Costume, vol. 48, no. 1, 2014 The Hodson Shop
By S B. S
In about 1920, Miss Edith Hodson set up a draper’s and haberdasher’s shop at the fam- ily home in front of her brother Edgar’s lock factory in the Midlands town of Willenhall. This article explains how the author became involved with the shop’s remaining stock and looks at some of the customers’ experiences of it. It goes on to describe the collection of clothes and related items, mostly comprising working-class women’s and children’s garments and accessories from 1920 to the early 1960s. The collection includes Utility pieces, quantities of haberdashery, and costume jewellery and cosmetics of the 1950s. A large archive has also been preserved of the shop’s paperwork (bills, invoices, bank statements, correspondence), warehouse catalogues, advertising pamphlets and women’s magazines. The ownership of the collection was passed to Walsall Museum in February 1993.
: drapers, haberdashers and clothes shop 1920–1971, shopping habits, fashions of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Midlands and Black Country local history
I I as a volunteer at Walsall Museum, looking after clothing and textiles. The curator at that time invited me to accompany her on a visit to a lock factory in nearby Willenhall, which was being considered as a future museum for the Willenhall lock industry. It was mentioned that there were some clothes there (Figure 1).1 Imagine my delight when I fi rst entered the front room of the locksmith’s house and found it to have been a draper’s shop. Boxes were piled haphazardly on fl imsy shelves, slim and elegant leather gloves were strewn across the fl oor. On the oak counter was a display box which revealed rolls of shimmering silk ribbons abandoned when superseded fi rst by rayon ones and then by nylon. Further exploration of the house brought to light trunks, drawers and boxes full of unworn clothing, bed linen and haberdashery. A dark, narrow, winding staircase led up to a dingy attic. A 1930s fashionable straw hat topped a pile of mysterious brown paper parcels tied up with string. Many parcels were scattered around the room. On opening one or two, socks, combinations and lengths of fabric were revealed. My delight increased as each nook and cranny gave up its secrets. Here were the clothes I remembered from old family photographs and newsreels of the past. They brought back memories of the times when as a very young girl I had been looked after by an aunt in the dress shop where she worked as assistant and alterations hand. This collection of unsold garments was the clothing of the
© The Costume Society 2014 DOI: 10.1179/0590887613Z.00000000039 : 83
F . The Locksmith’s House, 54 New Road, Willenhall (formerly known as the Lock Museum). From 1905 this was the home of the Hodson family, lock makers since 1792. © Walsall Museum ordinary men, women and children in the street. They were the clothes of my child- hood and youth. They never seemed to be displayed in the many museums that I had visited either here or in the USA. I was convinced that this old shop stock must be preserved. The clothes dressed social history. The unsold stock mostly included women’s and children’s clothing, except for the heavier items like top coats. There was also men’s underclothing, haberdashery, small soft furnishing items such as cushion covers, beauty products and toiletries, and the requisites for knitting, crochet and embroidery. The projected new Lock Museum was to be run by a Board of Trustees and, fortunately, they were persuaded to rescue the shop collection from sale by auction. The old premises were to be refurbished but the shop collection was stored in far from ideal conditions, at the rear of a disused garage in the waste disposal vehicle yard behind an oil engine. There were no plans to display the shop contents in this new museum so permission was sought and granted to remove them to the Walsall Museum store which was just down the road at that time. I started sorting and listing the items, removing the worst of the Black Country grime where necessary. It was a task that was to take several years. Items were used 84 in costume displays at what was then Walsall Museum and Art Gallery. Meanwhile further fi nds continued to be made at the Lock Museum by the curators and the volunteers. Garments were even found in the cellars! As I became more involved with the collection I realized how varied and interest- ing it was. In about 1987 the BBC appealed for information on interesting collec- tions relating to the social history of dress, so they were contacted. As a result Professor Lou Taylor, who was working on the television series Through the Looking Glass, saw the collection and confi rmed its social signifi cance. The collection subsequently featured in the 1920s episode of the series, and in the book by Lou Taylor and Elizabeth Wilson.2 In 1993 the collection was offi cially transferred from the ownership of the Lock Museum to that of Walsall Museum. The collection consists of over 2,500 different garments, some in dozens, and together with the related material totals approxi- mately 4,173 objects. This does not include over 4,000 documents and paperwork. Many of these papers were stored in the old way, not in fi ling cabinets but pressed down onto a nail, its sharp end protruding from a wooden stand.
