Images Dated 17th August 2004

A Fish Auction in Columbia Market

In 1869 Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for the building of the great Columbia Market (for fish) between Hackney and Bethnal Green Roads on the site of Nova Scotia Gardens, a squalid area of tenements and hovels and dust heaps. The cost of building the market was estimated at 200, 000. It was a philanthropic enterprise to make a clearance of the slum dwellings which clustered so thickly in the area but also to help the local people to have supplies of cheap fresh produce. Lack of support from wholesalers and small traders who preferred the open streets ensured its failure and it closed in 1885 and eventually became a bit of a white elephant and was demolished between 1958 and 1966"

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10217312

A help yourself grocery

Photograph taken from a United States supermarket in 1948, where Britain's queues and rations are unknown'. The concept of the supermarket where all manner of goods could be bought in one place, without the assistance of a shop keeper, and then paid for at a checkout, was first introduced in America where rationing did not feature following World War II. This picture was one of a series taken in an A&P supermarket; America's largest chain begun in 1937 and with 1670 supermarkets by 1948

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10217305

The Strawberry Trade - pottling

Engraving by Ebenezer Landells showing a rural scene with women pottling strawberries. Pottles were small, basket-like containers which would be carried in great quantities by women from Middlesex and Surrey, by foot, to the markets of London. According to the ILN article accompanying the picture, these women came from Shropshire and Wales each summer to perform the task, often making two round trips of a distance of up to 30 miles a day for a wage of 8 shillings

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10217307