The Ice Trade in the 19th Century

Sometimes, I link to posts from this blog in my monthly newsletter. And sometimes, I take blurbs from the newsletter and expand them into a full post. This is one of the latter.

In my July 1 newsletter, I described the beginnings of refrigeration in the 1870s. Prior to the 1870s, most people could only keep their food cold by storing it in an underground cellar or in an ice box. Cellars didn’t keep food frozen, merely cooler than the above-ground temperatures. Still, many fruits and vegetables could be stored through the winter, and canned and preserved foods would definitely last for many months.

Smaller ice boxes kept inside the home needed their ice replaced regularly. People who lived in northern climes could cut their own blocks of ice in the winter and store them in an ice house until needed inside. City dwellers and those who lived in warmer climes had to buy their ice, and the ice trade was a booming business in the 19th century.

Commercial ice houses were insulated and their floors drained to allow the water from melted ice to escape. In addition, the ice was often packed in straw to keep it cold for as long as possible. Ice from northern states in the U.S. was shipped to the South, to the Caribbean, and even to India. Norway and other northern European countries were also good sources for commercial ice houses.

The ice trade required relatively quick and reliable transportation to bring the ice to market. In East of Eden (my favorite of John Steinbeck’s novels), there is a remarkable failure of an experiment in refrigeration when Adam tries to ship lettuce East in rail cars filled with ice. Nevertheless, despite such problems, the ice trade flourished until the development of mechanical refrigeration.

The 19th century also saw the development of mechanical cooling systems. Inventors in England, Germany, the U.S., and Australia all worked on methods to cool water or gas. Alexander Twinning initiated commercial refrigeration in the U.S. in 1856. In 1870, a German inventor patented technology to liquify gas and create a refrigerator. And in Great Britain, over 100 patents for mechanical refrigeration were issued between 1855 and 1876.

Now, of course, modern homes depend on refrigeration. I don’t like to go to the grocery store more than once a week, so I need a refrigerator to keep my meat and dairy products from going bad. I also tend to stockpile food in the freezer, both foods I’ve purchased frozen and extra servings of soups and stews to save for an easy meal. Occasionally, when the power goes out, I’ve lost large quantities of food or scrambled to use things before they spoiled.

I don’t mention refrigeration in my novels, though one of my fictional families, the McDougalls, would have had the financial resources to have an ice box in their home in Portland, Oregon. Maybe I’ll have to add a reference to it in my current work-in-progress.

When have you suffered because your refrigeration has failed?