New Tea Warehouse

Follwing on from yesterday's post Teas of Empire II..... Tea was a joint venture by both wholesale societies. The adverts often used a heralding trumpet figure who wears an outfit just stepped out from an Alice in Wonderland story. Better pictures reveal that he has the wheatsheaf symbol on that quartered costume. I bet the image on the dark quarters is the logo of the Scottish CWS.

There is a certain irony in that there is also an illustration of the Cutty Sark. The famous tea clipper, though she spent more years carrying wool from Australia to Britain, has defied all odds and is preserved, and restored after the fire of 2007. It's at Greenwich in London. In 1930 she was anchored in Falmouth harbour having retired from sailing. However the massive tea warehouse in Salford mentioned in the text has not been preserved....it was demolished some years back. As for the SS Makalla she's gone too.

The SS Makalla, 6,677 tons, was built in Port Glasgow in 1918 and sunk in the Moray Firth by German aircraft in August 1940. She was sailing in convoy. Part of the Anchor Brocklebank Line she made regular trips to India and back to North West England ports loaded with tea. Besides cargoes for the E&CWS she carried tea for the rival and well known Mazawatti Tea Company. I love that name Mazawatti. Pioneers in advertising, they refused to sell tea to multiples and co-op societies and only traded with independent grocers.

Teas of Empire II

There used to be a massive tea warehouse on the Salford side of the Ship Canal. It was opposite the Pomona Docks, the original small docks at the start of the canal. I've never been sure at what point the canal starts and the River Irwell ends.

The most striking aspect of the building was the huge neon sign of a big teapot being filled with tea leaves by a lady standing on a tall stool. The bright light of the wording said the slogan "Filling the Nation's Teapot". Well this is how I remember it in a strong red colour. Now demolished. Still trying to find a good photograph of the building.

This display advert is from 1930 and like most of that time used line drawings.

Note it is only tea from the English & Scottish CWS plantations in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). It is loose leaf tea in 4 oz (about 113 gms) packets.

Seventy odd years later we can buy Fairtrade tea, most is consumed by using tea bags, and it comes from plantations not owned by The Co-Operative being blends from East Africa, India and Sri Lanka.

Chutney of Empire

A relish from the Raj that made its appearance in Britain at the end of the 18th Century in the upper class households, and was adopted by successive classes to become a national condiment. Now every grocery store, faux farm shop, pseudo farmers market and delicatessan stocks the stuff.

Hobson Jobson, Yule & Burnell's 1886 glossary of Anglo-Indian words, cites chatna from 1813 and chatnee from 1820. From which you get the modern English spelling chutney. If you were wealthy enough you could buy imported chutney, or get cook to rustle up a batch that used apples and onions instead of mangoes and tamarinds. Recipes in Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families ( 1845) or Mrs. Beeton's Household Management (1861).

Moving on a bit prices fell, and production from every pickle and sauce maker increased. Here we have the CWS advert from 1926 which has a Bengal chutney (that's short hand for hot, just like the description Mexican these days), and a mild sweet mango chutney.

Green Label Mango Chutney by Sharwood's become one of the leading brands after WWI and it still is. You'll find in The Co-Operative store and just about everywhere else. Just check out the illustration from the 1920's. It might have been made in a factory in London but you've got a character out of the Arabian Nights giving it authenticity. Heinz made a tomato chutney - tomatoes were their ingredient of choice for ketchup, soup and beans. Crosse & Blackwell were also leading purveyors.

I do like some of the names the evoke the colonial period, still available when you track them down. Major Grey's Mango Chutney was supposedly named after some chap in the Bengal Lancers. The best is Colonel Skinner's Mango Chutney, now he was a real soldier in India with his own horse regiment.

Now I've tried to explain chutney to friends from the other European countries. They look puzzled when I explain it is like a spicy jam and goes particularly well with poppadoms or as an extra filling for a sandwich.

However what was once an exciting new food from the Jewel of the Empire has been adapted to modern tastes. That is sweet and homogenised. Loaded with cheap sugar from beet, and there are brands out there are using high fructose corn syrup, having a texture that is gloppy sticky paste. When you see it in squeezable plastic containers you've hit another nadir in good taste. When you get the watery let down served in restaurants you've been done again. Don't fret there are still good chutneys about.

