Staffordshire Advertising Black Transferware PURE MILK Dairy Pail 🐄 Cows RARE

Here is a very hard to find, large Victorian white ironstone cream / milk pail, made in a conical banded form with decorative applied moulded handles. The face of the pail is decorated in black transfer with the rarely offered grazing dairy cattle pictorial above, which reads “PURE MILK” in bold lettering. Traditionally dairy cows were kept inside the city of London with people buying milk directly from their local owners, who had purchased the exclusive rights to an area called a ‘milk-walk’. The quality was often poor with the animals experiencing poor living environments and dreadful diets, resulting in poor quality milk, that was often further degraded by being topped up with water. In 1865 there was a massive cull in London due to the cattle plague. George Barham founded the ‘Express Country Milk Supply Company’ in 1864, bringing high quality milk from country farms overnight into London. The business prospered and in 1885 it became the ‘Express Dairy Company Limited’ bringing 30,