This book is about a specialised and interesting part of the food trade and also a study (unavoidably incomplete) of a striking personality who lived his whole life in catering, changing London for the better in the process. Such an undertaking would have been impossible a decade ago, since all his company records were destroyed after his death. Complicating my investigations of John Pearce, all his competitors likewise preserved no records, except for several minute books. Joseph Lyons & Co. was quite unusual in having a company archivist, who had access to the firm’s records and wrote an official history, though soon thereafter all the evidence vanished. Indispensable to my research was the recent digitising of major British newspapers, together with the then prevailing journalistic practices of publishing verbatim accounts of company meetings and annual reports.
Pearce looms so large as a historical figure because he became the quintessential rags-to-riches late Victorian, an astonishing figure whose social mobility many recognised, but whom few could rival. He benefited from having several intimate friends—two became his biographers, while the third served as editor of a leading catering journal—providing insights into not just London’s changing catering world but Pearce himself. As a result of spearheading the emergence in the capital of the mass food market, he would become a familiar figure interviewed often in the press, where he disclosed some facets of his life as caterer. Finally, he also fully deserves to be the focus of this study owing to his longevity, remarkable commercial success and commanding presence in the lives of lower- and middle-class workers in the City.
In 1908, the Temperance Caterer published statistics on the consumption of meals in the City of London that are reproduced here because they come from one of the few direct comparisons among the four big firms in London catering (Table 1.1). The proportion of teashops based in the City for the four largest firms—Aerated Bread Co. (ABC), J. Lyons, British Tea Table Co. (BTT; formerly Pearce & Plenty) and the Express Dairy Co.—is quite suggestive. Two-thirds of the British Tea Table Company’s outlets were so located in 1908, far greater than those of the Express Dairy, which had around 50% based in the City. By far the biggest company, J. Lyons, catering more to middle- rather than working-class patrons, had nearly half of its outlets there. Altogether, these four companies ran 180 shops in the square mile, selling 65 million meals annually! Lyons had fewer overall depots1 than the ABC, but still outsold its main rival: Lyons’ 120 depots sold roughly 250,000 meals daily, whereas ABC’s 130 depots counted just 100,000 meals daily.2 The two largest companies, moreover, also catered to many patrons outside the City, giving them a wider customer base than their competitors.
Table 1.1
Estimated customers served annually in the city, 1908
Company | City shops | Estimated customers |
|---|---|---|
Aerated Bread Co. (ABC) | 65 | 24 million |
J. Lyons & Co. | 57 | 23 million |
British Tea Table Co. | 37 | 10 milliona |
Express Dairy Co. | 21 | 8 million |
The City’s dominance could also be measured numerically. In 1840, the EC postal code—embracing the City—had ranked first, with the most dining/coffee rooms and restaurants, accounting for nearly half of the capital’s total. While this preponderance gradually declined during the next seven decades, the City still held over one-fourth of the total before World War I. In second place stood the Western postal code, where almost one-fifth of these establishments conducted business.3
John Pearce—involved in the revolution in retailing food in late Victorian London—has never received any detailed historical treatment. By writing about his business career, it is possible to set it against the development of the whole industry without going into considerable biographical details of his life, which remain sketchy and often unknowable, given limited available evidence. Pearce’s career thus must be placed in a wider historical context to understand his role in pioneering the mass food market in London.
This approach also enables me to contribute to the growing literature on the concept of consumption. To broaden our understanding, historian James Obelkevich recommends that scholars engage in “detailed empirical research on … a particular group of consumers.” In studying Pearce’s companies as well as those of his competitors, this book illuminates changing consumption patterns for workers in the City of London, the birthplace of the mass market, over a half century.4
Scholars point to the years after 1850 as critical in the “revolution in retail distribution,” and three factors indicate its catalysts: “new products and innovations in product manufacturing with changes in distribution channels,” improved transportation and storage facilities, and emergence of the mass market in large urban areas fostering the development of multiple branches.5
While scholarship on the retail revolution is extensive, little serious investigation exists on the narrower concept of the mass market. In an early study (1966) on the social history of diet, John Burnett said nothing either about John Pearce or about the mass market, instead stressing Lyons’ establishment of teashops in the 1890s.6 Several subsequent historical studies, however, would break new ground in suggesting the pivotal role of a new concept—the mass market—in transforming retailing.
W. Hamish Fraser, in his The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850–1914, identified three developmental stages of the mass market.7 Hawkers, fairs and street markets had flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century. “The street,” Fraser wrote, “was the last refuge of the unemployed and the unemployable, the artisan who had hit hard times, the drunkard, the blind, the limbless.” Little capital required and credit easily available with a loan from a pawn broker, penny capitalists burgeoned in numbers, particularly in London. Mobility, moving from place to place to what they called “stands,” was one of their chief features. Mid-Victorian London social investigator Henry Mayhew estimated some 30,000 costermongers sold a wide array of goods—fish, fruit, vegetable, game, poultry and flowers.
Distinctly second, London street traders (4000) catered to those working-class denizens whose homes had no cooking facilities and so purchased food cooked on the spot, together with a beverage of astonishing choice—ranging from tea, coffee, cocoa and ginger beer to lemonade, elder cordial, peppermint water, rice milk and even fresh milk. “The poorest section of the working class” consumed the poorest quality of food, only escaping detection as often inedible or noxious owing to lax government oversight in an era of laissez-faire. Seen in a broader context, these Londoners, one step above the residuum, engaged in what contemporaries regarded as the “luxury trade” in which workers proved capable of buying “take out” meals. John Pearce became part of this broad group when he opened a mobile coffee stall, dubbed “the Gutter Hotel,” in and around East and City Roads in 1866. Reflecting changes in the nature of catering, coffee stalls would be renamed coffee bars, which went well beyond offering a standard fare of coffee and “snacks.” Plaice, haddock, sole and whiting, especially popular with the working class, sustained some 300 street fishmongers. Cheap and readily accessible, herring sales topped 875 million annually. These astonishing sales, too, preceded founding in the 1860s of what became a central institution for slum dwellers—fish-and-chip shops. Another group, comparable in numbers to street traders, sold diverse manufactured products—metal, glass, china and cloth. Unlike food retailers, this group preferred barter, not cash. Two final groups were numerically less critical but still important: sellers of street literature and a diverse, miscellaneous group of thousands defying easy generalisation.8
Bigger shops with more diverse stock and larger premises constituted the second stage of the mass market. To achieve this more enviable level, stationary shopkeepers required more capital than their peripatetic predecessors—the greater sums still remained quite small. At one extreme stood the Roberts’ family in...