Mothers notes to Noel in Mattie's

A variety of notes requesting sweets, Fanta, crisps and cigarettes and matches.

In the shop cigarettes came in boxes of five, ten and twenty packets. However in Mattie’s customers could purchase one cigarette and a match. My parents would only sell these items to adults as a tragedy occurred in the parish when a child took his parents box of matches and hid under the bed to play with them and obviously the mattress caught fire and the child died. Everyone in the knew that children would not be sold matches or cigarettes and they never asked for them in our shop again.