The Cost of Living

In the late nineteenth-century, the poor would pawn belongings such as clothes and shoes just to pay for food. It was either that or enter the workhouse. Dickens tells us that 'wearing apparel of every description' could be found in a pawnbroker's shop, as well as old china cups, teaspoons and blankets, stored in ticketed bundles. Judging by how numerous pawnbrokers' shops were, this was an everyday experience for a lot of Victorian people.

I was intrigued to discover that this wellknown nursery rhyme is about pawning a coat to pay for basic food items:

“Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle,

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop goes the weasel!”

Apparently, pawning was called 'popping' and weasel is short for the rhyming slang 'weasel and stoat' or coat. Suddenly it makes sense. It's telling us something about the cost of living back then which a lot of people can relate to today.

A poor Victorian family would have eaten bread for breakfast lunch and dinner, supplemented with tea, sugar, and maybe butter or cheese. These items would often be bought on credit from local shopkeepers.

Butter Scales at a Victorian Dairy

Local shopkeepers could be unscrupulous, however. In April 1871, the scales from a number of shops in Ramsgate were seized for having weights which were under the standard. Three butchers, a baker/grocer and two marine store dealers were fined as a result. Among them were my ancestors, who had a shop on King Street. They claimed they only used the scales to weigh out 'small quantities of dripping to poor people'.

They were dealers in china and glass as well as wardrobes. Their shop may have looked something like the one in an early photograph from a book describing the lives of everyday Londoners in 1877. This shows a stand of old china outside the shop, as well as old clothes hanging above.

'An old clothes shop, Seven Dials'

Dealers like my ancestors bought up old clothes and other possessions rejected by pawnbrokers, on grounds of their quality. The used clothes would have changed hands several times. They wouldn't have been in the latest style and may have been altered extensively to fit different people. As Victorian clothes were difficult to clean, garments were sometimes taken to pieces, turned inside out and sewn back together again. Unsurprisingly, second-hand clothes shops could be sources of fever and small-pox. The poorest women, who hawked on the streets, bought their clothes from such shops, favouring men's coats and boots for warmth and practicality.

Occasional treasures could be discovered, however. Maids might be given their mistresses discarded clothes and would sell any they couldn't use themselves. This is how a fashionable or more expensive-looking dress might end up on display at a second hand clothes shop.