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own drapery store – his name was
John Lewis.
The Peter Robinson building is still there – and in
1965 it became known as ‘Peter Robinson’s Top
Shop’. Soon to be know just as Top Shop. So there is
a link between the old and the new.
However, the first department store in London was
not established in the centre of town, but daringly in
Westbourne Grove, Bayswater.
William Whiteley
(below) had arrived in London from Wakefield,
Yorkshire. Having been apprenticed to the largest
drapers in the town for 7 years, he came to London
to make his fortune. After working for a number of
drapers in the City, he noticed that the opening of
the first underground railway, the Paddington to
Farringdon line, was beginning to make the area
of Bayswater increasingly fashionable. In 1863 he
opened a ‘Fancy Goods and Drapers Store’ at
31 Westbourne Grove. His aim was to sell what the
public wanted, not what the store wanted to sell.
He boasted that he could provide anything, and when
tested by customer to provide a pint of fleas and an
elephant produced both within 24 hours!
Ambitiously extending his store, he rapidly bought
up adjacent
properties
and by 1867
he had 17
departments.
Aiming for
Westbourne
Grove to be
‘the Bond
Street of the
West’ he
continued
expanding
until by 1872
‘
could buy and
furnish a
house, feed
and clothe
yourself until you died – when Whiteley’s funeral
department would take over’
. It was also, importantly,
a place where unaccompanied ladies could go to meet
friends, shop and eat and take tea in the numerous
in-store restaurants.
One customer, Mrs D M Nicholas, wrote:
‘We made our way to the Restaurant, where we
ate Swan’
.
The buying up of properties was hugely unpopular
with local tradesmen, so much so that one year on the
Fifth of November local butchers undercut by
William Whiteleys burned his effigy in Trafalgar
Square. In fact, fires were quite common at
Whiteley’s store and in 1897 the Westbourne Grove
Westbourne Grove store burned down. Whiteley
began building an even larger store around the corner
in Queensway. Although it ceased trading as a
department store in 1981 the building survives as a
small shopping centre with a mixture of traders and
a popular cinema.
Whiteley was a very strict employer and most of his
6,000 staff, male and female lived in company owned
dormitories. They were strictly segregated, worked 6
days a week from 7am to 11pm and had to abide by
176 draconian rules. He was also fond of taking
young female shop assistants on weekend trips to
Paris – where he would promise them everything –
but sadly, ignore them after the return to London.
On 24
th
January 1907 a young man named Horace
Raynor walked into the store. He claimed to be
Whiteley’s illegitimate son, which may well have
been true, and demanded money to continue his
studies in America. Whiteley refused and went to call
the police. At that moment Raynor produced a gun
and shot William Whiteley dead at his desk.
William Whiteley died leaving a huge fortune.
Strangely, for a man with a reputation for being a
cold hearted business man, he left £1million to fund
a woodland retirement village of almshouses. The
village remains and is still operating in an idyllic
setting near Walton-on –Thames: Whiteley Village.
Whilst William Whitely was busy building his new
store, a Knightsbridge grocer,
Charles Digby Harrod
,
was equally busy turning his store into an emporium
dealing in carpets, drapery and fashion goods whilst
also providing
‘ elegant and restful waiting and retiring rooms for
both sexes, writing rooms with dainty stationery, a
club room, a smoking room – all free of charge and
no question.’