What Shopping Was Like During The Victorian Era | Turn Back Time: The High Street

The BBC's Turn Back Time: The High Street series started with shops and retailers in the Victorian era. It includes a Butcher, Baker and Iron Monger. The butcher in this episode is a pork specialist and there was one of these in Upper St James Street. The shop has basic equipment including a cold store chilled by blocks of ice that would have been imported from Norway. The program gives a visual insight into the life of a butcher and the other businesses in the latter part of the 19th century.

The programme shows sausages being made with a hand cranked sausage filling machine. It looks like a a kitchen mincer out of the 1950's but with a nozzle. There was a court case in 1890, Williams v Nye in the Court of Appeal before Lords Justices Cotton, Lindley and Lopes. The Lords Justices found that a combination mincing machine and filling machine did not include sufficient invention, it was the combination of old things.