Onion Johnnies were once a familiar sight along the highways and byways of Dorset. They were French farm labourers and farmers who travelled on bicycles selling the distinctive pink and flavoursome Breton onion. These were sold door to door.
The history of the Onion Johnny dates back to 1828. Breton farmer Henri Ollivier, put off by the prospect of a long road journey to Paris, decided to make the much quicker journey across the English Channel to Plymouth to sell his onions. Word spread of his success and others followed. Every July, farm labourers and farmers took their pink onions and sailed to England. For several generations, the county of Dorset experienced a mini invasion of French men usually wearing berets and Breton pullovers riding bikes laden with onions. This became the stereotypical image of a Frenchman in England.
Tragedy struck in 1905 when 70 Onion Johnnies were drowned when the London & South Western Railway’s steamer SS Hilda sank off the French coast. A century later, divers placed a string of onions on the wreck in their memory.
A Frenchman from Normandy remembers the Onion Johnnies meeting up in the same public house. There were so many there that it became known as Little France.
They would not talk to him because of the traditional rivalry between Brittany and Normandy.
Being an Onion Johnny was not an easy life with low pay and having to spend several months away from home. This trade was at its peak in the 1920s but today only a handful of Onion Johnnies remain in business. Each year in the port town of Roscoff, there is the Annual Onion Festival with dances and onion related celebrations galore.
Folk from Roscoff in Brittany certainly know their onions!
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