Title: Register of Milk Suppliers in Belfast
Date: 1922
Description: Prepared by a department of the new Northern Ireland government in 1922 this survey of milk suppliers in Belfast was drawn up at the request of the Supply and Transport Committee of the Ministry of Commerce to get a sense of the volume of milk consumed in the city and to ascertain whether the supply and distribution of milk in Belfast could be maintained ‘… Should any difficult arise within the city …’ [i.e. political instability or violence].
The author of the report indicates that there ‘should not be much difficult in getting it into the city’ as the milk is principally produced in ‘loyal districts’ referring to locales in a 20-mile radius around Belfast, including Boardmills, Saintfield, Crumlin, Muckamore and Randalstown. And that the milk supply could be maintained daily via motors of the ‘principal purveyors’ such as the Belfast Co-operative Society and others.
The report itself a ‘Register of persons carrying on the trade of purveyors of milk’ comprises three lists:
- Typescript list of those selling from premises (no cart), approx. 1,352 individuals
- Typescript list of persons known to have one or more carts, approx. 107 individuals
- Manuscript list of cow keepers and the number of dairy cows in the city, approx. 131 individuals.
The list gives names and specific addresses in each case of those involved in the milk trade in Belfast at a time of political unrest as the people on the island of Ireland tried to wrestle with the difficulties of maintaining order in the new jurisdictions resulting from partition. The lists include quite a number of business names as well as individuals and some individuals are named more than once, eg having more than one location in Belfast from where they supplied milk to the public.
Source: PRONI, COM/13/1/12
Compiled by: UHF