Shopgirls (34 page)

A fine example of a ‘stocky’ or ‘massed’ window display at Marshall & Snelgrove’s, with goods stacked or suspended from floor to ceiling. Photographed the same week that Selfridges opened.

‘London receiving her newest Institution’: a Selfridges newspaper advertisement touting the new store’s dedication ‘to women’s service’, 1909.

Lucile’s fabulous shopgirl models in London, 1912.

Over 200 suffragettes rush through the streets of London smashing shop windows with toffee hammers and other implements in protest, March 1912.

Departmental manageresses, Annfield Plain Industrial Co-operative Society Ltd, Durham, 1920.

One of Harrods’ ‘Green Ladies’ summoning a cab during the First World War.

Women serving in a grocer’s shop during the First World War, taking the place of men who have enlisted in the army, August 1915.

Shoppers outside the Co-operative Society Ltd in East Ham,
c
.1929.

Woolworths shopgirls struggling to keep up with the Christmas rush, as shoppers crowd to buy novelties and decorations, 14 December 1937.

Shopgirls from Marks and Spencer Ltd, enjoying their time at Dymchurch holiday camp, Kent in 1936.

Firefighters at work in front of John Lewis, Oxford Street, London, the morning after highly explosive and incendiary German bombs caused widespread damage, 18 September 1940.

A former Woolworths shopgirl working in a machine shop during the Second World War.

London’s first self-service ‘help yourself’ store at Wood Green, September 1948. Note the wire baskets and a few shop assistants still on hand to help out.