Soup kitchens

This month Oxford University students have decided to set up their own soup kitchens in protest of the high charges being imposed for meals http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-20122756

Soup kitchens and 'cooking depot's were organised for the benefit of the poor in some of the bigger cities in Britain during the nineteenth century, particularly in Glasgow. These were not always offering free hand-outs, early cooking depots set low fixed rates providing cheap affordable meals for those who lived in houses with inadequate cooking facilities.

A Dover soup kitchen c.1920s/1930s

(dover-kent.co.uk)

Due to the high numbers of poor and for new migrants entering Britain since the 18th and 19th centuries, soup kitchens such as the one for the Jewish poor established in East London in the mid 1800s survived for many years, until rationing forced production to cease during the Second World War.