In the later nineteenth century, magazines and journals were full of sensational accounts of the travels of middle-class reporters amongst the urban poor. The best known example is probably Henry Mayhew's work London Labour and the London Poor  (first volume published 1851).  Charles Dickens published pieces like this in All the Year Round and included some in his 1860s collection The Uncommercial Traveller. Charles Booth, when he began to investigate London life in the 1880s for the survey that would eventually be published as The Life and Labour of the People of London expected to expose the exaggerations and sentimentality of such writings.  He was, however, genuinely appalled by the extent of the poverty he saw and his own book appears to sit in much the  same tradition (Abbott, 1917).  

In the early twentieth century, many food companies realised that marketing products directly to children could be worthwhile.  Recent research has confirmed that they were quite correct to suppose that advertising could influence children’s preferences both for types of food and for particular brands (McGinnes et al, 2006).   There is a positive aspect to this development, as it is evidence that children were seen as consumers in their own right and could/should influence decisions about what they ate.  One company which put a huge amount of resourcing into this was Ovaltine.  Ovaltine is a drink combining barley malt, milk, egg and cocoa, which was first formulated by Dr George Wander in 1904.  It was promoted, and still is promoted, as a healthy drink, rich in vitamins and minerals. (R.Twining and Co., 2023).  In the 1930s, it launched a hugely impressive – some might say aggressive – multi-pronged advertising campaign, targeted squarely at children.  It provided a model for others to follow, although it remained exceptional in its comprehensive scope.  

My grandfather, Arthur Browne (1927-2010) worked as a ‘galley boy’ in the merchant navy in the Atlantic during World War II.  We are not exactly sure how old he was when he started, but we think he was 16.  In any case, the height given on his record, held in the National Archives, is 5 foot and 7 inches.  This seems very poignant because as an adult he was 6 foot tall.   The merchant navy employed boys from the age of 14 at this time and those designated as ‘boy’ on their records were likely to have been 14 or 15.  The galley was the kitchen and so young Arthur was making a double contribution to feeding the nation: working  on a ship that was importing supplies to Britain, with a role of cooking for the sailors. 

In Dickens' famous portrayal of life in the workhouse, Oliver Twist and the other children in the workhouse live a life of cruelty and neglect. In a now iconic moment, after drawing lots, Oliver bravely asks for more food (even though this food is a rather revolting sounding gruel - a food that has come to be synonymous with the idea of the deprivations of living in the workhouse). Dickens describes Oliver's diet as  consisting of 'three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week and half a roll on Sunday'. On feast days, however, the inmates were served an extra two ounces or 60 grams of bread he tells us. But what do we actually know about the workhouse diet for children and was it so awful? 

The birth of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart (later known as the Chevalier de St George or the Pretender/Old Pretender) on the 10th June 1688, was shrouded with controversy. Queen Mary of Modena, the wife of King James II of England and Ireland (VII of Scotland), had not given birth to a child since 1683 and her previous five children had not survived past infancy. Whether the child was hers or not was a hot topic of conversation. But what is without doubt, is that for the royal couple Prince James Francis Edward Stuart was a much-desired infant.

Clara Grant was a remarkable teacher who worked in the East End of London in the early twentieth century and was known as ‘The Angel of Bow’.  The area was marked on the Map of London Poverty created by Charles Booth as ‘very poor’.  Most of the men were unskilled, casual labourers and were frequently unemployed (Grant, 1905).  The children visibly suffered from malnutrition.  

We can be confident that children have always played games revolving around the preparation and eating of food.  Props have been used to enhance the play – perhaps sticks, stones and mud in the earliest days.  A  toy kitchen has an obvious appeal for children and manufacturers have duly obliged with products for purcahse.  Perhaps playing with many of these toys has not actually taught children how to cook – but it has been a way of consolidating their understanding of what they have seen others doing and of generating and maintaining enthusiasm for the process.  Unfortunately, most of the time, these advantages have been largely limited to girls.

The Foundling Hospital in Holburn, London – a charitable organisation for vulnerable children - was established in 1739.  The building you see in this image is of the hospital which opened for children in 1741 and remained open into the early 20th century.  Young babies were surrendered to the Hospital by their mothers, usually because they were too poor to care for their infants themselves. The babies were initially sent out to be nursed by a foster mother (living with their family), then they returned to the institution at about 5 years of age. The hospital housed hundreds of children at a time. 

It is a perhaps surprising fact that memorial plaques, tombstones and wills can add to our knowledge of attitudes towards breastfeeding in the past.  To nurse one's own children  - as written on this memorial  - was clearly something to celebrate in the 17th century.  Etched into this brass plate is a memorial to Elizabeth Brand and her husband Benjamin. She was the mother of 6 sons and 6 daughters 'all nurs[e]d with her vnborrowed milk'. The  memorial can be found in St Mary's Edwardstone, which is in Suffolk. It is one of a number of brass plaques dedicated to the Brand family who resided in nearby Edwardstone Hall.

The Cinema Museum is housed in the building of the former Lambeth Workhouse.  This is particularly appropriate as Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was there when he was a young boy.  He only stayed for a few weeks, as in that period children were kept in general workhouses for as short a time as possible.  They  were quickly removed to residential schools so that they would be separated from the adults who might set them a bad example of how to live.  For all the stigma that still attached to workhouses, they had come a long way from the nadir of the early Victorian, Oliver Twist days.  Chaplin remembered the dinners he received at Lambeth very fondly (Chaplin, 2003).  

What is the earliest British cookbook for children to use themselves at home?  It’s a difficult question to answer for many reasons: a cookbook may not take a form we recognise and the intended audience may be ambiguous.  But here are three early examples of the genre – each very different to the others in approach and style.

Pap generally consisted of animal milk or water thickened with bread (or some kind of cereal) with some additives for palatability - perhaps honey, then later - sugar. It was a popular complement to or substitute for human breast milk, notably in the 18th century. Panada was similar and generally referred to cereals cooked in broth  with some additives to flavour the food.