[opan]

>I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did.

This is an interesting point. It makes me wonder what unmarried people did, though. I suppose if you stayed with family, your mother would go to the shops. Did young people not used to live on their own as commonly?

[Ekaros]

Either you lived with parents or maybe other relatives. Or in case of agricultural labour the living space and food was part of compensation and thus someone else cooked. Same goes for lot of seasonal work cooking was shared or someone did it for larger group. Then you had boarding houses that included well board meaning food and possibly laundry. Or you simply ate in communal ways with food from vendors.

Actually single person living alone in place solely being their use is rather new development.

[stereolambda]

You'd buy your meals in diners instead of buying food to cook, if you were someone non-wealthy working in a factory or an office. You probably wouldn't be buying that much outside of this: for cigarettes, newspapers etc. there were newstands you could shop at while running to work. For big purchases, I imagine you would get a day off. Buying a fridge would be a major event, for example. But also one I'd expect people to be married for already.

Besides, if we go back far enough, upperish middle class people would hire servants. The original 101 Dalmatians film comes to mind.

[consp]

> you would get a day off

A day off? Are you mad! During the industrial revolution as a factory worker? Only on Sundays, if you are lucky.

[stereolambda]

Okay, maybe partly my fault for using too broad strokes. The fridge example already suggests Midcentury prosperity and civilized employment contracts.

If we're talking deep 1800s, this becomes more complex. As a factory worker, you may not have time and money to buy or own much of anything substantial. But you do have to buy clothes and such. Putting aside extreme examples like isolated company towns, you probably aren't on any long term contract. Why would they give you that, you live in a big city with dozens of factories and tens of thousands of people desperate for work. I'd say this is midway between Uber and how we imagine industrial employment today. If you don't come, they just don't pay you, and if they get mildly annoyed, they can fire you for any reason any time. From what I gather, you would negotiate with the floormaster some very much unpaid time to do a very specific thing, being very careful not to appear "lazy" or disobedient. People did become sick and sometimes returned to work afterwards.

This is based on from I remember from reading contemporary fiction and historiography on the period. But if you think an unmarried worker bought their clothing by some other means, please enlighten us.

[skrebbel]

Good thing the servants didn't need food or fridges.

[stereolambda]

I'll reply in good faith in case anyone else reads and wonders: if you had a working day, you would eat at your employer's. You could also well be the person doing the shopping for them and yourself for the day. For most of the period when the servants were common, people did not or rarely had fridges. There were different contraptions for keeping the food cool.

[wongarsu]

If you weren't that wealthy, you might have part-time servants. If you were wealthy, your servants would eat in their own little dining room in your manor, and shop for food for you and the servants in the same shopping trip

[bluGill]

In many cases the correct term is slave. Servants are different and generally treated better. Although slave also comes with a very large spectrum of treatment (it mostly wasn't as bad as your high school history makes it out - bad yes, but not quite that bad)

[dotancohen]

This is not how any class of people lived during any age of history.

[swiftcoder]

Is it not? The whole idea that young single people should live alone in apartments that have dedicated kitchens, and cook food for themselves would be considered pretty absurd in most prior eras.

[pseudohadamard]

In the countryside if you weren't the oldest who was set to inherit the farm you were sent out to work either as a maid or farmhand on another farm. They provided you with food and lodging. If you were lucky, you somehow worked your way out of there. If you were unlucky, you spent your life as a maid or farmhand.

[sph]

Nuclear families are another modern invention.