Fruit Security and Public Thoroughfares

When there are days like this, it helps to have some sort of container for the raspberries, at least if you are considering venturing out onto the public roads. As you will be aware the 1987 amendment to the Use of the Queen’s Highway Act of 1867, expressly forbids anyone to venture onto the roads, paths and other avenues of communication (except – for obvious reasons – canal towpaths) without their fruit being secured in some sort of container.

As we all know, the fruit riots of the early to mid Victorian period resulted in several deaths, many hundreds of injuries and some of the largest elderberry stains ever seen in peacetime England, certainly in the post-Reformation years.

Of course, in the Victorian era there was much concern over the access the working class had to such middle class foodstuffs such as fruit. It was felt that - in the moral climate of the time – that fruit led to licentiousness and other forms of moral delinquency that the god-fearing Victorian middle-classes would find too upsetting to contemplate, especially if, say, approached by a wick trimmer brandishing his gooseberries in an overly provocative manner.

Of course, there were certain Victorian gentlemen wiling to pay young women – and even – occasionally – athletic-looking young boys to fondle their plums or give their banana a good squeeze, but most Victorians overlooked such things.

We would like to think times have changed in the intervening years, but even in this day and age, any attractive young lady out on the street with her melons on display will be on the receiving end of a great deal of – often unwelcome – interest and speculation.