Hodson’s shop at Willenhall was in the home of lockmaking, and the Black Country was a grimy place with smoke belching from furnaces and smokestacks of all heights. Soot coated the buildings and the trees. Edgar Hodson’s lock factory was situated on the main road at the edge of Willenhall town centre. Trams on their way between Wolverhampton and Walsall rattled past. The Hodson family consisted of Edgar, his mother and his two sisters, Edith and Flora (none of the siblings married). They lived in a Victorian house which fronted the main road (Figure 1). To one side of the house was a carriage entrance, which led to a cobbled yard around which were the lock factory buildings on both sides. In about 1920 the twenty-nine-year-old Edith Hodson decided to open a draper’s and haberdasher’s shop in the front room of the house. There was a window onto the street where goods could be displayed. Quite why she chose to do this will never be known. There was plenty of competition from similar shops in the centre of Willenhall. In normal circumstances most women could expect to be married by the age of twenty-nine but, sadly, with so many young men lost in the very recent First World War (1914–1918) this was no longer the case. Perhaps she did not want to work in the grubby surroundings of the lock factory and thought that shopkeep- ing would be a more genteel occupation. There were ready-made customers on the premises: her brother’s female workers. There is a bus stop outside the premises now, but perhaps, then, there was a tram stop and people waiting would be attracted by the goods in the window. The family were regular churchgoers, so she might have thought she could attract her friends from there. On the opposite side of the road to the factory were large houses inhabited by the professional and busi- ness people of the town. Could they be a source of wealthy customers? The 1920s was also a time of depression and people would be economising on clothing. The Midlands Black Country with its wide diversity of trades was not so badly affected as the rest of the country and the demand for locks probably increased. : 85 From the shop paperwork that survives, despite the efforts of time, mice and insects to destroy it, one can ascertain that at fi rst Edith obtained her stock from a large variety of suppliers. As she grew more confi dent, the number dwindles to those she could rely on. In 1927 Flora Hodson was laid off from her job and joined her sister in running the shop. This must have freed Edith to attend the wholesale warehouses in Birmingham more often. She traded mainly with three of them. Invoices remain from Wilkinson and Riddell dated from 1920 up until 1971. Larkins enjoyed her custom from 1922 to 1969. Bell and Nicholson paperwork runs from 1935 through to 1969. Most of the clothing in the shop would have come from these three, but the Walsall warehouse of Ennals and Co. (which later became St Paul’s Warehouse) was a source of much of the haberdashery up to the Second World War (1939–1945). Edith also bought through travellers from big companies who would call on the shop carrying the fi rm’s new lines to show to shopkeepers. Wolsey and Corah and Sons, who made the St Margaret brand, were perhaps the most famous of these companies mentioned in the archives.3 From bank statements that were kept, the shop appears to have thrived most during the 1940s. The sisters never held sales in the shop, so unsold stock was just hoarded. Perhaps some of this stock was a welcome source of goods during the Second World War, when clothing was in short supply. By 1958 bank statements show the shop account to be overdrawn. Edith was now sixty-seven years old and suffering from ill health. She lived until she was seventy-fi ve in 1966. Flora carried on running the shop and also looking after her brother, Edgar, who died in 1970. The shop must have been hard-hit by competition in the 1950s as chains of shops opened branches in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Birmingham which were easily accessible by public transport. Business for the Hodson shop seemed to fade away rather than come to a sudden halt. Towards its last days, Flora did business by the back door, receiving payments there. In 1969 a man entered the shop and demanded money, terrifying Flora, and the next year the shop window was broken and goods stolen. Probably this