Florence Petty
British social worker, cookery writer and broadcaster of Scottish origin
Biography
Florence Petty (Montrose, 1870 – 1948) was a British social worker, cookery writer and broadcaster of Scottish origin. Her work in north London in the early twentieth century made her one of the pioneers of domestic teaching aimed at families with few resources.
From the 1900s she worked for the St Pancras School for Mothers, commonly known as The Mothers' and Babies' Welcome, in Somers Town, an area marked by high levels of poverty. Rather than teaching in a classroom, she cooked in the women's own homes, using the equipment and utensils they already had. Her students nicknamed her "The Pudding Lady", since in her first months of demonstrations they made plain, sweet and meat suet puddings.
From 1914 she travelled round Britain as a travelling lecturer for the National Food Reform Association, showing how to cook cheaply and nutritiously during the shortages of the First World War. She published The Pudding Lady's Recipe Book in 1917 and, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, broadcast on food and budgeting for the BBC. She died in 1948.
Key contributions
- Cookery demonstrations in families' own homes, adapted to the equipment available in each kitchen.
- Promotion of haybox cookery, a method that used residual heat to save fuel.
- The Pudding Lady's Recipe Book (1917), a cookery book built around basic, affordable ingredients.
- Lecture tours across Britain during the First World War, offering advice on economical cooking.
- Food and budgeting programmes on BBC radio aimed at housewives.