Transcript: Mrs Constance Jewell remembers economising with meals during the Depression

Description

Mrs Constance Jewell was born in 1896 and [media]interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' She moved with her husband to Hammondville, a housing settlement for families in difficulty during the depression. She recalls economising with meals during that time.

Transcript

CONSTANCE: In the dole days you had to be so careful because you had to stretch things. Three penneth of neck o' mutton and three penneth of soup vegetables and a handful of barley made a good dinner. The woman next door she put her dirt tin out one day and it was full of tins! I said 'What are you doing with all the tins?' She said 'Eat, of course!' I said 'They're twice as dear as what two dinners are the way I cook.' Sometimes you'd put a dumpling in it, sometimes you'd buy a neck of mutton and chop it all up and make a stew and then lift the bones out of it and that type of thing. Or you'd buy bacon bones and make pea soup. We used to make a cake, we couldn't afford eggs or anything like that, but I had one that I didn't have to put eggs in it. It was dripping mixed with sugar and you'd beat that up. And if you had eggs you were lucky. You put that in and a handful of fruit or whatever you had and some flour and a pinch of baking soda to darken it. [1]

References

Catherine Johnson (ed). Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900–1960 (Liverpool: Liverpool City Council, 1986). http://mylibrary.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/Electronicbooks/Lookingbackatliverpoolanoralhistory-1900-1960.pdf

Notes