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In the 1920s and 1930s, there was the constant reminder that badly made coffee might be expected in British households: Tea drinking prevailed and coffee was less popular, and less reliable, than in other countries. This narrative is examined using period literature and the British Newspaper Archive. Cookery books and newspaper articles offered guidance on how coffee should be prepared, but there was much that could go wrong. Articles presumed reader experiences of disappointment, but they also suggest a wide interest in bettering the situation. Advertisements show the many ways that perfection was promised. Percolators, especially electric models, were becoming sought- after appliances for those middle- class homes responding to the shortage of domestic servants. Claiming convenience and economy, there were also bottles of coffee essence and tins of coffee powder on retailer shelves. They certainly contributed to a wider British experience of coffee drinking, even if they were different to fresh coffee. In sum, coffee was becoming more fashionable, less exclusive and simpler to make.

Lucozade is a long-established flavoured glucose drink in Britain and is traditionally associated with convalescence, helping people get over an illness, or recover from surgery. The name dates back to 1929, but the history is longer. Over the years, the narrative has changed with the most recent transformation being from sickroom drink to become a performance-enhancing sports energy drink. Thereafter, the marketing focus has been on the replacement of lost energy following activity. There was a continuing narrative of health utility but the emphasis was different: the product had been recast for consumer concerns in a new era.

However, there had been earlier, and arguably more dramatic changes to the narrative. There were two phases to this but both led to broader claims for effectiveness. Lucozade’s origins had not been as the sickroom standby, it was developed as an unbranded drink in the early 1900s and used clinically as a precaution before chloroform anaesthesia. In this, it was a pre-emptive life-saver, not something to generally aid recovery from illness. This later purpose appears to have been an accidental attribution, first gaining popular traction around Newcastle. The drink was subsequently branded, first as Glucozade in 1927 and as Lucozade in 1929, by a manufacturing by a chemist. Acquisition by Beechams in 1938 and their substantial 1939 newspaper advertising campaign gave Lucozade much wider recognition and consolidated this claim of generic utility by invoking well-established advertising ideas about tonic preparations. In the course of that year, it was portrayed as the answer to many everyday problems. General help with convalescence was still assured but now Lucozade’s effectiveness was framed as a bulwark against several ill-defined afflictions – poor appetite, nervousness, listlessness, depression and all manner of personal debility. These were terms designed to resonate with readers, the advertisements referenced problems in their lives and alluded to Lucozade’s approval by doctors and nurses. This presentation examines the scope and scale of newspaper advertising during this 1939 Lucozade campaign. 

Lucozade is a British soft drink consisting of flavoured glucose that has very specific clinical origins but has more generally been associated with convalescence. That name was first used in 1929 and, over the years, the product has undergone metamorphoses to survive changed social and economic circumstances. From a largely local success in the north-east of England, much wider recognition can be attributed to a concerted newspaper advertising campaign in 1939 which extended a narrative of relief, and the prospect of cure, from ill-defined health afflictions. This promotion featured the techniques long-established for tonic preparations. Using the British Library Newspaper Archive, participating print titles were identified as were the complete range of Lucozade advertisements used there. The scale and scope of these presentational efforts can be illustrated. From February to December 1939, town and regional newspaper titles across England, Scotland and Wales were used to advertise 37 different problem scenarios with the consistent message of Lucozade’s effectiveness, and the suggestion of medical endorsement far beyond those clinical origins.

The early years of twentieth-century Britain were a transitional period for the way that food was understood. Diet adequacy was now being increasingly thought of as not simply a matter of the quantity of food but the qualities that food needed to have to sustain optimum health. A number of ‘fad diet’ books were circulating and proposed what readers should eat or avoid, and even how to eat. Science, meanwhile, was making progress with the identification of vitamins and these were added to the discourse. Newspapers in the 1920s had an important communication role in the struggle to separate dietary fact from fiction and this study examines how they represented ideas to their readers. Rather than giving a voice to ‘fad diets’, press stories endorsed the ‘common sense’ of normal varied diets although these could be socially and economically variable. Using fad ridicule and other techniques, as well as the reported opinion from well-known medical figures, newspapers emerge as responsible intermediaries in the transition.

"Invalid food" was still widely understood in the 1920s and 1930s as a special category of food for people with chronic conditions and those who were convalescing from illness or injury. In an era when there was still limited capacity to restore full health quickly with effective treatments, even for those who had access to the best medical attention, being an invalid was often protracted. Care at home was commonplace especially for the poor in a period of significant economic and social change. Generally, the impact of nutritional science on medical education was minimal and households often turned to mass market cookery books, newspapers, and the radio for practical advice about the preparation of meals to give some benefit to the patient, or to stimulate the appetite. By reference to period materials, this article explores the nature of that advice and the transition to more targeted publications offering a greater menu range and guidance for those preparing food.

British domestic kitchens are a product of long evolution but went through a period of great innovation one hundred years ago. Some sections of British society started to take an interest in a space that had been largely disregarded. The “servant problem” and suburban building were factors in this changed perspective. By reference to period newspaper archives, the nature of those changes can be demonstrated in some detail. Although there was a narrative of efficiency, and design ideas from Europe and the United States, progress for British kitchens was piecemeal and conflicted by fuel-choice issues as well as the question of how to equip the space for personal use. Ideas that survived this period of experimentation were to form the basis of kitchen development in subsequent decades.