On Whitechapel Road, the sky was just beginning to lighten, with white mist still hanging in the air, blurring all the rooftops along the street.
The earliest people bustling about on this road in the morning were vendors who had come early to secure spots to sell fruits, vegetables, and various food items.
They either rode pedal carts or pushed wooden carts themselves. The sleet didn’t matter much—they just needed to set up a cloth canopy.
On Whitechapel Road, vendors were divided into two schools.
One type paid stall fees and could have a fixed spot inside nearby markets.
As for those along the main roadside, no stall fees were required. Whoever claimed a spot first owned it.
Once daylight came, they would just pay a small protection fee to the Sanitary Inspector of the area.
The ingredients for the meat broth pudding that ordinary people made also came from these small vendors.
The meat sold by these vendors was wholesale from slaughterhouses of various sizes and imported meat merchants. They butchered and preserved it themselves, usually at prices lower than butcher shops.
Near the intersection, a meat vendor in worn-out overalls had just pulled a string of pork offal from a wooden barrel.
Bloody water mixed with sea salt and a heavy, fishy smell flowed from his stall, mingling with the sleet and draining into the sewer.
Dolly could smell the bloody odor from afar. She still held the crumpled list in her hand and said to Mary:
“We’ll go to a larger shop nearby later. There’s no need to save money on this.”
With no inspections in practice these days, it was common for small vendors, in pursuit of cheap prices, to buy and sell livestock that had died of illness from farms.
Large neighborhood butcher shops were usually run by food merchants with multiple farm suppliers, offering better quality at slightly higher prices.
Mary agreed with the suggestion.
She knew that in this cold weather, these meat vendors preserved pork by soaking it in saltwater, and who knew how long it had been sitting there.
They first needed to take advantage of the early morning, when shops had just opened and business was slow, to haggle for larger and bulkier items.
The largest used stove specialty shop nearby was on Osborne Street, called Tald’s Secondhand Kitchenware Shop. They continued walking a short distance further.
The secondhand kitchenware shop was already open—a small, narrow storefront.
On either side, besides stoves, there were shelves piled with various pots, kitchen utensils, and even baking molds.
Dolly and Mary entered the shop. After glancing around briefly, they both took a liking to the largest black enameled iron stove.
The large iron stove stood half a person’s height, six feet wide, rectangular in shape, and had a metal exhaust pipe.
The front had double doors: opening the left door revealed the firebox, while the right door opened to the oven. At the bottom of the firebox, there was an ash grate and an ash pan.
On top of the firebox were three burner eyes and a ten-liter water storage tank for boiling water.
It could accommodate three pots for cooking at the same time.
The top of the oven was a flat surface where a cast-iron skillet could be placed to fry things using residual heat.
It was clearly professional kitchen equipment, capable of preparing multiple dishes simultaneously.
The two of them whispered for a while, both quite taken with this stove. They felt its capacity was sufficient, and with some tidying up in their kitchen—moving clutter to the storage room—it would fit just fine.
Most importantly, this stove could absolutely handle high-intensity baking work.
Dolly sized it up visually, then walked over to measure it by hand, opening the cabinet door to inspect the oven area.
The interior space was about five to six hundred liters, capable of baking four layers of bread simultaneously, with adjustable partition heights.
Though secondhand, it was in excellent condition, made entirely of iron with enamel coating, so the price certainly wouldn’t be too cheap.
After looking it over for a while, they decided to ask about the price first. If it didn’t exceed three Pounds Sterling, they could consider it.
Mary called out for the shopkeeper.
Suddenly, a door deep inside creaked open, and a middle-aged woman in a modestly styled cotton dress emerged.
At the same time, Dolly keenly caught a whiff of rum.
She glanced toward the door behind the woman. After the middle-aged woman came out, someone seemed to gently close the door from inside.
Faint murmurs of conversation could be heard, as if someone was haggling.
Perhaps there were other customers in this small stove shop.
“How much for this stove?” Mary inquired.
“This one? It was just taken in. The previous owner only used it for two months—practically new. They originally paid five Pounds Sterling for it.”
The middle-aged woman couldn’t recall the price right away. She picked up a price tag from beside the stove, which was marked with a 3.
Mary was quite satisfied with this price. For such a stove, buying it for three Pounds Sterling meant that even if they stopped using it after a while and resold it, they wouldn’t lose much value.
Dolly shifted her attention from the back to the stove, then glanced around at the shelves. She said to the middle-aged woman:
“Can you deliver it for free? And could the price be a bit lower?”
The middle-aged woman hesitated, trying to remember:
“If you live in White Chapel, we can deliver it for free.
As for the price, this is already the lowest. I’m not the owner, so I can’t make decisions on that.”
Dolly asked again, “Where’s the owner? I’d like to speak with him. If the price can’t be lowered, could you throw in a few baking trays? If so, we can pay right now.”
