High Wycombe newsagent Jack Popp received his first summons to court on this date. For the next seven and a half years, the police prosecuted him once a week and by the end of that time, Jacob was famous around the world, a living tourist attraction, and a good few quid better off.
Jacob Ivanovitch Popp (1873-1939) was born in what is currently Estonia, and (for reasons now unknown) moved to Britain while still in his teens. In 1899 he married a woman named Philadelphia Moon in Kent, and by 1901 Jacob and his growing family (four daughters, eventually, as well as Jacob's sister-in-law and her husband) were running a little shop selling tobacco, sweets and papers in a street called Frogmoor in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. It wasn't a rich living; Mrs Popp had to work elsewhere as a live-in servant to keep the bills paid.
Known in England as Jack, Popp was said to be a well-built chap, six feet tall, fluent in many languages, and a cycling enthusiast. He was also, by his own account, a convinced anti-sabbatarian - though the degree to which he was moved by ideology, rather than commercial sense, is hard to tell at this distance.
Whatever his motives, Popp began opening his shop seven days a week, in direct contravention of the Sunday Observance Act 1677. Although this legislation intended to force citizens to honour the Christian sabbath was, by 1902, rarely enforced, for reasons best known to themselves the local police and magistrates charged Popp that "on a certain date, being the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday" he did "unlawfully do and exercise certain labour, business and work in the ordinary calling of a tobacconist and confectioner, the same not being work of necessity or charity.”
But Sunday was a good trading day for Jack, many of his customers presumably being working people who could not easily do their shopping on weekdays, and he had no intention of giving it up. He did not dispute the police evidence, paid his fine, and carried on with his defiance.
The law carried on, too. Every week Popp would receive his summons, be found guilty at the local court, pay the fine, and stay open. The money he took over the counter on a typical Sunday was considerably more than the amount he was fined. He decorated the walls of his shop with his summonses. He put a sign in the shop window: "King Charles is after me!" After about a year of this carrying-on, his fame began to spread. Not only in Britain, but also overseas, newspapers reported sympathetically on the case of the plucky small businessman taking on the might of the state and its foolish, pompous insistence on a piece of archaic, bureaucratic nonsense.
And, of course, the more his fame spread, the more his takings rose. In effect, he was paying a weekly amount to the courts in exchange for them providing him with a magnificent advertising campaign.
Popp also sold a series of comical postcards (thought to have been written and drawn by himself), depicting in cartoon form his struggle against sabbatarian authoritarianism, his "defiance of the Nonconformist conscience," along with a narrative rhyme:
When Charles the Second reigned as King
Some funny Laws he made,
And one of them was that to stop
All kinds of Sunday Trade.
When he was dead the people saw
This Law was an abuse,
In fact that it was like the King -
Of very little use.
On one fine day the Councillors
Of Wycombe Town all met,
And said "We must enforce this Law,
For we've done nothing yet.
"To lessen either Rate or Tax
Would surely be a crime,
Let's start with this old musty Law
Of Charles the Second's time."
They dug it up and looked around
To see on whom to drop,
And finally they found a man
Whose name is Jacob Popp.
They dragged him up before the Bench
Of Justices, in line,
Who scowled at him and said
"We must inflict a heavy fine."
He paid, and every Sunday
Finds him serving in his shop,
And every Monday morning
There's a Summons for J. Popp.
He [the chairman of the magistrates, presumably] threatened Fine, Imprisonment,
"The Stocks," he even said,
"Would be the fate of him who brought
This Law upon his head."
Would you believe this awful man
Whose name is Jacob Popp
Just laughed at him, and Sunday next
Was serving in his shop.
The sequel you'll be pleased to learn,
Although they fine him still,
Is that this nonsense only puts
More money in his till.
Indeed, trade on Sundays was so good for Jacob that the same police force that was summonsing him had to supply a constable to control the crowds outside the shop. Coach tours now included Popp's on their itineraries. On one occasion, 300 cyclists rode from Harlesden (about 27 miles away) to rally in Popp's support, complete with anti-sabbatarian speeches. It's said that Jacob begged the magistrates to reinstate the stocks, and put him in them instead of fining him, no doubt imagining what a great postcard that would have made.
Jacob told a reporter from a New Zealand paper that he'd tried to pay a quarter-year's worth of fines in advance, as a lump sum, to make things easier for everyone, but had been refused by the magistrates' clerk.
By the summer of 1909, after convicting Jacob more than 450 times (reported in the press as a national record), the magistrates had finally - and inevitably - had enough. It must have been clear to them that they were doing more good than harm to the unrepentant scofflaw, and so they surrendered. There were no more summonses, no more fines. (The Act itself was not repealed until 1969.)
The Popps' business continued to thrive, now in a more natural manner, and eventually Jacob owned three shops in the area. During World War I he served - rather surprisingly, given his history - as a Special Constable, even being promoted to Section Sergeant. In 1937 he had both legs amputated after a minor accident at work led to gangrene, and he died two years later, aged 65. In accordance with his wishes, no mourning clothes were worn at his funeral.
*
Sources:
Fortean Times #402, February 2021, pp.76-7
The High Wycombe Society Newsletter Spring 2015
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19080409.2.35