Brown, Ben – 1904

Ben Brown outside his mother’s green grocery shop on the Green, leaning nonchalantly on a pile of boxes and baskets.
His horse and cart were used for deliveries and for door to door sales, the pan on weighing scales is at the back of the cart on the left.
Rabbits are hung on a rail stretched across the cart and also outside the shop.
Rabbit was a cheap popular meat at a time when chickens and turkeys were mostly reserved for Christmas, not made readily available by factory farming.
An outbreak of the disease Myxomatosis began in Britain in 1953 and killed 99% of wild rabbits.
Only recently has it been championed by TV chefs.
The shop on the right was the business of Walter Clayton a Mill Furnisher and Commission Agent.

Ben was born in 1879 in Guiseley, the son of greengrocer Ellis and Mary Brown.
His father died in 1885 when only thirty-one, leaving Mary with a young family, but she continued with the grocery business and in Yeadon was registered at Kirk Lane and later in the High Street.
Ben then married Minnie Gill at Esholt in 1908 before enlisting in June 1916. Ben had hoped to join the Royal Engineers but was placed in the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, Private 140024.
He was registered as a greengrocer and horseman. He was called up in April 1918 and joined the British Expeditionary Force, returning home from the field a year later for demobilisation.
He died on February 1st 1959 when his address was The Moorings, Hauxwell Drive.
Minnie died at Otley Hospital in 1963.

Additional research by Helen M.

14 January 2023