A Shaws shop assistant's story

I was privileged to interview a number of former employees of Shaws over the last two years while working on a history of that firm.  One of those interviewed was a lady who started to work in Shaws of Athy as World War II entered its final phase.  Her story was typical of anyone employed away from their home town or village in those war-torn years.  The memory of those difficult times is now fading, but accounts such as that of the County Tipperary lass brings home to later generations what life was like in Ireland of the 1940s.  Seventy-two years have passed since my interviewee spoke of her journey home on Christmas Eve 1945 but let her take up her story.

 

‘I left my home in Co. Tipperary in 1944 to take up my apprenticeship with Shaws in Athy.  Being the war years there were no trains, no petrol for cars, so I set off on my high nelly bike for the neighbouring town from where I continued my journey by bus to Naas with my bicycle safely on top.  I reached Naas at 3 p.m. with a ten shilling note in my pocket.  By this time I was hungry but could not afford to spend money on food, as my ten shillings had to last a long long time.  I would need money for a stamp to write home each week, and a penny for church on Sunday mornings and another penny for the Methodist Church on Sunday evenings, which as a staff member of Shaws I had to attend.  I had to wait in Naas ‘til 6 p.m. in order to continue my journey to Athy on the Dublin bus.  Alas, when the bus did arrive, it was full up.  A man who had seen me waiting there for so long, came and told me that a hackney was coming to Naas from Athy to collect some people and he would ask the owner if he had room for me.  The man was Tommy Stynes who kindly brought me to Athy, and I didn’t have to give him any money.

 

My first Christmas 1945 I worked ‘til 10 p.m. as some customers seemed to get joy from coming in five minutes before closing time.  Between chatting and browsing, they wouldn’t leave til near 10 p.m., never giving a thought as to how far the staff would have to cycle home.  As I worked in the cash desk, I would be almost the last to leave, so it would be 11 p.m. before I could start my journey home.  As it was the war years street lights and directions on sign posts were not allowed, in case of a German invasion.  The roads were not tarred, except the main roads from Dublin to Cork and Dublin to Limerick.  I knew I had to cycle through Maryborough (as it was known then), Mountrath, Borris in Ossory, Roscrea, Dunkevin and then home.  In Mountrath, I turned right, instead of left and went on to Ballyfin, where I met a man “full of Christmas cheer.”  He told me to go back to Mountrath and turn right after the church.  On reaching Roscrea I was so tired I lay on the frosty grass for a while, and then walked ‘til the numbness left my legs.  I arrived home on Christmas morning at 7.30 a.m., spent Christmas Day at home and then cycled back to Athy on Saint Stephen’s Day.  Oh was I tired?  Some of the staff cycled to Gorey, some to Inistioge, and others to different destinations, just to be home for Christmas.  We had no other option.  For three years this was the way we had to go if we were to see “Home Sweet Home”.

 

It is understandably difficult for anyone accustomed to modern motorways and motorised travel to imagine how important a bicycle was in the life of Irish folk during the war and indeed for many years after it ended.  I remember my father cycling to Tullow, Co. Carlow where he was temporarily filling in for a local sergeant who was indisposed.  Those were the days when the bicycle was the only mode of transport for most people as car ownership was the preserve of the rich and the professional classes.

 

Last week when writing of past Shackleton Autumn Schools I overlooked the contribution of Liam O’Flynn, Ireland’s foremost piper who performed at two Autumn Schools.  Another omission was the absence of any reference to the Autumn School journal, ‘Nimrod’ which has been produced every year and this year reaches its eleventh edition. 

Tommy Whelan Shoes and Shaws

If you bought shoes in Shaws at any time in the last 40 years you will undoubtedly have met Tommy Whelan.  The engaging, likeable Laois man who crossed the county border each morning and evening while working in Shaws is now retired.  I first met Tommy when we shared a classroom in the Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane.  He was one of the many country lads who enrolled in secondary school, for the most part just for a year or two to bed down the primary education they had received courtesy of a local rural primary school.  Tommy left school at 15½ years of age to join Bryan Bros. in Emily Square and where he was to spend the next five years, starting on a wage of 30 shillings a week.  Memories flooded back as Tommy recalled his work colleagues of 55 or so years ago.  Danny Kavanagh, Margaret Ryan, Edith Furlong, Sheila Cahill, Ann Bambrick and George Donaldson were just some of the names he recalled from the 1950s.

