Tales from the tailor’s shop
JOHN SPARRY recalls his teenage years, when he worked for a well-known chain of tailors in Stourbridge High Street
A notice in the staff room, which was partitioned off from the small office of Mrs Elsie Marsh, cashier/secretary read: ‘The Customer is not an interruption of our work – He is the reason for it.’
Seeing the photograph of Stourbridge which appeared in a recent edition of the Bugle, looking towards High Street from near the town clock. I think I could just make out on the left, the frontage of Burton’s tailors where I first worked on leaving Stourbridge King Edward VI School in 1956.
It was something of a surprise when on my first day I was greeted by the manager with the words, ‘Good Morning, Mr Sparry.’
Tables
Two long narrow tables of a light, natural-coloured wood shade were a central feature in the shop – bolts of cloth could be easily displayed. Captain’s chairs were provided for either the gent or his wife – ‘Would you care to sit down, Madam?’ – and an instruction on how to sell a bespoke suit: ‘Always show the pattern books to the lady.’
If we had an early customer on a Saturday morning it was going to be a good day.
Our Stourbridge branch – number 539 if I remember aright – was one of over 800 shops under the name of Montague Burton, the Tailor of Taste.
Vast numbers
Workrooms at Leeds and Bolton employed a vast number of people. A canteen of theirs could seat 8,000. At those manufacturing bases, dentists, nurses and even chiropodists were on the staff.
Where has all that marvellous source of employment gone? After all I also worked for a time at Hepworth’s (Head Office, Claypit Lane, Leeds) and other multiples supplying both ‘made to measure’ and ‘ready to wear’ suits, coats, and even fancy waistcoats, including John Collier (The Window to Watch), Jacksons and Dunns. These last, hatters as well, always dressed their windows with very good quality Harris and thornproof tweeds.
Mr Abram, Stourbridge manager, a short, pleasant, dapper gentleman who had driven the long ‘Queen Mary’s’ – the aircraft retrieval vehicles in Egypt during the Second World War, lived in New Street, Brierley Hill, and was possessed of a largeish, old grey Vauxhall car.
First Sales, Mr Homer from Cradley, and Second Sales, Mr Brian Buffey, could add to their wages by selling something not too much in demand, either a last length of cloth or perhaps a brown stripe twopiece suit. This extra small commission, perhaps 2/6 or five bob, was known as a ‘spiff’.
Floor
Lesser lights, ie: people like me, did not qualify for this bonus, we served when needed and got on with whisking all the garments and bumpering the floor.
Around every eight weeks or so the display men would appear. Jim Linney, a breezy and witty man from Walsall, and Ted Felton, who played cricket for Whitwick.
Because my old friend from school, Terry Richards, later a successful estate agent, was doing a Saturday job putting down the measures as Mr Abram or Mr Homer called them out, my old nickname had travelled from school to shop – about four hundred yards.
As a result Messrs Linney and Felton would issue my instructions, “Space! Go and fetch us some sausage sandwiches from round the corner and tell ’em to put plenty of brown sauce on them!”
Down past Wrensens and a high class shoe shop, Warrilows up Coventry Street, past seed merchants, Hall, Newell and
Cake – Mr Cake was a valued customer – and up to the stall – almost opposite the old Labour Exchange and the large Midland Red Garage. They have gone but the refreshment stall is still warming folk up with tea and coffee. Great that some things don’t change!
The displaying of suits and cloths – one particular fold was called a ‘nose drape’ – was much more skilled than might be imagined. Large black pins hammered into the window floor, linings cut open and card inserted, much electric ironing. Our two windows were a week’s hard work.
Donegal ‘pepper and salt’ jackets and West of England cloth overcoats (nine guineas) were nice. The bottoms of trouser legs were getting away from the floppy Oxford Bag style; Mrs Wood the alteration hand from Hagley Forge shortened trousers for 3/6, and narrowed them for 10 shillings.
Collars
At Montague Burton’s my first suit was in charcoal grey twill, with a very faint red check. Our snappy stiff white collars went to and from Collars Limited of Glasgow, a dozen at a time – mine were ‘semi-cutaway’ –Wow!
At Burton’s I learned to snap the string when tying a parcel, and if it was sent by post or Midland Red parcel service the inside protective corrugated cardboard would face outward.
To Mr Abram in his immaculate dark grey hopsack weave suits, I was Mr Spa. A great delight was listening to the elderly gent who cleaned all the frontage every day, including applying ‘Leadsoap’ to the mosaic approach – Walter Savage had driven the horse drawn steam pump to the 1904 fire at Enville Hall!
It was a weird experience to stand in one of the two fitting rooms, and pull the hinged side-view mirrors to face each other, so that you could disappear into infinity – which of course is what, one day, we all will do.