Wigan Album

Was it Meesons where when you bought a quarter of sweets you got a quarter free?

I imagine that shop being very busy with three assistants and the location. I bet the smell of all that chocolate and sweets was scrumptious.

Amazing this shop, chocolates must have been a luxury in the early 1900s. These photos are great of our past.Thank you for sharing Ron.

In those days, nobody could care less about calories. I don’t suppose many of the general public had ever even heard of calories.

I only remember Meeson's when it was down Market Street, near Woodcock Street corner. When I was in my last year at Hindley Grammar School we made a Christmas cake in Domestic Science class......cake made one week then stored in a tin until it was time to cover with marzipan, then stored again until it was flat-iced, then another week for the decorating. We had to have a tin to keep it in between the stages and Meeson's sold me a Quality Street tin; in those days they weighed the sweets out from the tin into paper bags and the empty tins were returned to the manufacturer to be re-filled.

Meeson's later had a shop on the corner of Woodcock street and Market Street, it was indeed an excellent shop.

A tin containing chocolates and tobacco was sent to soldiers at Christmas 1914. It was the idea of Princess Mary the daughter of King George V that they should receive them. I believe cocoa was a popular drink in those days. I know it was in my grandma's day. I have seen many of those tins on eBay.

Albert.S. I suppose after walking from home and back again after manuel work, any extra calories would have been worked off. Not as many obese people then.

Veronica, not just "chocolates and tobacco". If you look at the contents of the Christmas tins from Harrods and the other big London stores, a variety of recreational chemicals which are not legal nowadays.

I dare say the chocolates and tobacco were meant as a comfort to the troops Bogle. It was the chemicals in the gas that was the most dangerous used first by the Germans in 1915.

Yes Veronica,so true,my Mams Dad who I never saw died at the age of 49 due to the effects of the gas...
Back to Meesons, Ron,I recall having a conversation about this shop before..was it Meesons that finished up down King Street next to the Court Cinema and later became Westheads???.

I can remember a Meeson's shop in King Street.

I hadn't realised Cocoa was no longer a popular drink.

In the 1990's, I started to buy drinking chocolate rather than cocoa, seduced by the convenience of "just add hot water" to make a cup of the stuff.

However, the latter has started to contain some quite questionable ingredients, and I read that the health claims in respect of cocoa DO NOT extend to drinking chocolate. So, last few years, I have switched back to cocoa, made 80/20 water to milk.