Do you remember Bryan Bros. and the overhead pulley system which brought cash payments by overhead wires to a central cash booth?   A similar system as far as I can remember was operated in Shaws.  As a young shop assistant Tommy worked in all the departments of the store as and when required, as well as sweeping floors, cleaning windows and as he recalls it, ‘washing the bosses car’.  Calling on customers to collect outstanding monies was another task entrusted to the male staff, as was the collection of items given out to customers on approbation.  Goods on approbation was one of the distinguishing features of retailing in those days, seldom, if ever, to be encountered today.  Tales of coats, hats and dresses leaving the shop for trial at home and featuring the next day at a wedding or other social event before being returned to the shop were common.  The wiles of some customers could never be underestimated. 

After five years retailing experience in Bryan Bros. Tommy moved to McCormacks of Ballinrobe in County Mayo where he remained for one year.  He remembers the journey from Slatt, Wolfhill across country to the County Mayo town courtesy of a lift in a Flemings Fireclay lorry.  Life in the west of Ireland apparently appealed to Tommy and within a year he took up a position with Logues of Eyre Square, Galway where he was to remain for seven years.  Our paths crossed in Galway and more particularly in the Seapoint Ballroom, the onetime Salthill dancing mecca for visitors and natives alike during Tommy’s time in Logues.

A brief sojourn in Coads of Limerick intervened between Tommy’s Galway job and his return to Athy to join Shaws in June 1971.  In the 36 years spent in Shaws shoe department Tommy dealt with an extraordinary array of customers, not all of whom could be said to be good for business.  The potential customer who insisted on trying on every imaginable pair of shoes, only to walk away without buying anything, was the bane of every shop assistant’s working life.  Some folk deemed it a necessary part of everyday life to extract the maximum value for their hard earned shilling and bargained for every purchase.  The bargaining invariably started at half the marked price and much coaxing and not a little loss of profit was required before the deal was done.  Nothing however compared to the customer who after months, even years of constant wear, insisted on returning a tattered pair of shoes or boots and demanding a full refund.  Despite all this Tommy enjoyed dealing with the public and indeed the public delighted in dealing with Tommy.

I was amused by one of Tommy’s stories concerning his boss, Samuel Shaw, who although heading up the Shaw Department store business still operated out of the Athy store where he was constantly on the shop floor.  Private security staff, then as now, were an essential part of the retailing business.  One day a security man came to Shaws and after a while observing staff and customers advised the staff to keep an eye on a suspicious man who was moving between the various departments putting dockets into his pocket but never putting money into the tills.  He little realised that the man in question was the proprietor, Sam Shaw. 

In 1982 Tommy met his match in Brigid Walsh who is from my own birthplace of Castlecomer and their son Barry is today a teacher in nearby Castledermot.  Interviewing Tommy gives a marvellous insight into the retailing world of provincial Ireland.  It’s a world which in many ways has changed, with open displays rather than counters, but what remains the same is the man or woman whose job it is to close the sale and keep the till busy.

Tommy in his time sold thousands of shoes, enough I’m sure to keep many tills busy.  He is now enjoying his well earned retirement which was to start on a Good Friday some years ago but which, being a superstitious Laois man, he brought forward by two days.

Shaws 140th Anniversary

Last week, one of those dark coincidences which come to all of us at some time or other in our lives occurred in my life.  Kieran Dockery and Nan Clarke lived in Prosperous and both died within a few days of each other.  Both were married and coincidentally their partners in marriage were colleagues of mine in Kildare County Council in the early 1960’s. Carmel Fitzpatrick worked in the Accounts Section and Noel Clarke worked, as I did, in the Health Section of the Council initially under Noel Finn and later Jimmy Tully.  Carmel and Noel were extremely kind to the garrulous gauchy red haired lad from Athy who was assigned to the Health Section early in 1961.

