A. I went out to Fresh Pond and I tried to sort of waylay one or two people - there were joggers going ’round - to say did they realize that ice from this pond in the 19th century was sent to India. And they sort of shook their heads and obviously thought I was completely mad. It wasn’t a very well known story, which amazed me. I thought Boston would know all about it.
Q. At the trade’s peak, how dependent was the country on New England ice?
A. In 1900, all the major cities, not just Boston - New York, Washington - they were all dependent on lake ice for the butcher shops, for cooling their drinks, for preserving food, and so on, before artificial ice really got going. As the climate warmed, less and less of the ice came from near Boston and Cambridge. It tended to come from further north in Maine. If you look at the newspapers at the end of the 19th century, you find that there are headlines about what they call open winters in New York. Earlier in the century, they could cut ice in New York, but they couldn’t anymore. It was a real crisis if the winter was too warm, and there were some open winters where they didn’t get much ice at all and you were more likely to get it up in Maine. When I went to Fresh Pond, I don’t think it ever froze deep enough to cut ice. I think that had all gone. I don’t think you could get any now. It’d be interesting to know if [the refrigerator] hadn’t developed, because of course the warming of the climate would mean that the places where you could cut ice would be fewer and farther between.
Q. What was the biggest impact of the ice trade on daily life for people of that time?
A. Considering ice to be a daily necessity. In Europe it was a luxury. And this is what travelers from America were struck by. The idea of having cold drinks and ice all the time was very, very American.
Q. How did Tudor generate interest in regions that had never needed ice?
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