TOPIC:

This cabinet photograph shows the shop front of Frederick Watson's grocery store, Barnsley, bedecked with packets of starch, each with a portrait of one of the British generals at the front.

Messrs Orlando Jones & Co., starch manufacturers, offered a prize for the best dressed window in August 1900. It appears that Frederick Watson did not win the £20 on offer, as an advertisement in the Shields Daily Gazette credits Oliver Thomson, of 10 Victoria Terrace, South Shields, as having secured the prize. Presumably participants were required to send in photographs of their displays, this being one of them.


Shields Daily Gazette, 4th September 1900

A few weeks ago Messrs Orlando Jones, starch manufacturers, offered a prize of £20 for the best window dressed with their starch and blue. We have been awarded that prize, and are now showing the photo of prize window.
Oliver Thompson, 10 Victoria Terrace, Fowler Street.






















..

A fascinating and delightful post.

Interesting that a Sheffield shop won a competition created by a London based firm.

Orlando Jones patented the process for making corn starch from rice.

Interesting that today if you tried to purchase a packet of Orlando Jones Starch you would be unsuccessful whereas for Cadbury's Cocoa, Quaker Oats, Bovril & Sunlight Soap it would be the opposite, albeit manufactured by a different firm (one could say exploiting the name) from 1900.

Here is another shopkeeper's attempt at patriotism, though, on this occasion, I would describe the decorations as a display of pure, unadulterated jingoism.

"Kruger, Steyn, Leyds & their Chums" are to be shackled, tarred & feathered, and sent to St Helena and Newgate Prison. My grasp of the scriptures is non-existent, but I imagine the referenced text "Ananias Stand 4th [forth]" is similarly degrading.

The shopfront is that of Robert Bonar, mantle & costume retailer, 35 Rye Lane, Peckham.

Bonar had similar premises at 118 High Street, Peckham; 36 Woodgrange Road, Essex; 133 Upper Street, Islington; and 5 Beckenham Grove, Shortlands, Kent. He died on 15 July 1904, leaving an sizeable estate valued at over £7,000 (the equivalent of over £700,000 in 2024).









...

Regarding Ananias, the Hampshire Advertiser of 30th May 1900 explains all:



Further research, which should have been unnecessary by the great-grandson of a Primitive Methodist Minister and self-confessed Ranter, shows that Ananias comes second only to Judas Iscariot as a betrayer. His crime? - he & his wife sold some land and gave part of the proceeds to the Apostles telling them it was all of the proceeds. When St Peter called him to stand forth and explain himself the Lord smote him dead. Seems a bit harsh to me!