ELIZABETH RAFFALD - Finally Rescued From Oblivion

ELIZABETH RAFFALD

– Finally Rescued From Oblivion

By Margaret Brecknell

Elizabeth Raffald’s 1769 book, The Experienced English Housekeeper, is recognised by modern food historians as being among the very first cookery books. However, this is only one of this remarkable woman’s many achievements. One of Manchester’s first female entrepreneurs, she ran a variety of different businesses, as well as being responsible for creating the area’s first ever trade directory.

Elizabeth was born in Yorkshire in July 1733, the daughter of a Doncaster schoolteacher called Joshua Whitaker. By the age of 15 she had entered domestic service and after more than a decade of hard graft at houses in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, she took on the prestigious role of housekeeper to the Warburton family at Arley Hall in Cheshire. Here she met John Raffald from Stockport, who was working as the head gardener. The couple were married three years later, following which they moved to Manchester. The rules of the house at Arley Hall did not permit married servants to work there.

Elizabeth was already 30 years of age by the time she arrived with her husband in Manchester, but she does not appear to have been fazed in the least by the prospect of having to start afresh. Soon after arriving in Manchester, she opened an outside catering business, followed by a confectioner’s shop, which was initially situated on Fennel Street, close to Manchester Cathedral.

Contrary to what the name may suggest today, an 18thcentury confectionery business traded in far more than just sweets. When the business moved to new premises in 1766, the following advertisement, which Elizabeth placed in the Manchester Mercury, indicates the range of different products on sale in the shop,

“Elizabeth Raffald begs leave to acquaint her friends and the public that she has opened a shop near the Bull’s Head in the Market Place, with a large assortment of confectionery goods, as good and as cheap as in London. Where may be had, jellies, creams, possets, lemon cheesecakes…also, Yorkshire hams, tongues, brawn, Newcastle salmon and sturgeon, pickles and ketchups of all kinds, a fine portable soup for travellers, coffee, tea and chocolate”.

The advertisement also reveals that by this time Elizabeth had already expanded her business activities to include a celebration cake-making business and a “Register Office”, an 18th-century version of today’s recruitment agencies which focused on providing domestic staff to potential employers. She is also known to have run cookery classes for the daughters of well-to-do local families from the back of the shop.

In 1769 Elizabeth published the book, The Experienced English Housekeeper, for which she is best remembered today. Dedicated to her former employer, Lady Warburton, this comprehensive work contained nearly 800 original recipes, which, according to an early advertisement, had “never before appeared in print”. The book is divided into three parts, of which the first relates to savoury dishes, the second section desserts and confectionery and the third section preserves, pickles and vinegars.

Drawing on her own experience of producing celebration cakes, the book includes Elizabeth’s personal recipe for “bride cake”, which is regarded as the forerunner of today’s wedding cake. She was the first to suggest decorating the cake with royal icing and almond paste, a method which is still often used for celebration cakes today. Other notable “firsts” in the book include recipes for “Burnt Cream” (better known today as crème brulée), Eccles cakes, crumpets and even piccalilli. All are Elizabeth’s own creations.  www.lancmag.com

The book quickly proved to be a big success, selling in huge numbers across the country, and only two years later a second edition was printed, which included yet more new recipes. In total, the book was reprinted 13 times including an edition especially printed for the American market. In addition, there are known to have been over twenty pirated editions.

In August 1772 Elizabeth published The Manchester Directory, the first trade directory of its kind for the then rapidly expanding urban areas of Manchester and Salford. This enterprising woman was never slow to realise the potential in publications which allowed local entrepreneurs to advertise their businesses. She is known to have played a part in establishing a local newspaper, Prescott’s Manchester Journal, in 1771, as well as offering financial assistance to the Manchester Mercury when it seemed likely to close.

At around the same time, Elizabeth and her husband moved to run the King’s Head, a coaching inn on Chapel Street in Salford. Sadly, this business venture did not prove to be a success. By the 1770s John Raffald is reported to have become an alcoholic with suicidal tendencies. The story goes that one day, having stayed in bed until midday, he came down to the bar and announced he was so tired of life that he intended to go and drown himself. Elizabeth is said, in exasperation, to have agreed that it would be the best step he could take. Her husband is reported to have never again expressed a wish to kill himself.

Even Elizabeth’s hard work and business acumen were not enough to save the couple on this occasion. In early 1779 the Raffalds, deeply in debt, were compelled to leave the King’s Head and returned to Market Place in Manchester, where they ran the Exchange Coffee House.

