Handbook of housekeeping for small incomes / by Florence Stacpoole.

  • Stacpoole, Florence
Date:
[1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of housekeeping for small incomes / by Florence Stacpoole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    shops in all large towns the same article can be purchased at a penny or more per pound cheaper than at other shops in the same town. This is natural, without any charge of unfair dealing being brought against the shopkeeper, because if he has to pay high rent, rates, and taxes for a shop in a good position, he cannot sell as cheaply as one who lives in a neighbourhood where such expenses are low. There- fore it behoves the housekeeper with a limited income to find out at which shops she will effect the most saving. In neighbourhoods where wealthy people principally dwell people with very small incomes are hardly catered for at all. The tradespeople only think of their rich customers, and it is not worth their while to provide for those who have to weigh and consider their sixpences before they spend them. A fact which came under the writer’s obser- vation shows this. A lady who had resided in Notting Hill moved with her household to a fashionable quarter in South Kensington; being fashionable, it was also more expensive than the bourgeois locality of Notting Hill. This was dis- covered by the lady’s domestics when they were put upon their usual board wages when their mistress went out of town, and they found that it repaid them for their trouble to make a journey to their former purveyors in the western quarter, where things were much cheaper than in the fashionable shops in the locality to which they had moved. I he addition of a penny to every pound of food used by a family will in a year swell into an alarming number of pounds. We all know the proverb, “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.” The careful study of prices in the different shops in her vicinity is then commended to the notice of the housekeeper who is mot experienced in such things. 1 Early and provident fear,” said Edmund Burke, “ is the mother of safety,” and fear of exceeding her allowance should be the guiding principle of the manager of a small one. To avoid the danger of this she must pay all her housekeeping bills regularly every week. This is the one and only way of keeping out of debt. Once the weekly accounts are allowed to overlap, and the expenditure for one week exceeds its income, it will be doubly difficult to make the ends meet in the following week, and when two or three
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