Shopping around in the archives

Tales from the Archive, 19th November 2012

Helen Wakely,

Archivist, Wellcome Library

‘Dedicated to all my fellow ‘ladies of the house’ who would rather be reading, sleeping, drinking and smoking, playing with the dog, the baby or her own belly button - anything – rather than face that what to have for dinner crisis everyday. But do it we must or feel so guilty! Out for dinner is a cop out – at least this way you don’t have to wear a girdle.’

‘[I] let your son-in-law know last nite that while I’m shopping for food, doing his s****y pants laundry, cooking his meals, taking total care of the animals & trying to earn money… - the LEAST HE CAN DO IS DO THE FREAKING CLEANING’

‘Sort of spun out this evening either from fatigue or hormones – redeemed my conscience for easy dinner by sectioning 2 grapefruits’

‘Carol’s Cooking Stinks Cook Book, also a diary as we go on’

Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote (2002), 147ff.

‘[T]he English poor are so irrational and perverted about their food. They will eat the dearest and worst food they can choose, and they cook abominably, and have little aptitude for it. They prefer to eat tinned stuff, and they pour vinegar over everything.’

‘Why go to the trouble of making pea-soup or suet-dumpling when you can spend the time gossiping with a neighbour and dine off tea and bread.’

Greta Allen, Practical Hints to Health Visitors (c.1905), p.76

Emilia Kanthack, The Preservation of Infant Life: A Guide for Health Visitors (1907), p.21-22

Creator-driven strategy

Documentation strategy

Researcher-driven strategy

‘Now that my father had to be at the Foundry by 5 o’clock – even on Sundays, because he was the watchman – and my mother was so often not feeling well, our suppers had become rather haphazard. If I cooked, there were things that I liked. One was sliced bread and cheese with milk and beaten egg poured over it, baked in the oven. Another, also oven-baked, was a loaf of tinned meat coated with brown sugar.’

From ‘Lying Under the Apple Tree’ in Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock (2006)