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Pushing pintas

This week's intriguing picture has been loaned by Mr Stanley Fox (80) of Bowbridge Road Newark and recalls the days when milk was delivered to people's doors by hand cart.

The picture was taken in 1933 and shows Mr Fox then aged 16 outside the London Road Alms Houses returning with an empty barrow after completing his morning round for the Newark Co-op.

He worked seven days a week 52 weeks a year (including Christmas Day) for a weekly wage of just 19 shillings (95p).

"We got one week's unpaid holiday a year and the time we went was chosen for us " recalls Mr Fox.

With such apparently unattractive working conditions it is perhaps surprising to learn that Mr Fox actually chose to leave another job to take over the position at the Co-op.

His first job in 1931 after leaving school at 14 was at the shoe shop of Salter and Salter at 20 Cartergate (now Spendlaw's the butchers).

Here he worked a 48-hour week (including up to 8pm on Fridays and 9pm on Saturdays) for eight shillings.

He remained at Salters for two years before moving to the Co-op in search of a more interesting job and better pay - the Co-op milkround brought in 19 shillings a week progressing to 46 shillings by the time he was 21.

Such a figure of course was a big improvement on Salters and compared favourably with many factories at the time. Nevertheless delivering milk by hand cart was no soft option.

In those days (1933) the Co-op was just beginning to move over to milk in bottles (as opposed to open churns) and on his daily round Mr Fox was expected to deliver around 320 pintas pushing his barrow all the way.

When be began working for the Co-op Mr Fox lived with his parents on Kings Street meaning that to reach the Co-op bakehouse on Lovers Lane (where the milk was delivered) in time he had to get up at 5am every day.

First job of the day was to unload the crates of milk from the lorry which brought them from Lincoln.

The crates were then distributed between the Co-op's fleet of five hand carts one horse and cart and one lorry (to cover the Co-op's more remote rounds in Balderton and Claypole).

Mr Fox's handcart could take up to 160 pints of milk - all contained in bottles with the Newark Co-op mark - and once fully loaded he would push the cart out from Lovers Lane depot onto Appletongate heading for the town centre - a gentle enough hill when walking or driving but quite a different matter when pushing 160 pints of milk.

It was not until he reached Milner Street - where the first houses on his round were located - that Mr Fox could begin to shed some of his weighty load.

From Milner Street he proceeded into Winchilsea Avenue and Hatton Gardens.

From there he crossed over London Road to the Alms Houses (pictured) and into Bowbridge Road and Earp Avenue where at a small branch Co-op he unloaded his empties and re-stocked the cart with fresh full bottles.

Continuing his round Mr Fox turned back on to Bowbridge Road proceeding to Jubilee Street Lime Grove Beech Avenue Byron Close and around the Clumber Avenue area.

All in all delivering his 320 or so pints around the town would take him until midday at which time he deposited his hand cart back at Lovers Lane and cycled home to lunch.

Sometimes however he would be detained at the dairy to count up his milk checks. If it had been raining the cardboard milk checks - the means by which most people paid for their milk - would have become sodden and liable to disintegrate.

It was then that the bakehouse oven came into its own drying off the milk checks and restoring them to a recognisable consistency.

With his shift at the dairy completed Mr Fox had the rest of the day to himself - but he was never idle. In the afternoons he took to helping out a friend of his father's Mr George Smith of 18 Crown Street who ran a sign painting business in Victoria Street.

Stanley Fox delivered milk with the Co-op for five years between 1933 and 1938.

It was a time when the traditional open churn (unpasteurised) style of milk delivery was just beginning to be phased out with the Co-op being one of the first dairies in the area to convert to bottles.

After a further two years delivering bread for the Co-op he was called up for war service in April 1940 with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) as a fitter and mechanic.

He served throughout the remainder of the war keeping tanks bren carriers and other armoured vehicles serviceable for the allied advance across Europe.

His unit crossed the channel shortly after D-Day and followed the allied advance to the very heart of Germany. Following demobilisation in 1946 Mr Fox and his wife became some of the first tenants of Newark's pre-fab houses in Cleveland Square.

He returned to his pre-war bread round followed in 1948 by a period of work for Redgates of Nottingham delivering beers and soft drinks to households around Newark.

Then in 1957 at the age of 40 he struck out on his own purchasing a milk delivery business in Farndon which he retained for the rest of his working life.

Here deliveries of up to 640 pints a day were made from a trailer pulled behind his 1949 Austin A40 motor car. Other cars and trailers followed and Mr Fox became a familiar sight around Farndon with this unusual method of milk delivery.

He retired in 1982 and now lives with his wife in a bungalow he designed himself on Bowbridge Road. Looking back over 60 years to the times when he pushed his hand cart around the streets of Newark ladened with up to 160 pints of milk Mr Fox considers that although he may have been able to find an easier introduction to the world of work there were probably very few other jobs that he would have enjoyed so well.

He said: "When I'm outdoors I'm happy. I enjoyed getting to know the customers on my round and serving them with the Co-op's high quality product."

ABOVE: "Drink Co-op milk" says the slogan on Stanley Fox's hand cart pictured here beside Newark's London Road Alms houses in 1933. With crates on top and beneath the cart could hold up to 160 bottles of milk.

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