I recall both with great affection and remember the day when Noel and myself conspired to push Carmel’s trusty old motor car down the driveway of St. Mary’s and out of sight causing alarm and much vexation when Carmel came out of work that evening to drive home.  The car was gone and Carmel could not understand why her colleagues could be so casual about what was the apparent theft of her trusted  transporter.  Every strategem was deployed to extract the maximum reaction from the hapless victim short of allowing her to call the local Gardai.

Carmel married Kieran Dockery,  a School Teacher and a talented footballer who played for the County Senior team as goalkeeper in 1961 and 1962.  Noel married  Nan Clarke of Prosperous and last week both Kieran and Nan passed away.  My sympathy on their sad losses go to my old work mates Carmel and Noel.

Last weekend I attended a seminar in the National Museum in Collins Barracks Dublin on World War I. Thomas Burgh was the Architect for the Barracks which was built in the early 18^th Century and he was also the Architect for Bert House which he designed for his brother.  A few days later, I came across a photograph in the Irish Independent of the 9^th August 1938 showing an open air boxing match between Ireland and Germany which took place in the square in the centre of Collins Barracks.  The photograph was of interest because the Irish Boxing Team which fought that night included an Athy man, Dick Reid.  Dick, who so far as I can find out, was the first Athy man ever to represent Ireland in any sport.  A few days later, I had occasion to contact the Irish Amateur Boxing Association which organises and control Amateur Boxing in Ireland looking for information on the boxing career of Dick Reid.  I was told that Jim Kane, who knew Dick very well had died just a few days previously aged 82 years.  Jim was for a long time the caretaker of the National Stadium in Dublin and as a relation of the Chanders Family of Athy got to know and admire Dick Reid when Dick was boxing in the late 1930’s.  Dick Reid, International Boxer from Blackparks in Athy will be the subject of a future Eye on the past. 

This week attention was caught by succession of large signs in the windows of Shaws Store advertising a sale to celebrate the firms 140^th Anniversary.  Shaw’s are synonymous with Athy although the firm has a connection going back to the 1860’s with Mountmellick where Henry Shaw opened his first small drapery shop.  Duncans Department Store owned by Duncans of Fortbarrington House, now Tonlegee House was acquired by Sam Shaw in 1915.  For some years previously, Sam had worked in the Duncan Store and when he took over the store the year before the Easter Rebellion, it marked a further expansion of the Shaw business enterprise which had previously been extended to  Portlaoise.  “The Boot Mart” had been opened in Portlaoise by the Shaw family just 25 years before the Athy store.  Later on, Sam Shaw acquired the premises in Duke Street, previously occupied by Brennan’s where he opened a hardware shop.  By 1919, Shaws consisted of drapery Stores in Mountmellick, Portlaoise and Athy and a Hardware Store in Athy.  Five years later, the enterprise was registered as a Private Limited Company, a legal entity which remains to this day.

Sam Shaw was the Managing Director and under his guidance, the business again expanded with the acquisition of a store in Waterford from Robertson Ledlie Ferguson in 1941. Shaw’s Store in Carlow was opened in June 1949 but following its destruction by fire in November of the following year, it was rebuilt in 1951.  Three years later, Gaze and Jessop’s Hardware Store in Portlaoise was purchased by Shaws and this business was subsequently transferred to the new Centrepoint Centre in 1973.

The Shaw group opened a Wholesale operation in 1960 under the style Shaws Wholesale Limited and the 1960’s marked the initial moves which culminated in Shaws becoming “Almost Nationwide”.  An additional branch was opened in Roscrea followed by another in Fermoy before Shaws moved into Dublin with the opening of a store in Ballymun.  In 1973, Shaws opened a new store in the Crescent Shopping Centre in Limerick and three years later acquired Hadden’s which operated stores in Carlow, Dungarvan and Wexford.  Further stores were subsequently opened in Dun Laoghaire and Tralee and a major rebuilding programme saw stores rebuilt in Carlow, Waterford and Dungarvan.