was the last straw. The factory and the shop were locked up and left as they were. Towards the end of her life, Flora appears to have occupied the back room and the kitchen, leaving the rest to look after itself — not exactly moth-balled, as the moths took their toll, as did the mice, but undisturbed otherwise. One can only speculate as to why so much stock was left unsold. The sisters had little experience of shopkeeping. It must have been diffi cult to calculate how much stock was needed and how much they would sell. Former customers in the 1950s made the comment that the stock was ‘old-fashioned’. Some of the remaining stock, in fact, predates 1920 when the shop opened. A Hodson relative was known to have had a similar shop some time earlier, so perhaps the short blouses and the full- length white cotton waist-petticoats trimmed with whitework were passed on or bought from this or another closing shop. Customers also commented that the clothing was too expensive, but the clothing club should have helped solve that (purchasers would pay so much a week, which was entered in a ledger and on a card held by the customer).4 86 Some found the shop claustrophobic. One entered the shop through the house door, up two steps from the pavement, and to the left of the sash window where goods were displayed. Opening the door rang a bell. Inside was a dark hallway where brown paper parcels were piled high. A door on the right led into the gloomy shop. A curtain across the window space cut out the light. Edith or Flora would emerge through a door from the back room, making their way with some diffi culty through stock piled high. Dresses and coats hung everywhere. Hanging from a washing line across the room were small items like socks and stockings. Boxes of cardigans, shoes and other wares were heaped on precarious shelves. Edith would stand behind the oak counter with her back to a blazing fi re in the grate. No ‘Health and Safety’ regulations then! Despite the muddle, Edith apparently could lay her hands on anything required. When the customer had what she needed, it was care- fully wrapped in paper tied with saved string. Money was put into a locked drawer under the oak counter. Edith kept the key in her pocket. Edith and Flora loved to chat, and it was not always possible to leave the shop immediately. People would pay them social visits to exchange the latest Willenhall gossip. Regular visitors remarked that goods in the shop remained in the same places for years. The shops in the centre of Willenhall appeared modern compared with the Hodson shop. Many of the shop’s customers were elderly and the older merchandise would have appealed to those set in their ways. Even in the late 1940s, in the poorer areas, one could still see the occasional old woman wearing long black clothes which would have required the older underwear. Often her outfi t would be topped by a man’s fl at cloth cap. People passing noticed that the window grew dirty and dusty. The clothing left in there gradually faded and rotted, and an old lace curtain left hanging there gradually decayed and disappeared — a sad end to a type of shop we will never see again.
The earliest garments in the shop predate its opening in 1920. The oldest item is an overall. It resembles a long, V-necked dress with cap sleeves, open down the back. It is made of white cotton printed in small navy spots and stripes, with edges bound in navy. Photographs taken in local factories in the early part of the century show just such an overall being worn. There are twenty-fi ve magyar-sleeved blouses and twenty-two long-sleeved, one- button-fastening blouses from around 1915 to the 1920s. These are very varied, in silk or in cotton; of gauze or crêpe-de-chine; plain, striped, printed or embroidered. One is even hand-painted with pink carnations and blue ribbons. A black muslin blouse with magyar sleeves has a print of mauve, blue and pink fl owers with trailing stems. Around the V-neck and high waist there is faggoting. The hem is scalloped. Another one has a navy-blue background. They are priced at 6s. 11d. (approxi- mately 35 pence today). The profi t margin on goods in the shop was only 20%, which is low compared with other establishments. Only one dress from this period remains: a straight up and down, pyjama-striped cotton washing frock of the early 1920s. It bears its original paper label