Travelling for Jam

When she was a small child, my mother said, her father made his living ‘in a commercial way of life and travelling for jam’. I thought the ‘travelling for jam’ sounded rather funny and supposed that it was one of the many private jokes and expressions that the family, back then, enjoyed.

However I have just found the family’s record in the UK 1921 census. (The individual records in that census were only released this year.) And there it is! My grandfather’s occupation is described as ‘Commercial Traveller in Jam and Bottle Fruits’. His employer is The Hereford Fruit Co Ltd, Mansion House, Hereford. His place of work is ‘Shropshire, Nr Staffs and Parts of Denbigh, Montgomerie Etc’. That was a pretty large area and it’s no wonder he was away from home every week.

The images are from a company brochure dated 1929. I imagine the jams that grandfather ‘travelled in’ looked much like this.