The Archive will be closed for the Bank Holiday from Friday 18th, re-opening Tuesday 22nd April
Marks and Spencer traces its roots back to a humble market stall founded by Michael Marks in Leeds in 1884. This exhibition introduces the man whose experiences and entrepreneurial flair shaped what is now a global retailer.
Michael was born in about 1863 in the small town of Slonim in Russian Poland, now part of Belarus. Available sources give differing birth years. Michael quoted 1859 on his British naturalization papers; his wedding certificate implies a date of 1864; his son Simon later quoted 1863 as his father’s year of birth.
Slonim, where Michael’s family had lived for several generations, was part of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, where Jews were permitted to live as part of harsh Russian laws which persecuted Jewish people. Jewish families living in this area experienced poverty and hardship and did not have equal rights to non-Jews.
Slonim was a typical Russian provincial town and, at the end of the 1870s, had over 1,500 houses and a total population of about 15,000 people. This comprised 10,000 Jews, 3000 Orthodox Church followers, 1500 Catholics and 500 Muslims and Slonim had several churches, several synagogues and a mosque.
Michael’s father was Mordechai, a tailor who also owned part of a water-powered grain mill in a village neighbouring Slonim. A photograph taken of Mordechai in his later life shows him wearing the yarmulke or skullcap of the Orthodox Jew. Michael’s mother Rebecca died shortly after his birth, and he was raised by his older sisters. He received a religious education in one of Slonim’s Hebrew schools, culminating in his bar mitzvah in the synagogue at the age of thirteen.
Michael was the youngest of five children. His brothers were named Barnet and Ephraim and his sisters were named Malke Beile and Esther. The family surname was not always Marks – this was an anglicised name that the family adopted, with some sources suggesting that the family’s original surname was Markovich.
To escape increasing anti-Semitism in Russia, all five of Mordechai’s children emigrated to Great Britain or the United States. Barnet was the first of the Marks siblings to leave, followed by Michael, who was about 19 years old when he left Slonim in 1882. He travelled by train to Germany, then by ship to London’s docklands, with few possessions and little money.
Michael had expected to join his older brother Barnet in London, but discovered that Barnet had already left for America, where he remained and opened a general store. Michael heard that there was demand in Leeds for unskilled tailors, including at a firm called Barrans. He had just enough money for the train fare to Leeds, so he set off for the north to try to find work.
Michael’s other brother, Ephraim, also migrated to the UK in 1890, setting up his own small chain of Penny Bazaar shops including in Oldham, Stockport, Dublin and Dundee. By 1918 Ephraim’s business was doing badly and he closed or sold his shops; this included selling some shops to Marks and Spencer, the company founded by his younger brother Michael.
Within a few days of arriving in Leeds in 1882, Michael met Yorkshireman Isaac Dewhirst, who owned a wholesale warehouse close to the city’s main market. Dewhirst was standing outside his warehouse talking to his warehouse manager Charles Backhouse, when Michael Marks came up to them and, unable to speak English, said the single word ‘Barrans’. Backhouse could speak a little Yiddish and was able to establish that the penniless young man was hoping to find work at Barrans tailoring factory, located in Leeds.
Isaac Dewhirst was fascinated by the stranger. He took Michael to his warehouse and offered to lend him five pounds, equivalent to about £520 at today’s values. Michael Marks asked if he might use the money to buy goods from the Dewhirst warehouse.
Dewhirst agreed and this gave Michael his first batch of stock to sell as a pedlar, rather than going ahead with his original plan of trying to get a job at the Barrans factory. As Michael Marks paid off the debt from Mr Dewhirst in instalments, he was allowed to make further purchases to the same amount.
For two years, from 1882 to 1884, ‘Michael the Pedlar’, as he became known to his customers, tramped from house to house or stood on the street corners of towns and villages around Leeds and beyond. He worked long hours, setting aside a little money each time he sold all the goods in his basket, which he carefully saved.
Michael felt that Leeds offered great potential for commerce, as well as a community that he could become part of. In 1884, Leeds had a total population of around 310,000 people. Within this, a Jewish community of about 6,500 was mostly concentrated in the area known as the Leylands.
