Princess of the 19th Century Department Store - Chapter 19

Chapter 19

On Whitechapel Road, the sky had only just begun to brighten. White fog still hung in midair, blurring every rooftop along the street.

The first people to start bustling along the road at dawn were the peddlers who had come early to claim spots, planning to sell fruits, vegetables, and all kinds of food.

Some rode pedal carts, while others pushed wooden handcarts themselves. Sleet was no great obstacle. All they had to do was put up a canvas awning.

On Whitechapel Road, peddlers fell into two camps.

One kind paid stall fees and could secure a fixed stall inside the nearby markets.

As for those along the main road, they did not have to pay stall fees. Whoever claimed a spot first owned it.

Once day broke, they only needed to hand over a little protection money to the sanitary inspector for this area.

The ingredients ordinary people used to make meat soup pudding generally came from these small peddlers as well.

The meat these peddlers sold was wholesale stock from slaughterhouses large and small, as well as imported meat merchants. They butchered and stored it themselves, so their prices were usually lower than the butcher shops.

Near the intersection, a meat seller in a pair of worn-out overalls had just pulled a string of pig offal from a wooden bucket.

Bloody water mixed with sea salt and a heavy stench of raw meat flowed from his stall, mingling with the rain and snow before running into the sewer.

Daisy could smell the blood from a long way off. She still held that crumpled list in her hand as she said to Mary,

“We’ll go to one of the bigger shops nearby later. This isn’t the place to save money.”

There was no such thing as quarantine these days. To keep costs low, it was common enough for small peddlers like these to buy livestock that had died of disease from farms and sell the meat.

The larger butcher shops in the district, on the other hand, were usually opened by food merchants with supply lines from several farms. Their quality was better, and the prices only slightly higher.

Mary agreed with the suggestion.

She knew that in this cold weather, the meat sellers preserved pork by soaking it in brine. Who knew how long it had been sitting in there?

First, they had to take advantage of the early morning, when shops had just opened and business had not truly begun, to bargain for the larger items and anything they needed in bulk.

The largest second-hand stove shop nearby was on Albans Street. It was called Tard’s Second-hand Kitchenware Shop. They continued walking for another stretch.

The second-hand kitchenware shop was already open. It was a small shop with a very narrow frontage.

Besides stoves displayed on both sides, there were shelves piled high with all kinds of pots, cooking utensils, and even molds for baking pastries.

Daisy and Mary entered the shop. After only a few glances, both of them took a liking to the largest black enameled iron stove there.

The big iron stove stood half as tall as a person and was six feet wide. It was a long rectangular block with a metal flue pipe attached.

There were double doors on the front. The left door opened to the firebox, while the right opened to the oven. At the bottom of the firebox was an ash grate and an ash pan.

On top of the firebox were three stove eyes and a ten-liter water tank that could be used to boil water.

It could hold three pots at once for cooking.

The top of the oven was a flat plate where a cast-iron skillet could be set to fry things with the residual heat.

One look was enough to tell it had come from a professional kitchen and could be used to make several kinds of food at the same time.

The two of them murmured together for a while. They both had their eye on the stove and felt it was large enough. If they tidied up the kitchen at home properly and moved the clutter into the storeroom, it would fit.

Most importantly, this stove could absolutely handle heavy-duty baking.

Daisy estimated its size by eye, then stepped closer and measured it with her hands. She opened the cabinet door and checked the oven section.

The space inside was roughly five or six hundred liters. It could bake four layers of bread at the same time, and the height of the dividers could be adjusted.

Although it was second-hand, it was in very good condition. With an iron body and enamel coating, the price was bound to be fairly high.

After looking it over for a while, they decided to ask the price first. If it was no more than three pounds, they could consider it.

Mary called for the shopkeeper.

Suddenly, a door deeper inside creaked open, and a middle-aged woman in a stiffly styled cotton dress came out.

At the same time, Daisy keenly caught the smell of rum.

She raised her eyes toward the door behind the woman. After the middle-aged woman stepped out, someone behind the door seemed to close it gently.

A faint murmur of conversation also drifted out, as though people inside were haggling.

Perhaps there were other customers in this tiny stove shop.

“How much is this stove?” Mary asked her.

“This one? We just took it in. The original owner only used it for two months, so it’s practically new. He spent five pounds on it originally.”

The middle-aged woman seemed unable to recall the price for a moment. She took a price tag from beside the stove. It was marked at £3.

Mary was reasonably satisfied with that price. A stove like this bought for three pounds would not lose much value even if they used it for a while and then sold it on third-hand.

Daisy drew her attention back from the rear of the shop and let it fall on the stove. Then she looked around at the shelves and said to the middle-aged woman,

“Can you deliver it for free? And can the price be any lower?”

The middle-aged woman hesitated as she thought back.

“If you live in Whitechapel, we can deliver it.

“As for the price, this is already the lowest. I’m not the owner, so I can’t make that decision.”