The following summer Elizabeth set up a catering stand to sell refreshments to wealthy racegoers at the then popular Kersal Moor Racecourse, which roughly occupied the site where Salford City FC’s ground is today. The following notice, which appeared in the Manchester Mercury, publicised this new business venture, 

Above: Arley Hall, Cheshire Photo Credit: Jeff Buck/CC BY-SA 2.0

“The Ladies Stand on Kersal Moor will be opened on Wednesday next for the accommodation of ladies and gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood of Manchester, where coffee, tea, chocolate, strawberries, cream, etc, will be provided every Wednesday and Friday during the strawberry season by the public’s most obliged humble servant, Elizabeth Raffald.”

Around this time Elizabeth is also known to have started to co-write a manual on midwifery with noted Manchester surgeon, Charles White. She may be certainly said to have had plenty of hands-on experience of the subject. At the same time as she established her many business interests and coped with her husband’s decline into alcoholism, she is known to have given birth to at least nine children, although she did not have her first baby, Sarah, until the then relatively advanced age of 32.

The manuscript is believed to have been completed, but sadly Elizabeth did not live long enough to see it published. In April 1781 Elizabeth died of a “spasm, after only one hour’s illness” (so possibly a stroke), at the age of just 48. She was laid to rest in Stockport Parish Church. Following her death, John Raffald was plunged once more into debt and appears to have sold the copyright for the midwifery manual, as it was never printed in her name. He later remarried and is reported to have become a reformed character, outliving his wife by nearly 30 years.

Elizabeth’s recipes were frequently copied by later 19th-century cookery writers, including the famous Mrs Beeton, but they were not generally acknowledged as being hers. Less than a century after her death it appears that Elizabeth Raffald’s name had been largely forgotten.

In 1843 John Harland published a biography of Elizabeth Raffald, whom he described as “a celebrated and highly respected personage in Manchester about the middle of the last century”. Much of the information for Harland’s account was provided by Elizabeth’s last surviving granddaughter and it has provided an invaluable record of the life of one of the North-West’s earliest notable businesswomen, which would otherwise have been lost.

Elizabeth is described as “a fine, dignified, lady-like woman, of high bearing and carriage, and with a considerable spice of pride”. Harland continues, “She was very kind to the poor, and had many pensioners on her bounty, who almost daily received cold victuals, cast-off clothing, etc, at her hands”. It speaks volumes for Elizabeth’s character that the woman who endured her own financial difficulties was always prepared to help those who were worse off than herself.

One interesting story in Harland’s account of Elizabeth’s life relates to a meeting at the King’s Head witnessed by her then young nephew, Joshua Middlewood, between his aunt and her London publisher, Robert Baldwin. It seems plausible to assume that Middlewood gave a first-hand account of the incident to Harland, as he had only died, aged 93, months before the author’s biography was published. Middlewood is said to have recalled that “he saw Mr Baldwin hand over to Mrs Raffald a large roll of bank notes, which it was stated amounted to £1400; that being in fact the sum which Mrs Raffald received for the copyright of her work on cookery”.

Baldwin is then reported to have asked her permission to alter “several terms in the book which were in general use in the north, but which he was sure would not be understood in the south”. The strong-willed Elizabeth is said to have replied “with a marked emphasis” that “What I have written I proposed to write at the time; it was written deliberately, and I cannot admit of any alteration”.

John Harland ends his account by declaring that “The compilation of three such books as a work on the whole range of cookery and confectionery; a directory, the first ever published of Manchester; and a work on midwifery, affords ample proof that Mrs Raffald was an extraordinary person”. It is hard to disagree with this assessment.

Yet, despite his stated intention “to have her name rescued, however imperfectly, from oblivion”, the story of Elizabeth’s remarkable life and achievements remained virtually unknown until the modern day. Only with recent research into the early trailblazers of culinary history has this 18th-century version of Delia Smith or Mary Berry returned to public view.

After so many years in the shadows, Elizabeth is finally commemorated today in the city where she made her name in the form of a blue plaque, close to the spot where her successful confectioner’s business was once situated in the centre of Manchester. In 2013 three of her recipes for lamb pie, pea soup and rice pudding made it onto the menu of the restaurant at Arley Hall, the stately home where she once worked.

Her story has even been featured on Channel 4’s Extreme Cake Makers, which seems quite fitting. One can well imagine that if Elizabeth were around today, she would have become a huge media star like some of her modern-day counterparts. 