In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller recalls an occupation lost in time – that of the ice man, who wore “leather vests and a wet piece of sackcloth slung over the right shoulder, and once they had slid the ice into the box, they invariably slipped the sacking off and stood there waiting, dripping, for their money.” From the late 19th century to mid-20th century, the ice man (and ice women during wartime) was a common sight in cities and towns where he would make daily rounds delivering ice for iceboxes before the electric domestic refrigerator became commonplace. Today we need only reach into our refrigerator for our personal supply of homemade ice cubes, but depending on where you lived a century or so ago, your ice might have travelled across oceans and continents, surviving over a hundred days without melting, just to chill your drink on a hot summer’s day. The ice trade revolutionised the meat, vegetable and fruit industries in the 19th century, enabled significant growth in the fishing industry, and encouraged the introduction of a range of new drinks and foods. At the height of its trade, ice, as it happens, was once America’s largest export after cotton.
