Bradford

Bradford and Its Children: The History of School Meals

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Bradford Firsts – Blog Series No. 1

Bradford and Its Children: The History of School Meals

As part of the Bradford Heritage Festival, running from 13–19 July 2026, Bradford Local Studies is working with West Yorkshire Archives and Bradford Heritage Connection to launch a new series exploring Bradford Firsts—innovations and social movements that began right here in the city.

With this year’s Festival theme focusing on Education, our first blog looks at something that has shaped childhood for generations: the creation of school meals. This story begins in Bradford, with remarkable civic effort, compassion, and community action that would influence national policy.

A Bradford Community Cookbook – We Need Your Recipes!

To celebrate the diverse heritage that makes Bradford the most culturally rich city in Yorkshire and the Humber, we are creating a Bradford Community Cookbook.

We’re inviting you to share:

  • a treasured family recipe,
  • a favourite school pudding, or
  • a dish passed down through generations.

The first 50 submissions will be compiled into a published community cookbook celebrating Bradford’s vibrant food heritage.

📧 Send your recipes to: local.studies@bradford.gov.uk
📌 Email subject line: Community Cookbook

Or Use the online form here: cookbook – Google Forms

The Birth of the Cinderella Club (1890)

136 years ago, Bradford’s civic leaders recognised an urgent social issue: thousands of children in the city were undernourished, and in many cases, starving. In January 1890, a committee of prominent citizens—Mr A. Boyle (President), Mr Arthur Perston (Secretary), Mr J.W. Woodcock (Treasurer), and Messrs W.G. Asquith, F.J. Stockton, and A. Ingle—established the Cinderella Club.

The idea had originated with Robert Blatchford, co‑founder and editor of the Clarion newspaper in Manchester, who had already inspired the creation of similar clubs in his own district.

On Tuesday 28 January 1890, this advertisement appeared in the Bradford Daily Telegraph:

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Only two weeks later, on 11 February 1890, the Telegraph published a lengthy commentary titled “A Social Question”, discussing the work of both the Cinderella Club and the Salvation Army.
At first glance, the writer appears sceptical of charitable feeding schemes; however, their real concern lay in the temporary nature of such efforts and whether the wealthier classes would have the commitment to maintain long‑term support.

Early Work and Early Impact

Despite these concerns, the Cinderella Club quickly became a major force in the city. In the first four months, the club provided weekly teas and entertainments to nearly 5,000 children.

On Monday 24 February 1890, the Third Weekly Treat took place, with 1,000 children in attendance—joined by Sir Henry Mitchell and Mr James Hanson, who both addressed the gathering.

The children were served a nourishing meal consisting of:

  • a meat sandwich
  • a pint of tea
  • a sweet bun
  • an orange

followed by an evening of entertainment.

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A distinctive feature of the Cinderella Club was its refusal to associate with any political or religious organisation. Its founders believed that poverty relief should transcend sectarian and party lines—an unusually progressive stance for the era.

By 1891, the Club expanded its support to include clothing. That summer, Mrs Titus Salt, Alderman William C. Lupton, and the Lord Mayor, Mr Jacob Moser, introduced countryside excursions for children. In 1898, Sir William and Lady Priestley funded special outings for widows as well.

Between 1890 and 1901, the Bradford Daily Telegraph ran the Telegraph Cinderella Fund, raising £4,842 18s. 1d. to support this work.

By 1902–3, the Club had provided:

  • 110,340 meals
  • 5,116 teas and entertainments
  • 1,018 Christmas dinners

These were extraordinary achievements driven by community generosity and commitment.

The Cinderella Club and the Education Committee

A turning point came in October 1904, when Frederick Jowett of the Independent Labour Party and a member of the Bradford Education Committee, supported by social reformer Margaret McMillan, asked the Club to compile a report on child hunger.

This report estimated that around 3,000 children in Bradford were experiencing hunger severe enough to affect their health and education.

The Education Committee asked the Cinderella Club to begin providing meals for the most urgent cases. Within a week, meals were being supplied to 34 schools, prepared initially at Green Lane School and served by teachers.

This arrangement continued until July 1905, when Bradford Council took over formal provision under the new Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906.
Link to the Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw7/6/57/enacted

Below is an extract from the Committee’s report:
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What the Children Ate: 1904–5 Meal Schedule

From The Bradford Cinderella Club: Coming of Age, 1890–1911 (Willie Gill), the menu for the winter of 1904–5 included:

  • Mondays & Wednesdays – a pint of nourishing lentil soup (meat stock with lentils and vegetables), 2–3 oz of bread, followed by one or more plates of rice pudding.
  • Tuesdays & Thursdays – savoury meat hash with potatoes and onions, bread, and rice pudding.
  • Fridays – pea soup (prepared as above), bread, and rice pudding.
  • Saturdays – an evening meal of tea, sandwiches and buns.

The simplicity of the meals belies their importance: they were often the only substantial food children received all day.

The Only Cinderella Club Still Operating

Remarkably, the Bradford Cinderella Club is the only one still in operation today, continuing its mission to support the city’s children more than 130 years after its founding.

