Fancy goods. A term which covered a whole lot of things in the 1860s. There were 25 merchants in fancy goods in Mitchell's Directory (1864). Some of them went into quite a bit of detail as to what they sold in the bigger alphabetical directory, but just now I couldn't find an interesting one to quote from, darn it. From memory, they were a sort of offshoot of the dry goods trade and dealt in trimmings, sewing supplies like needles, threads and scissors, etc. Some of them mentioned selling straw bonnets and hats. One was also a barber, another a bookseller. Many of the address were in St Lawrence Arcade and on the east side of Yonge, north of Queen.
Most dry goods merchants in Toronto were Scots and this was also true of fancy goods sellers. A term known in England was "Scottish pedlar"--a Scotsman who travelled from town to town with a pack on his back selling dressmaking necessities and the like from door to door--a travelling "fancy goods" salesman. Even into the 20th century the big dry goods firms in the vicinity of St Lawrence Market employed Scottish pedlars who had found their way across to Toronto--my grandfather was a commercial traveller with Gordon and McKay for 25 years after he arrived in 1903.
