Historicizing the Breakfast Shed 1936-2005

I feel it necessary to locate ‘‘the Breakfast Shed’’ currently scheduled for - demolition/ transition/ removal/ re-organisation in the history of our country and the city of Port-of-Spain. This is necessary not only for this case, but maybe to mobilise formal and popular historians, more learned than I, to become activists in the movement towards a greater historical consciousness in our development processes.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the term ‘breakfast’ or ‘breakfas’ was used for the first meal of the day.  It was derived from the fact that slaves were given their first main meal of the day at around 11 am.  This meal indeed broke the fast, hence the use of the term.  What we know today as the Breakfast Shed, owes its existence to the efforts of Audrey Layne Jeffers, founder of the Coterie of Social Workers, women’s movement activist, and politician and her supporter Capt Arthur Andrew Cipriani while the latter was Mayor of Port-of-Spain in the 1930s. The Trinidad Guardian of  March 3, 1936, page 11 heralded this event with the headline - “Mayor Opens Breakfast Shed: Miss Jeffers Explains Aim of Exercise.”  According to the article, Ms Jeffers had campaigned for seven years for this Shed to be erected, but “all sorts of ups and downs, disappointments and difficulties” had plagued it.   The Shed cost $1,500 to erect but after completion they were still $540 in debt.  Each vendor was to pay 3d per day and to observe certain rules of cleanliness and behaviour.

The idea behind the Shed according to Jeffers was to improve the conditions under which workers on the wharf ate.  Prior to this the food was cooked and sold in the open and the women who sold meals on the docks and quayside to stevedores, lightermen and other seamen had to do so in the rain and the sun.   In her rationalisation for the construction of this building, Jeffers stated - “I do not know if it is thought by some to be a fine thing to see these people eating in the open and tourists taking pictures of them…”  “The Shed” she concluded “ is established with the view of having the working class people live and eat under better, cleaner and healthier conditions.  Today the women who still sell in the Breakfast Shed are the daughters and grand daughters/ nieces and other descendants of these women who sold there in the 1930s.

This Workingmen’s Breakfast Shed as it was called in 1936, was a development on the earlier practice of the Coterie of Social Workers to deliver hot meals to school children in and around Port of Spain, Barataria, San Fernando, Tobago and other parts of the country.  On any day, thousands of meals were voluntarily prepared and distributed to needy children by Coterie members.  In opening the Workingmen’s Breakfast Shed therefore Mayor Capt Cipriani noted that - “unlike the others this shed was for grown-ups.”  He noted further that  “Their friends the capitalists on the other side of the road had objected to their presence there and had arrogated unto themselves the idea that they must have a free view of the sea and that nothing whatever should interfere with that view.”   He noted however that as taxpayers, the working men were as entitled to use the land as were anyone else.

The Need for Historical Knowledge and  Consciousness Trinidad (not Tobago) is a very new society in comparison with its Caribbean neighbours.  This newness is evident in the fact that the largest period of population growth was in the 20th Century, most due to immigration.  This may be the reason why there is so little sense of history in our approach to development.  Trinidad and Tobago is possibly one of the few countries in the world where someone can graduate from school, and from university and still never do one course on the history of their country.  It is not surprising therefore that the National Trust of which I am a paid up life member has not had an executive for over two years and similarly the National Museum has been without a Board for a similar length of time.  The Government Archaeolog-ical committee is another institution requiring attention.

Respect for indigenous creativity and knowledge is one of the hallmarks of informed national development.  All visions for the future therefore should take place in full recognition of the processes - negative and positive which have brought us to where we are.  I suggest that in future, a historian and/or anthropologist be employed in UDECOTT to ensure an approach to construction, urban planning and development which is more sensitive to our history, built and natural environment as well as a sense of an emerging indigenous aesthetic.  Last month, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNESCO on the protection of the national heritage/patrimony, natural and built.  It would be important to find out what the implications of this are for aspects of the national heritage.

Similarly architects need to be more sensitive to and contribute to this emerging indigenous aesthetic.   Design therefore can respond to our needs for self-actualisation and self-awareness vital for the informed development of any people.  The possibility of post-graduate training at the UWI in this area for architects is something, which can be explored by the relevant and interested parties.  This uninformed, non-historical and insensitive approach to planning needs to be reconsidered.  The case of The Breakfast Shed is only one example of a trend, which has been taking place for too long.