The bread cutting technique mentioned earlier was not unusual. In earlier times. Amongst the poorer members of society, it was not unusual to have little or no furniture and even a table might be a luxury that some could not afford, so the bread was buttered or more likely "scraped" (scrape the butter on the scrape most of it off again) and then cut using the body as the board (hence turning the loaf and cutting to the centre). Eric Partidge records the use of the phrase "When yout mother was cutting bread on you", by British soldiers of the Great War, as a variant on "Before your time"

Walrus