Putting the Phiz into Christmas: Dickens’ collaborator and Thornton Heath resident drew this Goose Club in 1853. Did Phiz base it on a pub in Croydon? The Dog and Bull, perhaps?
DAVID MORGAN looks back to the Dickensian era, when financial planning for the end-of-year revels was serious business for the likes of Surrey Street butcher Marmaduke Willis
Plans for Christmas dinner are well in hand in many Croydon households, but 170 years ago the onerous financial arrangements for such a major outlay often saw people place their trust, and money, in the hands of Victorian businesses who established something called Goose Clubs.
In 1853, Phiz, the illustrator of many of Charles Dickens’ works, who lived in Thornton Heath, drew a picture of a Goose Club. In Victorian times, these clubs were set up where people could contribute a small amount of money each week to ensure they had a good Christmas dinner, while also entering a raffle where extra prizes could be won. Come the week before Christmas, the customers would turn up at an appointed time, often to a public house, to collect the goods that they had been paying towards for months.
Phiz’s cartoon includes a lady looking displeased to come away with a rather thin and scrawny bird, while a man triumphantly walked towards the pub door holding aloft a much plumper, prize specimen.
Perhaps the woman lost out in the draw which decided who would get which bird?
Five years before the Phiz illustration, a drawing completed by John Leach showed crowds coming out of a baker’s shop on Christmas Day, having taken their goose, or whatever meat they were eating, to be cooked there. Many of the families would not have had the facilities to cook a Christmas dinner in their homes, which often will have been a simple, unfurnished room.
Oh yes!: this newspaper ad from 1866 banged the drum for butcher Marmaduke Willis’s Pork and Goose Club on Bell Hill
Croydon had many Goose Clubs. An early reference was to one was in 1845 at The George in Old Town, run by Mr Pearce. About 70 people paid into the club to get their goose, and the aroma in the neighbourhood from the birds cooking on Christmas Day reminded the locals of the Croydon Goose Fair in its heyday, some 20 years earlier.
As the years went by, more of Croydon’s Goose Clubs were based in shops, with butchers and grocers being the main organisers. Two of the largest clubs were run by local people whose roots can be found in the archives of Croydon Minster.
Marmaduke Willis was married to Sarah Fullilove in Croydon Parish Church on February 10, 1862, by the curate Rev Henry Watson. Their parents who signed the register were local too. Solomon Willis was a farmer and Jonathan Fullilove was a fishmonger.
Marmaduke Willis’s profession then was given as a “grocer”.
The couple were back in church on October 14, 1866, for the baptism of their son Harry, who had been born on August 3 that year. This time, Marmaduke recorded himself as a pork butcher.
On the same page of the church baptismal records as the Willis family was another local couple, John and Elizabeth Dossett. They had their son William, who was born on August 16, baptised a week earlier than baby Harry Willis. John Dossett, a grocer who sold produce in Surrey Street and later in London Road, next to West Croydon Station, was another of the Croydon entrepreneurs who ran a Goose Club.
On the record: Croydon Parish Church’s baptismal records show Willis and Dossett children – part of the family businesses with two of the bigger Goose Clubs
Marmaduke Willis, whose butcher’s shop was at 12 Bell Hill, off Surrey Street, was running his Goose Club just two years after he was married. The first advert appeared in The Croydon Times on September 24 1864, telling prospective customers it was time to join “Willis’ Monster Goose and Pork Club”. Christmas had to be planned for long in advance in the 1860s.
Willis was promising that 500 legs of pork would be distributed to 500 customers who would pay in 6d (2½p in modern currency) a week for 11 weeks, a total of 5s 6d – worth perhaps £20 in today’s money, allowing for inflation.
“A fine fat goose” would be drawn for every 16 members of Marmaduke Willis’s Goose Club. That would give you odds of just over 30 to 1 to win one. Willis wrote that mutton or beef could be substituted if the customer did not want a leg of pork.
In September 1866, an advert was placed in the local paper again, informing customers that the annual Goose and Pork Club had begun and that they “should join at once”, as well as telling all their friends about it. Willis did not give any specification of numbers this time, but he did add that he was the only butcher in Croydon who sourced his pork from Hampshire.
This time a cartoon-like bird was shown, beating a bass drum to get the message out.