with a : 87 picture of an imp delivery boy with the words ‘Hale’s Mayfi eld Cloth’ and ‘Hales Prints Ltd; Manchester. Established 1785’, and in pencil ‘4s 11½d’ (approximately 25 pence). Many items have their price written in a letter code which has not yet been deciphered. Other garments from this early period are ankle-length, white cotton waist petticoats with hem fl ounces of whitework machine embroidery. One has a ‘Horrockses Cloth’ label sewn in. There are also knickers or drawers that match and the odd camisole or two. Some of the forty types of women’s combinations may also date from this early period. The later 1920s are well represented in the collection. Possibly the star items are the jumper suits. A favourite with visitors to Walsall Museum is one which has a taupe wool jersey long-sleeved top with a V-neck; the skirt is of cobalt blue (Figure 2). The suit has a St Margaret label and is priced at 38s. 6d. (approxi- mately £1.93). St Margaret was the trademark of the Corah factory in Leicester. There are over eighty different items in the collection with the label. This includes two other suits. One is beige wool jersey with trimmings of brick red. It has a high Cossack-style neckline. The other is in pale blue wool and rayon mixed jersey fabric trimmed with fawn and pink. These suits would be a rather expensive purchase for the female lock factory workers who earned about £1 a week at this time, but the suit could be paid for on easy terms through the clothing club. Cheaper-looking jersey suits made of coarser-textured fabric have sewn-on striped welts and an appliqué fl ower over the left hip on the jumper. They were advertised
F 2. Wool jersey suit with ‘St Margaret’ label, c. 1927.The welts and cuffs are striped in three shades of blue matching the diamond-shaped insertions above the lower edge of the top. The long scarf is of silk. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. Suit: HSW 36. Scarf: HSW 852 © Walsall Museum 88 for sale in a 1930 catalogue of the Wilkinson and Riddell warehouse, Birmingham, with a rather fl attering drawing. Twenty-four day dresses have the characteristic low waistline of the late 1920s. They are made of either rayon or cotton. Most of them are in fl oral prints, which in some cases disguises a complicated cut. Rayon is shown in its many forms. Seven of the dresses are obviously for evening wear. One of mauve pink satin has a drape on the left hip which hangs below the hem and is headed by a large pink artifi cial fl ower. This is obviously Paris infl uenced. Be the belle of the ball for only 18s. 11d. (approximately 95 pence)! This sum could also have bought a beige or green dress in silky fabric with vertical lines of faggoting from a velvet fl ower on the left shoulder to its twin just above the low waistline. The hems are scalloped and embroidered in beige or green. Two other dance dresses have ruched waistlines and a light gold, shiny lace border to their skirts. Another item of clothing that can be seen in photographs of local factory women at this time is the jacquard-knitted rayon jumper. Most of those in the collection have roll necks and long sleeves and are knitted in several colours, with one of the colours picked up in the welts. For example, one has navy blue welts with a pattern of zigzag stripes in navy and yellow on a background of a mixture of turquoise, grey and gold. Two of the jumpers are priced at 19s. 11d. (almost £1). One of these jumpers illustrates very well why it did not sell. The sleeves are long enough for a great ape! Accurate sizing does not seem to have been a strong point in clothes of the 1920s and 1930s. Wool and cotton are mixed with the rayon in some of the jumpers. For summer wear there are short, magyar-sleeved jumper blouses which pulled on over the head. They must have gone out of fashion when low-waisted styles came in. There are a number of jumpers and blouses in the collection but, sadly, very few skirts and these are unremarkable. Hip-length, long-sleeved blouses of the 1920s exist in spun silk or rayon. Most have pointed collars or V-necks and some form of vertical decoration on the fronts such as pin tucks, faggoting, top stitching or small frills. Just a few are sleeveless. Some have false belts set low on the hips. The Hodson shop also sold underwear. Large amounts of machine-knitted undergarments remain from all decades