Some of you will recall that I recently posted a photo-series about the sort of shops that were around when I was very young. Some more research shows that around one hundred years earlier, during the Victorian Era, many of those same shops were already trading. It seems very little had changed between 1860, and 1958.
Sainsbury is one of the largest supermarket chains in Britain. British readers will know the name well, as there is hardly a town or city in the UK that does not have a branch nearby.
Much in the same way as so many Victorians liked to be photographed standing outside their beloved houses, the same applied to the shopkeepers of the time.
Long before local authorities banned excessive on-street displays for ‘health and safety’ concerns, it was usual for many goods to be stacked outside the shops. There was rarely enough room for everything inside, and all that stock had to be laboriously carried back in at closing time.
There were always lots of small shops selling household essentials.
This would have been the ‘Homebase’ of its time
An ‘Off-Licence’ (or License) is a shop that sells beers, wines, and spirits that have to be consumed ‘Off’ the premises. Unlike pubs, it was forbidden to open any bottles inside, or to drink them in there. Customers could take in their own pots and jugs though, to be filled from barrels of beer inside.
They continued until the supermarkets began to sell alcohol, and drove them out of business.
I actually operated one, with my mother, from 1976-1981.
Not this one though.
(The sign ‘Free House’ doesn’t mean that the drinks were free of charge. It means that the shop is not tied to one particular brewery, so ‘Free’ to sell all brands)
Sweets and chocolate were always very popular. Dedicated ‘sweet shops’ could be found everywhere, usually with small children inside, trying to decide which sweets to spend a very small amount of money on. They almost always sold cigarettes and tobacco too, and you can see that stated in small print over the entrance door.
Tobacconists usually sold newspapers and magazines too, as well as offering some sweets or confectionery to tempt customers.
At the same time in America, shops were getting grander and grander. This is a Philadelphia drug store, in 1880.
The interior is magnificent.
After trudging around doing all that shopping, the Victorian consumer usually liked to stop off for a cup of tea, and perhaps a bite to eat.
Popular ‘Tea Rooms’ offered genteel surroundings, and fair prices.
You would be served by very smart waitresses too.
Still prefer Starbucks?
I think it is a great shame that these character-filled small shops with their dedicated and knowledgeable owners have all but disappeared.
Like many good things of the past, they have been consigned to History.
Thank you for a great article. I am currently researching Victorian shops for a doll’s house project. Your photographs have given me some great ideas about what to include – judging by the quantities of stock involved in most of the images, i should cram in as much as possible?
Have you done any articles on Victorian food?
Thanks again. I’ll look forward to your next post!
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I did a few like this a while back, but no food, sorry.
Here are the others.
Good luck with your project, Lindsay.
If you search ‘Pinterest’ on Google, then type ‘Victorian Food’ in the search box of the home page, there are lots of photos, and links to articles.
You don’t have to have a Pinterest account.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I loved this post, Pete. The old photos are wonderful. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Like you, I think this was an era that is sorely missed. In America, malls are becoming a thing of the past. Now, developers are building neighborhoods of street shopping. It’s a good thing.
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Glad to hear that the trend is being reversed in America. The opposite is true here, with edge-of-town superstores being built all the time, and small shops closing down.
Best wishes, Pete.
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That is unfortunate. It’s hard to see the little shops close.
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Love these vintage photos-I love small shops, even now. The monster stores sure lack any charm.
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Thanks, Michele. You are lucky if you have some small shops left to shop in. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I now understand the “off license” and “free house” terms so this was very informative. I do a lot of “small shop” shopping… but online. I buy loads of things from independent producers via Instagram or Etsy… My groceries however are delivered to my front door by Mr J Sainsbury.
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Thanks, Abbi. Happy to educate you about the vagaries of the brewing retail industry. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Great pictures and goes to show how much things have changed especially with the advent of health and safety legislation. Of course you can still see the same sort of outdoor displays when you go to places like the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the developing world.
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We had one hardware shop in Dereham that had similar street displays on the pavement. Sadly, that closed down in 2018.
Thanks, WS.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Fascinating post, Pete. When I was researching for the first local history book I found postcards of a butcher’s shop in Dumfries whcih had carcasses on the pavement outside and another with literally hudreds of chickens suspended outside the shop – no health and safety worries in those days.
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Indeed. You can only imagine the flies and dirt all over that hanging poultry!
Thanks, Mary.
Best wishes, Pete.
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But did people get sick any more often than nowadays, I wonder?
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Hard to say. They certainly died younger though. And infant mortality in the first year was around 12% in the Victorian Era. Not sure if tainted food played any part in that.
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I remember shops like that from my childhood. There was a small Sainsbury’s in our market square in Poplar, East London, with marble counters and sawdust on the floor.
