Shopping Saturday - Marks in Time

Marks and Spencer is close to the heart of many a Brit, or at least close to their skin - or in their underwear drawer.  Marks in Time is the website of the M&S company Archives, and it recently celebrated its first anniversary. The archive itself is housed in the University of Leeds, and the website is well worth a visit, whether you are a serious student of retail history or you just like looking at old pictures. The site makes very good use of the company's extensive collection of images - photographs of buildings and people, and packaging and merchandise. For the Baby Boomer generation, that iconic 1970's fashion statement platform shoes will take you right back! You can do simple or advanced searches of the catalogue, with an option to select only items with images, and you can choose from a drop-down menu of subjects such as 'wartime', 'food and home', 'children' and so on. When I searched for all items with images in the category 'women', I found, as expected, lots of clothing items, but also wine labels and bars of chocolate. Makes sense, I suppose.

As well as the archive catalogue, there is a history of the company since its famous start as a Penny Bazaar in Leeds Market, complete with a timeline, biographies and memories. There is also a fine collection of resources for schools, including a game where you match the fashion to the decade. I have already spent more time than I intended to exploring - well, it's cold outside! Feel free to do the same.

Shopping Saturday - Oetzmann & Co

Oetzmann & Co were described in the London Post Office Directory of 1894 as 'complete house furnishers, cabinet makers and upholsterers, British carpet and rug warehouse, importers of Turkey, Persian, Indian and every description of Oriental carpets and rugs' or, according to the 1908 London Telephone Directory 'Cmplt Ho Frnshrs' - and you thought Text-speak was new! Their bill-head, from which the illustration above was taken, claimed that the business was founded in 1848, and it was still in business nearly a century later. You can see a selection of their advertisements on the Grace's Guide site, and one of them is dated 1947.

The founder appears to have been John Robert Augustus Oetzmann, and the business was carried on by his sons after his death in 1886. His brother, Thomas, was a piano-maker, and he too founded a successful business. The family came from Ipswich, and although their surname is German, there is no-one of that name in any English census who was born outside England. It is worth remembering that for centuries East Anglia has had close trading links with the countries that are now Germany and the Netherlands. I thought it was worth including the bill-head from which the top picture was taken, because it includes a comprehensive list of all the goods and services they provided. 

The company advertised extensively in the press, and the example above dates from 1906, when they had evidently taken over another business, Norman & Stacey, or at least acquired their stock. The London Metropolitan Archives holds some records relating to the Oetzmanns, mainly to do with their properties in Hampstead Road. 

Shopping Saturday - Arthur Lasenby Liberty

Arthur Lasenby Liberty was born in Chesham in 1843, the son of Arthur Liberty, draper and lace manufacturer. When he was young the family moved to Nottingham, a major centre of the lace industry, but after leaving school he worked for a while in Nottingham, then moved to London to work at Farmer and Rogers Oriental Warehouse. This was the premier outlet for the goods from the far east, which were becoming very fashionable in the later 19th century. He rose to the position of joint manager there, and remained with Farmer and Rogers until 1874.

London Gazette 14 February 1913

He founded his own small business in Regent Street in the following year, called East India House, which eventually became the famous Liberty's department store on the same site. The store is still there today, with its distinctive black-and-white building displaying the Royal Arms. The business is entitled to do this as the holder of a Royal Warrant to supply goods and services to Her Majesty the Queen. True to its origins, the name Liberty remains associated with a particular decorative style, the 'Liberty print' and the designs of William Morris.

Arthur Liberty continued to be very successful in business and counted among his friends a number of artists and designers including William Morris. He also held a number of public offices including deputy lieutenent and high sheriff of his home county of Buckinghamshire. He was knighted in 1913 and retired from business the following year to his home at Lee Manor, near Chesham.

Printed sources, including his entries in Who's Who and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, state that in 1875 he married Emma Louise Blackmore, daughter of Henry Blackmore of Exmouth in Devon. The couple had no children, but the department store business remained in the family, passing to his nephew and great-nephews after his death in 1917.

