Trials and tribulations of gingerbread sellers
WITH a tradition of selling packets of gingerbread to travellers at the coaching inns and then the railway station during the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the town began to grow in population the gingerbread business developed into a commercial success.
In 1828, the newlyappointed constable of Ormskirk , Mr William Nuttall, had much work to do policing the market traders who had been attending the market for many years.
In 1828 there were new rules on pitches and new rules on products.
The jury of the Court Leet made the rules and the constable’s job was to implement the rules.
On this occasion, the constable interpreted a new rule regarding traders as meaning he could move a gingerbread seller from a pitch near the Market Cross, which the seller had stood for over 30 years, removing the seller to an outlying pitch.
The constable then gave the pitch to ‘a stranger’, an out of town newcomer to the market.
Needless to say there was a disturbance.
The deputy-constables, under-deputies and special constables, who were actually the landlords and innkeepers of the town, were all summoned to meet up to deal with the problem at an early hour.
The Vicar of Ormskirk at the time, the Rev Horton, was one of the jury from the Court Leet who insisted the gingerbread seller be moved.
It was such an aggressive action by the constables to remove the man and his wife from the stall, the gingerbread seller attacked the deputy constable with a 2oz toffee hammer used to divide the gingerbread!
The deputy constable applied to the Kirkdale quarter sessions to have the man indicted but the jury at the sessions dismissed the case.
The following week, another gingerbread seller, son-in-law to the first one, was attacked by the constables, arrested whilst defending his pitch and ended up locked up in Kirkdale gaol and bail refused.
His case was also eventually thrown out.
Such was the plight of the gingerbread sellers on Ormskirk Market in the 1820’s.
Sellers from the town travelled to where they could find custom, in 1827 at the Liverpool Races, several stands, covered over by large blankets for shade, were selling Ormskirk Gingerbread and doing a roaring trade.
On August 24, 1829, a group of Ormskirk gingerbread vendors heard of an opportunity to offer their product to large crowds at the highly publicised opening of the new railway tunnel Mr George Stevenson had designed and built at Edge Vale.
The underground tunnel stretched for a mile and a half and was lit up by 88 gas lamps.
Thousands travelled through the tunnel on that first day.
Stevenson’s Velocipede powered through the tunnel and the crowds grew throughout the day.
The gingerbread sellers made a small fortune in just that one day, working alongside the sellers of Everton Mints.
Local MP the Rt Hon William Huskisson was also in attendance on that day, 22 days later he became the first person to be killed in a railway accident.