the more ‘noble’ arts of homemaking or manufacturing. Spending was the antithesis of ‘working’, however much thought, skill, planning and budgeting went into it. It was an activity of leisure and in particular of women’s leisure, regardless of whether the items bought on a given excursion were ‘essential’ provisions from the grocer’s or butcher’s or more ‘frivolous’ purchases from the milliner’s, confectioner’s or draper’s.
Shopgirls’ lives have also been played out on screen in several period dramas. In the early 1990s, the television series
The House of Eliott
, told the story of the Eliott sisters as they evolved from humble dressmakers into owners of an haute-couture house in Edwardian London. The more recent
Mr Selfridge
depicts the same era and locale, presenting Harry Gordon Selfridge as a man who understands not only what his female customers want, but also how his many female staff can help give them just that. One of its storylines follows young Agnes Towler as she overcomes her deprived background and works her way up from junior assistant to head of displays.
Another television drama,
The Paradise
– based on Zola’s novel but set in the 1870s in a northern English town – takes young Denise Lovett on a similar journey, moving from her uncle’s dowdy draper’s to the new department store down the road, eventually rising to become a head of department. These romanticised ‘rags to riches’ storylines were ripped apart by comedians French and Saunders in their own
House of Eliott
sketches, with the couture house mercilessly parodied as the ‘House of Idiot’. The sketches were harsh but fair. In reality, although some shopgirls lived the dream and rose to the top, many others did not. An earlier 1970s sitcom was closer to the mark: one of the running jokes in
Are You Being Served?
was that poor Miss Brahms would never get ahead in ladieswear at Grace Brothers so long as the gorgon Mrs Slocombe lived and breathed.
All this has made it hard for us to think of shops, whatever their size, as serious workplaces. Shops were distinct from the workshops, sweatshops, mills, factories, farms, mines and docks, where ‘real workers’ spent their working day. They were the places where the goods that those workers had produced were ‘merely’ displayed and sold. This helps to explain why shopworkers themselves, both male and female, from the very beginning struggled to gain status, despite taking pride in their jobs. It also helps explain why the real, rather than the fictional, history of their working lives has been overlooked, despite their huge numbers. Theirs doesn’t seem – at first glance – to be a courageous history.
Yet shops have always been about more than shopping. They are sociable places where, for generations, customers have come not just to buy but also to see and be seen, to catch up with friends, gossip and watch the world go by. They are places where creativity sparks and passions fly. Because they trade on trust, assistants have continually to find new and inventive ways to attract, keep and reward their customers. At the same time, of course, they are always ready to squeeze a profit from those same customers. Shopgirls have long been at the heart of these everyday dramas. Their work has always been about more than just selling. As Virginia Woolf suspected, shopgirls and their stories are a powerful part of our shared – sometimes heroic, sometimes shameful – social history.
Shops on Cornhill, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, including Foster’s drapery holding a ‘selling out’ sale, Bellar’s grocery, Baxter’s chemist and the Post Office. Nelson Foster is likely the man standing on the left and postmaster, Mr Goward, the man on the right. Photographed by Samuel Smith, 6 September 1854.
View of the magnificent three-storeyed fabrics hall in Jenner’s department store, Princes Street, Edinburgh. Photographed by Henry Bedford Lemere at the store’s
Shopgirls’ lives have also been played out on screen in several period dramas. In the early 1990s, the television series
The House of Eliott
, told the story of the Eliott sisters as they evolved from humble dressmakers into owners of an haute-couture house in Edwardian London. The more recent
Mr Selfridge
depicts the same era and locale, presenting Harry Gordon Selfridge as a man who understands not only what his female customers want, but also how his many female staff can help give them just that. One of its storylines follows young Agnes Towler as she overcomes her deprived background and works her way up from junior assistant to head of displays.
Another television drama,
The Paradise
– based on Zola’s novel but set in the 1870s in a northern English town – takes young Denise Lovett on a similar journey, moving from her uncle’s dowdy draper’s to the new department store down the road, eventually rising to become a head of department. These romanticised ‘rags to riches’ storylines were ripped apart by comedians French and Saunders in their own
House of Eliott
sketches, with the couture house mercilessly parodied as the ‘House of Idiot’. The sketches were harsh but fair. In reality, although some shopgirls lived the dream and rose to the top, many others did not. An earlier 1970s sitcom was closer to the mark: one of the running jokes in
Are You Being Served?
was that poor Miss Brahms would never get ahead in ladieswear at Grace Brothers so long as the gorgon Mrs Slocombe lived and breathed.
All this has made it hard for us to think of shops, whatever their size, as serious workplaces. Shops were distinct from the workshops, sweatshops, mills, factories, farms, mines and docks, where ‘real workers’ spent their working day. They were the places where the goods that those workers had produced were ‘merely’ displayed and sold. This helps to explain why shopworkers themselves, both male and female, from the very beginning struggled to gain status, despite taking pride in their jobs. It also helps explain why the real, rather than the fictional, history of their working lives has been overlooked, despite their huge numbers. Theirs doesn’t seem – at first glance – to be a courageous history.
Yet shops have always been about more than shopping. They are sociable places where, for generations, customers have come not just to buy but also to see and be seen, to catch up with friends, gossip and watch the world go by. They are places where creativity sparks and passions fly. Because they trade on trust, assistants have continually to find new and inventive ways to attract, keep and reward their customers. At the same time, of course, they are always ready to squeeze a profit from those same customers. Shopgirls have long been at the heart of these everyday dramas. Their work has always been about more than just selling. As Virginia Woolf suspected, shopgirls and their stories are a powerful part of our shared – sometimes heroic, sometimes shameful – social history.
Shops on Cornhill, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, including Foster’s drapery holding a ‘selling out’ sale, Bellar’s grocery, Baxter’s chemist and the Post Office. Nelson Foster is likely the man standing on the left and postmaster, Mr Goward, the man on the right. Photographed by Samuel Smith, 6 September 1854.
View of the magnificent three-storeyed fabrics hall in Jenner’s department store, Princes Street, Edinburgh. Photographed by Henry Bedford Lemere at the store’s
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