Jacks, Battersea

Here are a couple of ghost signs left by two of the businesses that traded at 65 Falcon Road, near Clapham Junction station (actually regular traces of paint could suggest there was a third ghost sign on this wall).

One ghost sign was advertising Max Bridge's jewellery shop. In common with many of his colleagues, Bridge was not only a jeweller but also a clockmaker. Max Bridge opened his shop before the First World War. His name appears in the 1914 edition of the Post Office Directory (and later in the 1919 edition). He certainly took over a jewellery shop previously run by George Law. Law's name and profession are mentioned in the 1911 edition of the Directory indeed. It seems Max Bridge's real name was Morduch Bregman but he adopted an Anglicized version to run his business. In April 1922 he changed officially his name to Max Bridge.

Jacks
Bridge's
Famous For Clothes
Famous Clocks

The other ghost sign promoted Jacks's or Jack's clothes shop. Unfortunately I have not found any information about it. I cannot even tell whether this second ghost sign was painted before or after Bridge's sign.

Location: Falcon Road / Picturs taken in July 2012

Quality and value, Battersea

This is something all customers like to hear or, in that case, read.

Quality
and Value
But what kind of products did this apply to? This is hard to tell since shops came and went, sometimes very rapidly (in the early 20th century the majority of shops in nearby Wimbledon failed to reach their first anniversary. Such a situation was certainly not unique). Between the end of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, at least a butcher, a provision merchant and the United Kingdom Tea Company traded from this address. I doubt the mosaic was laid by the latter though. A large company would rather have had its name written by the entrance and the slogan "quality and value" was not one used by "The 'Premier' Tea Merchant of the World."
In any case, the mosaic was attractive, and the message good and applicable to all kinds of businesses. That may explain why the subsequent owners of the premises kept it.

While looking for some information on that property, I came across the case of Herbert Hancock, who in 1908 was the manager of the Battersea Park Road branch of the United Kingdom Tea Company. Hancock was indicted for embezzlement, theft, and falsification of documents. He pleaded guilty to the latter charge, arguing he had falsified the books for fear of losing his job as business was bad, and was tried on the others. Although he was found not guilty on one account, his other crimes were considered serious enough to sentence him to six months' hard labour. The edited minutes of the case can be seen here (it starts towards the bottom of the page), here, and here.

Location: Battersea Park Road / Picture taken in March 2012

Commercial Buildings, Battersea

In the last quarter of the 19th century, a property developer keen to promote his two newly constructed buildings had their names painted on the end wall of the eastern unit: "Commercial Buildings." It is perhaps surprising that the name appears on the side but not on the main façades of the buildings, as it is usually the case. The two buildings, separated by Dorothy Road, are of similar design (shops on the ground floor with flats on the three floors above) but the east one, which accomodates eight retail units, is twice the size of the west one. Was there a similar ghost sign on the west building? This is highly unlikely. Even if it had been painted higher up it would still have been obscured by the Lavender Hill Post Office next door.
The Post Office and the two Commercial Buildings appear on this postcard from c. 1911. Both the Post Office and the building in the background with the neo-classical portico (largely hidden by the tramway) have since been replaced by modern horrors. However, one of these ugly modern buildings is lower than the construction it replaced and one can have a much better view of the ghost sign below than it was originally the case.

Commercial Buildings
Location: Lavender Hill / Picture taken in March 2010

Dining rooms, Battersea

By the end of the 1870s, London had an estimated 600 dining rooms. Some simply stated it on their front window, as in this picture taken in Brentford High Street, while others painted it in large letters across their façade.

Dining Rooms
Location: Queenstown Road / Picture taken on: 10/10/2008

A. H. Dunn, Battersea

After Tonbridge, Guildford and Acton, here is a sign for another bakery associated with Hovis (many more will follow). Sadly it has been damaged by graffiti.


A. H. Dunn
- High Class -
Baker & Confectioner
Maker of
Hõvis
Location: Northcote Road / Picture taken on: 23/05/2008

The National News and the Sunday Evening Telegram, Battersea

It is quite amazing how some ghost signs advertising products that disappeared decades ago managed to survive for so long virtually untouched. Such is the case of the one below, which encourages people to read two different Sunday papers, both of which were last published in the early 1920s.