Divorce file TNA Ref: J 77/87

What is much less well-known is that his marriage to Emma Blackmore was not his first; on 8 June 1865 he married Martha Cottam at St Pancras parish church, but this marriage ended in divorce in 1869, on the grounds of Martha's adultery with one Augustus Glover. When he married Emma Blackmore he is described on the marriage certificate as 'bachelor' but he had made no attempt to conceal the existence of his first marriage from the church authorities. On the contrary, the record of the marriage licence he obtained from the Bishop of London two days before the marriage gives full details of his marriage to Martha Cottam and their subsequent divorce.

Shopping Saturday - Fortnum and Mason

This seemed like an appropriate choice for 'Shopping Saturday' this week, since the podcast of Selling history: the role of the past at Fortnum and Mason has just gone live on The National Archives website. The talk was given by the company's archivist, Dr Andrea Tanner, who has researched Fortnum's history extensively. Fortnum's is one of several businesses that can claim to be the oldest department store. Their foundation date of 1707 certainly beats all comers with regard to date, but it traded as a high-class grocer for more than three centuries, only adding clothing and household departments in 1925.

Of course, the first this the genealogist wants to know is 'Are there any staff records?', and, sadly, the answer is no. This is not particularly unusual, as you may already know if you have ancestors who worked in the retail trade; it is much easier to find out about the kind of work they did than the details of any individual person's service. But shops and shopping have always been a part of everyday life for everyone, or at least for someone in their family, so we all have some connection with shops. Realistically more of us are likely to be descended from the servants or employees of Fortnum's customers than from the customers themselves - it is a little on the exclusive side.

If you are in London the distinctive building on Piccadilly is worth a visit - even if you don't go inside, the building's exterior is very attractive, and when the magnificent clock chimes the hour, the figures of Mr Fortnum and Mr Mason come out, give each other a dignified bow, and then retire. You will find a brief history of Fortnum and Mason on their website, where you will learn that they were the first British retailer to stock Mr Heinz's exciting new product - baked beans! You can also see a video of Fortnum's world record-breaking scotch egg, and follow the progress of the Fortnum's bees in their roof-top hive via the Bee-cam.
 
 

Shopping Saturday - some more Dickens

I have always been fascinated by the history of shops and shopping, and I have quite a collection of books on the subject. There are books on department stores, corner shops, well-known shopping street, famous high-street names and reprints of old catalogues. But many of our ancestors (well, many of mine, anyway) would have made their purchases in places that are not mentioned in any of these histories; they bought things second-hand. Think about it. If you were poor, and many people were, you couldn't afford to buy much, and even the cheapest new clothes might be beyond your reach.

You won't find company histories of dealers in second-hand clothes, or other goods, and there are no famous names that have come down through the ages. These traders did not always have shop premises either; instead they might have worked in street markets, or just streets. You might find them listed in directories as 'general dealers', 'wardrobe dealers' or 'marine stores'. In a post earlier this year about the monthly nurse I quoted Dickens' description of 'the very fetch and ghost of Mrs Gamp' hanging at the second-hand clothes dealers around Holborn. In Bleak House he paints an equally vivid picture of a marine store dealer's premises.

'She had stopped at a shop, over which was written, KROOK, RAG AND BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill, at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In another, was the inscription, BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE PAPER BOUGHT. In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything seemed to be bought, and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the window, were quantities of dirty bottles: blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles: I am reminded by mentioning the latter, that the shop had, in several little particulars, the air of being in a legal neighbourhood, and of being, as it were, a dirty, hanger-on a;ud disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles. There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes, outside the door, labelled "Law Books, all at 6d."...
...There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. A little way within the shop-door, lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls, and discoloured and dog's-eared law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn up.'

 

Shopping Saturday - an advent calendar

Just in case you don't have enough online advent calendars to play with already, here's another one, this time with a retail theme. It's from the House of Fraser archive at the University of Glasgow.

