The Edinburgh Reporter July 2023

13

woman counted as 0.8x an adult man for the
purposes of calorie requirements. The weekly
spend on food was counted to the nearest farthing
(¼d, d means 1 old penny, with 12d to the shilling
and 240d to the £). The average spend on food
was 15s 9¼d per week (£77.35 in 2023 money),
or 79% of household income. Per “equivalent
man”, each house spent on average 6¾d per

day on food (~£2.74 in 2023).

One of the few “advantages” in life that the

poor had was just how cheap accommodation was

(even if it was in a slum condition) in Edinburgh

in 1901. Per household it averaged 37¼d per

week, or about £61 per month in 2023. Some

families made half or all their rent by their Co-op

dividends alone – a measure of both just how

cheap the rent was and also how important the

Co-ops were to their members.

We come now to what our subjects ate. Let’s

just say that their diets were monotonous. 35% by

weight of what people ate was bread, a whopping

494g per “man” per day. 80% of everything eaten

was one of only six food types – bread, potatoes,

milk, sugar, beef and veg (mainly cabbage and

onion, some carrots and turnips, although the

study noted that many of the women didn’t seem

to know about any other vegetables than

potatoes). For reference, in 2013-15, the average

Scottish person consumed just 80g bread (84%

less), 64g of potatoes, 22g of beef per day. But

milk was almost the same at 201g.

People ate so much bread because it was cheap:

that 35% of bread by weight gave them 41% of

their daily calories but cost only 19% of their daily

food budget. In contrast, the beef consumed gave

just 6% of daily calories but was 23% of

expenditure. Clearly this was a luxury foodstuff

relative to the others, and it was eaten for the

protein content – and mainly by the man of the

house. The authors pointed out an anomaly in

that the traditional Scottish meat of mutton was

largely lacking in the diet, even though it was

cheaper and offered more protein per unit cost

than beef.

People got about 11% of their daily calories

from butter, jam, “syrup” (canned golden syrup or

treacle) and cheese, eaten on slices of bread as a

piece (an open sandwich, they weren’t closed back

then!). Cheese consumption in 1901 was almost

identical to Scotland’s 2013-15 average.

Unsurprisingly, oatmeal was important in the

diet, eaten as porridge – giving 6% of daily

Households which had no men in them paint a revealing

and desperately sorry tale of life for working class

women at that time

calories for 2.5% of expenditure. Eggs were

commonly eaten, although they were relatively

expensive they offered a reasonable amount of

protein. The amounts of suet, dripping, sausages

and offal are notably low. Small amounts of pulses

and barley were eaten (in soups and broths).

The subjects ate almost no fruit, except small

amounts of raisins and currants in the slightly

better off households or in jam. It was potatoes

that stopped them getting scurvy. Some teabreads

were eaten (a sweetened bread, with dried fruit

in it, usually spread with butter), almost nothing

was spent on biscuits or sweets. Seasonally

they probably did get access some fruit, when

there was a glut of cheap apples, but it is not

recorded. Confections may have been eaten

on special occasions.

Mealtimes were not coordinated or regular, the

report called this the old Canongate style. The

man usually kept a schedule aligned to his work,

with the largest meal in the evening. Children

fitted theirs around schooling with lunch the

primary meal, topped up with endless bread to

keep them full, if not nourished. The women had

to fit in between both. Children drank milk

(fresh, canned or buttermilk) lots of tea, coffee

(from essence) and cocoa.Women seemed to

drink a lot of cocoa probably needing the

sugar content.

Two last points: firstly, the study

probably would have failed without

Elsie Inglis’ involvement; it was

her and her female medical

students who convinced

reluctant families – usually the

housewife – to allow them to

intrude on their lives. Misses G.

Miller, H. Bell, Isabel Simson, May

Simson, Pringle, Cunningham,

Robertson, H. Maclaren and Colly

and Mrs Shaw Maclaren were the

students credited with

gathering the actual study

data from each family

(down to collecting every discarded bit of potato

peel to be weighed).

Secondly, one little snippet of insight into the

life of these families that really gave a lump to my

throat when I read it. It came from family

number 14, the mason’s labourer, his wife and

their 9 children, who lived in a tiny 2 room

house, “clean but bare-looking“. The report goes

on, “the eldest girl died of consumption [TB] last

year. They still keep little frames and bits of

fancy-work she was doing. They gave her a grand

funeral that cost £10 13s. Black suits had to be

bought for the father and eldest boy“. This family

had very little, yet they spent everything and

more than they had and could afford to give their

daughter a decent and dignified send off – over

10 weeks’ wages – and on account of paying off

their debts could no longer pay into their own

funeral society. I feet this really hit home how

unpredictable life was for people 120 years ago,

people living exactly where my own family was

living at the time and in exactly the same

circumstances. And it brings home a real sense of

human dignity to the lives of people in bitter and

crushing circumstances, at the bottom of the pile.

Their next eldest daughter, 17 but only 4ft 10in

tall, now looked after the house and 8 other

children when her mother went out to

work to make paper bags for 8s a

week. Such were the realities of life in

the Canongate at the end of the

Victorian age and dawn of the

20th century.

A study of the diet of the labouring

classes in Edinburgh can be found at

http://www.archive.org/details/b

/mode/2up for you to read.

I’ve only scratched the surface of it, and

there are many other stories and

insights contained within its

yellowing pages. Read

more topics at

threadinburgh.scot

Group of women and

children in the Canongate

Etching shows the outside the old White

Horse Close Inn, off Canongate

Dr. Elsie

Maud Inglis

Getting the messages in

High Street in the Canongate