I've been reading Bernard Cornwell's fiction, and he talks of the use of forks in the early 1800s being confined to the gentry, or at least to 'respectable' folk.
I'm wondering - is this historically accurate? If so, what would people normally use to eat with? Just fingers? Or only a knife? What would you do with a piece of meat, or a bowl of stew? Spoons must surely have existed. . ?
To be specific, I guess I'm referring to Europe and particularly England.
Visser covers this in Dinner is Served.
Traditionally, Europeans including the English ate solid foods with their fingers. One had a spoon for soups - a very important part of medieval and low-class diet - and a knife for cutting up foods served in large pieces like slices of meat. You can find this in Rickert's The Babees' Book.
Visser includes a picture of a 19th C silver table knife with a broad curved blunt blade that is used to scoop up solids like peas, where we would use a fork or spoon. Eating off one's knife seems to be a habit not broken even when people in some groups moved up to silver.
High Society novels of the early 1800's were called "silver fork" novels, not "silver spoon" novels.
So, yes, some people in England would never use a fork, like poor farmers, factory workers, and those simply with older traditions. They even invented a knife-ish utensil for them.