No, nothing to do with changing clocks, but an attempt by the BBC to show us how different High Street shopping was in the 1870's. For a week, they had a group of modern shopkeepers take over some empty shops in a neglected Market Square in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
This photo ( thanks to the BBC article) shows the grocer, who along with a baker, a butcher and an ironmonger cum blacksmith cum candlestick maker(!), spent a week plying their trades under the same conditions their predecessors would have had to contend with two centuries ago - no electricity, no running water, no women allowed to serve in the front shop...
The grocer probably had the easiest task - the female members of his family had to work in the back room, weighing and wrapping goods to order, while he played the jovial showman front of house - especially on Market Day, when he sold cuts from a giant cheese, outside his shop. When the shop had became overfull of customers waiting for the wrapping/weighing process to be completed, he decided to revert to the old tradition of merely taking orders, then having goods delivered directly to the customer's homes.
The butcher and his son had one huge Gloucester Old Spot pig delivered, with the challenge of selling every scrap of it by the end of the week. When you learn it took six men to manhandle this beastie into the shop, it should give you an idea of its size. With the only refrigeration supplied by a few enormous ice blocks in metal cages, the need for selling quickly was obvious, though there was no such thing as a sell by date back then. Sausages made from the less aesthetic cuts of meat, and encased in the well washed intestines, were a popular choice with shoppers, though an attempt at making pork pies was less successful, as they were put to cook in the baker's oven, then forgotten and burned to a crisp. On the market day, their own version of fast food - i.e. bacon and pea soup (peas pudding) - made them a good profit, as well as pleasing the crowds.
The Ironmonger soon realised he did a better trade from his blacksmith's forge than from behind his counter, and closed the shop. He took on an apprentice and set him to work making candles, while he himself crafted wrought iron candle holders, plus meat hooks for the butcher, and bread knives for the baker. At the end of the week he had made the largest amount of money, totalling about one and a half thousand pounds.
The baker's family had the greatest challenge to contend with, for it was the wife, not the husband, who was the master baker in real life, but in the eighteen hundred's women were not allowed to work in the trade. So the husband, who had never baked a loaf in his life, had to immediately set to work to produce 150 loaves overnight, ready for opening day on the morrow. Needless to say, as he wouldn't listen to any of his wife's gentle hints regarding quantities of salt and water needed to produce decent bread, the results were disastrous - burnt, and too salty by far.
After a crash course with a specialist baker, who gave him a lesson in how to make a profit by adding other ingredients to bulk out the flour (chalk, sawdust, alum and even arsenic were sometimes used!) he opted for the fairly innocuous rice to add to the fine white flour that had been delivered to him, and his bread improved.
The programme made it obvious how difficult life was for all tradesmen, not to mention their families who worked hard behind the scenes, supporting the men. But what it also brought into high relief, was how the
shoppers loved the personal interaction with the shop owners, especially on Market Day, when they turned to showmanship to advertise their wares to passers-by, be it by means of a giant cheese, pig's head complete with glass eyes hung above the shop, homemade candles and holders by the forge, or simply baskets of fresh bread displayed on trestles on the pavement; a far cry indeed from an out of town, all-purpose, impersonal supermarket.