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And staff slicing bacon, cutting cheese with a wire, and patting butter with wooden bats. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Yes, I remember all those. Happy days…
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Those photos do jump out
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Considering how old they are, they are still remarkably good images.
Thanks, Alex.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I think Poland has become the new nation of shop keepers, the villages are peppered with small shops, which incidentally can stay open on a Sunday if the owner is serving customers, whilst all other shops are restricted to one Sunday a month.
Our nearest Tesco shut down about six months ago, not such a bad thing in my eyes.
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I like to hear about a Tesco closing down because people prefer small shops.
Unfortunately, our local Town Council increased business rates by close to 100% in 2018. That put many shops out of business, including Ollie’s dog groomer. She now has to operate from a converted garage at her house.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I hear about the troubles of the small business on the radio on quite a frequent basis, although it seems to be lots of talk with little action.
I believe they have imposed a tax on shops over a certain floorspace to try and help out the small shops, although I think there may be a fight with the EU on that one, but as you probably know Poland like to fight with the EU 🙂
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Thanks for another fascinating trip into history by photo. We still have ‘Off-Licence’ arrangements with most beer and wine sales points. I don’t believe it is legal to drink in a liquor store either. My how times don’t change. Warmest regards, Theo
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Thanks, Theo. Yes, your liquor stores are very similar to off-licences. I think the settlers took the idea across the Atlantic with them. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Victorian/Edwardian time period is one of my favorites of England. I loved the photos.
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Thanks, Cindy. I am always intrigued by how little it had changed when I was young. Most of those shops would have been much the same in the 1960s, if not identical.
Best wishes, Pete. x
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I agree the period is fascinating, and the photos in this post are lovely. A lot of beauty characterised that time, and it all ended with WWI
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Thanks, Maria. Yes, beauty alongside great poverty too. I will be posting about that soon.
Many thanks for reading and commenting.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I know about poverty from that time. Children working in factories and no social security
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Yes, I have already posted about child labour. Did you see that one?
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thanks for the trip back in time. How things have changed!
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They have certainly changed here. However, in some small British towns and villages, you might still find areas of streets with individual shops.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Great information Pete! Lets wait when Amazon will begin opening local shops. Then we are back in the “good old time”. Lol
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Once Amazon rules the world, they will only have to open one big depot, then make us collect everything from there. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Its true, and sad too.
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In New York City you would still find many goods on the street outside the shops, especially produce.
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It still happens in small towns here, but big cities have been banning street displays for many years now. Of course, some traders ignore the rules. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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That is too bad. Street displays make life more interesting, I think. They often draw me into the store itself.
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i’m enjoying all these ‘going back in time’ Pete. come to think how impersonal shopping has become! 🙂
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Thanks, Wilma. I am also enjoying the nostalgia. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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About the pics taken out of the shop, I think it is simply because of lighting issues and because photographs were so expensive and rare that you would take one with your family and shop/house just to include everything that mattered to you. ☺️
Also, we still have loads of old-fashioned shops in India, though supermarkets are killing them pretty fast. I love the experience of being treated special just when attendants acknowledge me by showing their wares rather than just go-pick-pay culture of malls where attendants are only there to ensure I don’t mess up the arrangement.
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I agree with you about both the photos, and the shops in India. 🙂
Thanks, Shaily.
Best wishes, Pete.
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You have done so many interesting things, Pete. I love these photos. They remind me of the photos in my grandmother’s stereoscope. Most of the images were from Victorian times.
I love the character and individualism of stand-alone shops. One of the reasons I loved to travel to new places and shop in stores we did not have. Now, every city in America has the same stores.
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Much the same here, Maggie. You could be dropped off blindfolded in any major town or city, and all the shops would be the same as those at home. I understand why the small shop is failing due to economic pressures, and people like me buying cheaper from Amazon.
I still do my best to support local businesses though, and buy all our electrical and household goods from a shop that only has three branches in Norfolk.
When they are all gone, it will be a sad day indeed.
Best wishes, Pete.
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We are all somewhat guilty for the cost saving and convenience of Amazon. Still, I miss the romantic days of shopping.
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I love these trips back in time posts of yours Pete.
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Thanks, Kim. Tomorrow, I am posting about ‘Hats’. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Must have been fascinating to have an “off-license” – do you have pictures of it? I ask because in those days you needed to take the time to take photos…today it’s point and click your phone! If I had an iPhone growing up Id have million photos!
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There are some old photos somewhere, John.
Just don’t ask me where they are at the moment. 🙂
Rest assured that if I ever find them, they will be posted!
Best wishes, Pete.
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Reblogged this on Wilfred Books and commented:
Shopping was a much more personal experience, in the old days.
