Viva Brighton Issue #56 October 2017

INSIDE LEFT: LOWER ESPLANADE, c 1900
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It’s around the turn of the century, and a couple of
street vendors are plying their trade outside Bolla
and Biucchi’s Restaurant, on the Lower Esplanade,
near the Rotunda in front of West Street. The man
is selling shellfish, the woman is selling ‘Hokey
Pokey’ ice-cream, which suggests perhaps the handcart
stalls are connected with the restaurant. She is
managing to hold her baby over her shoulder while
working: let’s hope her shifts weren’t too long.
Ice cream was brought to England by emigrant Italians
as early as the mid-eighteenth century. Vendors
used to shout ‘Gelati! Ecco un poco’ (loosely: ‘ice
creams: here’s just a little bit’); soon ‘ecco un poco’
was corrupted to ‘hokey pokey’. The sale of ices was
to blame for the spread of many diseases as it was
offered in a glass tub, which would be licked clean,
given back to the vendor, rinsed in what water was
available on the stall, and used again for another
customer. This was called a ‘penny lick’. Around the
time this photo was taken, ice cream was starting
to be sold between two wafers: it’s unclear which
method is being used here. Whatever the case, the
serious chap in the bowler with the wooden leg
doesn’t look interested.
The Bolla and the Biucchi families were originally
from Ticino in Italian-speaking Switzerland, and
around the turn of the twentieth century colonised
this small part of Brighton, running a tea room, a
separate restaurant, and the Fortune of War pub.
There are quite a few extant photographs of the
restaurant: from one we can see that it offered
‘chops, steaks and hot joints’, which sounds a little
healthier than the penny licks on sale outside.
The photographer is standing with their back to the
beach, which would have been just as bustling as the
scene in front, with tourists milling around fishing
boats, and rows of bathing machines at the water’s
edge. While most men are wearing jackets, we can
see that it’s a summer day, as there are a number of
boater hats – fashionable at the time and only worn
in that season – on display. Alex Leith
The picture is courtesy of the James Gray collection,
which can be viewed in its entirety online at
regencysociety-jamesgray.com
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