Ice cutters

Before ice was easily accessible to just pick up at the corner store an ice cutter would go out onto frozen bodies of water and collect ice. Most people relied on ice cutters to collect ice for them and deliver regularly since there was no way to keep the ice reliably cold without the electric freezers we’re used to today.

When the ice was around a foot deep, ice cutters would use a horse-drawn plow to clear the snow from the ice, then score the ice into sections and use hand saws to cut it into pieces before placing it on a carriage to be delivered. It was a pretty dangerous job — ice cutters and their horses could fall through the ice.