Today the Shaw group of Companies comprises fourteen Department Stores and two Shopping Centres employing over 600 persons.  Henry Shaw who established the first small drapery store in Mountmellick in the 1860’s was succeeded by his son Sam and the business now “Almost Nationwide” is now under the corporate Directorship of Sam’s sons, William, Mervyn and Trevor. It is planned to redevelop Shaw’s Athy Store in the near future and that development when it comes will give enormous fillip to Athy’s retailing sector.  Congratulations to everyone in Shaws for the 140 year old success story.

Shaws

For someone like myself who grew up in Athy in the 1950s the names Bradburys and Shaws are names which feature in treasured memories of 60 years ago.  I have previously written of Tom Bradbury and the extraordinary impact he had, not only locally but also regionally on the world of baking.  Shaws is a name synonymous with shopping in Athy. Yet strangely the Shaw story is one which had its origins across the county border in the Laois town of Mountmellick.  The County Laois town drained by the Oweness River, a tributary of the River Barrow, was founded in the early part of the 17^th century and owed its early development to the Loftus family.  Before the settlement had reached its first century it had already established itself as a major centre for members of the Society of Friends.  The Quakers, as they were commonly known, arrived in Mountmellick with William Edmundson in 1659, just five years after the first Irish Quaker meeting had opened in Lurgan.  The Penal laws restricted Quakers, Roman Catholics and Dissenters alike to involvement in industry and commerce and it was largely due to the enterprise of the local Quakers that Mountmellick became known as the ‘Manchester of Ireland’. 

It was the marriage of Henry Samuel Shaw and Annie Smith which saw the establishment of the Shaw business which next year celebrates it sesquicentennial.  It was just fifteen years after the Great Famine when the newly married couple opened up their business as drapers in the County Laois town.  Henry Shaw, a native of West Cork, had earlier worked for the Quaker family of Pims, while his wife Annie who was originally from Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, had worked for the local firm of Smiths as a dressmaker. 

The small drapery business benefitted from the strong work ethic championed by John Wesley on his many visits to Ireland.  John Shaw and his wife were believed to be members of the local Methodist community, which in its early years was still part of the Established Church.  Their business prospered and in 1890 the Shaws purchased a boot and shoe shop in what was then Maryborough.  Called ‘The Boot Mart’, it dealt exclusively in footwear but as part of the developing Shaw enterprise it extended the business into drapery.  Within two years however Henry Samuel Shaw died and his eldest son William then became a driving force in the business with his mother Anne.  There were two other sons, Henry and Samuel, and it was the latter who in his time would drive the Shaw enterprise forward to become one of the largest family drapery businesses in Ireland. 

In 1904 the Shaws purchased four thatched houses on the main street of Maryborough and this was the location until some weeks ago of Shaws Department Store in Portlaoise.  It was there that the Shaws specialised in the early years in hand tailored garments. 

Athy people have always associated Shaws with the South Kildare town.  It was here that the developing drapery enterprise which in later years had branches ‘almost nationwide’, had its headquarters.  The driving force behind the advancement of the firm was Samuel Shaw or Sam as he was better known.  Sam, the third son of Henry and Annie Shaw, the founders of the firm, was sent to Athy in or around 1902 to serve his apprenticeship with Alexander Duncan of Duke Street.  Four years later he went to London to learn the tailoring business and on his return to Ireland some years later Sam Shaw worked in the Portlaoise shop with his brother William.  In 1914 as war clouds gathered over Europe Duncan’s Department Store in Athy was sold and the purchaser was Annie Shaw who had opened her first shop in Mountmellick exactly 50 years previously.  The tragic death of William Shaw, just weeks after he married in 1929, left Sam Shaw effectively in charge of the Shaw drapery business.  He would continue to be involved until his death in 1980, during which time he skilfully contributed to the growing success of Shaws. 