The weekly National News was first published in 1917, the same year Sir Henry Dalziel, the Liberal MP for Kirkaldy and owner at the time of several papers including Reynold's News, launched the Sunday Evening Telegram. Although several newspapers were published on Sundays, there was until then no evening paper. Two editions of the Telegram were printed each week.
In October 1919 Sunday Publications Ltd, a syndicate headed by Horatio Bottomley, MP for South Hackney and the greatest swindler in Edwardian Britain, acquired a controlling interest in both papers. Actually the way Bottomley obtained the money to buy these two publications was unorthodox to say the least: he simply diverted some of the money sent by the public to the Victory Bond Club (the Victory Bond Club was the greatest sting ever mounted by Bottomley, a man with considerable experience in that field!). Bottomley became their editor, a position he shared with Charles Palmer, who in 1920 was elected independent MP for the Wrekin. For his work, Bottomley was paid £2000 a year plus ten per cent of annual profits. He also received 75,000 shares of Sunday Publications Ltd. Yet both papers, which were printed by Odhams Press, had a relatively small circulation and didn't make any profit. In 1921 Bottomley converted the National News into the Sunday Illustrated and ran it in competition with the Sunday Pictorial, for which he had been writing a weekly column until then. Expensive to produce, the Sunday Illustrated only lasted for a few years. As for the Sunday Evening Telegram, it disappeared in 1921.

Spend a Happy Sunday
With the
Morning
National News
Evening
Sunday Evening
Telegram
... ... of Horatio Bottomley MP
A few years ago the future of this ghost sign looked uncertain. Indeed Clear Channel UK Ltd installed a high level revolving and illuminated billboard on this wall. When Wandworth Council objected to it, the company argued it didn't need consent from the Council since this location was being used for the purpose of advertising since 1st April 1974. This was challenged and the matter was eventually settled in the High Court, where two judges ruled in favour of the Council: since the two newspapers were last published in 1921, this sign couldn't be considered as still being used for advertising purposes on 1st April 1974. Consequently the billboard was taken down.

Location: Hafer Road / Picture taken on: 07/03/2008

Pulcinella, Battersea

The two weeks before Ash Wednesday and the penitential season of Lent mark the climax of the carnival period. The Venice carnival began last week and the one of Rio got under way today, to name but the two most famous ones. Costumes and masks are important accessories in many carnivals. Hidden behind her or his disguise, one can indulge in total anonimity. In Italy the characters of the Commedia dell'arte, such as Colombina, Arlecchino or Pulcinella have long been a source of inspiration for participants.
Unfortunately this Pulcinella won't be able to take part in any carnival anymore. A couple of months after I took this picture the name of the restaurant was changed from 'Il Cantuccio di Pulcinella' to 'Cantuccio' and the outside wall painted in a hygienic but uninspiring white. Shame.


Location: St John's Hill / Picture taken on: 05/03/2008

Sunlight soap, Battersea

Sadly yesterday's sign didn't make the temperatures go up but at least the sun is still out this morning. But we need more, brighter, sunlight!
Actually even if Helios remains hidden behind dark clouds, Sunlight can still be seen in many parts of London. Painted adverts for that particular brand of soap that is. Having posted one found north of the river last August, today's example comes from the other bank of the Thames.

Of course, if there is a river associated with Sunlight Soap, it is the Mersey rather than the Thames as it was near its bank that William Hesketh Lever erected Port Sunlight (then in Cheshire, now part of Merseyside). However the story of W. H. Lever and Sunlight Soap started a few miles away, in Lancashire. The son of a wholesale grocer based in Bolton, he joined the family business in 1867, aged 16, before becoming a partner at 21. As a commercial traveller and then director of Lever & Co. he had the opportunity to study the production process of the different kinds of soap available at the time. The rather appalling smell of both manufactured and homemade soaps led him to look for a possible alternative and in 1884 he launched Sunlight Soap. Contrary to most of its competitors, Sunlight Soap contained no silicate of soda, and more oils from copra, palm and cotton than tallow. Thus is lathered easily and did not generate a bad smell. There is little doubt that W. H. Lever had a flair for promotion and publicity, and until his death in 1925 he stayed in charge of the marketing strategy. His soap bars came in attractive packs, which not only protected the soap from oxygenisation and consequently from becoming rancid but also were a way of advertising. And then each soap bars had the name "Sunlight" stamped on it. At the same time, the first of many successful advertising campaigns was launched.
Originally Sunlight Soap was made by different manufacturers but in 1885, together with his brother James Darcy, he founded Lever Brothers and purchased the soap factory of Winser & Co in Warrington to produce it independently. Demand for Sunlight Soap was such that production rose from 20 to 450 tons a week within a matter of months. Additional land was purchased and local architect William Owen was asked to draw plans for the extension of the Warrington factory. However it became rapidly clear that the company would have to move out of Warrington if it wanted to expand even further. In 1887 Lever bought 56 acres in the Wirral peninsula, between a railway line and the Mersey. Two years later production started at the factory named Port Sunlight.
Like Sir Titus Salt with Saltaire before or the Cadbury brothers with Bournville around the same time, W. H. Lever believed it was in the interest of the company to provide employees with descent housing and recreational facilities. Of course there was a strong degree of paternalism, but there is no denying that for a good part of the twentieth century living and working conditions were far better at Port Sunlight than in most industrial areas of Britain, where squalor dominated.
In 1894 Lever Brothers launched Lifebuoy, a desinfectant soap, and in 1899 Sunlight Flakes, which was renamed one year later Lux Flakes. These two products became rapidly popular too. This was not due so much to their novelty (flaked soap for example had been known since the mid-nineteenth century) but to market research, packaging, and publicity campaigns.
From an early stage the company expanded internationally, setting up subsidiaries, taking over or amalgating with other manufacturers, while also assuming control of the supply of raw materials (its involvement in palm oil production in the Belgian Congo, where it took full advantage of the system of forced labour, cast a very dark shadow on Lever...). Abroad the major market was the US, and there as well the success of Lever's soaps was down to successful advertising campaigns launched in the mid-1910s and the 1920s, which propelled them from their confined corner of New England to the rest of the nation.
Meanwhile, in Britain, from 1914 Lever became involved in the production of margarine. After being approached by the government, which anticipated disruptions in the supply of margarine from Europe because of the war, Lever formed Planter's Margarine Co., a joint venture with its major competitor, Watson. In 1915 Lever assumed full control of the company. Sales of margarine boomed during the war but declined once deliveries from the Netherlands and Denmark resumed. However from 1924 sales of soap stagnated and the management of Lever began considering developing its presence in the edible fat market. This explains why in 1930 it merged with the Dutch concern Margarine Unie to form Unilever. But that's another story.
As for Sunlight Soap, even though it is still sold in parts of the world, production ceased in Britain in 2009 due to low demand.