The archives will be launching a new online catalogue to the House of Fraser collection after Christmas, so we have a retail event to look forward to that doesn't involve either venturing to the shops or spending money. Can't be bad.

 

Shopping Saturday - Britain's oldest business

I want to start by pointing out that I am not in the habit of reading the Daily Mail. Someone sent me the link, OK. Just so long as we're clear on that. The business in question is R J & W Balson, family butchers of Bridport in Dorset, which started with a market stall in 1535, run by one John Balson. The article in the newspaper shows the current proprietor of the business, Richard Balson outside what looks like a very handsome shop.

A brief look through Ancestry, Findmypast and FamilySearch reveals plenty of entries for the Balsons , and Richard does seem to be a popular name in the family. There is quite a lot of material online, in the Dorset wills and parish registers on Ancestry, as well as census returns and birth, marriage and death indexes. If the Balsons wanted to trace their family history it would be fairly easy for them - but they may not need to because so much has been passed down through the generations.

What is remarkable about the family is not just that they have followed the same trade for so long, but that they have done so in the same place. When I used to trace other people's family histories for a living, I often found families who lived in the same general area for several generations, but to be settled in a single parish for one or two centuries, let alone nearly five, is extremely rare.

The business has occupied its current premises for over a century, but they also supply their speciality sausages all over the world through their website. Quite a change from a market stall in Tudor times, but like all successful retailers they are moving with the times.This is what generations of Balsons before them must have done, to keep trading successfully for such an astonishingly long time. Long may they continue.

 

Shopping Saturday - Selfridges of Oxford Street

Many department stores started out as drapers' shops, then grew by acquiring neighbouring premises and widening their assortment. Not Selfridges, though. It arrived, fully-formed, at the western end of Oxford Street in 1909. It must have made quite an impact at the time.

Harry Gordon Selfridge 1864-1947 was an American who made Britain his home, although he remained an American citizen and never took British nationality. He was born in Wisconsin, but grew up in Michigan, where he worked for Marshall, Field and Co. He visited London in 1906, and was unimpressed with the standard of the established department stores there, and three years later unleashed his vision on the unsuspecting British nation. He introduced such revolutionary developments as large plate-glass windows, and the art of window display - London's shop windows had previously been crammed full of merchandise. The electric lights in Selfridge's windows were left on outside of shop hours, and the Christmas windows in particular became a tourist attraction in themselves.

Selfridge's personal life was not as successful at the business that bears his name. His mother, Lois, brought up her family unaided, and travelled with her son when he moved to England. His wife, Rosalie Buckingham, died in 1918 in the outbreak of influenza that followed the First World War, and his mother in 1924. Without the stabilising influence of these two women in his life, he neglected the business, while continuing to spend freely from the takings, even through the Depression years. He died in 1947, in very reduced circumstances.

The business went through some lean years, but recovered, and today is still one of Oxford street's major attractions. In Selfridge's day there was a plan to create a direct link to the store from Bond Street underground station - the store has at least three basement levels - but this never came to be. But the store never missed a merchandising opportunity if it could. One innovation was its own range of postcards 'The Selfridge Set' of London View Post Cards.

One of these was (surprise) a view of the store itself  'OXFORD STREET - One of London's leading shopping thoroughfares. Messrs Selfridge's magnificent premises shown in this view are a landmark for visitors to London, where this firm have made shopping a pleasure'.

Selfridge's has often turned over large amount of floor space to exhibitions, rather than cramming every square foot with merchandise. In the centenary year there was an exhibition in the basement devoted to the history of the shop and to the Selfridge family. It says everything about the Selfridge commitment to retail as showbiz that the centrepiece was a life-size model of Gordon Selfridge made entirely of jelly beans!

Shopping Saturday - by Royal Appointment

Liberty & Co, London, royal warrant holder

You can scan the various online royal pedigrees if you like, to see if you are related to the Windsors (or the Middletons) but there is another way that your family might be connected with royalty.

If your ancestor served the royal family in some way there is a good chance that there will be a record of it somewhere. Some records of people were employed in the royal household might be held by the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, although earlier records are more likely to be at The National Archives.

