What an Undisturbed Box of Novelty Holiday Chocolates Looks Like After 100 Years

In or around 1910, a little girl named Eileen Margaret Elmes received a tin box of novelty chocolates for Christmas. The cover of the box was that of Red Riding Hood, while inside the box lay chocolate figures dressed in clothing made out of tissue paper. Elmes was so enamored with the figures that she could not bring herself to eat them, so the box lay undisturbed throughout Elmes’ life and even after her death in 2007 at 99 years old. This box of ancient chocolates, which were so dear to a little girl a century ago, will be going up for auction at Hanson’s Auctioneers.

Inevitably, time has taken its toll on the chocolates made decades before sell-by dates were even invented. They display a white sheen of age that would put off the most ardent chocoholics but, when you open the box, the delicious smell of cocoa still fills your nostrils.And now, for the first time in a century, the chocolates have been publicly revealed at Hansons Auctioneers in Etwall, near Derby …The box of Little Red Riding Hood Pascall’s Chocolate Novelties will be sold on December 19 at Hansons Auctioneers, Heage Lane, Etwall, Derbyshire.