from 1920 to 1960, but mainly from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. There is a great variety, although the majority, from before the 1940s, are in white or pink, in cotton, wool or rayon. There are also a few earlier garments, from the pre-1920 period, such as camisoles and spencers. Prod- ucts of most of the well-known factories are represented. There is stock bearing the labels of St Margaret, Vedonis, Wunda-Wer, Wolsey, Meridian, Lorna, Naomi, Bryley, Conlowe and Cherub. To break the monotony of white or pink underwear there are two black 1920s cotton satin, princess slips (full-length petticoats) with low waistlines and fi nely pleated details. White cotton slips and knickers trimmed with whitework were still a popular choice for adults and children in the 1920s, even though rayon lock-knit ones were gaining in popularity. By the 1930s most of the slips and directoire knickers are in this fabric. The rayon slips fi tted well beneath the shapely dresses of the 1930s. There are twenty such dresses in the collection. Several could be classed as washing frocks as : 89 they are of cotton print and are simple in design. Remarkably, some have only a short back neck fastening, depending on their bias cut to accommodate the fi gure when easing them on. All the decoration is on the bodices. There are jabots; scarf necklines; collars in various sizes and shapes; tucks and smocking. Two dresses stand out as being the only ones made of silk. They have shaded stripes in green and brown and in brown and pink. They are of Macclesfi eld silk and cost 18s. 11d. (approximately 95 pence). A dress of rayon imitating Macclesfi eld silk forms an interesting comparison. A dress worth mentioning has a print of beige and cream daisies and orange poppies on a dark brown ground (Figure 3). The cinematic infl uence shows in the 1930s blouses. Several are in satin and resemble those worn by secretaries in black and white fi lms. Their decoration and fabrics differ little from those of the late 1920s except they are a little shorter and some are fi nished at the hem with waistcoat points. They were made to be worn inside or outside the skirt. Very few jumpers and cardigans remain from this time, but the few surviving cardigans are still beautifully boxed. Two have St Margaret labels in the neck and on the box. The earliest shoes in the collection are from the 1940s. Most of these have Utility labels, as do nearly 170 other items. Some labels have been cut out but the tell-tale frayed edges remain. This practice was not uncommon towards the end of the Utility Scheme when the clothes were superseded by others more exciting to the customers.5 The two plainest Utility outfi ts appear to belong to the wartime period. A dress in blue-grey, cotton and wool mixture twill fabric is about the plainest. The small front opening at the neck fastens with ties to make a ‘pussy cat’ bow. Two diagonal tucks from the padded shoulders meet at centre front, at the waistline. It has short sleeves and a skirt which is neither generous nor skimpy. The bodice tuck seams are continued in the skirt to form an inverted pleat. A self-fabric tie belt completes the look. It is priced at 33s. 9d. (approximately £1.69). The second plain outfi t is a light-grey wool jersey two-piece. It has minimal revers and it fastens with four grey plastic buttons. Seams from the padded shoulders shape the jacket, ending in curves to the sides which form pocket openings. Centre front of the skirt is a decorative seam. Ease is given by small openings in the hem at the side seams. Another wool jersey suit of note has bodice and patch pocket decoration of Italian quilting which uses no extra fabric (Figure 4). Several dresses of the late 1940s are made of satin-backed rayon crêpe and are obviously made for the older woman. Two dresses in wool are in younger styles heralding the fashions of the 1950s. Seven Utility blouses remain: four in the ubiquitous satin-backed crêpe. A black one is brightly printed with a pattern of white daisies surrounded by smaller fl owers and foliage in crimson, purple, blue and green. All are a shorter length than is usual for a tucked-in blouse, thereby saving fabric. An abundance of Utility and other underwear survives. Vests, knickers, slips, brassieres and corsets are all here. Most of the vests are of the conventional types in cotton, wool and rayon. Some are in Utility regulation tea-rose pink. A variety of knit gives them added interest. Many knickers match the vests, but by far the majority are made of celanese-type fabric in a variety of colours and are directoire in style. Only a few are French knickers, also in celanese or shiny, rayon satin for 90
