July must have been less enjoyable a hundred years ago; for, prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one seems to have thought of importing ice to temper its rigours. A Boston merchant named Tudor is credited with having inaugurated the ice trade when, in the summer of 1805, he began to ship ice from Labrador to Martinique. Not until 1833 did American enterprise carry supplies of ice to India, gaining a monopoly which was maintained until the invention of refrigerating machinery. The first cargo of ice brought to the British Isles arrived in the Thames from Norway in 1822, but it was allowed to melt while Customs officers debated the question of duty, and the experiment does not seem to have been repeated until some decades later.
The Irish Times, July 19th, 1929.