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Gingerbread Husbands

Pies and Pastries
Historic

Figures of men made of gingerbread pressed into wooden moulds, baked and gilded, commonly sold at fairs up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The 'Chelmsford Chronicle', for instance, of Friday 14 May 1847 reports of the Spring Fair that; "there were upon the stalls rows of gingerbread husbands for little ladies, and on the pavement rows of young gentlemen for larger ones, looking almost as gay if not quite so soft and tender". Though by 1878 a correspondent to the Grantham Journal (Saturday 29 June) could say that; "I will not dwell farther than to say that " gingerbread husbands" were beginning to be scarce articles in the market at the time of earliest recollections."

A story in the magazine 'The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction' of May 30, 1829 has an unwilling lover contemplating his escape with; "As for Julia, ... Name her never again, and should she cry for me, give her a sugar plum, a kiss, a gingerbread husband."

There is a novel 'Gingerbread Husbands' by Barbara Else.

See: Gingerbread


From The Little Gingerbread Man by Robert Gaston Herbert







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