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The
Local Corner Shop
Every
one had his or her local corner shop. A place that, as a kid,
you were often enough asked to, "pop down to, along to,
across to, or up to," on an errand, to fetch a packet of
Woodbines or something for mum, or an elderly neighbour. If
you were lucky you might even get a penny or more to spend on
some sweets for yourself for doing the errand. That's when sweets
could be bought for a farthing each; a penny could purchase
four sweets. Sweets such as Blackjacks, a farthing each, or
Bulls eyes, at a halfpenny each, two for a penny, a cushion
shaped, strong flavoured black and white striped boiled sweet
that lasted ages in your mouth if you sucked it, resisting the
urge to crunch it up. You could buy a slab of Palm toffee for,
was it tuppence! A chocolate biscuit 'Wagon Wheel', that seemed
as big as a tea plate, for, I think thruppence; but they've
shrank down in size a lot over the years. The sherbet dips were
another favourite. Served in a small paper bag with a twisted
top with a liquorice straw protruding through. Suck up the delicious
sharp tangy sherbet powder through the straw and when it was
all gone you ate the liquorice straw. In these little bags of
sherbet you'd find a small metal 'good luck' charm; perhaps
a tiny horseshoe or some other miniature goody us kids eagerly
looked for when the sherbet ran out.
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Above: An example of the penny, half-penny and farthing! (Click
for large view)
The
small bars of Fry's chocolate were another favourite of mine;
a special treat at thruppence a bar. I recall the changing faces
of the Fry's boy depicted on the back of the chocolate wrapping.
The first boy's face was a very distrought tearful face; the
second face a slightly less tearful face; and so on until the
sixth face showed a very happy smiling boy's face as he gets
his bar of Fry's chocolate. This thruppenny bar also got a lot
smaller in size as the years went by and went up in price to
sixpence a bar. It eventually disappeared.
Many
old favourites disappeared as time marched on. Palm toffee was
one. Before the individual slab of toffee, you bought it broken
into pieces from a much larger slab. It was broken up with a
little toffee hammer and then weighed out at so much an ounce.
Most sweets were sold by the ounce, and our rations of sweets
were generally bought in two-ounce amounts of this or that.
Gob Stoppers were another favourite with us kids. At a penny
each they were quite big and they lasted for ages and ages.
As the large ball in your gob was sucked it gradually changed
colour, as it had multi-coloured coatings. Us kids were forever
taking them out of our mouths with our, all too often, grubby
hands to see and compare with our mates what new colour was
showing and guessing the next colour to show. These big Gob
Stoppers were eventually banned because kids were occasionally
choking to death on them as they ran around with them in their
mouths. Another nearby local corner shop sold liquorice-sticks
that were actual twigs of wood. They were around a penny for
a small bundle of about four twigs. You chewed these liquorice
soaked sticks until all the lovely liquorice flavour had been
well and truly sucked out, leaving just a wet pulp of well chewed
wood fibres.
An
early observation from the 'Booth early Police books' for Plumstead
in 1900 says, "The streets are straight & empty &
clean except when the children tumble out of school and leave
a litter of small paper bags which once held pennyworth of sweets
or fruit.".......Nothing has changed, 'cept the prices
and very few corner shops!
Our
local corner shop was called Dickins' and was situated on the
corner of Goldsmid Street and Sladedale Road. It was owned by
a lovely elderly couple, Mr & Mrs Dickins. They were related
to the Dickins who had their own shop in Parkdale Road who also
later owned another shop on the corner of Parkdale and Sladedale
Roads (ex Welsh the Greengrocers) and which was run by Lennie
Dickins their son. Dickins' was a typical corner shop. To us
local kids it was known as 'the sweet shop' as indeed all local
kids called their own local shop. These shops all had that very
recognizable corner shop smell, a familiar aroma they shared
in common. A bouquet of smells that incorporated hints of soap,
paraffin, confectioneries, kindling wood, mothballs and other
smells more subtle. Often stacked up on high shelves that reached
the wood-lined ceiling, an array of rows of large glass jars,
each labelled jar containing varying amounts of different coloured
sweets for our young eyes to feast on, whilst we pondered on
what to get with our penny held tight in our hand.
I
remember going on an errand for mum to get a bar of Lifebuoy
soap from the corner shop. The red coloured soap, about 6 inches
long with 'Lifebuoy' embossed on it, was roughly moulded and
had no wrapping paper. On purchase, it was wrapped in a piece
of newspaper, as was the bar of yellow 'Sunlight' soap used
for washing the clothes and the floors. I loved the smell of
Sunlight soap on Monday washing day, but the smell of Lifebuoy
soap was not so nice as it had a stronger carbolic smell and
did it sting your eyes when your mum washed your face with it!
