Agnes Marshall

For years it was believed that Agnes Bertha Smith was born on 24 August 1855 in Walthamstow, Essex, and was the daughter of John Smith, who worked as a clerk, and his wife Susan. Recent research has discovered that she was three years older than she claimed; and her birth certificate shows that she was in fact born on 24 August 1852 in Haggerston, in the East End of London, as Agnes Beere Smith, the illegitimate daughter of Susan Smith. The couple had three children: Agnes Alfreda (called "Aggie", born 1879), Alfred Harold (born 1880), and William Edward born 1882). Daughter Ethel was raised as one of the family; and at some date Agnes changed her second forename to Bertha. == Career ==

Business ventures and The Book of Ices Marshall was a formidable businesswoman even by modern standards. The original records of the transaction have not survived but later evidence suggests that the couple purchased the school together, and this was unusual as women had only very recently earned the legal right to purchase property through the Married Women's Property Act 1882. and swiftly became one of only two major cookery schools in the city, and a class in French high-end cuisine taught by a Le Cordon Bleu graduate. an "ice cave" (an insulated box for storing ice cream), Her cone, which she called a "cornet", was made from ground almonds and might have been the first portable and edible ice cream cone. but Marshall is nevertheless frequently considered to be the inventor of the modern ice cream cone. In the summer of 1888, Marshall went on a tour to the United States. Her lecture received a positive review in the Philadelphia Bulletin but she did not achieve the same level of acclaim in America as she had in England. Marshall is recorded to have provided Christmas dinners for the "Hungry Poor" in Stepney and Poplar in London in 1889. She also provided warm soup to the poor throughout the winter of that year. Book of Cookery was followed by her third book, ''Mrs A. B. Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891), dedicated "by permission" to Princess Helena and devoted to more high-end cuisine than the previous book. Her fourth and final book, Fancy Ices, was published in 1894 and was a follow-up to The Book of Ices''. The cooking books written by Marshall contained recipes she had created herself, unlike many other books of the age which were simply compilations of work by others, and she assured readers that she had tried out every recipe herself. Among the various foods featured, Marshall's books contain the earliest known written recipe for Cumberland rum butter. In the 1890s, Marshall also resumed her weekly articles on various subjects in The Table, writing on both serious and frivolous topics. Among the articles she wrote during this time were musings on the poor quality of food on trains and at railway stations, a denouncement of canned food, a lament on the lack of good-quality tomatoes in her area, support for women's rights, criticism of superstition, and speculations on future technology. She made several correct predictions for the future; Marshall predicted that motor cars would "revolutionise trade and facilitate the travelling of the future", speculated on how refrigerated lorries could be used to deliver fresh food nationwide, predicted that larger stores would bring small provision shops out of business, and that chemically purified water might one day be provided to all homes as a matter of course. Marshall was greatly interested in technological developments and her shop was an early adopter of technologies such as the dishwasher, the teasmade and automatic doors. == Death and legacy ==

In 1904, Marshall fell from a horse and suffered injuries from which she never properly recovered. She died of cancer the next year, on 29 July 1905, at The Towers, Pinner. she became the first person known to have suggested the use of liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream Marshall imagined this would be the ideal method to make ice cream since the ice cream could be created in seconds and the ice crystals resulting from this method would be tiny, as desired. In the 1950s, a fire destroyed much of Marshall's personal papers which further pushed her into obscurity. == References ==