What price convenience foods?
As a keen genealogist and budding social historian I’m often aghast at the stories of hardship that gently unfold as I sift through old census and parish records relating to my ancestors. And now as I potter around the local supermarket picking and choosing this or that product I wonder what would Charles Ayley and his wife Eliza think if they were suddenly plonked down into a contemporary supermarket? I’m sure they’d die of shock although it’s not a bad plot for a movie. (Hand’s off my intellectual property). Charles born 1815, a gardener, and Eliza had 11 children and only three died a very early death, not bad for the 19 th century really. The census records reveal, in my opinion, a life of drudgery for ordinary women who frequently gave birth – how could they not? They often buried several children, cared for elderly relatives, a husband and a raft of children with no mod cons whatsoever. There was no electricity, so no electric washing machines, no convenience foods, water
