The Hat Box
George Bumstead

My mother was proud of the fact that she was born within the sound of Bow Bells and could claim to be a genuine east-ender.

In the 1920s we had a hat shop at 27 High Street, next door to the grocery store (25). It is now the bookmakers.*  I can clearly remember my mother taking me with her to London on buying expeditions when I was around nine or ten. One of our ports of call was a wholesale warehouse called Cooks of St. Pauls Church Yard.**  There would be large heaps of hats displayed on trestle tables. Under the tables were large baskets with the customers' names attached. My mother would select say 'two of those', 'three of those', and probably 'only one of those'.  The assistants were all men, which to me at my tender age seemed very strange and, to make mattesr worse, when these little men had both arms full, they would start stacking the hats on their heads in order to transport them to the basket. 

I may be wrong about the selling price in those days, but I think they sold at around 5/9d each. You must remember that everybody wore a hat, or cap, in the 1920s; men, women and children, nobody, but nobody ventured out without some sort of head covering;  they all had weekday hats and Sunday best hats.  The shop was called 'The Hat Box' and on the printed invoices were the words:

“The hat that is becoming to you means that you must be coming to us”.

My mother died in 1930 and my brother and I were not cut out for the rag trade, so 'The Hat Box' became an extension to the grocery store. My father had died eight years before.

*The bookmakers closed down in the early 1990s. No 27 is now the Southwold Railway souvenir shop

** Cook, Son & Co was one of the country's largest clothing wholesalers, founded by William Cook in 1819