scene of the sausage inspired crime as follows:

Illustrated Police News, September 29th, 1894.

Perfect. The lady on the right is Florence’s friend Nell, who bought the umbrella along to court and confirmed that Brut had insulted the women. Florence was sentenced to seven days hard labour, after which I hope she did get some sausages, but who knows!

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about food as we approach the release of Dr Eleanor Barnett’s book Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation. If you are at all interested in food (and who isn’t), you should go pick it up and also follow her at History Eats.

Sticking to that theme, here’s another food based crime from the Illustrated Police News.

I scream, you scream etc.

In the summer of 1894, the two men pictured above got into a brawl over ice cream territory. During the late 1800’s, London had around 30,000 street vendors who sold various food and drink out of a barrow or a cart. As you can imagine, competition between vendors was fierce and the quality of product varied widely.

An ice cream seller and some very happy customers, from John Thompson’s series of Street Incidents photographs, taken in the mid 1870’s. via The British Library.

Boni Lorenzo, an Italian ice cream vendor selling ice cream on a corner in Canning Town, became incensed when barrows belonging to Antonio del Castello starting appearing in the same area. Unfortunately for Lorenzo, Castello’s ice cream was significantly better. ‘The superiority of Castello’s ice-cream took the public taste, and Lorenzo’s trade fell off considerably’ noted one reporter.

At first, Castello’s vendors kept an almost respectable distance, but it wasn’t long before they were operating in sight of Lorenzo. Eventually, Lorenzo abandoned his own stall, stormed over to Castello, seized a freezer and ‘beat the ice cream out of it on the ground then began to kick the vessel about the road.’ A small congregation of children appeared and scooped up ‘the best of the cream’ (ick).

Lorenzo was summoned to the West Ham Police court, where he admitted to losing his temper. But he had a defence: he was angry because Castello was selling ice cream at a price that was not profitable. Vendors at the time sold their ice cream out of penny lick glasses which looked like this:

via Scarborough Museums and Galleries

Customers would pay a penny for their ice cream, lick it out of the glass and then hand the glass back to the seller who may or may not clean it properly between serves.

Back to our feuding vendors. Lorenzo told the Judge that Castello was selling his ice cream out of twopenny lick glasses but only charging the amount you would charge for a penny’s worth. He then accused Castello of ‘expressing his intention to ruin Lorenzo’ using this scheme. This obviously begs the question of whether Castello’s ice cream was actually better than Lorenzo’s, or whether customers just enjoyed being given more bang for their buck.  

Unmoved by Lorenzo’s defence, the Judge ordered him to pay a fine of 5 shillings and to cover the cost of the damage done to Castello’s equipment. Lorenzo paid the fine and presumably both men returned to hawking their ice cream out of their penny (and twopenny) licks.

If you are hung up on how gross the idea of eating your ice cream out of a semi-washed glass is, you aren’t alone. In 1898, London banned the penny licks out of concern they were contributing to the spread of diseases like cholera and tuberculosis. Elsewhere some vendors did continue to use the glasses as late at the 1920’s, but eventually they were replaced by the waffle cones that we know and love today. What a relief.

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Sources:

Newspapers, via Newspapers.com

• Illustrated Police News, September 29th, 1894.

• Illustrated Police News, June 9th, 1894.

Street Incidents, The British Library.

‘Penny Lick Glasses’, Scarborough Museums and Galleries.

‘The History of Ice Cream in London’ by Zoe Craig at The Londonist.