Finny Addy - a photo on Flickriver

Finny Addy

            This extremely rare photographic view from a private collection has never been published before as far as I am aware.  It illustrates a happy piece of social history by showing a woman vendor selling fish from a cart surrounded by some of her customers on a street corner in Liverpool.  These street vendors had a reputation for being strong characters and were once known locally as “Mary Ellens”.  They owned or hired a hand cart by the day and stocked up at one of Liverpool’s produce markets before setting off on foot to sell their wares.  

People traded with the “Mary Ellens” to hear the local gossip as as much as to buy their wares.  The Mary Ellens who sold fish would call at the wholesale market in Great Charlotte Street in town and then push their loaded carts around the streets.  In the Roman Catholic north end of Liverpool it was (and remains for some) a tradition to eat fish instead of meat on Fridays.  The property in the background of this picture is mid Victorian but the scene is much later.  It possibly dates from the 1920s or 1930s.  The exact location is not known but given its source it is likely to be somewhere in the north end not far from Scotland Road.  

To draw attention to themselves the Mary Ellens would shout "Finny Addy .. salt fish!".  Finny Addy is a form of smoked haddock.  Wives might buy a “threepenny tail-end” to cook for their husband’s Sunday breakfast.  On a couple of days of the week some Mary Ellens would be prepared to take their carts a couple of miles further out to sell to established "rounds" of regular customers. 

In this picture the formidable looking vendor wearing a white apron can be seen holding a large filleting/chopping knife in her left hand and a wooden mallet in her right.  Two large fillets of fish rest on a chopping board.  At the other end of the cart are a set of scales and a little stack of weights and behind them a crate.  This probably contained cockles and mussels for sale. The other women and children in the picture all look generally well clothed and well fed.  One woman at the back seems to be peering out of the shop window and there is also a solitary male standing near to the doorway.  

Footnote : in spite of being an historic seaport Liverpool has never been a large fishing port.  The Great Charlotte Street fish market was stocked from deep-sea catches brought into Fleetwood, Lancashire from the Irish Sea and catches brought into Hull and Grimsby from the North Sea.  The newly landed fish was transported to Liverpool by road and rail.

Copyright : (author unknown)

Taken on: September 29, 2014

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vendor

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Liverpool

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1920s

1930s

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tradition

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scales

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Mary Ellen

Finny Addy

Finie Addie

social history

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Great Charlotte Street

threepenny tail end

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