This soap was nothing though when compared to the dark red bar
of 'Carbolic' soap that really did mean business when that came
in contact with eyes and other orifices!
My
younger sister Ann remembers that it was every Saturday morning
that our dad would leave our pocket money for us on the living
room mantle shelf. She got thruppence and I, being three years
older, got sixpence. Every year on our birthday we would each
get a rise of thruppence in our pocket money. When we went to
spend our pocket money at the corner shop to get our weekly
meager amount of sweets we had to take our ration books with
us. When I had selected my sweets I remember the elderly Mr
Dickins would cut out of the ration book with a big pair of
scissors some squares with amounts printed on each square which
indicated your weekly sugar ration allowed for that week. Many
other items were on ration after WWII and were still being rationed
into the early fifties. When sugar rationing ended in the early
fifties there was such a rush of folk buying sugar and confectionery
that it was put back on ration again. Sweet rationing finally
ended on February 4th 1953 and all food rationing ended on June
3rd 1954. To us kids in those days it was so good to be able
to go and get sweets without any ration restrictions, so you
can well imagine what it was like for our parents as well, when
all forms of rationing finally came to an end.
Not
that us young kids had much in the way to spend, and it was
the same for my mates too. But, at least when you did manage
to purchase some sweets, they sure tasted that much more delicious.
Dear old Mrs Dickins would wait very patently behind their well
worn wood counter whilst pint-sized four year old me pondered
over what to get with my halfpenny, or three farthings, held
tightly in my hand. Then, when the big decision had been made,
she would take down and unscrew the lid off of the jar, reach
in and count out into my hand the sweets; then, thank yous exchanged,
away I'd trot, mouth watering in anticipation of the tasty morsels
I was about to receive. My sister recalls the time that our
mum sent her to Dickins' on an errand. It was winter time and
she was all wrapped up to go and mum said, "Don't loose
the change" as mum pushed the money wrapped in a note with
what to get into her glove. She got the item and was crossing
the road and slipped in the deep snow and lost the sixpence
change in the snow. Nervously she explained to mum how she had
lost the change. But mum said to her not to worry about it.
I over heard them talking and that sixpence was lost in the
snow. I took the hearth-shovel and shovelled the snow looking
for the sixpence and Mrs Dickins came out of the shop and asked
me what was I doing. I explained that my sister had lost the
sixpence and I was looking for it. A few days later Mrs Dickins
was talking to mum and told her about me digging in the snow
for ages looking for the lost sixpence. My mum felt quite embarrassed
about this as she thought Mrs Dickins thought that mum had made
me go and dig in the snow for the sixpence. But that sixpence
to me was well worth looking for. Another time my sister was
heading down our front steps as our dad came along. Dad asked
her where was she going and she said to Dickins. He ask her
how much did she have to spend and she said, " a ha'penny".
Dad gave her another couple of pennies as he didn't want her
going there with just an ha'penny. But it was no problem at
all for us kids to go to the shop with only a ha'penny; no embarrassment
whatsoever.
However,
I remember a very embarrassing incident that occurred at another
corner shop just down the road from our local shop. I had gone
into this shop to buy some sweets on my way home from school.
As I entered 'Ping' went the shop door jingling the bell. I
stood at the counter and waited for the lady to come out from
her living room, which was just off of the shop. But no one
came. I opened and shut the shop door again, jingling the bell.
Again I waited and still no one appeared. I was just a kid and
I was at eye level to all those marvellous sweets, all so temptingly
lined up right before my eyes! After a short deliberation, between
right and wrong, I quickly grabbed a hand full of sweets and
crammed them into my tiny thieving gob. At that very moment
'PING' went the door bell behind me and a ladies voice said
so sweetly, "Sorry to keep you waiting sonny Jim, I just
popped over road to get some greens for tea, (Welshes' corner
greengrocers) what would you like?" Quite unable to answer
her because of a mouth crammed full of illicit loot, I froze.
Petrified, I kept my back to her, trying desperately to swallow
down whole pieces of unchewed sweets. My face felt red and hot
and it seemed impossible to get the mouthful of sweets down
my throat, yet, somehow, I did! I think that it was sheer panic
that I managed to swallow them all back; the fear of being found
out and caught a thief, with all that that meant if my parents
were told. So, finally, after what seemed ages, I turned to
her with a hot red face and very watery eyes, caused by my embarrassment
and fear and also from choking back those lumpy sweets that
scratched my throat as forcefully I swallowed them down whole;
only then was I able to turn to her and 'innocently' give her
my order. I reckon that she must have known what I had been
up to, but she never said a word and I was soon out of the shop
and on my way home, so greatly relieved to have got away with
it. It was a very long time before I went back into that shop
again. However, I've never stolen a sweet since!
Another
corner shop that I would occasionally call in on my way home
was situated on a corner in Tewson Road, opposite the entrance
to St.