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Lovely photographs, Pete. I dimly remember a Sainsbury’s like the one in the photo, in my home town: it was the way they patted the butter from a huge block with big fluted wooden paddles, into a smaller pat to sell, that stuck in my mind.
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I used to watch the ‘butter people’ at a similar shop, ‘Liptons’, in London. They certainly mastered their craft with pride then. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Nice post! Interesting to learn about how they went shopping during that time and I love those pictures! It’s amazing how people used to dress up back in the day too. Nowadays people can stay home in there pajamas and order groceries online.
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Yes indeed, KCR. No wonder all those interesting little shops have disappeared.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Lovely to see them. Have you ever been to Beamish Open Air Museum Pete, it looks a lot like these pictures!
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No, but I have seen it on TV (Antiques Roadshow I think) and looked at the website.
Best wishes, Pete.
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People didn’t smile very much in pictures back then, eh?
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I think they not only felt awkward, but longer time exposures meant that if they smiled, the image might blur! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Fantastic journey back through time, Pete!
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Thanks, Sue. I was struck by how familiar it seemed to me. It had hardly changed when I was a small boy in the 1950s. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Just shows how rapidly change has come since the 1950s….
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I was 19 before I saw my first ‘real’ supermarket. It was a ‘Fine Fare’, in south London. It was tiny by today’s standards, but seemed enormous to me then.
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And I was in my 20s when I saw my first hypermarket over here, and most of our supermarkets now are on that model,I guess
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Okay I gotta know….just what is “Will’s Superfine SHAG”? chuq
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Wills was a large tobacco company. W.D. & H. O. Wills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.D._%26_H.O._Wills
Superfine Shag was a loose cigarette and pipe tobacco, designed to be easy to light, and to burn well. Its opposite number was ‘Rough Shag’, which the pipe smoker would rub into the consistency he (or she) preferred. Some brands of Shag tobacco were described as ‘Ready-Rubbed’.
Sherlock Holmes is described as enjoying his ‘pipes of shag’ in many of the novels.
Because of the common use of ‘Shag’ later on as referring to the sex act, the double meaning of this was not lost on us as giggling schoolboys. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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THanx for that…now explain why is a cig a “fag”? chuq
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There are no definite answers, but one of them is this.
Advertisements often used the phrase “For A Good Smoke”.
The first four letters are FAGS, so they became known as fags.
Older versions refer to the small pieces of droopy cloth that sometimes hung from clothing, known as a ‘fag of cloth’. Early hand-rolled cigarettes drooped from the mouths of smokers, and it was said that they resembled a ‘fag’.
Last but not least (and more plausible) is that faggots refers to a bundle of small irregular-shaped sticks. Tied together, they were often used to start fires, and burned quickly when lit. Cigarettes reminded people of these small sticks, and became know as faggots, shortened to ‘fags’.
You have to remember that homosexuals were not called fags here at the time. That usage was imported from America in the 1900s, also an abbreviation of faggots. That originated from the same small bent sticks, and homosexual activity was described here as being ‘bent’.
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I know we had a different definition for queer and gay a hundred years ago as well…..thanx for the insights chuq
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I remember the “corner store” from my youth……it was a personal experience today it is all about the cash…great pics my friend….chuq
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Thanks, chuq. Some places here still have corner shops, but they are dying out fast.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Around here there are none I can think of…the last one closed last year…..it is sad….chuq
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I commented on Alan Burnett’s News for Nowhere site recently that people are standing outside their shops and houses in almost every street scene in early twentieth century postcard. It’s sad that unless labelled and passed down in a family album, we no longer know who any of them are.
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Anyone else spotted the children looking out of the upstairs windows in the Huxtable picture?
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Thanks, David. I spotted the children, and presumed they were carefully posed for the photo by the open curtains.
That, or they are ghosts!
Best wishes, Pete.
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(1) I’d like to try their brilliant burning lamp oil. Preferably at midnight.
(2) Wills’s superfine shag was eventually topped by Austin Powers’s superfine shag.
(3) Those ladies at the tea room are winking at me. Four tea winks. I think I’ll take a nap.
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A feast of shopping-related puns, David!
The fact that pipe tobacco was called ‘Shag’ was always a source of amusement to us as youngsters. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I think I said that to you recently, I’m sad that so many shops seem to be disappearing. Everyone buys their goods on internet, and physical stores are becoming a thing of the past. I honestly still love shopping (I make a trip to my favorite shopping city Utrecht every 6 weeks or so). This pictures look amazing. I especially like the Philadelphia drug store…Sometimes I wish I really had a time machine to travel back to times such as these. Always love these posts Pete…keep them coming! 😊
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Thanks, Michel. There will be similar posts to come. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Look at those attires.
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Shop staff had to look ‘respectable’ in those days, Arlene. It was considered to be a good career, and a job for life. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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