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  1. Published on: 23/12/2017 08:09 AMReported by: rogerblaxall
    By Kate Hurst

    It’s here again; the car parks are full, shoppers are everywhere and I can’t be the only one who has been waiting desperately for the rest of my household to go to bed so that I can get those presents out from the secret hiding places and get on with wrapping them. There is no mistaking it, it’s Christmas again!

    Earlier this year, I gave a talk to Ormskirk and District Family History Society about unusual things that I’ve found in eighteenth and nineteenth century newspapers; in one way, it wasn’t a difficult task because I love transcribing old newspaper extracts, but in other ways it was very difficult - I’ve built up such a big collection that it was hard to decide what to put in and what to leave out! Newspapers give so much insight into the past that I wondered, what could they reveal about the Christmasses of the past?

    Digging out a scanned copy of the Ormskirk Advertiser from 14 December 1871, I discovered a world that seemed familiar. School concerts, church services, Christmas balls at local pubs . . . and lots of Christmas adverts from independent businesses, too!

    W.H. Garside, family grocer, of 6 Aughton Street, had laid in a remarkable stock of food that many of us might still put into our shopping trolleys today. Besides “finest Muscatel, Sultana, and Valencia raisins” potential customers might have been tempted by currants, boxed figs, almonds, “fine French plums in bottles”, “superior candied peel” or even just a jar of orange or apricot marmalade. The image of a traditional Victorian Christmas might lead us to think that everyone made every single meal, loaf of bread and cake at home from scratch, but Garside’s advert provides extra clues that might reassure those who aren’t at home in the kitchen . . . if you wanted a simple meal, you might have browsed the shelves for “mock turtle, venison, and ox tail soup in tins” or even a Christmas dessert cake from Huntley and Palmer’s. (Joseph Huntley first set up business in Reading, Berkshire in 1822, but it wasn’t until 1841 that his son Thomas joined forces with a Quaker distant cousin named George Palmer.)

    As exotic as W.H. Garside’s selection of dried fruit might seem, a competitor was lurking around the corner, at 6 Church Street, in the form of Thomas Alty and Company. When the census was taken in early April 1871, both 6 and 8 Church Street were unoccupied, so the company - who advertised themselves as “Family Grocers & Italian Warehousemen” - must have moved to the premises that same year. By mid-December, Ormskirk Advertiser readers could have been forgiven for thinking the firm had been there for generations; they claimed that their Vostizza currants were “superior in size and flavour to any other”, and also offered superior Valencia raisins, “curiously-fine sultana” raisins, the “finest Dehasa muscatels”, some “very choice” figs (in 2lb., 4lb. and even 7lb. boxes!), as well as bottled French plums, Chinese preserved ginger and apricot marmalade. Alty and Co. must have had the Victorian equivalent of a skilled marketing department; someone was bright enough to add the not-so-suble hint that such luxuries would be “suitable for Christmas presents” . . .

    Every year, there will always be someone out there who is hoping to unwrap something sparkly and perhaps quite expensive under the Christmas tree, and some of West Lancashire’s population must have felt just the same in 1871. In the ODFHS research library on Wigan Road, we know of at least one book that investigates the local clockmakers and watchmakers, and in 1851 a sixty-year old watchmaker named James Houghton lived on Church Street, with his thirty-nine year old wife Margaret, his thirty-four year old daughter Ann from an earlier marriage, and the three young children that he’d had with Margaret. The Houghtons moved to Scotland Road, Liverpool, and James died in the city in 1865. By December 1871, Margaret had spotted a sales opportunity and took out a notice in the Ormskirk Advertiser to encourage customers to make a few festive purchases. Emphasising her former address at Church Street, she tempted readers with talk of “Coloured Gold Brooches and Earrings”, “Lockets, Necklets, Breast-Pins, Studs, Sleeve-Links, Gem and Signet Rings” and - for those gentlemen who might have been contemplating a festive marriage proposal or even a wedding - she even carried a stock of “Guinea-Gold Wedding Rings and Keepers”.

