Phare de Roscoff
by Eric Tressler
Title
Phare de Roscoff
Artist
Eric Tressler
Medium
Photograph
Description
Roscoff is noted for being a ferry port to Great Britain, Ireland and for being the home of the Onion Johnnies, Onion Johnnies are Breton farmers and agricultural labourers on bicycles who sell distinctive pink onions door to door in Great Britain.
They have adapted this nickname for themselves in Breton as ar Johniged or ar Johnniged.
Declining since the 1950s to only a few, the Onion Johnny was once very common. With renewed interest since the late 1990s by farmers and the public in small-scale agriculture, their numbers have recently made a small recovery. Dressed in striped shirt and beret, riding a bicycle hung with onions, the Onion Johnny became the stereotypical image of the Frenchman and may have been the only contact that the ordinary British had with France.
From the area around Roscoff in Brittany known as Bro Rosko, Johnnies found a more profitable market in England than at home, and typically brought their harvest across the English Channel in July to store in rented barns, returning home in December or January. They could have sold their produce in Paris, but the roads and the railways were bad in the 19th century and going there was a long and difficult trip - crossing the channel was shorter and easier. The trade apparently began in 1828 when the first successful trip was made by Henri Ollivier. Journeys are now made by ferry but small sailing ships and steamers were used previously, and the crossing could be hazardous. Seventy Johnnies died when the steamer SS Hilda sank at Saint-Malo in 1905.
The golden age was during the 1920s; in 1929 nearly 1,400 Johnnies imported over 9,000 tonnes of onions to the UK. The Great Depression, followed by the devaluation of the Pound in the early 1930s, ended the era as trade suddenly fell, reaching a low in 1934, when fewer than 400 people imported under 3,000 tonnes.
Uploaded
July 9th, 2013
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