The owner was, of course, busy with more important matters.
The middle-aged woman said, “Just a few baking trays—I’ll give them to you.”
Dolly nodded and asked Mary to pick out a set of four metal baking trays.
After paying, they filled in their address, received a receipt, and arranged for the stove to be delivered to their home the next morning.
As they stepped out of the secondhand shop, Mary, treading over puddles in her worn-out pointed leather boots, couldn’t help but gloat:
“I thought the stove was already cheap enough, but I never expected we’d get a set of baking trays too. What a bargain.
The old stove we’ve been using at home was bought the year you just turned ten.
Back then, it only cost a dozen or so Shillings, but it’s too small—only one burner. Even something as small as Biscuits could only be baked one tray at a time in the rack.”
Dolly reopened her umbrella and nodded, saying:
“Right. With a bigger stove, making dozens of pounds of bread a day won’t be a problem at all.”
As usual, Dolly’s expression showed nothing out of the ordinary.
If anyone were to stare directly at her at that moment, they might notice a flicker of amusement in her typically indifferent eyes, brief and fleeting before it vanished.
Afterward, Dolly and Mary went together to a nearby wholesale glass jar shop.
In late 19th-century London, Mason jars were the packaging material used by almost all canned food factories.
Whether it was the jam the Queen spread on her bread or the pudding eaten by the poor, nearly all were molded or contained in these jars.
Thus, they were quite affordable, with common household sizes being one pint, half pint, and one quart.
The cheap Mason jars of the time were still made of cloudy brown or gray-green glass, with lids mostly of alloy and glass bearing inscriptions from as far back as 1858.
Dolly planned to purchase roughly a week’s supply, ordering one case each of the one-pint and one-quart sizes.
After confirming the quantities, she stood at the counter with a quill pen, signing the receipt with the clerk.
It clearly stated: one case of one-pint jars contained fifty pieces, with a wholesale price of ninety pence.
The quart jars, twice the size, cost one hundred and ten pence per case.
After buying the jars, they went next door to a paper goods wholesaler, where they purchased one thousand sheets of cut white paper and one thousand paper bags.
They also bought five rolls of kraft paper, three rolls of twine, and three thousand tag papers with holes for string.
At the time, paper products were also quite inexpensive, with the cheapest typically being straw pulp paper—thin, brittle, and prone to aging, the same type used for printing newspapers.
Kraft paper, on the other hand, was very sturdy, made using the sulfate process mixed with wood pulp.
They ordered a large batch, enough for a month’s use, totaling less than two hundred pence.
After completing these major purchases, both Dolly and Mary felt ravenous, their stomachs growling.
They returned directly across from Tald’s secondhand kitchenware store and entered a small restaurant run by Italians.
The small restaurant was shabbily decorated, with few tables and chairs but quite a few customers. A busy waiter bustled about, carrying plates of macaroni back and forth.
Dolly and Mary managed to snag a window seat, brushing past others as they sat down.
Dolly pulled out the list, spread it on the table, and counted down the items.
“Stove, trays, Mason jars, paper packaging, twine—all of these are taken care of.
What’s left is buying groceries and ingredients. That won’t take much time, and the budget still has this much left.”
With less than six Pounds Sterling remaining, Dolly gestured without mentioning the amount in the crowded place.
Mary nodded. Perhaps because everything had gone smoothly so far, she was looking forward to the preparations ahead.
After a while, the waiter in the restaurant finished his tasks and lazily came over to ask what they would like to eat.
“We’ll both have the macaroni set meal.”
After discussing briefly, Dolly told the waiter.
Mary put away the list and looked up at Dolly. She had already had some questions about her eldest daughter’s recent behavior, and today, after going out together, it was the first time she had seen Dolly bargaining meticulously outside.
A sudden thought arose in Mary’s heart: When exactly did Dolly grow into such a mentally mature person, with no trace of childishness left?
Indeed, growing up happens in the blink of an eye.
Mary thought to herself that she could no longer treat Dolly as a child.
Dolly’s expression remained calm as she gazed out the window, looking past the bustling market toward the secondhand kitchenware store they had visited earlier.
It had already been an hour since they left that kitchenware store.
Now the sky was fully bright, and the haze that had lingered in the air gradually dissipated, though the rain continued to patter down. The street vendors’ business grew lively, with people, horses, and carriages flowing like a woven tapestry.
“Clang,” “clang,” “clang.”
Suddenly, White Chapel’s bells rang out, and a rather inconspicuous, dusty carriage rumbled from the distance, pulling up in front of the kitchenware shop.
Before long, Dolly saw two people step out of the carriage.
They seemed cautious, dressed like laborers. After scanning their surroundings, they entered the shop and carried out several wooden crates.
After two or three trips back and forth, they loaded the carriage to the brim and swiftly departed, seemingly unnoticed by anyone.
…
Author’s Note: