Shopping at Piggott Bros. & Co.

As it appeared that all records from the Piggott Brothers long history had been lost or destroyed, it was a surprise to come across a sales catalogue of the company among other items. The catalogue is hardbound in a red cover. It is undated, although the dates of the complimentary letters and news of exhibition medals, which are included, would seem to indicate a date of about 1888. The volume runs to 263 pages. It is divided into the various business interests of the company; marquees and tents; camping equipment; harness and saddlery; flags and banners; gymnastics and sports.

Before Piggotts’ moved to Stanford Rivers, they occupied the address 57, 58, & 59, Bishopsgate Street, Without, London. The company also owned store facilities in Plough Yard, Shoreditch, and a factory in Spitalfields. The proximity of the showroom to Liverpool Street Station allowed the company to sell a wide range of goods matched to a prosperous clientele drawn from London and the commuters and railway travellers of the period. The list of prestigious customers conveys a snapshot of European royalty in the late nineteenth century with Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan of Turkey, and His Serene Highness the Khedive of Egypt mentioned among others.

In printed testimonials, customers expressed their satisfaction, but the tributes also give some idea of the range of the business at that time. From testimonials, we read from the Blackburn Corporation; “I have much pleasure in stating that the large Marquee and Grand Stand, to seat 5,000 persons, erected by you . . . . on the occasion of the visit of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales . . . . was carried out to the entire satisfaction of the Committee. I may also add that the Princess commented favourably upon its splendid appearance.” A William Boyce comments; “Did people but know the saving in household labour that is gained by using your Tents, there is no one, I feel certain, but would use them for dancing &c., in preference to their drawing rooms.” Robert Overman, referring to the “civil and respectable conduct of your [Piggotts’] servants” adds “I regret that I cannot call them by their names, and all that they did for us on your behalf might be equalled, but not surpassed.”

From the above it may be deduced that the main business of the company was the sale and hire of tents. Indeed, the catalogue illustrates and provides prices for tents in a large number of designs in a range of sizes. The ‘Mildmay Tent’, supplied to and used by the Emperor William II of Germany, was for both “Camping and Sporting purposes” and at a price of £21 was of superior quality. No doubt more aptly named, was the ‘Boating or Canoeing Tent’ the ‘Gipsy or Emigrant’s Tent’, the ‘Prospecting or Engineer’s Tent’, and the decorative ‘Bathing Tent’, of course. ‘The Czarina Tent’ must have appeared a little racy in red and white stripes, but there might have been little call for the seemingly elaborate ‘Crusader Tent’, “supported on lances of the early period”!

Most interesting is ‘The Expanding Balloon Tent” (figure 1). Although we are now familiar with such tents, it is perhaps a surprise to find such tents on sale so long ago. A statement that English and Foreign patents had been granted to a Captain in the Royal Navy would suggest that this tent was a recent innovation. For a price of less than £10, a tent of diameter 10ft. could be bought. Among the advantages listed, the tent is stated to be light-tight and “perfect for Photographic Development”.

As already noted, Piggotts’ sold other goods apart from tents and camping equipment. Sports goods appeared fully in their catalogue. Six years after the Australian victory at the Oval, after which the tradition of the Ashes was atarted, England cricketers despite the presence of W. G. Grace were still having a hard time against the Australians. For their part, Piggotts’ satisfied all cricket requirements with bats and batting gloves, cricket nets and cricket “telegraphs” (better known now as scoreboards) down to boxwood mallets. John Wisden’s ‘Cricketers Almanack’ could be bought for one shilling (5p.) – copies in good condition from that era now sell for more than £1,000! Cricket sets for women could also be purchased.

Football, a game still in its relative infancy, had just staged the first FA Cup - won by Preston North End who in so doing completed the Cup and League double. Piggotts’ offered football shirts, ‘knickers’, ankle guards and boots, apparently “very light, and [which] do not in the slightest degree interfere with the free action of the foot” (figure 2). A fashionable line in ‘striped German Jerseys’ also sold in a ‘slender fitting’ at 2s. 9d.. The ‘Challenge Football’ is “the most perfect ball ever introduced” and the ball “will outlast three ordinary balls, and will not lose shape or increase in weight in wet weather”. It cost just 13s. 6d.. The ball had apparently been used in three recent, important football matches played at the Oval.

The first of the modern Olympic Games were still eight years away, but twenty-four pages of the catalogue are devoted to gymnastics equipment. There was no computerised running or rowing machines, of course, but there were plenty of clubs to swing and a variety of wooden contraptions for vaulting, lifting and climbing. The range of equipment suggests an obsession by the late Victorians for physical fitness. There is the ‘Reliable’ horizontal bar, which is adjustable at little less than £7 (an unreliable horizontal bar would presumably have been much cheaper!) You could even buy a complete gymnasium with frames, horizontal bars, parallel bars, giant strides, ladders, trapezes, see-saws and numerous ropes and swings. Most of the gymnasts, illustrated using the equipment, are equipped with a distinctive moustache typical of the period, of course.

Any company that had traded for more than two centuries, as Piggotts’ has done, must have been nimble in reacting to changing fashions and market opportunities. Piggotts’ were to attempt to diversify their business in the period around 1910 by entering into the challenging and rapidly expanding aero industry. Having made tented hangars for housing the experimental aircraft that were being developed within the United Kingdom at the time, they entered aircraft manufacturing themselves. Although this seems like a dramatic step to take, their competitors were similarly short on experience. Nevertheless the move would have presented various contrasting technical challenges. The impression created from the catalogue of Piggott Brothers from this period is of a lively, adventurous company, willing to compete across a wide front over fashionable and substantial business areas.