F . Artifi cial silk crêpe print dress F . Wool jersey Utility suit with trimmed in cream with an additional collar Italian quilting detail, labelled ‘Ariel’, beneath the print one, c. 1937. At the c. 1944. In Italian quilting two parallel neckline there is also a rouleau tie. The skirt seams form a narrow channel between the is bias cut. Hodson Shop Collection, top fabric and the lining though which is Walsall Museum. HSW 55. run a soft cord to give a raised surface. © Walsall Museum Because it uses no extra expensive cloth it would have been an economic form of decoration. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. HSW 73 © Walsall Museum the more glamorous. Post-war celanese slips pair with matching knickers and are decorated with embroidery and lace. Corsets in the familiar tea-rose pink shaped the 1940s fi gure if control were needed. There are twenty-four corsets in all, dating from pre-1923 through to 1960. Brassieres date mostly from the 1940s and 1950s. An early 1940s packet says of its contents: ‘Supply dropping parachute cloth — a sure sign of exceptional strength’. : 91 The Hodson shop collection includes accessories to dress. Hats date mainly from the 1930s and late 1940s with just two from the wartime period 1939–1945. Both are small and worn forward tilting. One is of openwork green straw in a trilby shape; the other is brown felt in a pill box shape with veiling and a bow at the rear (Figure 5). Of the 1940s shoes, most are lace-ups, sometimes with a cuban heel and punched decoration. Stockings from this date are mostly of rayon or lisle in fawn or grey. It is diffi cult to think of this period without the headscarf. An intriguing one is in a blue and white Paisley pattern with a red border. Its label reads ‘Spun rayon. Made in Macclesfi eld, England’. Nearly all the others from this time are the conventional woven squares with fringed edges in several different colours of wool or similar. There are long, warm, knitted woollen scarves, too. Gloves of most types are represented of cotton, knitted wool, leather and nylon, both transparent and opaque. By the 1950s the depression of war and its aftermath were lifting and clothes seemed to refl ect the mood of the moment. Pretty cotton dresses blossomed forth (Figure 6). Roses appear to be the most favoured fl owers in the patterns of the unsold full-skirted dresses. Many labels on them mention special fi nishes such as ‘durable sheen’, ‘Everglaze easy-care fabric’, ‘drip dry’ and ‘Calpreta Permanent Sheen’. The many blouses are also treated similarly. New synthetic fabrics appear in the blouse and jumper collection particularly Nylon, Tricel, Orlon, Dylan, Acrilan, Courtelle, Lurex and Celon. Most of the knitwear, that is jumpers and cardigans, appears to have been acquired after 1945. Styles are neat and classical, with the exception of three fi sh- ermen’s knit jumpers, known as ‘Sloppy Joes’, of wool, Orlon and an acrylic fi bre.
F 5. Small felt hat trimmed with veiling bow, c. 1942. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. HSW 826 © Walsall Museum 92
F 6. Dress of printed cotton, labelled ‘Lizbeth Ann’, c. 1952. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. HSW 100 © Walsall Museum
A few jumpers have the fashionable batwing sleeves of the 1950s. There are also aprons from this post-war period. They have pretty border prints, mostly of fl owers and gardens except two of Venetian scenes. Much of the underwear utilizes the new textile fi bres. The briefs make an amus- ing contrast with the directoire knickers. Brassieres, essential to give the correct shape to 1950s clothes, range from minimal paper nylon ones to the more substan- tial, waist-length, boned type. The shop also stocked the fashionable mohair scarves and the foulard squares with varied pictorial themes. Shoes are of the older ladies’ comfortable makes such as Durafl ex and Portland, probably bought by the sisters with their own needs in mind. The Hodson shop collection is rich in overalls, pinafores and aprons of the 1920s and 1930s and the late 1940s and 1950s (Figure 7). They display a wide variety of interesting cotton prints. One has a ‘Hercules’ label which states: ‘You can go out to wear it but you cannot wear it out’. Whenever possible, packaging was saved with the clothing, but much of it was so grimy with Black Country soot that it had to be discarded. The most interesting boxes are those with illustrations on the lids. A large number contained stockings, of which the collection holds over 450 different pairs bought in throughout the : 93
