She took small-denomination coins from it, gathered three Pounds Sterling, locked it again, and returned the key to Lisa.
Half of the family’s savings were tied up in the grocery store’s inventory, which was worth over forty pounds.
This thirty pounds in cash already represented half of the family’s savings, yet it was only enough to cover half a year’s rent.
This money was also Lisa’s lifeblood; spending even a penny of it pained her deeply.
The reason for using it was that last month the shop lost money, and with the violent crimes raging outside, their walk-in business had also plummeted.
With no profits on the books to replenish stock, she had to dip into her own savings.
At this moment, Lisa felt like hanging herself.
Carefully tucking the key back into her clothes, she worried Dolly might not understand and added:
“Check the shelves. There’s an inventory list and purchase receipts in the drawer under the counter.
Restock whatever’s missing, and follow the prices on my old purchase receipts. If it’s too expensive, visit a few more wholesalers.
If anyone dares to cheat you, tell them I won’t let them off once I recover!”
Dolly’s father, Fred, had been cheated by a liquor wholesaler named Ronald when restocking.
He had mixed up the capacities of the glass-bottled gin.
Lisa had already planned to confront Ronald as soon as she recovered, making sure everyone on Auburns Street knew his business shortchanged customers.
Dolly acknowledged, then carried the tray and money downstairs, navigating the narrow staircase to the first floor.
The first floor was also cramped, with most of the front space taken up by the shop. The staircase faced the kitchen and a small storage room.
In the dim, windowless storage room stood a row of cribs, where five infants, none older than a few months, were sleeping.
These were sent by neighbors. Each child’s parents paid two pence a day for Mary to look after them.
The cost of cow’s or goat’s milk was separate, counted as extra income. Some brought their own, so it wasn’t fixed.
Most of these neighbors worked in various small factories nearby on Jude Road.
Women returned to work just two or three months after giving birth, giving rise to numerous cheap childcare services.
Those providing cheap childcare were mostly women who couldn’t work due to family responsibilities.
Dolly sidestepped, squeezing through the narrow stairwell into the kitchen, and tossed the tray into the ceramic sink connected to the drain.
The kitchen was about seven or eight square meters, with a back door leading to a half-meter-wide gutter. Beside the door was a glass window.
Near the window stood a coal stove and the sink, a cupboard with spice jars and a gas lamp on top.
Against the left wall was a small table serving as both a cutting board and dining table, along with a small stool.
Against the right wall stood a basin rack filled entirely with enamel basins.
The kitchen was dark and damp, with peeling brick walls.
But compared to the shared kitchens in neighboring houses, where three or four families crowded together, the conditions here were relatively better.
Dolly first went to the stove and lifted down the large tin kettle.
She found the washbasin she shared with Penny, poured some hot water into it.
Then, on the kitchen windowsill, she found the toothbrush and tooth powder the original owner used for washing up.
After washing her face, she rinsed her mouth over a dirty water bucket.
Mary was warming milk on the coal stove, preparing to help feed the neighbors’ babies.
Seeing Dolly finish washing up and head to the front to organize stock on an empty stomach,
she dropped what she was doing, grabbed the bread slices from the table, and hurried after her.
Not noticing Dolly’s surprise, she impatiently shoved them into her hands.
“How could you forget to eat? Honestly…”
Before Dolly could say anything, Mary turned back to warm the milk.
Left with no choice, she could only take the dry buttered toast and quickly stuff it into her mouth to finish it.
Outside in the grocery store, Hank, while waiting for Dolly, also sat behind the counter eating his own breakfast.
Again, it was two slices of buttered bread.
Dolly remembered that her father and grandfather in this life delivered milk outside, and the two of them could earn eight Pounds Sterling a month.
Mary looked after the neighbors’ children at home, taking care of five kids in total, and could net two to three Pounds Sterling a month.
As for the small grocery store, during good months, it could earn six to eight Pounds Sterling.
Last month, business was poor, earning only three or four Pounds Sterling.
So last month, the family’s total income was less than usual, amounting to fourteen Pounds Sterling in all.
