Fire-places and Kitchen Utensils. 459 



collected together at the doors of the great public 

 kitchens in London during the scarcity of the year 

 1800. 



Two or three hundred people may, without any con- 

 siderable inconvenience, be supplied with food from the 

 same kitchen ; but when public kitchens are not con- 

 nected with asylums or houses or schools of industry 

 where the poor assemble to work during the day, and 

 when there is no other object in view but merely to 

 enable the poor to purchase good and wholesome food 

 at the lowest prices possible, without any interference 

 at all with their domestic employments or concerns, it 

 appears to me that it would always be best to select 

 from amongst the poor a certain number of honest and 

 intelligent persons, and encourage them to prepare and 

 sell to their poor neighbours, under proper regulation 

 and inspection, such kinds of food and at such prices 

 as should be prescribed by those who have the charge 

 of providing for the relief of the poor. 



A plan of this sort might be executed at any time 

 on the pressure of the moment, without the smallest 

 delay, and almost without either trouble > or expense, 

 if each parish or community were to provide and keep 

 ready in store a certain number of portable kitchen fur- 

 naces, with boilers belonging to them, to be lent out 

 occasionally to those who should be willing to under- 

 take to cook and sell victuals to the poor on the terms 

 that should be proposed. 



If these boilers were made to hold from 8 to 10 

 gallons, they would serve for preparing food for 60 or 

 70 persons ; and, as they would require very little fuel, 

 and so little attendance that a woman who should 

 undertake the management of one of them might per- 



