I thought readers might be interested in a story – a true story – and old boy told me a long time ago.
He was a van and truck salesman in the twenties and thirties of last century and his tale concerned a Jew named Cohen who lived in the East End of London and earned a living selling off a barrow in the street.
A ‘costermonger’ in fact.
Cohen had a bright idea. He realised that the English labourer was sustained in his drudgery by above all else, bread and tea. But the wives could not always find sufficient pennies to buy the 1/4lb packs of tea, and hubby was often forced to go without.
So one day Cohen trundled his barrow down to the docks, to the warehouse of a tea importer, and purchased a wholesale chest of tea. He and his wife spent evenings and nights spooning the tea into twists of paper which he then sold at the side of the street for a penny each.
The idea was highly successful.
Now the women could buy the necessary tea each day and hubby could enjoy his cup or two when he reached home in the evening. What’s more,the family could re-use the leaves throughout the following day for themselves.
Soon Cohen was able to employ girls to do the spooning, and then other mongers to sell the penny twists off other barrows.
He branched out into doing the same with butter,and then jam.
But Cohen always did the buying himself, getting the best quality at the lowest price.
Came the day when a barrow would not suffice – and that is when my storyteller sold Cohen his first van. Followed by others as Cohen moved onto shops and took his sons and sons-in-law into the business.
If you haven’t realised it already, the ‘Co’ of Cohen’s name today forms the last part of’ ‘Tesco.’
Image: RomainGuy under CC BY-SA 2.0