In the Autumn of 1884, Michael used the savings he’d accumulated to rent a stall in the open-air section of Kirkgate Market in the city centre, managing the stall personally on the two market trading days each week. His stall sold simple haberdashery products that every household needed.
In 1886, he moved his stall to the indoor market area, increasing to trading throughout the week.
Michael ‘…learned from his customers that quality and value for money were paramount selling points. While many of his rivals in the market would buy the cheapest goods possible, however shoddy or inferior the merchandise, Marks knew that over the long term this would prove a ruinous policy. He also realised that even if he had been able to speak English, he could not have competed with the promotional banter of neighbouring stallholders. He knew that his goods had to, as it were, speak for him. He therefore had to win the trust of his clientele by selling items that represented value for money. In practical terms this meant buying merchandise from his wholesaler, Isaac Dewhirst, which was of a higher quality – and therefore greater cost price – than the cheapest available. He would build his profits, he hoped, by increased turnover. By 1888, the year of Simon’s birth, this policy was paying off. The crowds around Marks’s stall demonstrated his popularity and other market traders were vying to position their stalls close to his, hoping to benefit from the increased customer flow.’ (Paul Bookbinder, M&S management roles & Company Archivist 1953 – 1992)
Michael only lived in Leeds for six years, from 1884 to 1890, but it was the most significant period of his life. During this time, he not only founded a successful business, but also married and started his family.
In 1886, the same year that Michael moved his stall to the indoor hall at Kirkgate Market, Michael married Hannah Cohen at Leeds’ Belgrave Street Synagogue. Hannah was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrant parents; her father Moses Cohen was a tailor. The age of the bride is given as 21 and of the bride groom as 22.
Hannah’s name is shown as ‘Fanny’ on the marriage certificate’, and birth certificates for her children give her name as ‘Annie’. Both of these were popular ‘familiar’ versions of the name Hannah, but it’s impossible to know whether this is how Hannah referred to herself, or whether the registrar writing the records chose to use these variations. Other family members referred to her as ‘Hannah’ in surviving family papers.
‘Hannah was a wonderful woman…a rare creature, small, slight, delicate, devoted. She was, in spite of being small, immensely energetic, a dominating little lady who ruled her husband and her family. She was a wonderful dressmaker and had a head for figures. In the early days of their marriage, she and Michael would work together at night to prepare for the next day’s work in the market’. (Israel Sieff, Michael and Hannah’s son-in-law, Acc-11-643).
Hannah helped her husband during busy periods on the market stall. When her apron pockets were full of the pennies received from customers, she would bag up the cash and carry it to Dewhirst’s nearby office for safekeeping. At home, after the evening meal, Hannah would help Michael to prepare for the next day’s trading by sewing buttons onto display cards and counting the nails, buttons and hairpins into penny bags.
When Marks and Spencer became a Limited Company in 1903, the legal document shows that Hannah Marks was a signatory who had a say in the business, which indicates her role in its success.
Michael and Hannah originally lived in rented rooms in Leeds and had their first baby, a son who sadly died at birth. In 1888, Michael and Hannah moved to a small, terraced house at 50 Trafalgar Street in the Leylands district of Leeds, where a large proportion of the city’s Jewish community was centred.
Shortly after moving to Trafalgar Street, Michael and Hannah’s son Simon was born at home. Simon would later become the Chairman of M&S and would develop the business founded by his father Michael from a chain of penny bazaars to large department stores on high streets across the country.
By 1890, Michael was concerned that the Leylands district was no longer a safe place for his young family, due to increasing anti-Semitism in the area. In addition, it was no longer the best location from which to look after his expanding business, which now included market stalls in other towns including Birkenhead, Castleford, Chesterfield, Wakefield and Warrington. His solution was to relocate with his family to Wigan.
Michael and Hannah went on to have four daughters. Dora Rebecca, always known as Rebecca, was born in 1890, then Miriam, Matilda and Elaine were born in 1892, 1895 and 1901 respectively.