There are online research guides Royal household and wardrobe before 1660, Royal Warrant holders and household servants and Royal warrant holders and suppliers of goods after 1600.

I am particularly interested in the second and third of these guides, because they deal with references to shopkeepers and others who supplied goods to the royal household. A household of that size has always done a lot of consuming, much of it from regular suppliers; just think of all the places where you shop and how much you spend there, then multiply it by a large number (depending on the size of your family and how rich you are), and you will see that an awful lot of businesses must have sold goods or services to members of the royal family over the last few centuries.

One of the sources referred to in the guides is the London Gazette, where annual lists were published from 1900 onwards. Part of the list from 1905 is shown below; the entire list occupies 21 pages. It includes well-known businesses like large London department stores, but also businesses of all sizes from all over the UK and even further afield. Some of them are small shops near royal residences such as Sandringham, Osborne, Windsor and Balmoral; so if you discover an ancestor who ran a sweet shop or a dairy in one of these areas about a century ago, the London Gazette might be worth a look, you never know your luck. It's free to search and dowload - one of the best bargains in family history!

Shopping Saturday - Mrs Addley Bourne

This is one of those frustrating newspaper cuttings that came as part of a bundle of assorted ephemera, without a date. It probably dates from the late 1870s, though, as I have seen similar adverts for the Swanbill Ceinture Corset dated around then. It's a fascinating looking contraption, and adds to the many reasons I am glad I live in the 2010s and not the 1870s. I have no idea what a 'Jeanne d'Arc Belt' is, but I don't like the sound of it. But once you get over the wince-inducing appearance of the thing, and the thought of what it would do to you ribcage and your circulation, the advertising pitch is interesting. 'It is most effective in reducing the figure and keeping the form flat'. Just look at the shape of it - not exactly designed to 'lift and separate' (for those old enough to remember the Playtex slogan). The 'graceful and elegant symmetry' it promises is fairly timeless, I guess, but nowadays we expect cleavage, not the reinforced mono-prow that this seems designed to deliver. It shows how concept of the ideal female form does change over time. I've been waiting patiently for thick ankles to come into fashion, but I don't think it's going to happen. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Another feature of note is the pricing; 21s, or for a hand-made corset 30s or even 42s. It's a sign of the times that a shop in a high-class location like Piccadilly would offering ready-made items at all; a few decades earlier everything would be made to measure for the discerning and well-heeled customer. Ready-made items like this were a product of the industrial age. The most expensive hand-made item, though, was only twice the price of the ready-made one, which says a lot about the cost of skilled (female) labour in the 1870s. The equivalent modern values would be about £50 and £100 respectively. I'm not in the habit of buying corsetry of any kind, but it strikes me that £50 ready-made is on the expensive side, but £100 for hand-made would be a bargain.

Like many fashion retailer, Mrs Addley Bourne played up the French association of the firm, believing that this would lend an air of chic sophistication, and she was probably right. Addley, incidentally, was not her first name, but that of her husband. In fact it was his middle name (his first name was Benjamin) and she was Ann, but followed the practice of the time in using her husband's name, as in Mrs Patrick Campbell. It is less common today, but we have become used to Princess Michael of Kent, I suppose.

The Bournes conducted their business at 37 Piccadilly for a number of years, and retired to Sutton, Surrey at some time in the 1880s, where they died within 3 weeks of each other in 1895. The Piccadilly address seems to have been very dear to them, because the birthplace given in the 1891 census for the three children who still lived with them was given as '37 Piccadilly'.

Shopping Saturday - High Wycombe Market Place

I have lots of old books with engraved illustrations, and by 'old' I mean a hundred years old or more. I have scanned some of the illustrations, which are often only about 4 or 5 inches across, and I am amazed at the level of detail you can see when you zoom in. In fact, there are details that you can't really see WITHOUT zooming in.

