In the summer, it’s hard to imagine going without ice. But until the early 20th century, ice was a luxury and could be hard to come by. In the 1800s, it was “harvested” from ponds and streams, the frozen surface broken into huge chunks and shipped to cities to the south. This system could be great in cold years, but it was fraught with hazards — warm winters being a major one.
Ice was a major industry in the 19th century. In North America it began in 1806, when a daring entrepreneur named Frederic Tudor started shipping ice from Boston, insulating it with sawdust, to places as far south as Brazil. The idea seemed as absurd then as it does now. Yes, plenty of it melted. But the general idea worked and Tudor was soon dubbed “the Ice King.” Other businesses followed, mostly harvesting ice from New England and shipping it to places like New York City, Charleston, Savannah, and the Caribbean. Tudor even sent his ice to India.
Henry David Thoreau observed the ice-cutting ritual in the winter of 1846-47 on Walden Pond, in Massachusetts. The workers came from Tudor’s company, which leased the rights to harvest the ice there:
“A hundred Irishmen…came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes…and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre.”
The Warmest Winter
The winter of 1889-90 was one of the warmest on record — with the highest temperatures ever in some areas — and it led to a shortage, called an “ice famine.” By this time, Americans had grown accustomed to having ice around, using it for everything from quelling high fevers to dropping in mint juleps to preserving meat. They bought ice from a cart and stored it in a cool place at home. New York City, for instance, used about 3 million tons of ice a year in 1890.
Even in a normal year, ice companies might exaggerate shortages to gouge prices, but in June 1890, a smug Savannah newspaper noted that ice prices in Georgia were much lower than in the north, despite 90-degree days. While ice was going for $10 a ton in New York and $20 a ton in Cincinnati, in Savannah it ranged from $5 to $7.50. This was because Northern cities relied on natural ice, while the South was perfecting man-made ice. “The process of ice manufacture is both simple and comparatively inexpensive,” the Savannah News reported. The major cost was in the creation of the plant, not the manufacturing process itself.
Air Cooling Machines
A Southerner had come up with the idea. In the 1842, a Florida physician named John Gorrie built an air-cooling machine that compressed and cooled a gas to treat yellow fever patients. He patented the device in 1851 and eventually left his practice to work on the ice machine. Other inventors tinkered with the process, and refrigerators went into commercial use in the latter part of the 19th century. Beginning in 1877, cattle dealer Gustavus Swift pioneered the use of refrigerated railway cars so he could ship meat from Chicago across the country.
These inventions meant that Americans need not be at the mercy of natural ice. After the shortage in the winter of 1890, companies stepped up their efforts to bring ice machines and refrigerators to the consumer. But the domestic refrigerator wasn’t even invented until 1913, so people still had to buy ice themselves to take home and store. During a heat wave, hospitals gave it out for free, which could lead to an ice riot.
In a summer like this, we’d fight for ice, too.