Old cookery books and books housewifery skills are a unique source for clues of the domestic past. Chapter one starts with money and the weekly pay packet and housekeeping allowance. Chapter two covers food and shopping, chapter three going into detail about contemporary food prices and budgets looking at actual menus, how various items were cooked and how it was possible to save money in the kitchen by careful use of time, fuel and leftovers. It might be surprising and humbling to learn about lighting fires with dried potato peelings or making bodkins out of broken bootlaces. Books were often used as notebooks, doorstops or pan trivets and empty pages torn out for letters, firelighters or mopping up spills. The fifth chapter covers the World War One years, shortages and hardship of everything from firewood to saucepans. The sixth chapter concerns the role of housewives as wage earners prior to the Second World War concentrating on 'womanly' crafts. Contains hundreds of ideas from making a cradle from a beer barrel to a tea cosy from a trilby and practical advice which could be followed today. 144pp in illustrated paperback.