It was all handed over to the grandmother to manage.
She paid five Pounds Sterling in rent, leaving nine Pounds.
With this money, she had to pay Dolly’s two Pounds Sterling tuition fee from last month.
Out of the remaining seven Pounds, she also had to deduct the renewal fee for the public water pump, which was four Shillings a month.
The ditch maintenance fee was three Shillings.
The shop tax was six pence, and the tobacco, alcohol, and tea goods tax was six pence, totaling one Shilling for these two items.
That left six Pounds and twelve Shillings. The grandmother gave Mary five Pounds for a month’s food expenses.
After some other miscellaneous expenses, there was basically nothing left.
This month, if they needed to restock or encountered any issues, they would have to dip into the meager savings Lisa had painstakingly scraped together over the years.
Dolly silently calculated that, given the current state of the shop, this month’s income would likely decrease further.
If the shop’s income couldn’t cover the rent, there really wouldn’t be much point in continuing her schooling.
After all, what the school taught, she had already learned in her previous life.
She lifted the cloth curtain separating the sales area from the staircase and walked out.
The shop area in front of her was not large, about ten square meters, with a small entrance and narrow, dirty windows, making it quite dim.
Within the small ten square meters, there were eight tall counters.
There were two short counters, arranged in a semi-enclosed structure resembling the character “日” in the room.
It was somewhat like a bank service window.
Usually, customers couldn’t pick items themselves; they had to rely on the shopkeeper to fetch them from the counter.
With this setup, if the staff weren’t familiar with the goods, they would be flustered.
If the staff weren’t eloquent or good at recommending, they wouldn’t sell much in a single transaction.
Grandfather Hank was sitting slanted behind the cheap cigar counter.
He finished his meal in a couple of bites and then brewed some cheap tea leaves in a chipped porcelain cup.
Dolly found the inventory list in the drawer under the cigar cabinet.
On the yellowed white paper, there were faint traces of quill pen writing.
It was all listed by Lisa.
There were about a hundred types of goods in total.
Fast-moving items were marked with red ink, and items with high stock were marked with green ink.
Apart from Lisa, no one else could make sense of this list at all.
Hank, seeing Dolly sorting goods on the counter while looking at the inventory list with smooth movements, was slightly surprised.
“You can understand this inventory list now?”
Dolly was by the canned goods shelf. Without even turning her head, she just replied, “Hmm.”
In her previous life, when she first started as a wholesaler with her partner, she had to take on multiple roles.
Every day, she faced messy shipping documents, and everyone kept accounts differently.
After doing it for a long time, she only needed a glance to understand the pattern behind each person’s documents.
In Dolly’s eyes, though this grocery store was small, it was riddled with holes and problems everywhere.
Starting with the sanitary conditions, these display cabinets were likely all second-hand, emitting a musty wooden smell. Some areas were so damp they were nearly rotten, and there was a risk of mold.
Replacing the cabinets was impractical, she thought. The only solution was to find some tung oil or wood wax to give them a coat as a temporary fix.
Inside the cabinets, no one had the time to clean them thoroughly. During Lisa’s illness, both the cabinets and windows had accumulated a layer of dust.
Then there was the product display.
Last time, Fred, the original body’s father, had gone to stock up on some canned tomato sauce and cocoa powder.
Lacking experience, he had haphazardly arranged them, placing all the older dates at the back.
At this time, canned foods typically didn’t have clear production dates, but manufacturers would mark production batch numbers on the bottom of the cans.
The smaller the batch number, the older the production date.
Canned food packaging wasn’t as standardized or tightly sealed as it would be in later eras.
London still had many small, low-quality canning factories.
If stored for too long, cans could still bulge, leak, or become damp, causing the food inside to spoil.
Selling spoiled food could lead to fines if reported to the Sanitary Inspector.
Whether it was dumping feces out the window or selling rotten food, this Sanitary Inspector had the authority to impose fines, ranging from a few Shillings each time.
Every month, Lisa would bribe the Inspector with a box of cheap cigars worth a few Shillings.
