HAWKERS LICENCE

[LancashireLad]

Hi
Would any one know how to find out how hawkers applied for their license in the late 1800/ early 1900s?

[dragongirl]

HI LANCASHIRE LAD
      just googled it  nothing comes up clicked on the Romany
 site lots of Hawkers on there but no explanation how they get their Licences.
My great great grandmother was a Hawker in Bath she sold or bartered goods .Clothes  .Ribbons etc when she died her eldest
son took over licence but he touted for scrap metal etc. Maybe it was a Council thing that you had to pay for it otherwise I suppose they`d class you as a beggar  Sorry can`t be of more help!!!

[LH35]

I think I remember they were got from the Police station . they come under the Pedlars Act 1870 if you put that in google it will come up with the info , I would think they were kept at an  Local Archives now unless they are still kept with the Police Aorthority

[CitizenSmith]

Hi LancashireLad

LH35 is right. Hawkers and pedlars would head to the police station to get their licence from 1870 onwards. I heard once that the money they paid went towards the police officers' pension fund.  These days most, if not all, of the records have been deposited with county record offices.

Licences had to be obtained for each county in which a hawker wanted to trade and also renewed annually.

Problem is, the survival rate for the records is very poor. Some counties - such as Huntingdonshire - have a straight run of licences granted, from 1877 to 1967. Other counties have nothing at all.

A quick way to check what's available is by visiting this site: www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/policing/police-archives-guide/index.html

It lists what was held by English and Welsh county constabularies in 1992 when the Police History Society did a survey of their archives. The actual location of the records obviously may have changed in the intervening years.

Sharon

[tomwdcraftr]

I wonder how the licensing worked before 1870??

I have census records for my ancestor's from the 1841 Scotland census, showing them as "licensed hawkers" in 1841. They were in Airth, Stirlingshire in 1841.

Thanks!!  Tom McMillan (Washougal, WA)

[jenny36]

to LankashireLad
I'm way over here in America and I just Googled it, but I'm not reading all that.  Here it is:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file49664.pdf

But from a previous Google item I learned that if they carried their wares they were 'peddlers' but if they had a hand cart or a horse-drawn cart then they were called 'hawkers'.

and in 1861 there were 300 persons selling cat meat on the streets of London.

[LancashireLad]

Many thanks to all of you who replied, sorry it is late in answering been in hospital for surgery.