This picture shows the Market Place in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and if you zoom in you can see that the name over the shop next to the Market Hall is 'D L Smith'. Like many of the images I have scanned, this one is undated - the date of the book is not always helpful, because the engravings are often older. This one is late 19th Century, and the 1891 census shows Daniel L Smith, grocer, in High Wycombe Corn Market. He was a single man, aged 42, with his 40-year-old sister Sarah, an apprentice and two assistants one of whom was their nephew Percy, aged 25. Ten years later in 1901 Daniel has married, and only his wife, Alice, and a servant are in the household. Daniel is still described as an employer, so any assistants or apprentices he employed must have lived elsewhere by then.

Daniel and his sister came from Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, a neighbouring county, but he did not go directly from Hemel to Wycombe, because the 1871 census finds him in Kent, working as a wholesale grocer's clerk in Canterbury, presumably learning his trade. His full name was Daniel Liberty Smith, according to his birth entry in the September quarter of 1847 in Hemel Hempstead registration district.

I haven't done exhaustive research on this person; all I have done is a few quick online searches, but it just shows how a book illustration and a little idle curiosity can uncover some family history. In this case the intriguing detail is Daniel's middle name of Liberty. Liberty is a surname associated with Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and in particular with Arthur Lazenby Liberty, founder of the famous London department store, and who was born in Chesham (where I live), not far from Hemel and Wycombe. Now I wonder...

Shopping Saturday - Pictures!

Lantern-maker

For a change, I thought I would just post a few pictures that I have collected over the last few years. I have a lot of old books, mostly over 100 years old, and I particularly like ones with engraved illustrations, like the ones here. I have scanned some of them, but only a fraction of the whole collection so far. I am astonished at the quality of some of them; they are often only 3 or 4 inches wide, sometimes smaller, but I can blow them up to A4 size or even larger, and the detail is still crisp. And most of the time we don't even know the names of these amazingly skilled engravers. What a pity.

The lantern-maker is a nice example of one of the earliest kinds of shop, where a craftsman sells the items he has made from his own premises. In this kind of shop, the counter is often also a shutter, hinged at the bottom instead of at the side.

The Linen-draper's assistant dating from the late 1830s

'Hath ribands of all colours i'the rainbow - inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns: why he sings them overs as they were gods or goddesses'

Shakespeare: A Winters Tale 

and this is one of the few where the names of the artist and the engraver are known. The artist was Kenny Meadows, a very prolific illustrator in his day, and the engraver was Orrin Smith. This picture is one of many portraying  different types of people, from  'Heads of the People: Portraits of the English'.

The Newsagent: Girls Own Paper 1894

The last two pictures come from one of my favourite publications, the Girls Own Paper, a late 19th and early 20th century magazine for well brought up young ladies, published by the Religious Tract Society. It's an absolute goldmine.

These are both from the 1894 volume. I particularly like the picture of the newsagent, for the sneaky piece of product placement; the billboard is advertising the Boys Own Paper, its companion publication.

The draper's shop illustration is a wonderful period piece, but what is slightly worrying is the fact that I can dimly remember shops a little like that. The clothes were different, though.

The Draper's shop: Girls Own Paper 1894 

I am happy for anyone to re-use any of these pictures on their own not-for-profit blogs or websites. All I ask for is an acknowledgement on your site.

Shopping Saturday - London's bazaars

Pantheon Bazaar, Oxford Street 1845 

In my never-ending quest for media stardom, I rang a radio station this week. The Robert Elms show on BBC London has a 'Notes and Queries' feature on Wednesdays, and this week a listener was asking about the London Crystal Palace Bazaar, near Oxford Circus, which he had seen marked on an old Ordnance Survey map of 1870. I didn't know anything about this particular establishment, but I knew a bit about London bazaars, which were a kind of precursor of the indoor shopping mall. One of the prized elements of my collection of old books is a nine-volume set of 'Knight's London' dating from around the 1870s, and I knew it contained a chapter on London Shops and Bazaars. I looked it up, and found that there was a description of the London Crystal Palace Bazaar.

