Ice, ice baby

I’m always fascinated by the realization that what we think of as normal may really have had a very short life. Case in point, Gavin Weightman’s book The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story.
I knew that before the development of the refrigerator, people had relied on actual blocks of ice, delivered to their home and placed in an “ice box,” to keep food cold. Prior to reading Weightman, I didn’t realize what a radical idea the icebox was.
Up until well into the 1800s, the concept that it was natural to have your water cold, with ice, or to drink your alcohol iced, didn’t exist; if you drank in the summer in a hot climate, you drank tepid. Even ice for preserving food wasn’t an option except for the very wealthy.
That changed thanks to Boston merchant Frederic Turner, the “Ice King,” who hit on the crazy idea of shipping ice to the Caribbean (and later India) and promoting it for health (cooling fever patients) and drinking. It was a long shot that came close to bankrupting him several times (Turner spent a lot of years one step ahead of debtors’ prison) and might not have worked at all except that outbound ships were happy to use ice as ballast, then trade it for cargo when they reached their destination.
The real success for Turner came when he extended his business to Southern cities such as New Orleans or Charleston and discovered Southerners could acquire a taste for ice just as much as the British Raj. And an acquired taste it was: Nobody was sitting around demanding ice for their drinks because it wasn’t even an option—but once they tried it, they liked it.
The trade faded away in the 20th century not because users preferred refrigeration technology but because monopolists gained control of the ice industry and began jacking up prices; in addition, pollution made natural ice from many areas increasingly suspect. Those doubts made it possible for refrigeration to move in.
Any book that makes me appreciate how different things used to be is a pleasure.