A ghost of Christmas repast

08 Dec 2022

This blog looks at two very different accounts of a Christmas meal - that of a Scottish man emigrating to Australia in 1879 and of a young Admiral, Sir George James Perceval, 6th Earl of Egmont, in 1806

by Victoria Syrett, Archive Assistant

October 1879 saw the three-masted sailing vessel Northampton (1866) set sail from Plymouth on a 140-day voyage bound for the shores of New South Wales, Australia. Among the 140 adult passengers was Joseph Gerrard Stewart from Aberdeen.

A young man of 22 years, he kept a diary during the voyage which is full of the drama of births, deaths, theft, and illness. Throughout the voyage, Joseph helped the crew by pulling water from tanks, shifting coal, and cleaning out his apartment with the other single men. Food seemed to be a constant issue for Joseph, although he himself noted that he couldn’t complain.

“We get loaf bread every morning and flour raisins and suet to make a cake, one a week. We have to make our own cakes. We get pea soup twice a week. We can’t complain of the food only it’s so rough so many men in the one apartment and they are rough in their manners and ways.”

The passengers were only allowed into their boxes in the hold every three weeks and when the first opportunity into the voyage allowed, Joseph went straight for the food parcel his family had sent him on board with.

Unfortunately, the cakes his mother had sent were inedible as was the butter, but he took the chance to devour everything else.

His Christmas dinner was not much better. On Tuesday 25 December 1879, his dinner consisted of:

“Some salt pork and preserved potatoes we had the regular potatoes until last fortnight. Preserved potatoes are like very coarse saw dust, boiling water is poured on them and stirred up and then they are ready for use. A person would want to have good teeth to eat the biscuits we get they are so hard we have to break them against the corner of the table before we can get our teeth into them.”

It had obviously left Joseph a bit homesick as he later goes on to mention how he thought about his family getting ready for Christmas in the cold weather of Kingston, Moray, Scotland.

Thoughts of home are always on the mind of those that for one reason or another may not be home to celebrate Christmas as a family. No letter in the collection says this better than Sir George James Perceval’s letter to his parents, Lord and Lady Arden.

The letter starts off neatly with formal affection before he obviously has a few drinks to toast to his family’s health and best wishes for Christmas. The inebriated handwriting can only leave us guessing just how many drinks he had to uphold his promise to his mother to eat Christmas food and toast their health.

And so, echoing the sentiment of George, may the staff of the Caird Library & Archive wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year no matter what repast graces your table.