Walsall Museum Walsall Museum was a small, local history museum located in the centre of Walsall in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands. The holdings of Walsall Museum ranged from seventeenth-century firemarks to twenty-first century posters. There was al ...

Service's nationally significant Hodson Shop Collection comprises the unsold shop stock of a general drapers' shop in the small town of Willenhall in the

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

of England. It contains everyday

clothing Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...

from the mid-twentieth century aimed at ordinary

working-class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

and lower

middle-class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Comm ...

women and their children. These are garments and accessories that rarely find their way into museum collections, making this an unusual and interesting resource for the study of everyday clothing.

Background

In 1920 Edith Hodson established a small shop in the front room of her family home at 54 New Road, Willenhall. Catering for a local clientele, the shop sold women's and children's clothing,

haberdasher In British English, a haberdasher is a business or person who sells small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons, and zippers; in the United States, the term refers instead to a retailer who sells men's clothing, ...

y and household goods. Edith was joined at the shop by her sister, Flora, in 1927, but business declined in the late 1950s. Edith died in 1966 and Flora, finding it difficult to manage alone, shut up shop in 1971. Rather than getting rid of the stock, she simply closed the door. After her death in 1983 the collection was discovered and transferred into the ownership of Walsall Museum. In 2003, the Black Country Living Museum took over the running of the premises, turning 54 New Road into a museum known as the

Locksmith's House The Locksmith's House (formerly Willenhall Lock Museum) is a museum in Willenhall, England. The premises, on New Road, consist of a house and backyard workshops, typical of the many family run lock making businesses which once thrived in the t ...

The Collection

The collection contains around 3,000 items dating from the 1920s to the 1960s; including outerwear garments and

underwear Undergarments, underclothing, or underwear are items of clothing worn beneath outer clothes, usually in direct contact with the skin, although they may comprise more than a single layer. They serve to keep outer garments from being soiled o ...

for women and children, plus accessories, dress patterns,

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

s, haberdashery,

cosmetics Cosmetics are constituted mixtures of chemical compounds derived from either natural sources, or synthetically created ones. Cosmetics have various purposes. Those designed for personal care and skin care can be used to cleanse or protect ...

and domestic items. There is a small collection of clothing and accessories for men. The clothing is almost entirely machine-sewn, generally inexpensively made, and was purchased from a range of ready-to-wear manufacturers particularly in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

and

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

Fabrics

The introduction of man-made fabrics facilitated the development of cheap mass-produced clothing from the 1920s onwards, making fashion and a choice of clothing affordable to many women for the first time. There are a large number of artificial silk and

rayon Rayon is a semi-synthetic fiber, made from natural sources of regenerated cellulose, such as wood and related agricultural products. It has the same molecular structure as cellulose. It is also called viscose. Many types and grades of viscose f ...

garments that date from the 1920s in the Hodson Shop Collection, with

nylon Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers composed of polyamides ( repeating units linked by amide links).The polyamides may be aliphatic or semi-aromatic. Nylon is a silk-like thermoplastic, generally made from petro ...

Orlon Acrylic fibers are synthetic fibers made from a polymer (polyacrylonitrile) with an average molecular weight of ~100,000, about 1900 monomer units. For a fiber to be called "acrylic" in the US, the polymer must contain at least 85% acrylonitri ...

, Courtelle,

Tricel Tricel is a global engineering company headquartered in Killarney in County Kerry, Ireland. Tricel's four core divisions are Water Storage, Environmental, Construction and Distribution. It has production sites in ten locations in Northern Europ ...

and

terylene Polyethylene terephthalate (or poly(ethylene terephthalate), PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P), is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods ...

being used from the 1950s.

The Utility Scheme

The Utility Scheme was introduced in the United Kingdom during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

as a response to the growing shortage of materials in the country. Designers were challenged to create styles using the minimum amounts of fabric, and trimmings were restricted. The general clothing collection of Walsall Museum Service includes a large selection of Utility garments, with 278 items in the Hodson Shop Collection alone.

References

External links