On the home made chutney front it became the salvation for the glut of fruit and vegetables. Back in WW2 days the Ministry of Food issued information to make Green Tomato Chutney. It had been around for decades because unripe tomatoes are that blessing or curse of English summers. The adoption of a foreign food to become an institution is a fascinating development and we should be pleased it has happened. Why eat plain when there is a jar of chutney in the cupboard.

Links for further reading :
Hobson Jobson : Anglo-Indian dictionary online.
Military memoir of lieut.-col. James Skinner is available at the Internet Archive, but only the Google Books version appears to have all the pages. It's here.
Previous posts in the Foods of Empire series are these.

Dairy of Empire

A display advert speaks the wartime propaganda. It's 1944 and the centenary of the Rochdale Pioneers. The celebrations are played down as the nation is busy with the big conflict, but the CWS shows it is playing its part in the war effort and "in welding together the interests of the British Commonwealth of Nations".

There is the Scottish born, Peter Fraser, the Prime Minister of New Zealand 1940-1949 linking it all together. Note the wheatsheaf emblem of "Labour and Wait" with a spade. I'm intrigued by this spade, it appears during the war, but I'm certain it is not on the original logo, but there is probably more to it than that. Either that or I'm mistaken.

Previous posts :
Foods of Empire including Butter of Empire

Sauces of Empire

If there ever was a sauce of the Empire it would have to be Lea & Perrins Worcester Sauce, born in that town in 1837. It has the ingredients of Empire - sugar, molasses and tamarind. Though most people in Britain wouldn't know what tamarind looks like or that comes from India. But they've certainly tasted it for it also in the biggest brand of table sauce - HP Sauce. House of Parliament on the label, a favourite of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and now made in the Netherlands. That says what happened to Empire. It was overtaken by global capitalism and multi-nationals.

The picture is of TT sauce made by the CWS. It was around in the time of WWI, maybe even later. Now the Empire is shown on the hemispheres with the Dominions, the Raj and a colony. Not the East African acquisitions of Rhodesia, Uganda, Kenya etc. Ceylon isn't even on the map.

There were lots of sauces in bottles and usually they had two initials for their name. The CWS also had one called JP Sauce which carried on until at least the late 1950's. Unfortunately I've only got this bad reproduction of a TT Sauce label and no ingredient list. I have a theory why bottles of sauce have always been popular. It goes bland food, and making your own sauce for your meal is a step too far in skill or time. So reach for the bottle and liven up your plate with a consistent condiment.

This was No.6 in the Foods of Empire Series at the Co-Op.

Cookbook of Empire

I was given a tattered copy of a small book "A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes" many years ago. Written by Charles Elme Francatelli back in 1852. For me it was a mere curiosity not being my style of cuisine. It is not an original but a 1978 reprint, and subsequent reprints you can still purchase. However the other week I came across the following...
"In January 1860 T. B. Potter Esq. M.P. presented 1,500 of Francatelli's cookery books for distribution amongst the members."

A generous gift to the M&SE Co-op from the radical politician and member for Rochdale, who would be well known to the directors of the Society. They shared the same politics of support for the Union cause in the American Civil War with the Union & Emancipation Society, and support for Garibaldi, a hero to radicals all over the world. Burning topics of the day.

Though Mr. Francatelli made his living and reputation as a chef for the toffs it was practical cookery books for the lower classes that he is remembered for. Those with an interest in improvement and ability for self-help might have found them useful. Recipes for a pie of small birds, or cooking oysters when those creatures were plentiful are included. How to cook potatoes in several styles covers some of the basics. Over a full page is given over to the humble haricot.

Besides the recipes it starts with what kitchen equipment to purchase. Those Victorians had to be content with a black cooking range with an oven next to a coal fire. Smoke, ash and no thermostats. A contrast to the current times when people have the best kitchens in the whole of human history but rely on ready made sauces and takeaways. Cooking from scratch ingredients is a minority activity, back then it was a neccessity. The values of economy and no waste still hold good today, even if the vegetables are boiled to almost mush. 

I'm going to use one of the recipes. It's long overdue. Some interesing biscuits called "Ginger Nuts". They are shaped like walnuts, and ginger was a popular spice in the days of Empire...

References :

Wikipedia entry for Charles Francatelli
Free e-book version
Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald 1909 page 153

Coffees of Empire

The fourth in a series entitled "Foods of the Empire". The victuals people would buy at their local Co-Op when the maps of the world had large areas shaded in red.

