Food And The Family Budget (2 September 1977)

I suppose everybody nowadays is concerned about the cost of living.  Among the less well-to-do, the cost of food is said to be the main problem.  This applies especially to retirement pensioners and most particularly to elderly widows and widowers living alone who have neither the means to buy in bulk, nor to pack their pantries with tins in anticipation of future price increases.

Beside me, I have a list of food prices for the year 1911, when I was aged three.  And, of course, it is in what I call real money, not the present P-money.  Here it is:

First the cost of items that are measured in lb.  Mutton 8d per lb, bacon 7d, rice 3d, sugar 2d, lard 5d, fish (unspecified) 6d, cocoa 2s, oatmeal 2½d, suet 8d, jam 5d, currants 3d, butter 1s, tea 1s 4d, flour 1¼d, treacle 3d, potatoes ¼d, apples 6d, and cheese 1s.

And items not measured in lb:  cabbages 2d each, oranges 1d each, onions ¼d each, milk 1¼d a pint, eggs 9d a dozen, and vinegar 2d a pint.

Early in August, with this list in my pocket, I went round two or three Bletchley self-service shops, in an attempt to check today’s prices as against those on the list.  It was an interesting, but difficult exercise.  Things which used to be sold in lb and pints are now sold in kilos and litres.  Nearly everything used to be sold loose.  Now nearly everything is sold pre-packed; but if that is the only way you can get it, then it is fair to include the packing in the price.

Then again, the 1911 list does not divide anything into grades.  So I assumed that the listed price was the cheapest grade and accordingly wrote down the cheapest prices I could find for the equivalent.

First, mutton.  Does anybody eat mutton nowadays; are all sheep slaughtered before mutton-age; or do we all eat mutton disguised as lamb?  At any rate, I noticed lamb shoulder on “special offer” at 58p a lb, took that as the mutton guide, and found it worked out a 139d – an increase of over 17 times.

Bacon, streaky and loose, cost me 36p for just over ½lb – say 70p a lb.  that is 168d, a 24-fold increase.

Sugar, 24½p a kilo (2.2lb) was about 26d a lb, a mere 13-fold increase.

Lard at 25p or 60d a lb had risen even less – 12 times.

Other comparisons were:

Suet, 41p or 98½d a lb, just over 12-fold.

Jam, 25p or 60d a lb, 12-fold.

Butter, 51p or 122½d a lb, just over 10-fold.

Tea, 102p or 245d a lb, just over 15-fold.

Flour, plain, 8(d) or 22½d a lb, 18-fold.

Potatoes, 5p or 12d a lb, 48-fold.

Milk, 11½p or 29d a pint, 23-fold.

Eggs, 48p or 115d a dozen, nearly 13-fold.

I could not find a simple straightforward price for some of the other items.  Oranges, for instance, were 24p for a tray of five weighing 13¾oz.  Was that old treacle black, or was it golden syrup?  I saw 1lb of English cheddar cheese marked at 64½p, but could not believe that that was the cheapest cheese available.  And so forth.

But I think I have quoted enough comparative prices to show that the increases have varied widely item by item, making the average food costs virtually impossible to assess.

There is, however, one way of assessing the comparative size of the cost of food in the family budget.  In 1911, the average wage of a skilled working man was 22s (110p) a week.  From that he had to pay 5s rent and rates.  Another likely expense would be two bags of coal at 1s 6d a bag for cooking, baking, clothes-washing and bathing and also for space-heating in winter.  So 8s of the 22s was already “booked”.

But there were also a large number of other items necessary from time to time, like boot repairs, a new apron or other garment, cotton for mending and patching, wool for knitting stockings and darning them, soap, black lead for the range, baking powder and salt.  Plus 4d a week for national health insurance.  It is interesting to speculate how much would then be left for food in an average week.

The 1911 list comprised a range of foodstuffs from which it was thought the family of a skilled working man might afford to make a choice.  It will be noticed that beef, pork and poultry are all absent.  More importantly, so are tripes and other offals.  It will also be deduced that the housewife made the family’s bread, so the cost of yeast should also have been on the list.

And now, dear ladies, I invite you to imagine yourself the “non-working” wife of a skilled man, with two growing children back in 1911, remembering that there were no school meals and family allowances.  How would you provide three varied and adequate meals a day, seven days a week, at the prices quoted in the 1911 list?

I do not know.  I leave the answer to you.  But it seems to me that, in general, the cost of food today would have to rise several more “folds” over the 1911 prices for it to have the same importance in the family budget that it had in those days.