They Pulled Themselves Up By Their Bootstraps
Freeman, Hardy and Willis Sign, Hitchin, 2007. Via Wikimedia Commons
[This article was first published in the now obsolete Practical Family History]
When my father proposed to my mother in 1961, he told her
that he would give her a diamond ring that he had kept in a shoebox at home. My
mother was rather concerned about the shoebox, but she accepted anyway. For me,
this story is as much about the shoebox as the ring it contained. It struck me
that my father kept lots of things in shoeboxes; they made fine receptacles for
anything from pens to cufflinks. Shoeboxes were his repository of choice
because he was born and brought up above a shoe shop – a branch of Freeman,
Hardy and Willis - in Walton, Liverpool where his father, William John
(Jack) Symes, was the manager from the 1920s right through to the 1950s.
Jack Symes: The Bootseller’s Apprentice
I recently started to look further into my grandfather’s
past. Born in 1894 in Ancoats, Manchester ( a place made famous by L. S. Lowry
for the kids who had ‘nowt on their feet’), he was 21 in 1915 and joined up for
the army, first in the Royal Cheshire regiment and then in the Tank Regiment. I
found 30 pages of his army records at British Army World War I Service Records http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/DB.aspx?dbid=1219
and was interested to see that on joining up, he gave his occupation as a ‘Boot
Salesman’ in Doncaster, Yorkshire. An email from the archivist at Doncaster
Record Office confirmed that there was a branch of Freeman, Hardy and Willis
in the town at that time.
I worked back in time. On the 1911 census (now available to
view online at www.findmypast.co.uk), I discovered that Jack Symes (then aged
18) was living in Pontefract with his uncle, Charles Terrell. As Jack’s father
had died when he was just twelve, it was natural that he should spend some time
working for another elder male family member. Uncle Charles Terrell is
described as ‘the manager of a bootshop’ in ‘Marketplace,’ Pontefract and Jack
Symes as an ‘assistant bootseller.’ I contacted Wakefield Library and
discovered that there was a branch of Freeman, Hardy and Willis in the
Marketplace, Pontefract at that time. Evidently this was where my grandfather’s
work among shoes and boots began.
Charles Terrell: The Bootmaker’s Apprentice
Charles Terrell, my great-great uncle, was as tough as old
boots according to my family
folklore. Among family papers, I have a
letter from a great niece of his who described him as an almost fanatical
Methodist: a believer in hard work, saving money and teetotalism. Family rumour
has it that Charles saved his earnings from the shoe shop and invested any
fifty-pound notes he acquired in shares in Cadbury’s, Rowntree’s and
Lipton’s. Apparently, he hastily withdrew these shares when he suspected
that Lipton’s had begun to sell wines and spirits!
But how (and indeed why) had Charles Terrell started out in
his boot-selling career? Looking back in time again to the 1901 census, I
discovered that he was already managing the Marketplace shop in Pontefract.
Further back still, on the 1891 census, he was running what appears to have
been an independent bootshop in another part of Pontefract - Mounthill. I
doubted that the previous census (of 1881) would give me any further clues
about how his career in footwear had started. After all, he would have been
only fifteen at the time it was taken. I was wrong, this census was actually to
lead me on to a great deal of interesting information.
In 1881, the young Charles Terrell was living in Sheffield
and described as a ‘servant and a bootmaker’s apprentice.’ The ‘master
bootmaker’ at this establishment was one William Rodgers and, according to the
census, he employed four men. Charles was the only one of these who lived on
the premises. I noted that the company were ‘bootmakers’ and not ‘bootsellers.’
The footwear trades were some of the last in Britain to be mechanised, much of
the work was done by hand until well into the nineteenth century. Charles
Terrell must have gained ‘hands-on’ expertise of his trade at William Rodgers’
establishment and later, this practical experience, must have made him a very
appropriate choice of manager for Freeman, Hardy and Willis, a high
street shoe retail company that would grow out of the boot and shoe
manufacturing business.
Charles Terrell’s boss, William Rodgers, is listed as an
independent bootmaker in the 1884 Whites Sheffield trade directory. As
there is no reference in that directory to a Freeman, Hardy and Willis shop
existing in the city, it seems safe to assume that Charles Terrell was probably
apprenticed as a boy to a privately-owned business. It is possible that William
Rodgers was later taken over by the company of Freeman Hardy and Willis,
as subsequent trade directories show that he had ceased trading by 1900 and
that there was, by that time a branch of the famous chain in Sheffield.
In all of the census records for Charles Terrell, there was
a hint of a mystery that urged me on to further investigation. Whilst his
employers, neighbours and (later his wife and daughter) gave their place of
birth as other Yorkshire towns, Charles is recorded as hailing from a small
village right at the other end of the country - Henstridge in Somersetshire.
From his mid teens, the young bootmaker was an exceedingly long way from home.
Why, I wondered, had he moved all the way from the South West to Yorkshire to
take up a job making boots?
The obvious place to look for answers about Charles’s
migration was yet further back in time in the 1871 census – when he was just
six years old. It was soon apparent that he was one of a large and impoverished
family of eight children. His father, William Terrell (spelt Terrel this
time) was an agricultural labourer. His
mother, Phillis, and sisters, Anne and Jane, were glovers. The British History
Online site (using information from the Victoria County Histories Publications (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=18743)
records that in Henstridge. ‘Gloving had been established by 1841 and by 1851 there were 100 glovers,
mainly female, probably outworkers to Milborne Port manufacturers. In 1871
there were a gloving agent, 152 female glovers, and 5 male glove cutters and
finishers.’