You somehow feel that Britain has come to terms with its imperialist past. The recent BBC Tv five part series "Empire", an excellent travelogue / documentary with Jeremy Paxman suggests that.

Here is coffee essence a peculiar British product. A thick gooey syrup that was suppose to taste like coffee after hot water was poured over it. It is still retailed in places but I can't bear to purchase any. I remember it first time around. Ingredients : 40% water, 30% sugar, 26% chicory essence, 4% coffee essence, stabilisers and thickeners.

The label says everything about Empire and that later creation the Commonwealth. Manufactured by Patterson & Sons in Glasgow from 1875. The iconic label of an military officer in the Gordon Highlanders and a Sikh gentleman being a waiter / batman serving up the delicious sweet drink. That was the black and white days. Now the firm is a brand of the McCormick & Company (think of those over-priced Schwartz herbs and spices) it has been re-designed with both chaps sitting together enjoying the beverage. There was an intermediate design of the chap in his turban standing with the tray airbrushed out. Redolent of those Stalinist era photographs, when the old Bolsheviks got removed from the picture after Uncle Joe had them executed.

Getting back to the beverage I've always wondered why Britain, in the days of Empire, never got to grips with coffee making at home? Also the use of chicory in this product is an interesting and separate story. It can make an acceptable drink when there is a coffee shortage but there wasn't one.

Butter of Empire

The advertisement is from Friday 17th April 1931 in the Manchester Guardian. Another in the series of Foods of The Empire. It says it is the first direct consignment, presumably from New Zealand to the Manchester Ship Canal. The S.S. Surrey was a steamship of the New Zealand Shipping Company. Built in 1919, with a tonnage 8,580 and like many of their ships was named after an English county. The ship was sunk in 1942 in the Second World War.

The New Zealand Produce Association had offices in Tooley Street, London and was set up by the CWS and the Marketing Association of New Zealand in 1922 after a visit by a CWS delegation to New Zealand. It served importers of agricultural produce which the CWS required for its factories. An international co-operative undertaking by both producers and consumers.

Links : New Zealand Shipping Company History

Cocoa of Empire

This is the second in the series of "Food of Empire". The co-operative societies fully participated in importing and promoting victuals from the distant colonies and dominions. Not only that they owned the plantations, had depots and agents in the cities of the Empire.

The English and the Scottish CWS opened a cocoa factory in Dallow Road, Luton, in 1902. Like the British Empire it is gone now, demolished early in 1970. It is now a site of the Guardian Business Park, near the junction with Vernon Road. The poster dates from 1906 and is a contrast between an idealised view of work in West Africa and the impressive building with smoking chimney to demonstarte a hive of industry in Luton.

Nowadays the cocoa and chocolate is advertised as a Fairtrade product, the workers in West Africa have their own co-operative, but no sign of any factories in the UK, or wherever it is processed in the EU.

Links :
Divine Chocolate
Teas of Empire - previous post

Teas of Empire

If you subscribe to enough email updates of other bloggers then occasionally something will surprise you.

An interesting one is Curatorial Space which is behind the scenes at Manchester City Art Gallery. This led to looking at their online collection of Empire Marketing Board posters. That's one on the left by H.S. Williamson from the 1930's.

As a way of contrast there is a E&SCWS postcard below, from around the same time. The artwork is not as sharp and crisp as the one by the E.M.B.  Both shew tea picking by women wearing no shoes and a few bangles, and I'm guessing in Ceylon.

Produce from the Empire wasn't just foreign imports it was highlighted as a selling point of quality and very British to eat. For example Australian tinned fruit, Canadian flour, New Zealand lamb, and bananas from the West Indies.

It is all a bit suspect to modern sensibilities, but for a historian you tell the story of the propaganda of that age without endorsing the values.

The Empire Marketing Board commissioned these posters from 1926-1933 to promote trade and understanding between empire countries, but they are in essence propaganda that sends out a message of industry, nourishment and civilisation as seen from the powers in London. This view persisted until the trading patterns changed with Britain's entry to the Common Market (later called the EEU, now the EU) in 1973.

The English & Scottish CWS appear to have joined in with a series of picture postcards depicting work on the Co-operative's own tea estates.

If you wish to see the E.M.B. posters, and there are at least 200 of them then browse over to the Flickr collection. The quality of the paintings is superb. As a side note there are a four posters about imports and exports with the Irish Free State.