Two adverts from St Marys Church Norton Parish Magazine dated October 1890. Courtesy of Eric Collins. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Two adverts from St Marys Church Norton Parish Magazine dated October 1890. Courtesy of Eric Collins.
Talking of bacon ‘slices’. I once recall, as a small child, my mother reducing a grocery-shop full of customers to laughter by saying to the assistant who was slicing the bacon ” And I want a decent ‘thick’ cut,…not one you can read an Evening Gazette through!”
Frank – We called this thin cut of ham or bacon Willow-Pattern Cut, as the design of the plate could be seen through the meat. That this advert was aimed at the upper-class is the lobster and salmon shown. A skilled mechanic in 1890 averaged 25/- a week for 60 hours, while a farm labourer was lucky at 12/6. Servants in the big houses were worst paid the “skivvy”, everybodies servant” were paid £18 per year. Re working dress. The gas-mask case was universal, while cycle-clips remind me of the “snake” of lights as hundreds of workers cycled across Billingham -Bottoms to Norton and Stockton during the dark evenings
Aye Bob, I used to be sent to the shop for a quarter of corned beef or tongue “sliced thin”! You could practically see through a slice. Today two ordinary slices of corned beef would almost BE a quarter! Dad”s bait box was an old Oxo tin and he carried it in his old gas mask bag. Flat cap, gaberdine raincoat, gas mask bag and baggy flannels with bicycle clips was almost a uniform for working men in the fifties, as they pedalled off to work.
Looking at the prices, this shop must have been the Harrods of Stockton, as the typical working price was bought in 1 or 2p worth of bacon, butter, jam, tea etc. The prices here would have been the house-keeper or head cook listing. I can remember going to the local shop for 2oz of corned beef for Dads “Bait-box” and a 1/4 ib of broken biscuits