You can learn more about their mission here:
🔗 https://cinderellaclub.org/

Looking Ahead: The Recipes Behind the Meals

This history aligns with the meals later formalised under the 1906 Provision of Meals Act.
Bradford Local Studies holds an original 1906 school meal recipe booklet, compiled by Marion E. Cuff, Superintendent of Domestic Subjects.

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In our next blog, we’ll explore some of these early recipes, attempt to recreate a few, and discuss the remarkable logistics of preparing meals for more than 3,000 children across the Bradford district.

Send Us Your Recipes!

Help us celebrate Bradford’s diverse food heritage.
📧 local.studies@bradford.gov.uk
📌 Subject: Community Cookbook

Written by Vicki Warner

‘Is your house called Windyridge? Willie Riley (1866-1961), famous Bradford author’

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Bradford History Afternoon Lectures
Bradford Local Studies Library

‘Is your house called Windyridge? Willie Riley (1866-1961), famous Bradford author’
an illustrated talk by David Copeland
Thursday 27th November, 2.15pm

“W. (Willie) Riley, 1866-1961, was a Bradford businessman and later in life a best-selling author, mainly of novels, most being set in his beloved Yorkshire. The talk will tell the story of the remarkable life of Willie Riley, and about his books. In this Year of Bradford, City of Culture, it is good to remember one of Bradford’s illustrious and remarkable men of culture.”

These talks are given by members and supporters of FoBALS (Friends of Bradford Archives & Local Studies) with Bradford Local Studies Library and West Yorkshire Archives Bradford.
Doors open at 2pm for a 2:15pm start.

Free entry to all events. Booking essential.

Lunchtime Lectures – ‘Book Treasures in Local Studies’

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These talks are given by members of FoBALS (Friends of Bradford Archives & Local Studies) with Bradford Local Studies Library and West Yorkshire Archives Bradford.

‘Book Treasures in Local Studies’ – an illustrated talk by Bob Duckett
Thursday 25th April
Doors open at 1pm for a 1.15pm start. Free entry to all events. Booking essential.

The Bradford ‘Free’ Library was established in 1872 and from the start efforts were made to collect books and other items of local interest and the collections have developed over many years. Come along and hear Bob speak about some of the ‘Treasures’ from these collections. There will be the opportunity to view some of these items on display.

Bob Duckett is widely known as Bradford’s Reference Librarian before retirement. Since retirement Bob has been a volunteer in a number of libraries including Bradford Local Studies Library.

For more information or to book a place please telephone or email Bradford Local Studies Library, Telephone 01274 433688, Email local.studies@bradford.gov.uk.

Bradford Local Studies Library, Margaret McMillan Tower, Princes Way, BD1 1NN.

Lunchtime lectures poster

Treasure of the week no. 26: Hedgehogs, polecats and churchwardens.

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This week we resume our popular ‘Treasure of the Week feature by our volunteer ‘Stackmole’. These treasures are from 19th Century Publications which give a varied insight into the Bradford of the 19th Century – history as it happened. We hope these articles will encourage people to study these items and to pursue this interest into other aspects of Bradford’s history.

Natural History Notes from the Bradford Churchwarden’s Accounts by Herbert E. Wroot. Offprint of pages 183-187 from The Naturalist, June 1895. Contains a transcript of the entries relating to payments for catching wild animals from 1668 to 1748.

JND 18/12 (Please quote this number if requesting this item)

Tres 26 image

The Churchwardens were very much the local officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and were responsible for the administration of the law. Interesting are the payments made for catching vermin and wild animals. The entries in The Accounts of the Bradford Churchwardens date from 1668 to the end of 1748. From these, journalist and naturalist, Herbert Wroot, transcribed the entries that relate to wild animals. They give evidence that in and near Bradford there were:

  • Hedgehogs (or ‘Urchins’)
  • Wild Cats
  • Foxes
  • Otters
  • Badgers (or ‘Greys’)
  • Polecats (or Foumarts)

hedgehog from Eileen Aroon p 127

Image from ‘Eileen Aroon’ by Stables, Gordon, 1884 https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary Flickr Commons

Most common of these were hedgehogs, the deaths of 180 being recorded. Superstition against this harmless creature was strong – they were supposed to seek the milk from the udders of cows as they lay on the ground. The existence of the wild cat in the district is especially interesting; the animal being long ago extinct in England. Four specimens are referred to – two were caught in 1676, one in 1678, and the last in 1680. The badger or ‘gray’ seems to have been scarce or rarely seen. The sole specimen referred to was killed in 1676 at Shipley. Although polecats are several times noted, there were no martins, weasels or stoats. Otters were not uncommon, five having been killed, the last mentioned in 1731.

No payment was made for any of the birds whose destruction was prescribed by the Acts; birds such as hawks, kites, the buzzard, magpie, jay, rave or kingfisher. Likewise, there is no record of smaller vermin such as rats, mice or moles. The rewards paid, one shilling each for foxes and greys, and two pence each for hedgehogs, otters, wild cats and polecats, were in conformity with the scale prescribed by the Government.

