WI help

They certainly looked brand new to me. My Granny's WRI seemed to me to have canned mostly gooseberries as far as I can remember. I suppose it was largely dependent on what there was a lot of that season. Tomatoes featured strongly too. Good luck with your project.

When they say canning foods, do they really mean canning or did they bottle them? You can certainly reuse Kilner jars. My MiL (married 1929) used to bottle a lot of fruit,. I still have some of her jars, taller and narrower that the ones I bought when I was first married. Some of them are of an older design still, I don't know how old they are.

My Granny's lot produced large tins all neatly finished off and labelled.

Thanks, Ladies! I have seen bottled goods, but they def. used "proper" cans.

It was a very serious business too. Very important to be as hygienic as possible. Botulism etc if not.

I can remember the WI coming to my small Yorkshire village for about a week, sometime in the late 1940s, and canning fruit. My Mum did a lot and the cans were definitely new ones. She canned pears and peaches but as I was only about 5 or 6 I don't know where she got the fruit from. Possibly the market? As far as I can recall you could book a slot in the week the WI were there with their equipment and it involved a lot of steam and big cauldrons of boiling water. They used a small empty shop which later became a fish and chip shop!

Thanks Gagagran - brilliant info!

I saw a TV programme a couple of months ago about the WI and it featured canning but I don't recall any information on the cans themselves. Try to search for the programme may have been BBC2.

I would imagine that they must have been new because of spoilage and rust.

I thought they came from the USA, we were far more into using jars over here and I remember seeing adverts for canning machines when I was reading up about the whole process.

Have you read the book 'Jambusters'? It is about the WI in WW2. There may be useful information there.