Popp go the Sunday Trading Laws

On my blogpost of the 23rd December I took you on a short video tour of one small part of High Wycombe. And, at one point, I point out a building on a street called Frogmoor that has a sign on it saying Popp's.

Number 14 Frogmoor - formerly 23 Frogmoor Gardens - was the shop of Jacob Popp from about 1901 to 1911. Jacob Ivanovitch Popp (1873-1939) was a Russian immigrant from Pernau, Estonia, who settled in Wycombe in 1891 where he married local woman Philadelphia Priscilla Moon in 1899. They opened a newsagents on Frogmoor and sold papers, tobacco and confectionery. 

Popp achieved notoreity when he decided to open on Sundaya which, at the time, was illegal. His argument was that he was simply responding to what the people of High Wycombe were demanding.

Despite being prosecuted and fined under the Sunday trading laws he continued to open as his profits more than made up for the fines - even though he was eventually fined every week for 8 years.

The case became a cause celebre reported in the national and international press. The New York Times headline of 8th March 1908 read "Popp the Martyr of High Wycombe; Tobacconist who has been arrested once a week for the past six years. Keeps shop open Sundays His Martyrdom has been a grand thing for his business - takes in over $100 every Sunday." 

Popp even issued a set of postcards satirising the affair.

Popp's act of defiance caught the public imagination and a wave of copycat action followed. However, Sunday trading remained illegal until after the Second World War when the Shops Act of 1950 set into law what could and could not be purchased on a Sunday. Only a small number of specialist outlets were able to open legally, including garden centres, small 'corner' or family-run shops, and chemists. You could buy cigarettes or ice cream, but not frozen vegetables or fish fingers. Other anomalies reflected the type of retail outlet allowed to open: you could buy newspapers and porn mags, but not bibles, fresh cream but not evaporated milk. You could buy bicycle spares, but not a bicycle, have your shoes repaired but not buy shoelaces. 

Despite more than twenty attempts by various MPs to change the laws it wasn't until 1994 that all shops could open on Sunday. One attempt by Margaret Thatcher's government in 1986 was defeated in Parliament, with opposition coming from Conservative MPs who saw it as a threat to family life and church attendance, and Labour MPs who were concerned about workers' rights. This led to the formation of the Keep Sunday Special campaign, backed by church groups and USDAW, the trade union representing shop workers. 

However, it's now a free-for-all and - whether you love Sunday trading or loathe it - we owe it, to some degree, to Popp's. His occupation of the building is commemorated by the Popp's signs on the upper storey.