This was to avoid real trouble or someone deliberately causing problems.
However, small oversights like not checking dates were indeed easy mistakes for someone not regularly managing a store.
She took out all five or six types of cans and sorted them by batch order.
Each cabinet had ten shelves. If only cans were displayed, each shelf could hold forty bottles.
Currently, there were forty-six Tomato Cans in total.
Dolly checked and found that the cans they had stocked all came from a canning company named Jarvot Foods.
The tin cans were wrapped in white paper printed with Jarvot Brothers’ red cursive script, and the manufacturer’s address was pasted on the bottom.
It came from Building A30, Baker Street, St. Pancras Parish, Metropolitan London.
That was in the north of London, not far from King’s Cross Station.
She took out the purchase invoice and found that the wholesale price for the Tomato Cans was three pence each, with a minimum order of forty bottles.
The price marked on the sales slip was five pence per bottle or nine pence for two.
Lisa had some business sense. When attracting customers, she would always tell them that buying two cans was more cost-effective than one.
One Pound Sterling was twenty Shillings, and one Shilling was twelve pence.
Once this batch of cans was sold, they could earn at least sixty-nine pence.
She continued taking inventory and found that fast-selling products like Soap, matches, Sealing Wax, and baking soda were nearly out of stock.
She pursed her lips, finally feeling somewhat unable to tolerate it.
However, when she thought about the family’s tough and busy lifestyle, with Lisa sick and no one able to properly look after the store…
Asking Mary to do it wasn’t ideal either—she was illiterate, though she was good at taking care of children and cooking. Now, with having to care for Lisa as well, it was already quite impressive that she could manage the store at all.
Dolly spent half an hour quickly going through the cabinets.
The variety of goods in the 19th century was much smaller than in her previous life.
For her, memorizing the inventory of each product wasn’t particularly difficult.
Now that she had a basic understanding of the store’s situation, Dolly decided to go out to restock.
She also wanted to get a sense of the customer base in this area and learn about other competitors.
Before leaving, she took two burlap sacks from behind the counter and called Mary out to watch the shop and sell goods.
Then she went out with the old man, heading south along the narrow alley.
The south exit of Clark Street led to Jude Road, while the north exit led to Dorothy Street.
Their destination was Whitechapel Road, which required passing through the south exit.
It was only half a mile in a straight line to Whitechapel Road, but with the snow and winding paths, it would take about half an hour to walk.
As for Spitalfields Market and Petticoat Lane, where Lisa often went to source goods,
the area was located near Osborne Street and connected to Whitechapel Road.
That entire area was considered the liveliest part of the East End.
Based on her original body’s instinctive aversion to this place, Dolly could sense that “lively” was not exactly a positive term here.
However, if she wanted cheap goods, far below market prices, she had to come to this area.
Land in London’s East End was inexpensive, and all the wholesale dealers of tobacco, alcohol, and tea, as well as factory distributors, gathered here.
Although railways spanned the country in this era and London already had a subway system,
very few stations were open, so she couldn’t enjoy that convenience yet and still had to walk.
Dolly followed the old man southward. As soon as they exited the south end of Clark Alley, she saw a grocery store much larger than her own.
In fact, most of the houses inside Clark Alley, where Dolly lived, were similar to hers—
narrow, small, and low, with dull brick walls, peeling wooden doors and windows, and dilapidated roofs, lacking any design style or era-specific character.
There was no such thing as fashion in the homes of the poor; they hadn’t changed since the eighteenth century.
Each building was either used for business, housing an entire family crammed inside,
or divided into rentals, with three or four households living in each one.
When they reached the intersection connecting to the main street, she stood at the narrow crossing and looked toward the street corner.
The Piero Grocery Store stood out prominently at this dull intersection.
The shop occupied an entire standalone building, with wide glass display windows,
clean red brick walls, classical-style beige door pillars and porch, and fresh pine branches hanging at the entrance.
Sunlight streamed in through the front, and young women in cotton bustle skirts were coming and going. Even early in the morning, business was already bustling.
Author’s note: