Posted by Joe Windsor on August 13, 2006 at 14:05:11 from 84.12.79.72 user Joe.
In Reply to: Re: What is a "milk-can" ? posted by Mike Dennis on August 13, 2006 at 10:20:01:
Yes, well - we are talking British usage. Firstly there are butter churns which are fixed m/c's making butter by hand rotation or machine.
Next, there are Milk Cans and Billy Cans. Billy Cans were also called by other names locally where there were miners who used 'cans' to take drinks into the mine. These were normally enamelled, with an attached lid and a wire handle. They took up to 2 pints - 1 quart - of liquid which was mostly, but not always, tea with milk. Milk Cans were the same can - BUT - used only for milk because any foreign matter in a milk can would turn the milk.
Then there were Milk Churns. Rob's image in post 24086 on a station platfrom is right. The taller 'churns'were the usual ones. Farmers would put their milk into such churns (I can't find a reference for the content size at the moment - but the churn was waist high and heavy!!)and they were put at the gated entry to the farm on a raised platform. As you drive around the older farming areas you can still come across these (mouldering) platforms, often made with redundant railway sleepers, at farm gates. This facilitated the collection by lorry to take the churns to the railway. In those days all milk was taken by rail to a processing place. There were special milk trains.
Certainly up to 1950 - and maybe beyond - milk was sold by being dipped from a churn with a measure like a big soup tin on a handle with a curved top to hang it from the churn edge. In the 1940's I worked with a Dairy Milk provider in a small village and we had a horse and cart (dairy carts were all a special design - unmistakeable) and filled glass bottles or milk cans from householders from a brass tap at the base of a conventional churn.
Phew! Ask again if I missed anything!! Joe