What the Milkman saw

Bill Clark reminisces on his time on the horse drawn milk round. Stories of  red face encounters, the horse as an amiable and helpful companion and how the birds adapted to the different types of milk bottle tops - from the old cardboard inserts to the newfangled foil.

Horse drawn Milk float, Credit: M Campbell / Ryeburne Street, Oldham / CC BY-SA 2.0

Reminiscences from Bill Clark, former Warden of Wandlebury, "Route and Branch" read as podcasts:

In between hospital appointments, I had been helping with weekend deliveries at a local dairy: being a town round, mine was large in number, but short in length, so was still worked with a horse – a van would meet me halfway to load more milk and take away the empties. It usually took me from 7.00 am to midday. As with most dairies we used bottles with cardboard disc closures – the customer pushing a finger into a centrally scribed spot to lift the disc out of the rim inside the neck. In practice it often wasn’t scribed deep enough, and the whole disc shot in squirting milk everywhere! Even the one third of a pint bottles for school delivery, where the centre was only used to poke in the drinking straw, treated the young customers similarly – also because the disc was recessed some milk often lay on top to gather dust and germs. 

One Saturday, a ‘working’ lady complained that upon arriving home she had found her bottle tops had been ‘chewed’ during the previous week. I did the lady no favours suggesting ‘rats or mice’; however, as I walked back I disturbed a Great Tit pecking at a bottle on the cart and dashed back to inform her, and she remarked on what a clever bird it was. This bird – and a cousin, the Blue Tit, often live in close proximity to houses and gardens, pecking up seeds and berries, scavenging for insects under window ledges and inside porches, etc. It was obvious what had happened. The odd bottle had a drop of milk on top, in plain view of the foraging bird. It would not take long for it to decide there must be more below, and joy oh joy, it had now settled into solid cream!

I had already decided it would be sensible to get out of dust and fumes, and when the dairy owner offered me the job of helping in the dairy, I jumped at the chance. Once again I was in the forefront of change! Britain had at last caught up with America, and here was I in 1949, helping to position the last of the machinery to change the dairy into a modern pasteurising facility. Even the bottles and closures had been changed, a disk of aluminium foil was now crimped over the top, so no more puddles of milk on top to pick up germs, or for a sharp eyed bird to see. The damp atmosphere was ideal, and I was not only soon fit, but put in full charge. Then during the winter – due to a roundswoman’s illness – I had to take on a round for some weeks whilst my employer managed the dairy. 

The first Sunday was especially mild and sunny – the horse clip-clopped to a halt, and I stepped quickly down a path and round a corner to a covered patio. A tall, slim, blonde woman, in nothing but the briefest of undies, was standing with her back to me, one foot on a stool as she smoothed on a nylon stocking. ‘Thank you Esme,’ she called, ‘Could you put it on the table?’ and next, ‘OH MY GOD,’ as I plonked the milk down and fled! Then two weeks of hard frost ensued, freezing the milk even as I travelled, and little columns of cream lifted ‘above the parapet’ as the ice expanded, forcing off the caps. Here and there, small birds noticed.

A horse-pulled milk cart was not the fastest transport, but it was one of the easiest to drive: the horse mostly stopped – without being asked – at regular customers’ houses, moved along at my command from a distance, and often caught me up with no command at all. I had plenty of time to observe my surroundings. During the following weeks as the mild weather returned, those sharp eyed birds that had enjoyed their frozen cream, must have been quite disappointed to find tightly fitting caps again, and one or two tried pecking through them. All birds are quick at noting each other’s movements – even listening out for other breeds excited calls, and I was soon seeing more and more strips of bottle top foil. 

Thinking back, I can remember regional differences, and individual milkmen had an input too. On the start of early rounds, it was dark, the folk were still home, and probably all the milk was taken indoors. The milk left on the doorsteps by the later starting roundsmen and at the end of long rounds, would stay until the scattering of working mothers who had already left, arrived home – giving plenty of time to freeze, and longer opportunity for ‘copy-catting’. 

One suburb of large gardens, filled with trees and shrubs and lots of resident birds, became a ‘no go zone’ unless I threw a sheet over the crates. In this area of large houses, the ladies got out of bed much later, but no longer had live-in servants to take in the milk. Their birds soon got onto milk rations: however, on a new housing estate – mostly young mothers at home – and not much in the way of tree cover, only an occasional bottle would be attacked, and I cannot recollect a single bird chasing the cart.

The milkmen soon started...

You can listen to the full podcast here:

https://archive.org/download/what-the-milkman-saw/Chapter3b-What-%20the-Milkman-saw.mp3