The London Crystal palace is the name given to a somewhat extensive and attractive bazaar, on the north side of Oxford Street, near Regent Circus. It has entrances both in Oxford Street and in Great Portland Street. The building was erected in 1858, from the designs of Mr Owen Jones, and is constructed chiefly of iron and glass. The name of the building, from the Great Portland Street entrance to the western extremity, is 180 feet in length by 33 feet in width, from which there is a transept extending southward to the Oxford Street entrance. The arched roof, which is of coloured glass, of mosaic appearance, is supported by light columns. On the ground-floor is a spacious hall divided by iron columns on each side into a nave and aisles; a gallery runs along the whole length of nave on each side, and in and under the galleries there are convenient and well-lighted stalls. From the galleries we look down upon the ground-floor, and find it arranged with counters in a very systematical order, loaded with uncountable trinkets. On one counter are articles of millinery; on another lace; on a third gloves and hosiery; on others cutlery, jewellery, toys, children's dresses, children's books, sheets of music, albums and pocket-books, porcelain ornaments, cut-glass ornaments, alabaster figures, artificial flowers, feathers, and a host of other things, principally of a light and ornamental character.

As the description above indicates, a bazaar consisted of a collection of stalls, hired out to individual stallholders, usually women. The stallholders had to comply with strict rules regarding their standard of dress and the appearance of their stalls. They had to open promptly each day, and if they were sick, to provide a substitute. Other bazaars are also described, notably the one housed in Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, re-sited in 1854 at Sydenham in south London after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Another was the Pantheon Bazaar, also in Oxford Street, which had closed down by the time the book was written. I don't have a picture of the Crystal Palace Bazaar, but Knight's description of it sounds remarkably similar to the  the Pantheon Bazaar, above. The site of the Pantheon, originally a theatre, is now occupied by a large branch of Marks and Spencer, which is still known as the Pantheon branch. The Crystal Palace Bazaar was listed in the 1884 London Directory, but seems to have disappeared by 1891.

Shopping Saturday - Mourning becomes her

Illustrated London News 22 January 1887

There have been a number of funerals in Soap-land recently. For the benefit of anyone outside the UK, our two longest-running soaps, The Archers (60, radio) and Coronation Street (50, TV) have marked their significant anniversaries by killing off central characters in highly dramatic circumstances.

This is as good an excuse as any for looking at the business of mourning in the past. And I literally do mean 'business'. As you can see from this advert from January 1887, there were entire shops devoted to mourning apparel and accessories. Nowadays, if we have to attend a funeral we wear black, quite possibly drawn from items we already own, with maybe a quick dash to the shops for a pair of gloves or a black tie. If the deceased is a close family member we might even wear black or subdued colours for a while afterwards, but that's about it. The Victorians, on the other hand, made a great deal more of the period of mourning, and the richer they were, the more they would spend on it.

There are a number of interesting features in this advert. First of all, the shop is 'Peter Robinson's Court & Family Black Goods & Mourning Warehouse'. Any draper's shop or department store worth its salt would have a mourning department, but the really big players, of whom Peter Robinson was one, had a completely separate shop selling much the same goods as the main shop, but in black or grey. You will notice that the items listed are not just items of regular day-wear, but also evening gowns, opera capes, accessories and even undergarments. There was a whole elaborate etiquette of mourning, depending on the closeness of your relationship to the deceased, and the length of time since the death. This of course provided many opportunities for the canny retailer to sell not one, but several, outfits to the bereaved - the ideal customer would be the newly wealthy widow with a social position to keep up. But even those of modest means would expect to have a decent set of mourning clothes, and with large families and lower life expectancy than now, you could be in some degree of mourning for quite long periods. The fact that they were having a January sale indicates that they expected people to stock up for the coming year's bereavements. Lovely.

This bill of sale dated four years earlier is from a much smaller provincial establishment, Thomas Thorp, Silk Mercer and Linen Draper of Burnley, Lancashire. The bill-head shows that he also arranged funerals, and the details of the bill itself bear this out; after the list of clothing and drapery items is a fascinating glimpse into the fumeral service provided, and how much they cost, from carriages to catering. The bill-head also says 'Accounts quarterly' but this bill is dated a full nine months after the funeral concerned.