F 7. Two overalls of printed cotton, 1920s. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. Left: HSW338. Right: HSW 371 © Walsall Museum active period of the shop. The earliest must be the black woollen stockings embroi- dered above and below the ankle with small roses and buds — one pair with red roses, the other with yellow. Their patent was registered in 1908 by J. B. Lewis and Sons of Nottingham. On the toes is printed in gold ‘New seamless sole. Registration number 52980ZT. British manufacture’. There is every kind of stocking one can think of, made of wool, cotton, silk, rayon and nylon. Another pair is referred to as ‘Ladies All Wool Sports Hose’ in a Wilkinson and Riddell catalogue of 1932. They are in a light oatmeal colour, printed in brown in a diamond Argyle pattern with ‘Made in England’ printed on the foot. White silk stockings made by Chipman Knit, imported from the USA, were priced at 4s. 11½d. (approximately 25 pence). According to the label on the box they were ‘The Pick of Hosiery’ with illustration of a pick! Some beige rayon silk stockings have a card of mending thread attached. A prettily illustrated box for Three Knots hosiery has on the lid a picture of a girl in a blue, early 1920s dress blackberrying with the motto ‘Has Caught On’ (Figure 8). The men’s clothing left in the shop seems to be of the type that would be worn by the sisters’ brother Edgar, the lockmaker, such as vests, socks and underpants. There is only a small selection. Children were also catered for. Infants, for example, could be supplied with baby robes, romper suits and pram suits. The boys’ and girls’ clothing is mostly 94
F 8. Stockings and original boxes labelled Pinnacle, Wolsey Lustral and The Three Knots, 1920s. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. From the left: HSW 1116, HSW 1135, HSW 1127 © Walsall Museum underwear. Older visitors viewing these items in the Walsall Museum always respond to the fl eecy-lined liberty bodices, itchy woollen vests, navy-blue directoire knickers and black and brown woollen stockings that many women associate with their childhood. The unsold haberdashery stock includes buckles, buttons, ribbons, laces, braids, elastic, tape, fringe, shoelaces, stocking suspenders, bead tassels, hair slides, hair nets, hair grips, safety pins, hat pins, feather trimmings for hats, men’s braces and handkerchiefs. There are all the requisites needed for needlework and mending, knitting and crochet, as well as knitting patterns and traced goods. Worth a special mention are the many cards of Swiss embroidery edgings and insertions still in their attractive white and gold packets, and the skeins of shaded artifi cial silk knitting yarn. Shade and sample cards for many threads have also survived. The dressmak- er’s needs were further catered for in the many textile remnants discovered; these included fl oral cottons, curtain and other fabrics. There are two lengths of attractive Utility spun rayon with delicate fl oral prints. The shop stock also contained small soft furnishings such as tablecloths, cushion covers, table runners and antimacas- sars. A large amount of the later stock was obviously bought with small gifts in mind. In later years at the shop one could complete an outfi t, or give as a gift, costume jewellery. Other such presents were stocks of toiletries and cosmetics. : 95 Nearly all are prettily packaged, some in specifi c presentation packs. The names of perfumes such as Phul Nana, Californian Poppy, Evening in Paris and April Violets are a perfect evocation of this era.6 Accompanying the shop stock were women’s magazines dating from 1915 to 1949. These have proved useful as many of the products in the collection are men- tioned in the advertisements. Whenever possible, show cards and price cards were salvaged. Those of St Margaret, Wolsey, Rameses and Naomi make an attractive collection.
