Publications
Italian ice cream families in the East Sussex seaside resorts, by Trevor Hopper, published January 2015 in The Local Historian (vol. 45, no. , article) View Online
Abstract:This short paper is a case-study of one of the lesser-known groups of migrants to Victorian and Edwardian England. Hopper begins by reviewing the literature on Italian migration to Britain, with special reference to the work of Terri Colpi, and shows how most authorities agree that these migrants had a special affinity with the catering trade in its various manifestations. He then notes how this, almost by definition, made an Italian presence in seaside resorts very likely, and then explains how in the Sussex resorts this role was performed by a small group of interlinked families which formed ice cream 'dynasties'. He discusses examples from, in particular, Hastings, using directories, oral tradition and interviews, published histories and autobiographies as evidence and includes discussion of the most famous of all the migrants, Sir Charles Forte, who was from Monteforte in Lazio, south of Rome, and whose family were closely connected with the Sussex ice cream trade. The article shows how these families in some cases have conducted the business for over a century, in four or five generations, and concludes with observations on their enduring links with the parts of Italy from which their forebears came.