Daisy asked again, “Where did the owner go? I’d like to speak with him. If the price can’t be lowered, could you throw in a few baking trays? If you can, we’ll pay right now.”
The owner, of course, was busy with more important matters.

The middle-aged woman said, “It’s only a few baking trays. I’ll throw them in for you.”

Daisy nodded and had Mary pick out a set of four metal baking trays.

After paying, they filled in the address, received a receipt, and agreed on a time. Someone would deliver the stove to their home tomorrow morning.

When they came out of the secondhand shop, Mary stepped over a puddle in her old pointed leather boots and couldn’t help saying with a smug little thrill, “I thought the stove was cheap enough already. I never expected we’d get a whole set of baking trays too. What a bargain.

“The old stove at home was bought the year you turned ten.

“It only cost a dozen shillings or so back then, but it was far too small. It only had one burner, and even for something as tiny as biscuits, the oven rack could only bake one tray at a time.”

Daisy opened the umbrella again and nodded. “That’s right. Once we switch to a large stove, making dozens of pounds of bread in a day won’t be a problem at all.”

As usual, nothing about Daisy’s expression seemed out of the ordinary.

Only if someone were staring straight at her at that moment would they notice a flicker of teasing amusement in those eyes that were usually indifferent to everything. It appeared for an instant, then vanished.

After that, Daisy and Mary went to a nearby glass jar wholesaler.

In late nineteenth-century London, Mason jars were the packaging material used by nearly every canned-food factory.

Whether it was the jam the Queen spread on her bread or the pudding eaten by the poor, almost all of it used these jars as molds or containers.

Because of that, the price was quite low. The common household sizes were one pint, half a pint, and one quart.

The cheap Mason jars of the time were still cloudy brown or gray-green, with lids mostly made of alloy, and the glass still bore the old 1858 inscription.

Daisy planned to buy roughly enough for a week’s use, ordering one crate each of the pint and quart sizes.

Once the quantity was confirmed, she stood by the counter with a quill and signed the receipt with the clerk.

It clearly stated that one crate of pint jars contained fifty pieces, with a wholesale price of ninety pence.

The quart jars, twice as large, were one hundred and ten pence per crate.

After buying the jars, they went to the paper goods wholesaler next door and purchased one thousand sheets of precut white paper and one thousand paper bags.

There were also five rolls of kraft paper, three rolls of hemp twine, and three thousand string tags.

At present, paper goods were also very cheap. The cheapest kind was usually straw-pulp paper, thin and brittle and prone to aging. Newspapers were printed on that kind as well.

Kraft paper, however, was extremely sturdy, made from mixed wood pulp through the sulfate process.

They ordered a large pile, enough for a month’s use, and it came to less than two hundred pence in total.

Once the largest purchases were settled, Daisy and Mary both felt ravenous, their stomachs practically sticking to their backs.

They returned to the spot directly opposite Tard’s Second-hand Kitchenware Shop and entered a small Italian restaurant.

The little restaurant was old-fashioned in its decor, with only a few tables and chairs, yet plenty of customers. A busy waiter wove through the room, carrying several plates of macaroni back and forth.

Daisy and Mary still managed to grab seats by the window, slipping in shoulder to shoulder with the people beside them.

Daisy took out the list, spread it on the table, and counted down it.

“Stove, trays, Mason jars and paper packaging, hemp twine. We have all of those now.

“What’s left is buying miscellaneous goods and ingredients. That won’t take much time, and we still have this much of the budget.”

There was a little less than six pounds left. Daisy made a gesture with her hand and did not mention money in such a crowded place.

Mary nodded. Perhaps because everything had gone smoothly so far, she was looking forward to the preparations to come.

Before long, once the waiter had finished his rush, he sauntered over lazily and asked what they wanted to eat.

“We’ll both have the macaroni set meal,” Daisy told him after they discussed it.

Mary put the list away and looked up at Daisy. She had already had some questions about her eldest daughter’s recent actions, but after going out with her today, this was the first time she had seen how carefully Daisy haggled over every penny outside the home.

A sudden sigh rose in Mary’s heart. When had Daisy grown into someone so mature, so completely free of childishness?

Sure enough, children grew up in the blink of an eye.

Mary thought to herself that from now on, she could no longer treat her like a child.

Daisy’s face remained perfectly calm. She turned her gaze out the window, looking past the bustling market street toward the secondhand kitchenware shop they had visited earlier.

It had been an hour since they had left that shop.

By now, the sky was fully bright, and the smog hanging in the air had gradually dispersed. The rain, however, was still falling in a fine drizzle. Business among the street vendors had grown lively too, with people and horse-drawn carriages streaming past in a constant flow.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Suddenly, the bells of Whitechapel rang out, and an inconspicuous gray, dusty carriage came trotting from the distance and pulled up in front of the kitchenware shop.

Before long, Daisy saw two people get down from the carriage.

They were rather wary, dressed like workers. Only after looking around did they enter the shop and carry out several wooden crates.

After making two or three trips back and forth and filling the carriage, they quickly left again, seemingly without drawing anyone’s attention.

…