Pawnbrokers and Penny Stores

After the festive period, gift giving and indulgence follows the contrastingly bleak winter months and a period of self-deprivation: alcohol free, less calories and reduced spending… It is time to look back to thriftiness in Barking’s past - shopping here a hundred years ago involved pawnbrokers and penny stores.

During the nineteenth century Robert Willet, inherited a drapery business (selling cloth), from his father, John, who became a Pawnbroker on North Street, by 1881. Around this time, Philip Barton owned the Unredeemed Pledge Stores at 5, East Street. He sold items that had been pawned and not reclaimed.

Moneylending has ancient origins but was considered disreputable for centuries and only recognised legally in the UK from 1800 onwards. The industrial revolution fuelled the need for pawnbrokers, which supplied extra income for people with regular, but low-paid work.

Pawnbrokers were not used by the poorest people, who had nothing to ‘pawn’, but by those in financial difficulties or whose regular wage was not enough. Many families slipped into the trap of pawning their ‘Sunday best’ outfits on Mondays to pay the weekly bills and redeeming them on Saturdays (after pay day) to wear for the weekend, church or chapel.

The song, often sung to children, which begins: “Half a pound of tuppenny rice, Half a pound of treacle, That’s the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel!”, dates from around 1850 and implies that the coat (‘weasel and stoat’ in Cockney Rhyming Slang) was regularly given up for the purchase of foods…

Pledging belongings (to ‘pawn’ comes from the Latin pignus or ‘pledge’) in return for a loan, to be repaid with interest, was one way to avoid the much-feared Workhouse. There was a large, foreboding Workhouse on North Street from 1788, where local inmates were usually separated from loved ones, kept on meagre rations and forced to work on mundane tasks. It was a haunting reminder of where poverty could lead to, until 1836…

If the debt to a pawnbroker was not repaid within the agreed time-limit, items were sold to cover the cost, on set days and often by auction, although the pawnbroker could set the reserve price.

The typical pawnbroker’s symbol of the three golden balls may have its origins in the Italian Medici family, famous for banking and money-lending, in the fifteenth century, the Lombard bankers or Saint Nicholas who, gave away three bags of gold to help young women avoid destitution…

You can see three gold balls hanging at 27 East Street - pawnbrokers and moneylending remain part of local high-street services today, perhaps revived by the bad publicity for ‘pay-day loan’ companies. There are some interesting photographs of number 27, when H Frank, the tailor, continued to trade from his shop whilst the new Woolworth’s block was being built behind it.

Bill George wrote an interesting article on 'H Franks and Son', after an old wooden hanger from the store was sold on Ebay. From his research he discovered that' H' was not originally for Harry, as he was later known, but Hyman! Hyman and Rose (nee Kactlwith) were still living at 27 East Street in 1939 - the rebuilt Woolworth's block by then, with their two sons Morris and Ronald. Hyman's father was known as Joseph Hyman and the family's original surname was Cwang, before being changed to Franks... Both of Hyman's parents emigrated from Russia, probably in the nineteenth century. Bill discovered that the tailoring business of H Franks began in 1913, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 1963. Sadly Ronald Franks, lost his life, whilst serving as a Glider Pilot in World War Two, dying from war wounds, as a prisoner of war, in September 1944! His father died two years later. Morris, perhaps with his mother's help, until her death in 1970, managed the tailoring business, until it was dissolved In 1980. Bill has proved that even a coat hanger can tell an interesting story!

Many residents will recall that 23-25 East Street hosted Woolworths - a stalwart of British high streets. The American, Frank Woolworth, believed, that a good penny store, (influenced by Penny Bazaars like Mark’s and Spenser’s) ran by a Yankee, would go down a storm. The first one opened in 1909. The original Barking store-front advertised Woolworths as: ‘3d and 6d stores’, and numbered 328 of over 800, including fifty built in 1928. The last UK Woolworth’s closed in January 2009, and after more than a hundred years of inflation, it is apt that the three-penny store is now a 99p store. The grand pilasters (imitation columns) along this row still stand proud and will hopefully be cleaned up to enhance their original beauty, as part of this Barking Town Heritage Project.

There was a lovely photo of Maureen Jones, working on the Beauty Counter at the Barking Woolworths, in 1953, shown in the Treasured Memories exhibition at Eastbury Manor House, recently. She was probably one of many who enjoyed the store and missed it when it closed. The Post articles at the time of its closure, quoted local people’s fond memories of the store. Luckily there are still several inexpensive shops on East Street selling a variety of items as Woolworth’s used to do, although perhaps with less panache. Even at Woolworth’s the personal level of customer service was eventually replaced with self-service shopping and eventually it failed to compete with on-line sales.

The earliest penny store in Barking was probably the London Penny Bazaar on Broadway, which was replaced by Mark’s and Spenser’s - who claim to be the originators of Penny Bazaars, through Mark’s Penny Bazaar, established in Leeds in 1884. The history of M&S in Barking is another story to tell, next time…