The deceased in this case was an 82 year old spinster, Susannah Gilbertson, who is described in the census as 'annuitant', 'landed proprietress', or 'no occupation' although in 1851 she was a schoolmistress. and was probably living on the income derived from a legacy. The value of her own estate when she died was £323 13s 10d.

Shopping Saturday - Old houses in Fetter Lane

Old houses in Fetter Lane, West side, near the Record Office, from a drawing by Shepherd 1853

Fetter Lane is on the western edge of the City of London and runs between Holborn to the north and Fleet Street to the south. The 'Record Office' referred to is the Public Record Office, which was in nearby Chancery Lane until 1997, and is now part of The National Archives at Kew.

The business of Lightfoot, fruiterer and greengrocer, at number 133 is clearly visible in the engraving, and next door is Talmage, Dyer and Scourer. Both businesses were run by widows at this time, and the 1851 census shows both Ann Lightfoot and her son Thomas (TNA Ref HO107/1527 f226 p11) and Katherine Talmage with her daughters Frances Ann and Mary at Number 134, on the next page. In 1841 the Talmage and Lightfoot families were at the same addresses (TNA Ref HO107/1527 726 book 9 f7 p7), when both husbands, Henry Talmage and Thomas Lightfoot snr were still alive.

The 1841 Post Office Street Directory for London containes entries for many, but not all, of the addresses in the street. It includes Henry Talmage at 134, but there is no entry for No 133.

These shops are just two among many examples of women continuing to run businesses after their husbands had died. I did a lot of research on this many years ago, looking at female proprietors of businesses in Maidstone, Kent, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Who knows, I may even write it up one day! After the 1851 census, the Lightfoots disappear from Fetter Lane, but the Talmage dying business was carried on by one of the daughters, Frances Ann. She never married, and when she died in 1879 she left an estate worth between £2000 and £3000, a tidy sum for those days. Her name also appears a number of times in the London Gazette as holder of bank shares, so she must have been a pretty good businesswoman. Girl power!

Shopping Saturday - Henry White & Sons, tailors and habit makers

I bought a new book yesterday (just for a change! It was a bargain, honestly) 'The design and printing of Ephemera in Britain and America 1720-1920' by Graham Hudson, London 2008. It is full of wondeful illustrations, including decorative billheads for shops and other businesses. I have always been fascinated by these, and I have acquired a number of them. This one is an interesting example from my collection.

The business of Henry White and Sons, Tailors and Habit Makers, Regimentals, Uniforms &C is listed in London directories from 1837 to 1913, first at 53 Great Marlborough Street, Westminster, then at number 58. Henry White and his family lived on the premises to start with, and 53 Great Marlborough Street is the address given on his will, proved 6 May 1873; he died there on 1 April 1873. The business passed to his sons, Henry Hart White and Thomas Thrush White, and by the time of the 1891 census they had moved to Wandsworth and Islington respectively. Henry Hart White died 28 October 1896 at his home in Granard Road, Wandsworth, and Thomas was his executor. Thomas Thrush White died in 1933, aged 84.

The bill itself is interesting, partly because it is a nice decorative example, but also for what it says. It details the kind of work undertaken by Henry White and Sons 'Liveries, hunting clothes, ladies jackets, clerical clothes', but the really interesting bit is the phrase '5 Per Cent charged after twelve months Credit'. It was common practice at the time for customers to purchase goods on credit, and tradesmen often had difficulty collecting the sums due; it was a matter of honour to pay one's gambling debts, but tailors' and other tradesmen's bills were another matter. Legal action was theoretically possible, but was likely to result in the loss of any further business not only from that customer, but from their friends and acquaintances. So shopkeepers often preferred to suffer in silence, in the hope of eventual payment.

Finally, the details of the transaction itself are a goldmine for the costume historian, although the finer points of Victorian tailoring are lost on me, I'm afraid.