Chicago Tribune, May 9, 1947
(Chicago Tribune Press Service) LONDON, May 8 Harry Gordon Selfridge, a Wisconsin farm boy who amassed fortune in Chicago working for Marshall Field & Co. and then conquered the retail trade in London by American methods, died in his sleep today in a modest flat in suburban Putney. He had been ill of bronchial pneumonia for several days.
The merchant prince who founded Selfridges Ltd. on Oxford street and built it into one of the biggest and most famous trading places in Eu-rope, was said by members of his family to have died without a great fortune. He had retired from active management of the store in 1939, but had been retained by the company as a consultant at a salary of $8,000 a year.
Frequent Visitor in U.S.
Altho Selfridge became a British subject in 1937, he retained a lively interest in his native land and frequently returned to visit friends and business associates. He and his wife, the former Rose Buckingham of Chicago, who died in 1918, opened their estate, Highcliffe Castle on the English channel, during the first world war as a visiting place for members of the American Expeditionary Force.
First Pay $1.50 a Week.
Harry Gordon Selfridge was born in Ripon, Wis., in 1857. His youth was spent there and in Jackson Mich, where, after his father’s death, he went to work in a dry goods store at $1.50 a week. He was 10 years old.
Later he became a junior bank clerk at a salary of $20 a month, but he left this and took a job as a bookkeeper in a factory. He abandoned this job because he believed it offered no chance of advance ment, and came to Chicago to take a job with the Field store, then known as Field, Leiter & Co.
Within a short time after he entered the employ of the Field store he met the first Marshall Field and made a favorable impression by asking for a job as manager of his department. He won the job, and from then on his rise was rapid. He acquired an interest in the store which he held until 1903, when he sold out for one and a half million dollars.
Writes a Daily Column
With this to back him, he reversed the usual immigrant’s route and went to London to establish his own store. In 1909 he opened the store that revolutionized British trading habits. He hired a staff of 1,000 in the huge building, where for the first time an Englishman could buy “anything from a pin to a phonograf.”
Acutely sensitive to the value of publicity and a believer in advertising, he startled London with such stunts as displaying Bleriot’s airplane in his windows and writing a daily column in the Times over an assumed name, Callisthenes.
Three daughters married European noblemen, becoming Princess Wiasemsky, the Vicomtess Jacques de Sibour and the Vicomtess Louis de Sibour. A son, H. Gordon Selfridge Jr, followed his father’s career at Selfridges for a few years, but later came to New York, where he was associated with an American department store chain.
- A 1904 John T. McCutcheon illustration showing Mr. Selfridge carving up the Schlesinger and Meyer department store and serving to the partnership of Messrs. Carson, Pirie, Scott and another dozen gentlemen.
Time Magazine, February 3, 1941
RETAILING: Selfridge Reorganized
Pert, imaginative, Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge is, as he likes to say, the only man ever to buy a business from five Jews and sell it to seven Scotchmen at a profit. The business was Chicago’s Schlesinger & Mayer department store, sold to Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Harry Selfridge also made $1,000,000 from Marshall Field & Co., went to England with his profits. In 1909 he amazed Londoners with his magnificent effrontery by setting up a department store on Oxford Street, running it in the breeziest American tradition.
So successful was Selfridge & Co., Ltd. that its owner was able to buy ducal mansions, hobnob with London sophisticates. So wild was “King” Selfridge’s personal spending that he had to found a holding company—The Gordon Selfridge Trust, Ltd.—with his Selfridge & Co. common as assets to raise £1,100,000 of quick money. By 1933 he was some $1,000,000 in debt again. Then Selfridge & Co. headed for trouble too.
After 1938 net profits dropped to £166,946—less than half those of two years before—Selfridge resigned his chairmanship, took the inactive, empty post of president. But 1939’s statement (for year ended Jan. 31, 1940) was worse: net profits had dribbled to a mere £21,093. Harry Selfridge, who had called Hitler a great patriot in 1937, could now blame him for part of his troubles, since retail sales have collapsed since the war. But as stockholders wandered into their 32nd Annual Ordinary General Meeting last week, they knew there were other reasons too: 1) an ill-timed £5,000,000 expansion scheme of eight years ago, 2) a 25% yearly dividend on £450,000 of William Whiteley Ltd. stock, guaranteed for 15 years when Selfridge took over the fading rival firm in 1927.
Upshot of the meeting was the acceptance of a tentative plan of reorganization. Whiteley was to be released from Selfridge control, and Selfridge would be split into two: 1) a new trading company, 2) the old company as a holding unit for allocation and transference of future trading profits. The new company will take on the old company’s trading assets and properties securing the old Selfridge debentures. Job of the old company is ostensibly to untangle Selfridge’s financial mess. Whiteley stockholders will get new Selfridge redemption stock in lieu of guaranteed dividends due them for the next three years.
In the maze of reorganization, stockholders had not forgotten the father of their fiscal woes. Insisted one: “I understand there is an idea of giving the late chairman a pension. I’d like to know what it is likely to be.” A reticent chairman finally announced that Harry Selfridge had been retained as “consultant” at a salary of £2,000 a year. Result was a sort of polite mob scene.
“That’s too much.”
“He’s wasted our money.”
“I object strongly to paying him anything.”
“There’s that £114,000 he owes the company.”
“Perhaps Mr. Selfridge will serve for nothing.”
“Perhaps he will pay off some of his debt with the £2,000 a year.”
King Selfridge was not present to hear these recriminations (largely female). Since he resigned the chairmanship he has lived quietly in a Park Lane flat. He works eight hours a day on his private affairs, continues to write a biography of the 15th-century Florentine Merchant-Trader Cosimo de’ Medici. The huge glass window of his former office on Oxford Street, cut with autographs of the great and near-great, has been shattered by a bomb.
Time Magazine, July 16, 1951
RETAIL TRADE: Deal for Selfridge’s
In London financial circles, traders gossiped and wondered as the stock of Selfridge’s department store scooted from 31s. 9d. a share to 52s. 6d. in six months. Last week they heard the reason for the rise. Lord Woolton, chairman of the Conservative Party and of Lewis’ Investment Trust Ltd., which owns a big chain of provincial department stores, had put in a $9,500,000 (£3,412,000) bid for the store. When Lord Woolton offered 65s. a share, Selfridge’s Chairman Horace Holmes quickly advised his stockholders to sell. At the news, Selfridge’s stock jumped another IDS.
For 42 years, Selfridge’s great Portland stone facade with its massive Corinthian columns has dominated Oxford Street, one of the city’s greatest shopping centers; its aggressive merchandising and flamboyant promotions have changed the pace of British retailing. Second largest store in London,* Selfridge’s has little of the snob appeal of its competitors. Said one regular customer: “In Fortnum & Mason’s you feel ill at ease without a mink, at Harrods you feel uncomfortable without a hat, but at Selfridge’s you feel at home in a cotton dress and sandals.” It comes closer to being a big U.S. department store than any other shop in London.
Born Great. The reason is that Selfridge’s was founded by H. Gordon Selfridge, who wa’s born in Ripon, Wis., in 1857, made enough money in Chicago retailing (he was a partner of Marshall Field) to retire at 39.
But Selfridge, whose big spending and royal manner won him the nickname “King,” could not stay retired. He decided to open a store in London, because “London is the greatest and richest city in the world and contains six million discerning inhabitants.” When Selfridge’s threw open its doors in 1909, London newspapers hailed the $2,000,000 building as ushering in “an epoch in London life”; the Times was moved to reassure its readers that the store’s huge and wonderful plate-glass windows did not make the structure unsafe. Throngs marveled at Selfridge’s 130 departments, its vast restaurants, rest rooms, writing rooms and six acres of selling space. “Visitors, indeed, are guests in a palace,” burbled one news story, “with a thousand servants at their disposal.”
Boxing Kangaroo. To keep his palace in the public eye, “King” Selfridge grabbed all the publicity he could (Bleriot’s little plane was on display in the store the day after it flew the Channel), advertised as no London merchant had ever advertised before. Selfridge’s offered customers “101 unusual services,” including expert umbrella rolling, cricket bat oiling, pipe cleaning, wig-making, wart removing. The store’s “Great Luncheon Rooms” offered Southern U.S. cooking, such as “Fried Chicken, Maryland Cream Chicken, Corn
Bread . . . Corn Beef Hash, etc., etc.” In 1914 it opened a U.S.-style barbershop.
Selfridge also kept himself in the public eye. In the ‘203 all London society attended his fabulous champagne election parties on the top floor of Selfridge’s, danced the Charleston to the music of five bands. When things got dull the guests watched a boxing kangaroo.
For years, Selfridge drew a salary and expense account of some $1,200,000 a year until he ran into financial trouble. A merger with another department store (Whiteley’s) cost Selfridge’s about $3,600,000; depression and an ill-timed $21,000,000 expansion program cost the store still more.
Corner Turned. By 1938, profits were down 50% (to $800,000), and King Selfridge, deep in debt himself, was forced into the inactive post of president. By 1941, after Selfridge had retired on a pension of $8,000, the store faced a deficit of $6,800,000. Four years ago, when he died at the age of 90, King Selfridge’s millions had dwindled to $6,000. But the store, under the hand of able Yorkshireman Horace Holmes, had turned the corner; for the last few years its operating profit has averaged more than $2,200,600.
Lord Woolton plans to operate Selfridge’s as a link in Lewis’ chain, which has always boasted that in every city where it has an outlet, it has the biggest store. In London last week, the gossip was that Woolton planned to make Selfridge’s big enough so that Lewis’ boast would cover London too.
Chicago Tribune, March 29, 2013
Nina Metz
Until recently, the Vera Wang bridal shop in Singapore imposed a nonrefundable $482 fee to try on dresses. And last month a health food retailer in Australia posted this notice on its door: “As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for just looking? The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased.”
So much for welcoming the casual browser. But these kinds of bully tactics were par for the course more than a century ago. It took pioneering retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, a galvanizing figure who made his bones in the late 19th century at Marshall Field’s in Chicago, to radically change the way stores and their patrons viewed the shopping experience.
After amassing considerable wealth in Chicago and perhaps struck with a bit of middle-aged wanderlust, Selfridge migrated his considerable charm to London, where he would open his eponymous department store in 1909, an operation that exists to this day. He revolutionized the way Brits spent their money, and it is this portion of his story, that of a gambling, womanizing retail kingpin, that is the centerpiece of “Mr. Selfridge,” the British period drama starring Jeremy Piven that begins its 10-week run Sunday on PBS.
After amassing considerable wealth in Chicago and perhaps struck with a bit of middle-aged wanderlust, Selfridge migrated his considerable charm to London, where he would open his eponymous department store in 1909, an operation that exists to this day. He revolutionized the way Brits spent their money, and it is this portion of his story, that of a gambling, womanizing retail kingpin, that is the centerpiece of “Mr. Selfridge,” the British period drama starring Jeremy Piven that begins its 10-week run Sunday on PBS.
Selfridge was the product of a vastly different era. So were the journalists who wrote about him. Consider the lead in this 1941 Time magazine piece; it would never get past an editor today: “Pert, imaginative, Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge is, as he likes to say, the only man ever to buy a business from five Jews and sell it to seven Scotchmen at a profit. The business was Chicago’s Schlesinger & Mayer department store, sold to Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Harry Selfridge also made $1,000,000 from Marshall Field & Co., went to England with his profits. In 1909 he amazed Londoners with his magnificent effrontery by setting up a department store on Oxford Street, running it in the breeziest American tradition.”
The new TV series (which has already been renewed for a second season) aims for that same breezy sensibility, even if it never quite lands. “Mr. Selfridge” aired in the U.K. earlier this year on ITV, the network home, not coincidentally, of “Downton Abbey.” In the U.S., “Downton Abbey” has been a proven draw: 12 million viewers watched the third season finale last month, making it the highest-rated drama on PBS ever. If TV audiences were willing to swallow the terrible plotting and soapy performances of that series, “Mr. Selfridge” (which earned good numbers in the U.K despite its uneven quality) has a decent shot at cracking the American market as well.
Selfridge, though, is hardly a household name in the U.S. Even Piven, to whom I spoke last week, said he hadn’t heard of the man prior to signing on; he did know of the store (which is not formally involved with the show) and said he frequents the flagship location – designed by Daniel Burnham, by the way – despite the fact that he has no endurance for shopping: “It’s like, I love those pants — do I really have to try them on?” I asked if he gets a discount. “I get a little discount, and they’re incredibly kind to give me a discount, yep.”
In Britain, Selfridges may be a deeply entrenched part of the marketplace, but few could tell you anything about its founder before the show aired. There appear to be just two comprehensive biographies about him, one that is long out of print and the other a more recent publication released in paperback this spring called “Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge” (upon which the series is based), by Lindy Woodhead.
“I asked a librarian at the Chicago library why she thought that Harry was so little known,” Woodhead said by email from her home in France. “After a pause she said, ‘I guess because he left us? I found that very interesting. America lionizes its business-achieving heroes and heroines, but doesn’t seem to take too kindly to them leaving to move to other countries.
“Likewise, England at that time viewed Americans with some suspicion. Too modern. Too overen-thusiastic. Perhaps too egalitarian. Harry and his achievements are remembered through his excess rather than his success, and I hope that my book and, of course, the wonderful television semes albert a dramatization!) will go a long way to restoring his rightful place in the Retail Hall of Fame, where I believe he belongs.” (Woodhead is an adviser on the show.)
The series takes place in the early 1900s, during Selfridge’s time in England (Where he spent the latter half of his life), but his Chicago story is pure Americana, rising from humble means to become a department store honcho.
“He turned shopping into theater” is how Piven put it. And perhaps it is fitting that the Evanston-raised actor, who frequently makes reference to his roots in Chicago theater, would play the title role. Selfridge was a force of nature, and one imagines he possessed all that winning manic energy of Piven’s Ari Gold on “Entourage,” minus the hostility; Selfridge was far more interested in treating people well. Good manners meant good morale, which meant good business. The customer was always right, a phrase he likely coined.
Most of his big ideas—decluttering store windows and lighting them at night; putting merchandise on display; launching the first-ever bargain base-ment; installing phone lines throughout the store—were first put into practice at Marshall Field’s, where he climbed the ranks from stock boy to junior partner. He would go on to marry Rosalie Amelia Buckingham, cousin to the Buckinghams who donated the funds for Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park).
According to Woodhead, during these years Selfridge was “bursting with ideas and always ready to express them.” But: “He was a showman and, because of this, was not particularly regarded by Mr. Field as being a merchant. They had an uneasy relation-ship.” When Selfridge eventually cashed out his shares, he went into business for himself and bought a Louis Sullivan building a few blocks south on State Street, with its distinctive curved corner entrance, that he would ultimately sell to Carson Pirie Scott.
“The store didn’t work for him,” Woodhead said. “It was too small in scale, too near to Marshall Field’s, and one can only assume he was suffering withdrawal symptoms. He sold out quite quickly.”
London was next. Per Woodhead: “He knew it was the biggest, richest and most powerful city on Earth at that time, and had a rather naive belief the British establishment would welcome him.”
After the death of first his wife and then his mother, Selfridge saw his fortune dwindle. He gambled (and lost) frequently and spent lavishly on opportunistic showgirls. Not that he minded. The man liked his night life. But by the time the Depression hit, he was toast—and ultimately forced out of the business that he built. He died in penury in 1947.
It’s funny, though, if you think back to that phrase “just looking” cited by that Australian health food store. That was a phrase Selfridge quite liked. Browsing was his thing. He ran ads encouraging shoppers to visit to the store as if they were sightseers. And more important, he helped abolish the role of floorwalkers who would pressure customers to spend their money or leave.
Here’s one account in Woodhead’s book: “‘Is Sir intending to buy something?’ asked one supercilious man. ‘No, I’m just looking,’ replied Selfridge, at which the floorwalker dropped his pseudo-smart voice and snarled, ‘Then ‘op it mate!’ Selfridge never forgot the incident and refused to hire walkers’ when his store opened in Oxford Street two decades later.”
“Mr. Selfridge” begins 8 p.m.
Sunday on PBS.
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