Scottish invasion: Inside story of army of 'Onion Johnnies'

The annual swarm of ‘Onion Johnnies’ brought a flavour of Brittany to Scottish kitchens stretching from the Borders to the islands, with their rosy pink, plump and juicy onions loaded onto their bikes to be sold on doorsteps, in the streets and in marketplaces and snapped up by shoppers if not exactly like hot cakes, but certainly at an eye-watering rate.

It was a tradition that spanned around 170 years, until supermarkets and increasing agricultural mechanisation put paid to the annual influx of Onion Johnnies, and yet another curious and quaint element of Scottish life became the stuff of memories.

Now the stories behind some of the ‘Ingan Johnnies’ and Jennies who became familiar faces as they journeyed across the country selling nothing but their haul of onions, are being revisited with the re-release of a little-known book that reveals in their own voices who they were.

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Researched and written by Ian MacDougall, who was secretary and researcher for the Scottish Working People's History Trust, it was first published 20 years ago, when some might still have had vague recollections of the influx of French sellers passing through their town.

Now re-released and back on sale, it is being presented to new generations of readers for whom the notion of migrants making the long journey from northern France to Scotland to sell a few bunches of onions, must seem the stuff of pure fiction.

Yet it could scarcely be more timely, coming amid discussions over the need for migrant labour and more British workers to support the nation’s agricultural sector, plus dire warnings that a lack of migrants could make Scottish farms unviable.

And although Onion Johnnies may seem relics of a distant past, a handful were still at work as recently as the turn of the century: the last one, André Quemener, who regularly travelled from his home at Roscoff to Leith, only retired in 2004.

Onion Johnnies stringing onions at their base in Dundee in December 1965. Brothers Pierre and Henri Tanguy are on the right of the picture (Image: DC Thomson)

Aged 68 at the time, he had made the journey every spring since 1951 when he was 14, spending five months a year cycling towns and villages selling strings of freshly harvested pink onions grown on his own smallholding.

Often seen on his regular patch including Peebles, Penicuik and Melrose, he was known to dispose of 400 strings of onions in just two days, selling to his loyal customer base.

He was following a well-trodden path: the Johnnies and their cargoes of pink onions emerged in the decade after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, at Waterloo.

What started as a handful of sellers became a flood in the late 1820s, when one young Roscovite, Henri Ollivier, set off with a boatload of onions to sell in England, and arrived home with tales of how he was overwhelmed by the demand.

It sparked a dash among farmers and labourers – likened to an onion version of a gold rush – with streams of migrant workers crossing the Channel in search of their fortune.

Some headed for Portsmouth and Plymouth, crossed into Wales and spanned the English counties. Others, however, made their way to Leith, often with up to 400 tons of their freshly harvested juicy onions crammed into the ship’s hold.

From there on foot carrying large poles tied with onions, with their loaded carts but often on bicycles strewn with carefully tied bundles of onions they would cover hundreds of miles crossing the country for up to five months at a time.

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Others were put to work stringing the onions: the largest, le capitaine, at the top, and the sailors, le marins, below, a job often carried out on a Sunday using rushes, straw or hay gathered from nearby fields to form the strings.

The book reveals how some Onion Johnnies began working the trade as young as eight years old, trawling the streets from 5am until 10pm, carrying loads of onions as they went.

While distances could be huge: one, Guy Le Bihan, told how he would set off loaded with up to 30 bunches hanging from the handlebars of his bike, or over the carrier above the back wheel.

“That would be about 350 or 360 onions altogether,” he said. “Oh, it was very heavy!”

Another, Jean Milin, said he would cycle from Leith to Glasgow with a loaded bike. “Well, it was quite a flat road from Edinburgh to Glasgow. There weren’t many hills. I set off very early in the morning.”

Long distances were necessary, as sellers sought out the ‘right’ customers.

“Glasgow was a big city,” one seller, Claude Quimerch, recalled. “When we started in 1950 the population there was about a million. But, you see, there weren’t enough customers for us in Glasgow!

“In the Gorbals, for example, we weren’t able to sell our onions. The people there’d got no money. The Gorbals had many very poor people. And there was quite a lot of unemployment there. We needed to go where there was money.”

Anna Gourlet, (right) an ‘Onion Jenny’, who first came at the age of 11 to work with her parents as onion sellers at Leith, shown with her loaded bicycle in the later 1930s. Left an Onion Johnny in Inveresk in 1931. (Image: East Lothian Libraries)

At its peak in the 1950s, thousands of Bretons headed across the water to camp in shop storerooms alongside their sacks of onions, sleeping on bundles of hay, and sharing their space with rats and mice.

The book describes how few made their fortune, but came to forge strong bonds with their loyal customers, who would seek out their Onion Johnny each summer and proudly display bunches of pink onions in kitchens, savouring each one.

The book’s author, Ian MacDougall, who died in 2020, was inspired to compile oral histories of the onion sellers by the Onion Johnny who made regular visits to his Edinburgh home.

His meticulous approach to recording their stories, packed with fine detail of the lives, incidents and thoughts, is praised in a new foreword to the book by historian Ian S. Wood.

In it, he describes the author as “a patient and meticulous scholar – one with a lifelong resolve to drawing upon the testimony of ordinary people to illuminate their lives, their work and their struggles.”

In an interview in 2002, Mr MacDougall told how he wanted to capture the Onion Johnnies’ memories, aware that they were a rapidly dying breed and a part of British culture that would soon be lost.

“Individual sellers had up to 500 customers each, but they were not paid for up to six months, so there was a good deal of hardship by the end of the season,” he said.
"I wanted to get something written down before this unique form of work died out completely."

Onion Johnnies: Recollections of Seasonal French Onion Sellers in Scotland by Ian MacDougall (£9.99) is published by Birlinn and released on 15 June