If Lever Brothers launched regular advertising campaigns for their products, I doubt they spent much in painted signs. Of course there are several Sunlight signs around but most seem to date from the same era, namely the 1890s. Indeed only on enamel signs and packages from that period is Sunlight (or the other Lever soap, Lifebuoy) written in that particular way. Obviously I haven't researched that extensively so I could be totally wrong and they could have used that design again at a later stage, but I'll take my chances... Let me know what you think.

Sunlight
Soap
Since all the other Sunlight Soap signs include at least another line underneath, I think the lower part of this one has been swallowed by the roof of the garage next door.

Location: Chatham Road / Picture taken on: 23/05/2008

Peterkin's custard, Battersea, and Flins & Sons, Putney

Over the past couple of years I have been taking hundreds of pictures of painted signs and mosaics, mostly in London and across the southeast. Whether they are highly elaborate or very simple, relatively well-preserved or have almost completely faded by now, they provide an insight into our social history and past commercial practices.

I thought I should start this blog with the first painted sign I spotted in London about 10 years ago, and one I look at every time I take a bus between the Putney area and Clapham Junction. With its smiling boy, this is definitely one of my favourite ghost signs!

Peterkin's
Custard
Self-Raising Flour
Corn Flour
Can Be Obtained Here

"Little Peter" (the suffix -kin meaning little, like -kijn or -ken in Dutch or -chen in German) was the face of a product launched by Joseph Arthur Rank after he joined his father's milling business in 1905 at the age of 17. Apparently Peterkin's Self-Raising Flour was not a big success but it was still being sold by 1926. That year "a grocer was summoned at Marylebone Police Court by the Hampstead Borough Council for having sold to the prejudice of the purchaser, egg custard not of the nature, substance and quality demanded." You can read more about the case here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/AN/article.asp?doi=an9265100185

The case was dismissed on the grounds that there were no standard for custard powder and that given the price of Peterkin's (1 and 1/2 d. for a pint packet), customers should not expect too much of it... What a surprise!

Location: St John's Hill / Both pictures taken on: 05/03/2008

I always thought it was a bit of a miracle this ghost sign was still with us, given its position on a major thoroughfare, and in such a good state.

Although the following signs are not as eye-catching, I include them on this first post simply because they are the nearest ones to where I live (unless another one is hiding right under my nose and I have managed to miss it so far!). As it is often the case the same wall was used by different businesses to advertise their products or services and the texts overlap.

Below is the right-hand side of the wall:

A Flins [?]
And
Sons
Everything
In
Woodwork
Advertising Space
Riverside Works
To Let
...al Motor Body
Con... Dept

Having stumbled on this sign, it is easy to walk away hoping to find another one further down the road... Yet there are clearly three texts on this part of the wall and a close look reveals that the last two lines start on the left, on the part of the wall that appears empty at first sight. I have enhanced slightly the picture below to make whatever is left of the sign come out. The most legible part is next to the little window.

Engineering
... Work ...
Cars Lodged in Garage
Phone Putney 2385

Location: Ruvigny Gardens / Both pictures taken on: 30/04/2008