On their marriage certificate, and the birth certificates of their youngest children, Michael and Hannah’s names are marked with an ‘x’ rather than signed by them in their own handwriting, which indicates that they could not write in English at that time.
In September 1890, Michael and Hannah moved with their young family to Wigan. There were not many Jewish families in Wigan at this time, and there was no synagogue in the town for the Marks family to attend. Michael was attracted to Wigan by its potential for a successful market stall, with a large population of factory workers, and by its location. It was within half an hour’s journey by rail to Warrington and Birkenhead and other Lancashire towns like Bolton, which offered Michael a promising field for expansion. Within weeks of Michael’s arrival in Wigan, he had set up a new Penny Bazaar market stall in Wigan’s Market Hall and rented a second property for use as a warehouse, for storing the goods that were sold on all of his market stalls.
At first, Michael rented rooms in Caroline Street in Wigan, but in 1891, Michael and Hannah and their two oldest children, Simon and Rebecca (aged 3 and 1) moved to a two-up, two-down terrace house in Great George Street in Wigan, which they rented for £9 a year.
As an adult, Michael’s son Simon wrote of this house:
‘…my first memory is of a little house in Wigan at the age of four. The patter of clogs on the cobbled stone streets appealed to me enormously… We lived in modest but comfortable circumstances and conditions, and our happiest times seemed to be when father spent the Sunday with us. He was the most loveable of persons and seemed to be away a great deal. He was of course pre-occupied with the building up of his business to which he devoted all of his energies’.
In 1892, with business prospering, the family moved to a larger house at 57 Darlington Street, Wigan, at double their previous rent. Michael’s business was successful but soon he recognised that, to expand even further, he needed two key things: an injection of capital and a business partner to share the workload.
In 1894, Michael found the partner he needed in Yorkshireman Tom Spencer, a senior cashier at Dewhirsts, who used his life savings of £300 to buy a half partnership in Michael’s business. The famous Marks and Spencer name was born, and the first shop premises to bear this new company name were in Manchester. To be on hand to ensure the success of this new venture, Michael moved his family from Wigan to Manchester.
Using Tom’s investment as capital, the partners quickly expanded into more impressive shop premises in more locations. In 1900, within six years of the partnership commencing, there were 36 Penny Bazaars across the North of England and Midlands, South Wales and London.
This growing chain of Penny Bazaars needed to be kept fully stocked, requiring significant storage space. The first Marks and Spencer warehouse in Manchester was in Robert Street, but this was soon outgrown. The partners arranged the building of a larger warehouse in Derby Street. This was the company’s registered office from 1903 to 1924 and featured proudly on the company letterhead.
Michael and his family lived above the Marks and Spencer Penny Bazaar at 20 Cheetham Hill Road, within a thriving Jewish community with synagogues, a Jewish school and lots of Jewish businesses. Michael made weekly visits to the Jewish Working Men’s Club, where he would distribute money to the most needy members.
To six-year-old Simon, the family’s home, an end-of-terrace shop with rooms above, was warm and comfortable. He would always view Manchester as ‘…my home town. It is here that I spent the formative years of my life, where I married, and where I helped to lay the foundations of a new Marks & Spencer’.
Simon attended the Manchester Jews School in Derby Street, where the non-religious curriculum focused on the English language and culture. On evenings and Sunday mornings, additional tuition was received at a Hebrew religious school. Simon’s mother Hannah encouraged her son to attend synagogue on Friday night and Saturday mornings. Michael could rarely accompany his son as these were the busiest trading periods for his business, attending at only the most significant times in the Jewish religious calendar.
In 1895 the family moved to a larger house in a wealthier area, at 118 Bury New Road in Manchester. In 1901, the family moved further along the same street, to 396 Bury New Road. Michael ordered the existing house to be demolished and constructed a new house, ‘Knoll House’. It boasted eight bedrooms, a garden summer house, accommodation for a cook and a maid, and even a telephone, a recent innovation that few homes had.
For secondary school, Michael was keen for Simon to attend Manchester Grammar School, one of the best schools in the country that was open to children of all faiths. To Michael, the school represented educational opportunities for his son that had not been available to him as a boy in Russia.
