Milk Consumption in Nineteenth Century in Britain

Little milk was generally drunk in liquid form by town dwelling adults in the nineteenth century. It is due to supply of milk to the expanding towns and large urban settlements posed many difficulties.

Milk of good quality was expensive and out of reach of the working classes. AT that time not only fresh milk but likewise condensed milk was of importance for the urban consumer.

Milk and buttermilk were mainly used as ingredients for cereal porridges.

Most was used as an addition to hot beverages, especially tea, and to to the porridge that was a main article of diet in Scotland and northern English countries; smaller amount also went into milk puddings and baking, particularly in better off households.

While milk was too rich for weaning infants but was often boiled with an equal quantity of water and some added flavour to make what was considered suitable food for babies.

It was described that in Cheshire breakfast in mid-century as consisting of a large platter porridge in the centre of the table and smaller platters of milk before each person, each then dipped his spoon into the porridge, taking as much or little as they wished to add to the cold milk.

In Scotland two meals a day of oatmeal porridge were customary in rural areas where accounts in the 1860s show laborers drinking milk with or after their food as well as adding it their porridge.

In the early years, the supply and preparation of milk were completely in the hands of private enterprises and independent tradesmen.

By the late nineteenth century, however many municipalities had established their own management system dealing with milk supply and distribution.

End of the nineteenth century, it had become strongly entrenched with such traditional butter, cheese and milk strongholds as Cheshire and Somerset; but also a number new or partly new dairying are had emerged, some of which included localities where cereal cultivation and mixed, cereal and livestock, farming had formerly prevailed.

Railway companies, in particular the Great Western Railway which provided special trains travelling through the night from south-west England to London, Bristol and Birmingham, invested quite heavily in the running of milk trains from pastoral England to the major cities.
Milk Consumption in Nineteenth Century in Britain

History of Milk in England from late 16th to end of 17th century

History of Milk in England from late 16th to end of 17th century
From the late sixteenth century conditions of life for most country people began a slow deterioration under the impact of sharply rising prices, periods of dearth, and the beginning of enclosures in southern England.

Labourer’s probate inventories of the late seventeenth century now showed a steep fall in the numbers keeping cows except in the pastoral North, where 80 percent still did so, but in the Midlands the proportions fell to 31.6 percent, in the East to 21.9 percent and in the West to only 4.2 per cent.

For the southern labourer the traditional ‘white meat’ were now dearer and scarcer, and although the total number of cows increased in the seventeenth century more were now kept on large farms, where the milk was turned into butter and cheese for sale in the markets.

A growing urban market led to the expansion of commercial dairying in the vicinity of towns, especially London, as well as the practice of cow-keeping within the towns themselves.

Dairymen were normally both producers and retailers. In London, cows in Tothill Fields, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Islington and elsewhere were milk by milkmaids around 4 or 5 am, the milk carried in pails suspend from a yoke and either sold from fixed shops or hawked through the streets.

It was regarded as suitable for young children after weaning, old people and invalids, hardly for healthy adults, though whey was considered very wholesome and London had several ‘whey houses’, which were sufficiently fashionable to be patronized by Pepys: junkets and syllabubs – warm milk frothed over fruit, wine or spice- were also popular.

By end of seventeenth century milk was being added to the new, costly hot beverages tea, coffee and chocolate: tea was at first drink, Chinese fashion, without milk, but by 1700 milk or cream (poured in first to prevent cracking the delicate china) was usual, and the bitterness of coffee and chocolate was found to be softened by cream and sugar.
History of Milk in England from late 16th to end of 17th century