Shaws stores are now to be found in Athy, Carlow, Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Waterford, Wexford, Roscrea, Fermoy, Limerick, Tralee, Dun Laoghaire, Castlebar, Drogheda and Ballina.  It is a family firm, although now under aegis of a company formed in the 1930s. 

Athy is no longer the headquarters of the Shaw enterprise, the management focus having shifted to Portlaoise some years ago.  However, for Athy people Shaws is still seen as an Athy firm.  It is after all the anchor tenant in ‘shopping Athy’ and many people will have memories of shopping, not only in the Athy branch but in many of the Shaw branches which are to be found in three of the four provinces.

To mark the sesquicentennial of Shaws stores I am gathering material for a written account of the Shaw story.  All of us have memories of shopping in Shaws and of dealing with the staff, many of whom spent a lifetime working behind the counter.  I would like to hear your memories, good or bad, of shopping in Shaws.  Let me have your stories for possible inclusion in a forthcoming publication dealing with the history of one of Ireland’s most famous family drapery stores.

George Hegarty

George Hegarty always seemed to be part of the Athy I knew as I grew up. Surprisingly he has only been with us since 1957.

Of West Cork farming stock George was born in the townland of Smorane, Skibbereen, where his brother still works the farm which has been home to Hegartys for seven generations. At an early age George was apprenticed to a draper and shoe merchant in his native town. In those days shop apprenticeships were much sought after and indoor staff, who lived over the premises, actually paid for the privilege of learning their trade. As an outdoor staffer who lived at home George earned 7/6 per week for the first six months. To younger generations unaccustomed to the intricacies of pounds, shillings and pence, his pay in modern coinage came to 37½ pence per week.

In April 1945 George was on the move when he got a job in Templemore. Staying only eleven weeks he moved further inland on being appointed Chargehand in the Boot Department of Goods of Kilkenny in July 1945. As a member of the indoor staff George lived over the premises with full board and a salary of £14.0.0 per year. Boots and shoes sold in those days were of the sturdy type, designed to last. Every home had an iron last used when reinforcing newly purchased boots or shoes with the metal heels and toe caps so prevalent in the 1940's and 1950's.

George spent three years in the Marble City before returning to Templemore in November 1948 to set up his own boot, shoe and light drapery business. Marrying the following year George was to spend the next eight years developing his business during the difficult years of the pre Lemass boom years. Giving up the unequal struggle in 1957 George came to Athy to work for Shaws as Manager in mens clothing.

In the late 1950's and well into the 1970's tailor made suits were all the vogue. A good quality suit cost sixteen guineas although a cheaper version was available for £12. Rolls of cloth decorated the shop shelves but the choice was limited normally to dark grey or navy with or without stripes. Customers were measured on the premises and the cloth was then sent to a local tailor or to Dublin to be made up. If made up locally all the trimmings were provided by Shaws. These included buttons, thread (including twist or heavy thread for button holes), heavy outer lining and inner lining of canvas, hair cloth or synddo. The local tailors included Mick Egan of Leinster Street, Tom Moran of St. Patrick's Avenue and John Connell of Prusselstown. Once made up the garments were returned to Shaws for a fitting after which final adjustments were made before completion.

The emergence of the ready made suits in the early 1970's hastened the demise of the town tailoring skills. George recalls how his boss reacted on seeing the first readymade suits which George had ordered for the shop. Made of shiny cloth material with narrow trouser legs they did not find favour with Sam Shaw who ordered them to be returned as "they will never sell". They were sold within a week leading to another order from George and the admission from his boss who was over 50 years in business "Hegarty, I have gone beyond it".

Up to the mid-1970's Athy was still a hive of business activity especially on Saturday nights with late opening until 9.00 p.m. George recalls many a Christmas Eve leaving the store with work colleagues at 10.30 p.m. after a long and busy day clutching Santa's toys secured at the last moment for his children Ivor and Anne. Stories of the same toys scattering around Leinster Street under the watchful eye of the local Gardai after a nocturnal visit to a well known watering hole are recounted with mirth and a wistful regret for times now past.