“Tickler’s Jam! Tickler’s Jam!
How I love old Tickler’s Jam
Plum and apple in one pound pots
Sent from England in ten ton lots
Every night when I must sleep
I’m dreaming that I am
Forcing my way up the Dardanelles
With a pot of Tickler’s Jam.”
During the First World War Ticklers Jam became a household name throughout the United Kingdom and many places across the world as it became one of the staples of the British Army during the war. Ticklers jam had more than a dining purpose for the men in the front line trenches and whose popularity would plummet almost immediately after the war.
The Ticklers jam factory was established in 1878 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire England by Thomas Tickler, with a factory also established in Southall later in the period. In 1914 Ticklers Ltd secured a substantial army contract to provide the army with plum and apple jam, a contract worth £1 million in 1914 prices.
Tickles jam gained a reputation which perhaps wasn’t the beneficial to it marketing department as it was often described as coming in “two colours, green and red but both tasting the same.” Although different varieties were available Ticklers seemed to the men at the front to be the only preserve produced.
The men at the front were extremely more utilitarian when it came to their food packaging than we are today. Ticklers jam, send to the front in tins were used for a variety of different purposes such as vases to hold flowers and more bizarrely homemade grenades. Ticklers artillery were Tickler jam tins packed with guncotton, scrap metal and a simple fuse. This simple projectiles show a bottom up approach to adapting to the challenges of trench warfare. These improvised explosive devices would be replaced by the more effective mills grenade which would become a staple of the battlefield. After the war unsurprisingly Ticklers never took a command of the market and production finally ceased in the late 1950’s.
Sources
Rod Collins, ‘Ticklers Jam Grimsby’, Lincolnshire thro’ History, life, Lens & Words, < http://www.rodcollins.com/wordpress/>
Martin Pegler, Soldiers’ Songs and Slang of the Great War (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2014)
Historic Happenings 