Halfpenny Ices

This photograph was one in a series of social documentary photographs taken by John Thomson and published in Street Life in London. Here Thomson shows customers gathered round the barrow of an ice cream seller. By the 1870s London’s ice cream and flavoured ice trade was exclusively in the hands of the Italian community who lived in Clerkenwell and Saffron Hill.

The trade of the ice cream sellers is described in Street Life in London as follows:

'It is true they enjoy certain facilities at Saffron Hill, which could not be obtained readily elsewhere. The tradesmen of that locality supply all the paraphernalia necessary to the business of their customers. There also the milk is kept and sold on special terms for the mixing of ices. In little villainous-looking and dirty shops an enormous business is transacted in the sale of milk for the manufacture of halfpenny ices. This trade commences at about four in the morning. The men in varied and extraordinary déshabille pour into the streets, throng the milk-shops, drag their barrows out, and begin to mix and freeze the ices. Carlo Gatti has an ice depot close at hand, which opens at four in the morning, and here a motley crowd congregates with baskets, pieces of cloth, flannel, and various other contrivances for carrying away their daily supply of ice. Gradually the freezing process is terminated, and then the men, after dressing themselves in a comparatively-speaking decent manner, start off, one by one, to their respective destinations. It is a veritable exodus. The quarter, at first so noisy and full of bustle, is soon deserted, a few women only remaining to attend to the domestic affairs and to quarrel with their loquacious neighbours.Towards evening, about seven o'clock, the ice-men begin to return. From all points of the compass they approach Saffron Hill'.