Todays random question...

[roche]

Out of nowhere, except possibly wondering about energy usage:

What, if anything, preceded aluminium foil for the tops on glass milk bottles?

I look to the collective knowledge of the forum for the answer to this arcane piece of trivia...

 

[Ian123]

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=o...wZTgtNjgwNC00ZGQ4LWFhNTktYzlkMzQxNjAxYzg4Il1d

 

[Ian123]

Out of nowhere, except possibly wondering about energy usage:

What, if anything, preceded aluminium foil for the tops on glass milk bottles?

I look to the collective knowledge of the forum for the answer to this arcane piece of trivia...

 

[fian]

Those bottle caps are still available.
https://www.berlinpackaging.eu/es/102/caps-for-bottles/454/mechanical-cap

 

[Newbeeneil]

These are what I believe came before the silver foil.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/8-Old-Vi...c-9aba-4078-9043-57f8ae8a45fd&redirect=mobile

 

[JamezF]

I remember as a child getting milk from the shop opposite my grandparents that came with a crown cap rather than foil.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What, if anything, preceded aluminium foil for the tops on glass milk bottles?

cardboard disks pushed in to the neck and held in place by a small lip in the glass

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I remember as a child getting milk from the shop opposite my grandparents that came with a crown cap rather than foil.

That would have been sterilised milk - a few on my father's round (renote hill farmers) used to buy the occasional bottle

 

[JamezF]

That would have been sterilised milk - a few on my father's round (renote hill farmers) used to buy the occasional bottle

That sounds entirely plausible. As I recall they didn't have a very big fridge, so the unopened bottles were kept in the cupboard under the kitchen sink.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

When I was a child our milk was delivered by our milkman on a horse and cart and we would take a jug out for him to fill. I must be pretty old.

 

[Garry R]

Blue tits would be the best source of information on the pre-foil milk bottle tops. The other memory on the winter doorstop I have is the cream frozen with an inch of it pushed out of the bottle and the aluminium top perched on the cream!!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

When I was a child our milk was delivered by our milkman on a horse and cart and we would take a jug out for him to fill. I must be pretty old.

My father started with a horse drawn milk float - although the milk was bottled (at my uncle's farm initially) I remember finding a box full of the foil bottle caps years ago in the loft above the stables. So that gives an idea of when foil caps were in use as my mother recalls in the big Feburary snows of 1968, as unigate dairies couldn't deliver the milk to us, my father, on my first birthday washing bottles and bottling milk in the kitchen and using the old foil caps from the farm to close them, and Moses finished bottling his own in the late fifties/early 1960's the caps would have predated then.

 

[Amari]

When I was a child our milk was delivered by our milkman on a horse and cart and we would take a jug out for him to fill. I must be pretty old.

Same here, with the added benefit of going out onto the road with bucket and shovel to scoop up dung for our allotment......

 

[roche]

So were the cardboard caps waxed or plain? I would never have thought of cardboard...

 

[enrico]

And then there was the sound of another horse and cart and the cry " RAGBONE"

 

[MillMeadow]

And then there was the sound of another horse and cart and the cry " RAGBONE"

My G.grandad was a rag and bone man.

 

[Erichalfbee]

And then there was the sound of another horse and cart and the cry " RAGBONE"

And a plastic bag with a goldfish swimming around in it.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

did they have plastic back in them days?

 

[Amari]

did they have plastic back in them days?

I think it was in the late 1950s that I remember polythene bags being a novelty - we would accuse each other at scout camp of being 'polythene products'. Daft, I know.

 

[Darryl]

I remember as a child getting milk from the shop opposite my grandparents that came with a crown cap rather than foil.

James

Likewise, it was sterilised milk as opposed to pasturised.