Stockwell Toilet Watch

SOOTY SALTY MORAT AND LIBERTY STREETS BEFORE THE AGE OF TOOTHPASTE!

To increase the text size to easily read of MORAT and LIBERTY STREET in the pre TOOTH PASTE era CLICK once on the text image and then a second time and hey presto hopefully the text will then become enlarged so as to be pretty easily readable. Below a paragraph or two to more fully explain the personal family background to this poem which I came across by chance again only just recently.

A pre toothpaste poem like this telling of SOOT and SALT useage regularly for the purpose of tooth preservation would hardly have been written recently - it was written when the very times to which it refers to were then more recent.

In 1954 when this blogger (tho not a blogger then!) moved to Central Stockwell to an address which had central heating and so no chimney then SOOT as an ingredient to use for tooth preservation was totally off the menu. Not so SALT though and so my old mother - as described in the poem - was still relying on that ingredient daily for preserving her teeth.

Her old Grandmother who lived in MORAT STREET from the early 1900's until 1950 used SOOT - and also still had all her teeth intact at the latter time when she passed away in her mid Eighties.

My mother certainly could have opted for TOOTHPASTE when it became available but she NEVER EVER DID and the poem records to what result.

posted by Ian Cameron aka KILROY WAS-A-HERO @ 13:16