‘The Food of Great-grandmothers’ 2
Margaret Bride continues on the theme of ‘The food of Great-grandmothers’
As a further step in debunking the myth about our foremother’s healthy diet I hunted up the reports made by the Port Melbourne Health Inspector to the Central Board of Health in 1887. Let us be grateful for the campaigns that resulted in the regulation of food sales and the effective prosecutions of offenders, and never join in the mindless laughter at jokes about the nanny state.The Report states:
food sold in butchers and grocers is wrapped in newspaper, stained and dirty. Small, ill-ventilated shops sell milk, butter, clothing and groceries all from a shop not properly separated from the shop-keepers dwelling, and frequently also inhabited by dogs, cats and fowls whose urine and excreta come into daily contact with commodities exposed for sale… butchers carts never sell good meat, but dispose of diseased and inedible meat to people anxious to buy it cheaply.
Margaret and Graham Bride are the authors of The Borough and Its People: Port Melbourne 1839 to 1939 which was belatedly featured in the ‘local’ paper this week