In 1897 Michael applied for and received British nationality, through the official process of ‘naturalisation’. Michael’s business partner Tom Spencer endorsed the application, in which the mayor of Wigan and the Chief Constable of Manchester described Michael as ‘a respectable man’. Michael’s application indicated his gratitude to the country that had granted him shelter and the opportunity to set up a home and a business.
A range of sources offer insight into Michael Marks at different times in his life. At the time of opening his first market stall in Leeds in 1884, Michael is described as ‘a small made man, of a fair, almost ruddy complexion, physically not strong, sensitive in spirit, kindly and sympathetic’. (Historian Goronwy Rees)
‘He was dressed in a black waistcoat, peaked cap and clogs, with a large basket over his arm… He could only speak a few words of English, could not read or write, and spoke Yiddish. He was a very cheerful and good-natured person, and an extremely hard worker. He was not religious.’ (Joshua Goldston, family friend, interviewed in 1948)
‘He was a nice boy was Michael Marks, he was a man born with a smile on his face, a man who never lost his temper. The strongest word I ever heard him say in my life was ‘damn’, and only twice in my life. He never lost his temper and took life in such a way that, well, he was – I don’t know, anybody who ever talked to him liked him. In adversity he was just the same, always smiling, always carrying on.’ (Joshua Goldston, family friend, interviewed in 1948)
‘Michael was a hard-working and ambitious man, fiercely determined that his family should never suffer the poverty and privation that he had known during his early life in Russia.’ (Paul Bookbinder, M&S management roles & Company Archivist 1953 – 1992)
‘He was thrifty, immensely hardworking and honest, and in his business dealings appreciated the virtues of simplicity and directness. He had a gift of sympathy and imagination which enabled him to understand the needs and wants of his working-class customers; it is the kind of gift which can give retailing something of the quality of a social service. He had known suffering and want himself and they aroused his sympathy when he encountered them in others’. (Historian Goronwy Rees)
‘He inspired confidence and affection in even casual acquaintances; he never quarrelled; and he never lost a friend. Withal, he had an unlimited quality for work and no nonsense or vanity as to the kind of work as long as it was honest and useful’. (Harry Sacher, Michael’s son-in-law)
Just before Christmas in 1907, Michael had a particularly strenuous week. Simon described how his father: ‘…travelled to Glasgow where he had made arrangements for the purchase of chocolates from a firm called Reeves; he had travelled to Cork and back, where he had bought a considerable quantity of tinned milk in penny cans; he had travelled to London and back.’
On Christmas Eve, Michael took Simon, Tom Spencer Junior and a business friend to lunch at a grand hotel in Manchester. Afterwards, Michael set off for his branch in Stretford Road. Shortly after they parted, Michael collapsed in the street. When he recovered, he was taken home in a taxi and confined to bed, with a nurse in attendance. Three days later, he lost consciousness and died on New Year’s Eve, 31st December 1907.
His funeral on 2nd January 1908 drew one of the largest attendances ever seen at Manchester’s Jewish cemetery – some 30 to 40 carriages followed the cortege.
In 1928, Simon Marks wanted to introduce a ‘brand name’ for the best quality goods on sale at Marks and Spencer. One of M&S’s suppliers had their own brand name of St Margaret (their goods were made in a factory near a church called St Margaret in Leicester) and Simon liked the idea of using a saint name, so copied the idea. He decided on the name of St Michael, to honour his father Michael Marks. Between 1928 and 1958, the St Michael name appeared on M&S’s best quality products, then from 1958 to 2000 it was used on all M&S products and became well known around the world. For many decades, the main company office in London was called Michael House, first at a location in Chiswell Street and then at a much larger building in Baker Street, in another gesture to honour Michael Marks.
The business Michael founded is now a global retailer with over 65,000 colleagues serving nearly 30 million customers every year. The heritage of that business, including records relating to Michael’s life and work, is housed at the M&S Archive in Leeds, in a purpose-built repository that bears his name – the Michael Marks Building.