One of the most academically valuable aspects of the shop is over 4,500 documents that remained in the house. It would need more than another article to describe them fully. They include invoices, bills, bank transactions, insurance documents, government communications and some personal notes and correspondence. Some
F 9. Catalogue covers from Wilkinson & Riddell Ltd, retail drapers, Birmingham, 1932. Hodson Shop Collection, Walsall Museum. HSR 4 and HSR 5 © Walsall Museum 96 of the invoices and bills are headed with beautiful prints of factories and buildings. In addition there are the warehouse catalogues and leafl ets which the sisters kept from the main Birmingham warehouses of Wilkinson and Riddell, Larkins and Bell and Nicholson, besides some from individual manufacturers such as Twilfi t and Durafl ex (Figure 9).
Although some of the contents of the shop had to be discarded through the depredations of climate, mice and insects, enough remains to give a very full picture of the workings of this type of mid-twentieth-century shop. Thank goodness for the hoarding instinct of the Misses Edith and Flora Hodson. Walsall Museum has another collection of clothing in its Community History Collection which seeks to continue where the Hodson Shop stock leaves off, collecting the clothing of the working-class people of Walsall and its surroundings. These garments need preserving as they are often worn to shreds. How are generations of the future going to picture what the masses wore if they cannot clothe them in their imagination and sense how they felt in those clothes and how this affected them?
Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Joyce Hammond who recorded customers’ memories, to Brenda Jephcott and the volunteers at what was once the Lock Museum but is now the Locksmith’s House and run by the Black Country Museum, and to Jennifer Thomson and Catherine Lister from Walsall Museum.
Antimaccassar A covering for the backs and arms of chairs to protect them from hair grease or oil (originally, macassar oil used to dress men’s hair in the Victorian period). Can be purely ornamental. Batwing sleeve A sleeve made to fi t an armhole extending from shoulder to waist with a narrow fi tted wristband. Camisole A short underbodice. Cossack style A garment with a high standing collar and a side-fastening bodice. Infl uenced by the tunics of the Russian Cossacks. Cuban heel A fairly broad shoe heel of medium height. Directoire knickers Women’s loose-fi tting long knickers elasticated at the waist and above the knee. Faggoting Decorative openwork stitching joining two pieces of fabric. French knickers Women’s short fl ared knickers fi tted at the waist. Liberty bodice A warm underbodice usually worn by children. Magyar sleeve A sleeve cut in one with the bodice. Spencer A warm underbodice, usually of wool. Washing frocks Dresses that require no special care in washing. Welt The border of ribbing on a knitted garment. : 97 Fabrics Acrilan Trade name for manmade acrylic fi bre having a wool-like feel. Made by Chemistrand Co. Celanese Trade name of artifi cial silk made from cellulose. Later called rayon. Celon Trade name for a nylon fi bre produced by Courtaulds. Courtelle Trade name for acrylic fi bre made by Courtaulds. Dylan Nylon coating for wool fi bres. Lisle Knitted fabric made from mercerised cotton. Lurex Trade name for metallic yarn. Macclesfi eld silk A hard-wearing spun silk. Nylon A polyamide fi bre produced from mineral sources. Developed by DuPont laboratory. Orlon A soft, warm, acrylic fi bre made by DuPont. Rayon Artifi cial silk. See Celanese above. Tricel Trade name for a nylon fi bre produced by Courtaulds.
1 Willenhall is a medium-sized town in the Black Country area of the West Midlands of England, situated between Wolverhampton and Walsall, historically in the county of Staffordshire. Edgar Hodson’s lock factory became the Lock Museum and is now known as the Locksmith’s House, run by the Black Country Museum. The surviving stock and paperwork from Edith Hodson’s shop were transferred to Walsall Museum. For further information on the Hodson Shop collection, see
S B. S was awarded an MBE in 1999 for her services to historic dress. She has been a volunteer working with costume and textiles for twenty-fi ve years at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and for over thirty years at Walsall Museum, for which she was made a Jaguar-Land Rover Cultural Champion for the Arts and Business in the Midlands in 2012. Prior to her work in museums she was a primary school teacher, but gave up her career in 1982 to pursue her lifelong interest in costume and textiles.