    The party season might have already prompted you to spend some cash on a well-timed haircut or even a colour, so you might be surprised to learn that if you stepped back in time to 1871 and called into 18 Moor Street, Ormskirk, John Whitehouse Medlicott was ready and waiting to provide the same services. Born in 1844, in Cheshire, Mr. Medlicott was himself newly-married, and was a “well-known ladies’ and gentlemen’s hair dresser. Although based on Lord Street in Southport, John Medlicott must have been keen to expand his business; by December 1871 he let the Ormskirk Advertiser readers know that he leased a shop at 18 Moor Street (“formerly occupied as the Old Post Office”), from which he offered hair-dyeing services (price based on how much hair you had!) and could even make “ornamental hair” (perhaps the Victorian version of our hair extensions? - in the Edwardian period, some ladies padded their hairstyles with horsehair or fabric to make it look more voluminous). If you’ve ever wondered how people decorated their hair in 1871, John Medlicott’s advert gives other clues - he sold “the most fashionable Butterfly, Star, and other Pins for the Hair” . . . maybe someone bought one as a Christmas present that year?

    It can be much easier to buy presents for people if you’ve got a rough idea of their hobbies or other interests. Doubtless, many of Ormskirk’s population in 1871 knew someone who was musical, artistic or simply had a lot of correspondence to deal with. If they did, they might have found a few last-minute presents at Thomas Hutton’s, on Church Street. Just before Christmas, his Ormskirk Advertiser advert advised that he had “just received from Messrs. DE LA RUE, Messrs. GOODALL and other London Manufacturers, and Assortment of New Leather Goods”. A travelling friend might have liked one of his portable writing cases, the Victorian shopaholic may have appreciated one of De La Rue’s Sovereign purses (priced at 9s.6d and 10s.6d each), a keen musician could have kept their music tidy in in a leather or cloth folio, and the photographer or scrapbook enthusiast may have liked a square or oblong album “direct from Berlin”. If you were really stuck for ideas or needed to make a practical purchase, Thomas Hutton could supply “Commercial Envelopes, in blue or cream paper, from 3s.6d. per 1000” . . . possibly not something to wrap up for under the Christmas tree, though?

    If all of this makes Christmas seem unsettlingly commercialised, fear not; religion was not far from people’s minds. Indeed, the first three notices in the first column on the front page are more spiritual; on Sunday 17 December 1871, St. Thomas’s Church at Lydiate intended to split their collection between the Canal Mission and the South American Missionary Society, and the Wesleyan Chapel in Ormskirk had great plans for the New Year. Mr. Lee of Crosby would give the morning and evening sermons on New Year’s Eve, and on New Year’s Day a public tea was planned in the chapel; tickets cost a shilling, and could be purchased from Mr. Evans of Burscough Street or Josiah Wainwright, of Aughton Street, and attendees could expect “tea on the tables at half past four”!

    That said, the people of Ormskirk and its surrounding villages knew how to have a good time over Christmas in 1871. If you were a gentleman with three shillings (or a lady with two shillings), at seven o’clock on Boxing Day, you could go to the ball at the Coach and Horses, Maghull, where you could enjoy tea and dance to a quadrille band all night. On 27 December, members of the Bickerstaffe choir and their friends gave a concert at the village school, and a day later, James Taylor of Melling Rocks gave a general invitation to a ball at his house; once again, tea and dancing were to be expected. (If your feet weren’t too tired by the end of the week, you might have ventured to the Railway Hotel at Blaguegate, Skelmersdale on New Year’s Day, where - in possible acknowledgement of the many recent dances - you weren’t expected to be on the dance floor until nine at night, three hours after the food was laid out!

    If any younger readers have been scrolling through this article, you might wish that we could bring back one particular Victorian habit. A week before Christmas 1871, local schools were already putting notes into the Advertiser to tell parents and scholars when the next term started, and it seems that local students enjoyed longer holidays than modern pupils. At Aughton Moss, lessons Mrs. Merryweather’s boarding and day school “for young Ladies” only started again on 22 January!

    The next Ormskirk and District Family History Society meeting will be held at 8p.m. on Wednesday 24 January 2018 at the Guide HQ, Moorgate, Ormskirk, when Roger Blaxall will give a talk on Local 20th Century Newspapers. All are welcome to attend.
     
    Follow the discussion on news at facebook.com/groups/ormskirknews

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