Page:The Coffee Publichouse.djvu/26

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never empty. It may be hoped that the example here afforded will be widely followed.

The kitchen appliances should be such as to secure, as far as possible, good cooking and perfect cleanliness, together with economy of time and labour. Attention has already been drawn to the importance of thorough ventilation of the kitchens. A cooking stove is much to be preferred to a kitchen range or ordinary kitchener, and may be obtained of any size required, the prices ranging from about £5 upwards. The kitchen should contain either two ‘coppers’ or a gas stove with two boilers, one for boiling water, and the other for making soup. The latter is a convenient arrangement especially where tea and coffee are required at an early hour in the morning. In some London houses, including those of the Coffee Tavern Company, the customers are allowed to bring their own chop or piece of meat to be cooked, and are provided with plate, knife and fork, salt and pepper for a charge of one halfpenny. Hitherto this accommodation has been provided for working men only at publichouses, and wherever the custom prevails the Coffee Publichouse should adopt it. A grill may be fitted up for the purpose at an expense of from £15 to £20. Gas ovens are found to work well, both for cooking meat and baking bread, cakes, &c. At the Wellington Bridge Temperance House, Leeds, where an average of 120 dinners are provided daily, besides a large quantity of other refreshments, a gas oven, occupying a space on the kitchen floor of about 4 feet 6 inches by 3 feet, is employed for baking the whole of the bread, &c., and cooking the joints required, and is remarkably clean and convenient.

The plan of partitioning off portions of the ground floor, or setting apart rooms for reading, smoking, or other purposes, though occasionally useful, does not always work well. Men like being in a crowd; isolation is not to their taste; and an arrangement of this kind is apt to lead to overcrowding of particular rooms while others may be almost unoccupied. The reservation of a room or rooms for visitors of a ‘better class’ is also to be depre-