Nick's hospital. I used to get a glass of homemade
lemonade from this tiny shop. The lady would ask what flavour
I wanted and poured the coloured liquid into a glass. She'd
put the glass on a stand with a metal tube going into the glass.
The machine had a round glass container on top filled with water.
A lever was pulled and there was whooshing and hissing sounds
as lots of large bubbles globed up into the round glass container
and, hey presto, I had a glass of extra gassy lemonade at a
penny a glass!
A
Mr Fletcher and his wife had a corner shop on the corner of
Flaxton Road, top of Timbercroft
Junior School. My eldest brother Mark sometimes helped him
deliver the Star and Standard
evening papers. Elderly Mr. Fletcher collected his papers from
Plumstead Station, delivering along Conway Road. Mark would
meet him top of Lakedale Road. Mr. Flaxton always had a pipe
in his mouth and talked to everyone in his friendly high-pitched
voice, through his teeth, without ever removing his pipe.
Alan
Gibbs, remembering his local corner shops, says, "There
was a group of corner shops in Conway Road and on the corner
of Ancona Road was a group of little shops. Rumbold's was a
hardware shop, selling everything from sweets to soap powder
to paraffin. The sweets I remember were Flying saucers and Gob
stoppers which you could suck all day. Long liquorice pipes
plus sweet cigarettes; you could buy sherbet bags, wetting your
finger and dipping it into the bag. On the other corner stood
Loaders, which sold bread, ham, cheese and so on. Across the
road stood Davies the butchers, in those days the floor was
covered in sawdust. They used to have a chap deliver the meat
on a delivery bike. Turkeys and poultry would hang up outside
the shop at Christmas time; no frozen ones them days. Then there
was the wireless shop where you would take your accumulator
for the wireless to be recharged. There was also the Orchard
Arms pub in Ancona Road where I was sent to get my dad's beer
bottles filled up and a penny arrowroot biscuit for the dog.
Just below the pub was Jones, one of the first shops to have
a fridge, and where we all went to get our Jubley's. Back along
Conway Road was Frank Bywaters the hairdressers, which also
took orders for the chimney sweep, whose name was Waghorn, who
had an old motorbike with a box sidecar, which carried his rods
and brushes. The barbers wouldn't cut kids hair on Saturdays
as this day was reserved for adults only. One thing that puzzled
me when he had cut the gents hair he would often say, "Anything
for the weekend sir?" It wasn't until I got older that
I realised what he was referring to!"
In
Joyce Foster's story she remembers, "On just about every
street corner there was a small shop. One day mum sent me across
for two ounces of 'All Sorts'. On the way back temptation was
just too great, so I ate one, but she knew that two ounces meant
six sweets and I came back with only five! I was sent sent straight
back to the shop and, in deep shame, I said that I wasn't given
the correct weight. The shopkeeper knew what had happened though
and took pity on me and replaced it. On icy mornings an old
man named Mr. Baxter used to stand out side his shop on the
corner of Avery St. and give us children a bulls-eye each."
(a black and white stripped boiled sweet)
Bread
was bought on Sundays from the corner shop if we'd ran out of
it at home. We'd carry it home without any wrapping at all on
it. Hygiene was not such a factor in those days. Behind the
shop counter the sticky boiled sweets were handled with fingers
that had just filled, perhaps, a container of paraffin; or had
just cut up some rashers of bacon, wrapping it up in newspaper
and then picked up the broken pieces of toffee after perhaps
handling some soap or counting a load of pennies into the till
and then cutting up a block of cheese; doing this all day with
the same busy fingers! Sticky buns and cakes sat exposed with
no cover from dust and flies and were picked up with fingers;
no tongs, and put into a paper bag that was separated from the
stack of bags by a swift lick of the fingers and the bag deftly
blown open before the cakes were dropped in!
Gordon
Coton recalls their local shop as more a general store that
sold a good mixture of goods. He recalls the big blocks of cheese
and butter cut into the size you wanted with a wire cutter.
Also the paper cone deftly made by the shopkeeper by twisting
a piece of paper round his fingers to make the cone to hold
the sweets. He remembers a small hand-held gadget for making
ice-cream wafers. A wafer was put into its tray then a lever
pulled down, then a dollop of ice-cream was smoothed flat into
it, another wafer put on top, the spring was released and up
popped a uniform-sized wafer ice-cream.
Things
could be purchased and paid for at the end of the week. Every
item was carefully written into a well-thumbed book and the
tally totaled up and then settled up by the customer each payday.
This system afforded folk to continue to buy things during the
week, when their money was short. This also helped the local
corner shops to continue doing a reasonably steady daily business
in the poorer working-class areas.
Colin
Weightman.

Children outside a shop c.1900. (photo © Childrens Society)
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