Charles Terrell
would have grown up watching his mothers and sisters making gloves at
home. His eldest sister Elizabeth (my
great-grandmother) - herself a former
glover – was employed by cousins of the family as a servant in the nearby town
of Street by the time of the 1871 census. Interestingly, this is where
the Clarks brothers began manufacturing footwear in 1825. I am assuming,
therefore, that the Terrell family were familiar with the processes of shoe
production. The so-called ‘Brown Petersburg’ sheepskin slipper was made by hand
in the cottages of the residents of Street. Later (in the 1860s) the Singer
sewing machine would bring some mechanisation to the process. Clarks became the
first footwear company that exactly matched shoes to the shape of the wearers’
feet. Since cladding the hands and cladding the feet were trades that were in
the blood of the men and women of Somersetshire, I remain puzzled as to why the
young Charles Terrell was sent as far away as Sheffield to learn his bootmaking
trade.
Charles was, of course, among many thousands of young men
who migrated to the industrial North of England to find work in the late
nineteenth century. It was probably his youthful success as a bootseller and as
a manager for Freeman, Hardy and Willis that tempted many of his sisters
and brothers to move North too. Elizabeth, Anna and Jane came up to Manchester
to work as a cook, undermaid and housemaid to three wealthy families, brother
Joe worked as a packer for Westinghouse Gas Engines, and, another brother, Jim
came to work for the Manchester Cleansing Department and was employed emptying
privies onto wagons at night. None of these jobs could be considered glamorous
by any stretch of the imagination.
In the eyes of these close relatives, shop managers Charles Terrell and Jack Symes would have
been considered very successful. Adhering to the strict rules of Methodism that
benefited so many businesses of the era – hard work, sobriety, careful spending
and saving – they managed to leave behind poverty-stricken circumstances in
rural Somerset and the slums of Manchester respectively. And the decades that
they spent measuring and fitting the feet of the prospering businessmen of the
North allowed them to pulled their own families up – as it were – by the
bootstraps – into the realms of the lower middle class.
Freeman, Hardy and Willis: A Brief History
My ancestors Charles Terrell and Jack Symes became shop
managers for one of Britain’s most famous and successful shoe retailers. Freeman
Hardy and Willis began in Leicester in 1875 and was incorporated in 1876
(when future bootmaker Charles Terrell would have been just eleven years
old). The founder of the company, Edward Wood, a boot and shoe manufacturer,
named his new enterprise after three of the company’s employees: architect,
Arthur Hardy, factory manager, William
Freeman, and traveller, Charles Willis. The first branch of the retail shoe
business was opened in Wandsworth, London in 1877.
In the early years of the twentieth century, the company
acquired the boot and shoe retailers, Rabbits and Sons Ltd (1903); and The
Kettering Boot and Shoe Company Ltd (1913).
By the time Jack Symes,
started work (just before the First World War), the chain was already well
established. In 1921 (when Jack was demobbed from the Tank Corps and back in
the boot trade), the company had 428 shops.
In 1925,
Freeman, Hardy and Willis acquired the shoe capital of the Leicester
firm Leavesley and North Ltd and by 1927, Jack Symes was manager of a branch of the shop in County Road,
Walton, Liverpool. In 1929, Freeman,
Hardy and Willis was acquired by Sears of Northampton (operating under the brand name of Trueform).
The shops continued to operate under the Freeman, Hardy and Willis
name.
The joint shoe business, (consisting by then of over 900
shops) was acquired in 1955 by the entrepreneur Charles Clore. He added many
other businesses to his conglomerate including more shoe retailers (two of
which were Manfield and Dolcis). The footwear side of the business became
known as the British Shoe Corporation and, with 1,500 shops, soon had over
one quarter of the British footwear market.
Archival papers
relating to Freeman, Hardy and Willis (in its various incarnations) are
described at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=056-de2357&cid=2#2 and available to view in the
Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland Record Office
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Useful Books
Fox, Alan, A
History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives 1874-1957,
Blackwell, 1954.
Hall, Joseph Sparkes The Book of the Feet: A History of
Boots and Shoes, BiblioBazaar, 2009.
Lehane, Brendan, C and J Clark, 1825-1975, Street ,
1975.
Reynolds, Helen, A Fashionable History of the Shoe, Heinemann
Library, 2004.
Riello, Giorgio and McNeil, Peter, Shoes: A History from
Sandals to Sneakers, Berg Publishers, 2006.
Useful Websites
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/DB.aspx?dbid=1219
Military Records of Ancestors Who Fought in the First World War.
www.clarks.co.uk/historyandheritage The
history of Clarks shoes.
This site gives
an overview of the development of Sears PLC including its acquisition of
Freeman, Hardy and Willis and other shoe retailers.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=18743
British History Online Site, Victoria County Histories description of the
village of Henstridge.
http://www.unionancestors.co.uk/bootmakers.htm
History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives
http://www.twixtaireandcalder.org.uk/default.htm
Website of the Wakefield District in words and pictures
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=056-de2357&cid=2#2
Description of archival papers relating to Freeman, Hardy and Willis.
http://www.clarksvillage.co.uk Clarks
Village and shoe museum
For women's history and social history books - competitive prices and a great service - visit:
Keywords: European ancestors, Europe, ancestry, family history, genealogy, oral history, England, English, British Isles, UK, England, English, shoes, footwear, Freeman, Hardy and Willis
