The Jewel of Knightsbridge

by Harrod, Robin;

  CHARLES DIGBY HARROD

  Back in 1861, Charles Henry had decided to hand over the running of the business to his son, Charles Digby. The death of his wife Elizabeth, tiredness after many years of work, and a vigorous son full of new ideas must have helped to make the decision.

  As the Daily Mail of 1949 puts it, in newspaper speak in an article to mark the 100th anniversary of Harrods:

  The clarion call of opportunity was sounding, and by 1861, when a migration of ‘gentry’ to Knightsbridge had already begun, Henry’s son, Charles Digby, heard the call so plainly that he persuaded his father to sell him the business.

  Young Charles Digby, then 20 years old, was enthusiastic, ambitious and hard-working, and that year began to run the store himself. A deal was made between Charles Digby and his father that he would take over the running of the store, and buy his father out in instalments over the following three years. His father would stay on to help and advise, and then retire gracefully.

  An added stimulus to business appeared at about this time. An International Exhibition, known as the Great London Exposition, was a form of world’s fair. It was built in 1862, beside the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington, on a site that now houses the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. Queen Victoria did not attend the opening as she was in mourning. The exhibition, much like the Great Exhibition of a decade before, was to display the industrial, scientific and artistic advances of the day. It was intended to be permanent, but after six months a purchase was not confirmed by Parliament and the construction was removed and reused to build the Crystal Palace.

  The directories, rating records and electoral registers show that Charles Henry remained in charge of the Brompton Road premises, at least nominally, until 1864, and was then replaced by Charles Digby. Charles Digby had been running the shop for three years by then and had made enough money to clear the debt and pay off his father. Charles Henry moved out to live elsewhere. At about this time, what had been 8 Middle Queens Buildings was renamed as 105 Brompton Road.

  On Thursday, 31 March 1864, Charles Digby married Caroline Godsmark at St Mary’s Church, West Brompton. My knowledge of the character of Charles Digby might suggest he chose to marry on a Thursday as this was the quietest trading day of the week! Charles is listed on the marriage certificate as a ‘tea dealer’ of 105 Brompton Road, whilst Caroline is listed as a spinster of ‘full age’. Caroline was living nearby at 4 Percy Terrace, Gloucester Grove West, now called Clareville Grove, on the Old Brompton Road.

  Charles Digby’s father is listed as a ‘gentleman’, which means that he was not working and was living on his own means. Caroline’s father, James Godsmark, had died in 1849, aged 33, of meningitis, and was listed on the certificate as having been a ‘grocer’. His widow, Caroline, had remarried in 1855 a commercial traveller from Builth Wells, Breconshire, called Robert Edward Jones. He was one of the witnesses.

  The Godsmark family has been thoroughly investigated by several descendants. One, Peter Godsmark, sent me a resume of the family and some of it is repeated here. The earliest known record of the surname Godsmark is in the Sussex Subsidy Roll for 1296. The Subsidy Rolls were the lists of people who had paid the ‘subsidy’. This was the tax levied by the king. It was usually one-fifteenth of the value of all movable property. The Godsmark family moved from Ashurst in the late 1600s to Cuckfield and Slaugham.

  In the eighteenth century, the family were farmers and yeomen in the Horsham area of Sussex. One descendant, James Godsmark, became a grocer, initially in Lambeth and later in Chelsea. He had married Caroline Kibble, the daughter of a baker, James Kibble from Lewisham. Some of the Godsmark children continued in the grocery and tea business after James’s death, and some of the Kibble part of the family were later to be heavily involved at the Harrods shop itself. It is tempting to think that the common factor between the families, the grocery business, was what brought Charles Digby and Caroline together. It might be that James Godsmark and Charles Henry Harrod had traded with each other in the 1840s. James’s grocer son might have been a customer and Caroline’s new husband, Robert Jones, also worked for a while after their marriage as a grocer and tea dealer in Chelsea.

  Tim Dale, who wrote some of the previous books about Harrods, told me in 1987 that Charles Digby Harrod and Caroline Godsmark met when they both attended Trinity Chapel, situated on the south side of Knightsbridge, close to Albert Gate. (Although Trinity Chapel sounds like a Nonconformist church, it was in fact Church of England.) Charles Digby was appointed Honorary Librarian of Trinity Chapel in 1861 and Caroline Godsmark taught in the Sunday school and sang in the choir. They became engaged in 1862, two years before their marriage.

  Both the Kibble family and Caroline Godsmark and her second husband, Robert Jones, remained heavily involved with Charles Digby and his family. Caroline Godsmark’s father, James Kibble, was a much beloved great-grandfather to Charles Digby’s children. The family sent me a lovely letter from him, written in 1875 to two of the children a few months after the birth of another daughter.

  Once Charles Digby had married, he and his bride Caroline took over the living accommodation on Brompton Road and his father, Charles Henry, by 1865 had moved out to 9 York Cottages in Kensington. This was a leasehold property which had been built a few decades earlier on the south side of the triangular site opposite the Brompton Oratory. He lived there with a housekeeper for the majority of the rest of his life.

  Although Charles Henry retired from Brompton Road in 1864, in 1866 he was still listed as a grocer at 40 Old Compton Street, in the shop taken over by Henry Digby, so he may well have been ‘keeping his hand in’. His ‘York Cottages’ property was renamed between 1866 and 1871 and became 9 Thurloe Place.

  The Essex connection continued, as in the 1871 census his housekeeper was Julia Digby, a cousin of his wife’s, who was 30 years old in that year. She must have left soon after as she married in that same year. In 1881, he had a more mature housekeeper, a 64-year-old widow from Birch called Eleanor Murton (or Munton). There is a Digby relative by marriage called ‘Murton’, but no other connection has been found. It would certainly be in character for his housekeeper to be a relative.

  There is nothing in the records to throw light on how Charles Henry spent his time in retirement. Perhaps he was just a doting grandfather. Charles Henry lived on twenty years in retirement and died aged 85, in 1885, at 2 Oxford Terrace, Chiswick. Oxford Terrace was a terrace of large villas, part of Oxford Street in Chiswick. The road still exists, just under the southern end of the M4 flyover, east of Kew Bridge. It is not known why or when Charles Henry moved to this address, but it is probably related to the fact that Henry Digby was living at a house just down the road at 15 Oxford Road. Charles Henry had presumably gone to live near his son as he became less independent. He had retained his Thurloe Place residence as this property appears in his will.

  His cause of death was given as ‘General Decay of Nature’, what would now be called ‘old age’. His death had been ‘reported’ by his son Henry. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery with his wife and his youngest son, Joseph. His will, made in 1879 whilst he was resident at Thurloe Place, states:

  My sons Charles Digby Harrod and Henry Digby Harrod are already indebted to me in the sum of one thousand pounds each and the sum owing from my said son Charles will if still due at my death form a fund to meet the legacy hereinafter bequeathed to my son William.

  All the household goods were to be sold and the proceeds divided equally between his three sons, as were the plate and plated articles. To Charles Digby he bequeathed his ‘leasehold messuage and premises at 9 Thurloe Place, with the appurtenances thereto belonging [appurtenances – the rights associated with the property]’, and his life assurance policy with the National Life Society. To William Digby he bequeathed £1,000, and to Henry Digby he bequeathed his four ‘leasehold messuages at 11, 12, 13 & 14 New Church St, Bermondsey’ and the £1,000 he owed him.

  Char
les Henry’s personal estate amounted to £3,436 9s 10d, somewhere over £1 million in today’s money. Quite an estate for the grocer from Cable Street.

  The early 1860s was the start of a dramatic change in the direction and speed of travel for the Harrod shop, and Charles Digby Harrod was the architect of this change. It is quite difficult to know where to start in trying to describe the man. Although his father had done some of the hard work and had laid the foundations for the Harrods shop that we know today, there is little doubt that in the thirty years after taking over, Charles Digby took the business into overdrive and changed the shop into a store. He had the personality, the energy and the vision to make it happen, and was helped by being in the right place at the right time. That his father, having decided to retire after forty years in business, had the confidence to leave the whole thing in the hands of his 20-year-old son, says a lot for his capabilities.

  As we shall see as we progress, although Charles Digby was a hard taskmaster, he never expected his employees to work harder or longer hours than himself. He had enough drive for several men. He was an enthusiastic man who managed to infect his staff with his enthusiasm and the will to follow his example. He was brimming with new ideas and not afraid to try them out. In addition to all of these business traits, he had an engaging personality and managed to retain his common touch with his customers, who vied to be served by Mr Harrod in person.

  After 1863 Charles Digby and his wife, Caroline, and later his growing family, progressively filled the living quarters at the back of the Kensington shop. The story of the shop has been gleaned from a variety of sources, including Tim Dale’s books about Harrods, which are full of useful information, and an account by Gilbert Frankau written in the 1940s. I have, thanks to successive Harrods archivists, been granted access to the same information in the Harrods archives as was used by both Frankau and Dale.

  Other information came from the book,Modern Men of Mark, in a section about Sir Richard Burbidge, Charles Digby’s successor, and from the newspapers of the time, now available online. British History Online is a wonderful resource and provides a wealth of material.

  An example of what was available to me in the Harrods archives is an original script, full of information, entitled, ‘The Story of Mr C.D. Harrod’. Importantly, it is a first-hand account of events. This document is the transcript of a talk by Miss Conder to the Harrods staff on 26 January 1932. She was Katherine Emily Conder, an unmarried granddaughter of Charles Digby who was born in 1898 and died in 1989. She was alive at the tail end of Charles Digby’s Harrods tenure and worked in the shop herself for some years, so had invaluable direct information and a lot of fresh second-hand information. Katherine Conder had been 7 years old when her grandfather died. I am sure both Frankau and Dale took some of the personal details of Charles Digby from this source.

  Her account of the early days of Harrods differs somewhat from other observers, attributing little of the vision of the future shop to her great-grandfather, who she calls ‘Henry Charles’ rather than Charles Henry Harrod. He must have called himself Henry at some time as the sign in the windows of his early shop was ‘H.C. Harrod’.

  Although she denied bias, she was obviously a fan of Charles Digby Harrod. The start of her talk began thus:

  The task of preparing the ‘Story of Mr C.D. Harrod’ has been considerably more difficult than I anticipated when I cheerfully accepted Mr Lawe’s invitation to come here and tell it. During his lifetime, and he died a little past middle age, the significance of his achievement had scarcely begun to be appreciated so that, while there are of course, records of the development of his work, there are but few records of the man himself. The two, naturally, are inseparably bound, and the best I have been able to do is to piece together the records of the development of Harrods Stores with personal reminiscences of those who had intimate personal contact with its founder and so to sketch a portrait that I hope is in due proportion and likeness to the original.

  I must ask you throughout the narration to dissociate me as far as possible from the bias of personal relationship. My grandfather died when I was only a small child and I have but few, though very happy, memories of him. Ancestor worship forms but little part of the modern creed, and so I hope you will regard me as quite detachedly interested, as I feel myself to be.

  At the same time, I must admit that I have been able to discover very few faults recorded against him.

  In his case it seems that the Shakespeare dictum has been reversed; the good that he did lives after him, the evil, if any, was interred with his bones.

  The first Harrods shop in Brompton Road was founded by my great-grandfather, Henry Charles Harrod, in 1849, a small but ‘select’ grocer’s shop which he had thought little of extending. Charles Digby Harrod left school at about 16 years of age, and entered a wholesale grocery business in the city. He very soon began to dream dreams and see visions of the possibilities for the development of his father’s business, but he was not then allowed to put them into practice. However, he cherished them secretly and used those years of minority to exercise his own powers of observation, to watch the ways and means of current trade and commerce and to think out schemes for making his visions into practical realities.

  In 1861, Henry Charles Harrod withdrew from the business and Charles Digby, at the age of 23 reigned in his father’s stead. [He would in fact have been aged 20 when he took over in 1861].

  For five years longer he continued his observations, meanwhile consolidating the business as it stood, winning and extending the favour of his clientele with reliable goods, attractively displayed, and by unfailing personal attention to the personal requirements of his customers.

  Like most young men, Charles Digby was bursting with new ideas and I suspect his father would likely have advised restraint. It says something about the success of the shop that in those early ‘consolidation’ years between 1861 and 1864 Charles Digby was able to pay back his father at the end of that three-year period.

  Charles and Caroline’s first child, Fanny Elizabeth, was born in 1865, just over nine months after their marriage, and their second child, Grace Miriam, followed soon after in 1866. The growing family soon began to put a strain on the accommodation, at the same time as Charles Digby wanted to expand the store and its products. A move elsewhere for the family was inevitable. Returning to Miss Conder’s talk:

  By 1866 his plan of attack was ready. He had observed that West End shops were charging exorbitant prices, mainly because they were forced, on the one hand to allow their customers 2 or 3 years credit, and on the other to give large bribes to the servants in order to retain the patronage which their employers left to a great extent in their hands.

  The family moved out in 1868. He started adding his first new sections to the shop and building a new shop front. He stepped up the pace of expansion, adding ‘departments’ selling furniture, perfume, china, and glassware.

  He decided to take a gamble, hoping for increased trade by curtailing the ridiculous and exorbitant prices being demanded by the old established businesses in the West End.

  The changes that took place were not aimed at the upmarket trade which has characterised the development of the shop in the last century, but were intended to increase the volume of sales, with good quality and value for money.

  He did not employ ‘barkers’, as some shops did, but sent out discreet circulars to the better-class houses, listing his offerings. A barker was an employee who stood in front of the shop or walked the local streets to solicit customers by shouting out his loud sales spiel.

  The key to this growth was his adoption of the ‘co-operative’ method of retailing, whereby the shopkeeper was able to charge low prices by taking cash only and refusing credit. He advertised his shop and selling methods, pointing out good things were to be bought on his premises at a small cost for a strictly cash payment.

  At around the same time, the Post Office Supply Association was formed using similar methods, ‘for th
e purpose of supplying officers of the Post Office and their friends with articles of all kinds for domestic consumption and general use, at the lowest wholesale prices’. It became the Civil Service Supply Association in 1866 and with membership exceeding 3,000, presented a real threat to Charles.

  Charles Digby was not going to take this challenge lying down. He had seen the possibilities of publicity, and he hit back. In that year, he placed announcements in the Times, Morning Post and the Pall Mall Gazette, London’s newest evening paper, and other papers. They proved a great success. The adverts proclaimed such bargains as ‘Harrods sells 7 pounds of rice for 1/-.’ He announced the installation of new plate-glass windows in late 1866 and that became reality in 1867, quite a novelty at that time. In the window behind there were no goods displayed, just the slogan ‘Co-operative Prices’.

  Crowds came to test the value for cash, and the business grew by leaps and bounds; so rapidly that it became necessary to build on to the premises every few years. The takings increased and the staff numbers were gradually expanded from the five in 1866. He later built a two-storey extension and opened new departments. By degrees, most of the shops down the same side of the street were bought and swallowed up by Harrods, beginning with Nos 101 and 103 Brompton Road in 1874.

  Charles Digby saved by keeping the business in personal ownership rather than forming a company. The local co-operatives put up the fiercest of battles, but not for long. His methods meant he was able to compete keenly on price and success followed. After his brother, Henry Digby, left Brompton Road and went to live and work in Old Compton Street, Charles realised he needed additional management help, and preferably from within the family. In 1868, Charles Digby was joined by his cousin, William Kibble, who would have then been aged 16. William was the fifth child of James Kibble, a baker, who was Caroline Godsmark’s uncle. James and Charles Digby were first cousins by marriage.