It’s the beginning of the end for 163 BHS stores, which have been part of the high street landscape for decades. It also means the terrible loss of 11,000 jobs. But this will not be the end of furious controversy about the greed and shabbiness of the most recent owners of the chain.
BHS was started in 1928 as a rival to the stormingly successful Woolworths. It was not quite a department store, but it had a defining high street identity that its old rival (closed in 2008) also had. To me, it feels like it was one of the last chains for which customers felt affection and trust, and which inspired a pleasure at the thought of shopping.
The decline of the pleasure of shopping must be one reason for the galloping pace of internet buying. None of the faff, none of the parking, none of the trying to catch – or trying not to catch – a faraway shop assistant’s eye. Remote shopping, a contactless pursuit in every way. There’s clearly no point in too much nostalgia for the great shopping palaces, called department stores, which covered the UK, hanging on in many cases surprisingly long, into our new century. They came, they lasted about 100 years mostly, then they went. But remembering them is a pleasure worth sharing.
London had Derry & Toms, Dickins & Jones, Gamages, Marshall & Snelgrove, Swan & Edgar, Army & Navy Stores, Barkers of Kensington, John Lewis, Harrods. Manchester had Kendals, Liverpool had Lewis’s and Owen Owen. There was Jolly & Son of Bath, Caleys of Windsor, John Walsh of Sheffield. Edinburgh had a raft of them all along Princes Street: Binns, Darlings, Jenners, R W Forsyth (among the many unpleasant facets of the retailer Philip Green was that his Arcadia group supposedly baulked at the cost of repairing the celebrated Forsyth Sphere, which had beautified the Princes Street skyline since 1906. It will be reinstated later this month.
It was unimaginable that a customer would not enjoy an expedition to their local department store. They constituted social outings: customers were known, and often would be contacted by the store with the thoughtful information that some dress or coat or jacket had just come in and would be just right for them. They sold everything – I worked in the haberdashery department of Smith Brothers in Dundee as a student, and felt good and useful as I searched for darning needles, hooks and eyes and handkerchief cases.
Department stores were almost always started by local men (mostly men), and so they were highly responsive to local character and social nuances. DM Brown’s in Dundee was started in 1890 by David Brown, a draper and son of a coal merchant. He began with three employees. By 1938 it employed 400 people. For a Dundee girl, being a shop assistant was a heavenly alternative to the jute mills. DM Brown’s was homely, keenly priced, not frighteningly smart or adventurous. Draffens, however, was snooty, hushed, pricey, with bat-like sensitivity to the roaring snobbery of the jute barons and their wives. Fenwick began in Newcastle in 1882 and the Fenwick family were significant northern figures although they opened the London store relatively early, in 1891.
Department stores were reliable and nuanced indicators of social class and aspiration. In Edinburgh, a city with a world-class understanding of social distinctions, Jenners sat at the top of the tree, with its thickly carpeted floors, personal service and highly trained assistants. RW Forsyth, even after the 60s brought with them the idea of fashion released from class, continued to offer its customers respectable tweeds, school uniforms and reliable underwear. Of course, it could not last and fell into the hands of the ubiquitous Green.
Department stores benefited from great customer loyalty. In the time before there was such a thing as shopping around, customers would go to one department store because that was who they were. In Aberdeen it was either Esslemont & Macintosh or Watt & Grant. My two grandmothers were Aberdonian – one was forever Esslemont & Macintosh, the other always Watt & Grant.
These characteristics – strong local base, profusely staffed with people who knew what they were doing, an identity for the shopper, a social centre – did make shopping pleasant, not just something to be got over with as quickly as possible. And there are surviving stores – John Lewis is clearly loved (and its ownership structure is at the heart of the trust it inspires) but there are many other cheerful and robust local stores that will gladden the heart. So head off to the wonderful Boswells in Oxford, or Selbys in the Holloway Road in London to experience knowledgeable service that isn’t on a sales target, and to be a customer with that rare sensation of enjoyment.