By 1867, Willis’s business had expanded, perhaps as a result of the Goose Club driving sales. His advert for the Goose and Pork Club for that year showed that he now had a second outlet for his business, at 40a Surrey Street. He also paid for a bigger ad, and this time it included a poem.
Good news will travel far and near, Among the folks o’Croydon
That Willis will have Christmas cheer, That can really be relied on.Then go and join his Goose Club now, Provide for Christmas Day,
To suit him, pay him anyhow, you have no fixed sum to pay.When that day comes and you’ve ceased work, How pleasant to be able,
To put a goose or leg of pork, or both upon the table.Go to Bell Hill or Surrey Street, And make a wise provision,
For you know that which is good to eat, Is ne’er treated with derision.And on Christmas Day you’ll be, In comfort round the table,
And dining with the heartiest glee, On pork or goose as long’s you’re able
Willis might not have won any prizes for his poetry, but people seemed to like his produce.
The first year that James Dossett advertised a Goose Club was 1872. From his greengrocer premises at 1, 2 and 3 Surrey Street, for the sum of 10/6d Dowsett offered a package of meat and veg and fruit. His customers would receive a 10lb goose, 14lb of “the best potatoes”, a quarter of a hundred oranges and a large bag of nuts, but it all had to be paid for by Saturday December 14. That amounted to a significant up-front payment from his customers, which must have taken much of the risk out of ordering in the produce for Dossett’s and other Goose Club businesses.
Three years later, in 1875, Dossett’s Goose Club had grown into a massive operation. His ad reminded all subscribers for his “Great Annual Goose Club” that they needed to pay their contributions by December 18, when the draw would take place: 2,000 fine geese would be available on that day, together with some real Norfolk turkeys.
As well as the club, Dossett’s advert provided potential customers with some special Christmas prices: 50 fine St Michael oranges, a small sweet variety grown in the Azores and popular in Victorian times, would cost one shilling, with 40 very fine St Michael oranges costing the same. New Brazil nuts cost 4d per pound and fine English cooking apples a penny ha’penny a pound.
Sales drive: greengrocer Dossett’s annual Goose Club, advertised here in 1875, thrived through until the 1900s
Dossett’s Goose Club continued to evolve. In 1885 there was a distribution of Christmas hampers to the members of “Dossett’s Goose Club” on Monday December 21. He was described in the advert as a “wholesale and retail dealer in British and foreign fruits of all kinds” as well as a “poulterer and licensed dealer in game”.
In 1888, reflecting that the business had been successfully running the club for more than 20 years, the advert stated that this year’s Christmas Goose Club would offer the best 10/6 hamper that there had ever been in the shop.
As well as a “large English goose” weighing 10lb, a subscriber would also get 25 oranges, 2lb English apples, 1lb new figs, and at a time when some produce was measured by volume, rather than by weight, they would also receive 1 pint brazils, 1 pint almonds, 1 pint small nuts, 1 pint chestnuts and one whole coconut.
By 1899, a subscriber’s fee to the Goose Club had been reduced by a tanner to 10 shillings. Tastes, as well as prices, were changing. For th first time, the Goose Club offered its customers the choice of a goose or a turkey.
The 10-shilling outlay was sustained right through to 1906. Despite the advert that year declaring that the club was popular and that customers should be aware of inferior goods from newer clubs, this was the last Dossett advert posted about the Christmas Goose Club in the local paper.
Other Goose Clubs came and went during Dossett’s long years of success.
One example was S Kendall’s, which was advertised in 1875. Kendall’s business operated from Crown Hill. Limited to 1,000 members, this club offered much the same fayre as the others for the sum of 10/6d, but had the additional bonus of customers having one shilling returned as a “Christmas box” if they had paid up in full.
Their advert didn’t appear in the paper the following year.
During the 20th century, the concept of a Goose Club changed into a generalised Christmas Club.
I can remember as a boy being sent to the local butcher’s shop for an order of meat and hand over an amount of money for the Christmas Club.
Nowadays, when a 10lb turkey can cost around £90, supermarket loyalty schemes reward customers with points throughout the year, providing a discount on their Christmas shopping if they cash in their points.
But a Goose Club sounded much more interesting, don’t you think?
Anyone know if there’s an app for it?
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Oh yes she is! Victorian dancer who became a pantomime star
- The casualties of war are not always killed on the battlefield
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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