Biscuit Tins

I saw an old biscuit tin on TV and realised they were a thing of the past. They were not the posh, Christmas bisuit tins of today, all flash pictures and bright enamel colours. Don't get me wrong, these tins were around in years gone by but I mean the cube shaped tins ordinary biscuit came in at the grocers.

I am not sure but I suppose they were about 12 ins square, may be more. You went to the shops to buy loose biscuits and they were served from the tin and put in paper bages. As a child I loved the biscuit counter in Woolworths. These had glass tops and you could see all the lovely biscuits inside. A shop assistant would serve you and weigh out the biscuits you selected. If you were lucky they remained in one piece. If you were short of money you could buy a pound of broken biscuits which were fun as you didn't know what you might get.

I suppose biscuits barrels and tins come from this era. If you didn't put them in something air tight they went soft. Ugh! Tasted horrid. I have a feeling these cube tins came from the time biscuits were shipped out to the colonies, India and so on. Cubes would be easy to stack.

One last memory. As I got to the last days of my schooling I lived in Reading, UK, which was the home town of Huntley and Palmer Biscuits. They always brought the children on a trip round the factory in the hopes of recruiting workers. We were told we could eat as many bisuits as we liked on the way round but not the chocolate ones. This was just post war and there was still rationing and shortages. If there was not much money in the family like ours were were always hungry. It was a heaven sent oppotunity. We crammed our mouth full and made ourseves sick. But as for going to work there, I observed a young woman sitting by a conveyor belt that flipped the biscuits over. She had to pick out bad ones. I knew that was not for me let alone the poor pay.

Now I am sworn off biscuits for health reasons.