The struggles of the illiterate churchwardens with spelling of the words ‘urchin’ and ‘hedgehog’ are amusing. Two examples are:

1670, April 23   Paid to Thomas Roe for Catshing two heg hoges ..… 4d.

1679-9   Aloud to the Churchwarden of Shipley for 6 uerchanes & for a wild cat ….. 2s. 02d.

Stackmole

Image from ‘Eileen Aroon’ by Stables, Gordon, 1884 https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary Flickr Commons

Neglected Bradford Industries: Copperas

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Bradford is famous for spinning and weaving but textile production was only one of a group of important industries which ‘Worstedopolis’ supported. Since several  are now almost forgotten by contemporary citizens I should like to draw attention to those which seem unreasonably neglected, in a series of short articles.

  I would be delighted if any reader has ever heard of copperas, let alone that it had once been produced close to the city of Bradford.  Copperas is nothing whatever to do with the element copper, but is an old name for ‘green vitriol’ or iron II sulphate heptahydrate. Copperas was used in the manufacture of iron gall ink, leather tanning, and a very early process for the production of sulphuric acid. Copperas, like alum, was also important as a mordant in cloth dyeing processes. For centuries both these chemicals were papal monopolies. The monopoly was eventually broken and in the early post-medieval period the production of alum, on the North Yorkshire coast, and copperas, at several sites round the country, marked the origin of the domestic chemical industry. The industry flourished and the UK became the world’s biggest copperas producer.

At various times production works existed in several places, this being indicated by name evidence: Copperas Hill in Liverpool, Copperas Road in Colchester, Copperas Point in Chichester Harbour, Copperas House Terrace in Todmorden, and Copperas Bay on the Stour estuary in Essex. The technique adopted  was similar at the various sites. Some years ago I was surprised to learn from historian Jean Brown, of the Thornton Antiquarian Society, that Denhome had been a centre of this industry. From trade directory evidence it is clear that, between 1822-1854, copperas was being made at not only there but at Hunslet, Birstall, Huddersfield, Elland, Southowram and Todmoden as well as in the cities of Manchester and Liverpool. Nineteenth century historian William Cudworth, writing about Denholme, recorded that an extensive coal seam was then being worked by Messrs. Townend of Cullingworth and that in parts of this Hard Bed coal ‘quantities of iron pyrites were to be found’. Cudworth stated that the process of converting iron pyrites, or pyrite, into sulphuric acid was carried on along the line of the coal seam’s outcrop. He omitted to say that two copperas works, Field Head and Denholme Gate, were associated with a family called Horsfall.

 

08 Plan Image

Essentially the Copperas process was the slow oxidation of iron (II) sulphide, obtained as the mineral pyrite, using atmospheric oxygen and rain water to form iron (II) sulphate heptahydrate, that is copperas. Essential to the process was, of course, access to a plentiful supply of pyrite. Pyrite nodules (‘brass lumps’) are found in the Coal Measures in Cumbria and West Yorkshire. At Denholme the producers obtained the nodules and placed them in ‘beds’ lined with clay. They were then left to weather for up to six years. Towards the end of this time they began to produce a large quantity of liquor, a dilute solution of hydrated ferrous sulphate and sulphuric acid, which was pumped into a lead boiler positioned over a furnace. Quantities of additional scrap iron were added to increase the final yield. As the liquor was reduced by evaporation more liquor was added. When it was  sufficiently concentrated the liquor was tapped off into a cooling tank. As the solution cooled the copperas crystallised in the tank. Crystals were collected, heated to melting point, and poured into moulds; finally the resulting cakes were packed into barrels for transport.

Why did the industry survive in Denholme? The most important property of copperas for nineteenth century textile manufacturers in Bradford must have been that it ‘saddened’ and ‘fixed’ wool dyes. Because it prevented the colour from washing out or fading, copperas became an essential part of the black dyeing process, especially for woollen cloth in conjunction with log-wood imported from South America. We known that cheap coal and pyrite nodules could be obtained with minimum transport costs and I imagine that once the plant had been set up there were little additional capital costs.

The cheap manufacture of vitriol, in Bradford and elsewhere, by the lead chamber process inevitably killed off the copperas industry. Once you can make sulphuric acid cheaply and in bulk you can make copperas more quickly by reacting the dilute sulphuric acid with scrap iron fragments and evaporating the result. The discovery, by Sir William Henry Perkin in 1856, of aniline dyes which did not require mordants were to make copperas largely redundant in dyeing in any case. Elsewhere copperas works were adapted to produce other industrial chemicals but this did not happen at Denholme in its rather rural location. Nevertheless at one time this community was a small but significant centre of Britain’s chemical industry. By 1888, at the very latest, all production had ceased.

If this topic interests you do read the following paper which includes Jean Brown’s meticulous family history studies:

D.J.Barker & Jean K Brown, Bradford’s Forgotten Industry: Copperas Manufacture in Denholme, Bradford Antiquary, (2015) 3rd series, 19, 25-38.

Derek Barker, Local Studies Library Volunteer.