A Liverpool Exemplar - Thomas J. Hughes

Thomas and Kathleen - with their children, from left to right, Valerie, Shirley and Brenda, at their home in West Kirby in 1927

Thomas Hughes was born in Liverpool on the 21st of March 1888, the son of James, a shopkeeper from Corwen in North Wales. James had worked for Edward Morris and married Anne who had gathered vital experience working in a shop. Together they bought their own shop in Old Hall Street above Princes Dock and along with this, purchased 11-13 County Road in Walton. When they opened the shop in 1889, it became the first, though not the most famous, Hughes store. Young Thomas served his apprenticeship as a draper at Audley House, and then Owen Owen, and went to work briefly at Blacklers in Liverpool before moving to London to work. Getting up early each day before work he would walk to the West End to look at the way the big, smart stores had dressed up their windows, to get ideas for his display. After gathering this invaluable work experience outside the family business, Thomas moved back to Liverpool once again and began working for his father. Using his savings, and leaving his father's business by mutual consent, Thomas set up his first store on the corner of London Road and Norton Street in 1912 with five shop assistants with the former draper Thomas the main shopkeeper, overseeing everything within the business. This was a brave move for a 24-year-old but it was when he came back from the first World War that the business really took off. Thomas had served in the Royal Flying Corps and appears in roll of honour compiled by his church, Walton Park Calvinist Methodist chapel. Back from war in 1919, Thomas married Kathleen Dowling, whom he had met in a public library at Ramsgate, where he was stationed.

 

T.J. liked a quiet domestic life and a very simple lifestyle, he smoked fairly heavily but didn't drink. The move from Walton to Wirral in the mid-1920s was, his daughter says, "his only concession to affluence". The interwar years brought rapid growth to T.J's business and by 1927, with 200 employees, he was looking to expand, while his one-time employer, Owen Owen, struggled and sought a partner to take space in its London Road building. In 1925 Owen Owen saw the need to move out of their Audley House premises on London Road into the new centre of Liverpool at Clayton Square and so they put the building up for sale. This was unsuccessful resulting in the then chairman of Owen Owen, Duncan Norman going to see the T.J Hughes shop. Norman was so impressed that he agreed to let Thomas run and expand his business in Audley House for part ownership of the business under Owen Owen. The outcome of their meeting resulted in them becoming partners in T.J Hughes and Co Ltd, based in the building. T.J Hughes then became a department store and the business not only expanded but blossomed, with T.J leaving an indelible mark on his native city. Within 20 years it had grown into one of the city's biggest department stores with over 400 staff. These were the days of the department store as a theatre of an experience for shoppers to browse. 

T.J Hughes was a businessman and a man of deep principle. His daughter again recalls, "His main relaxation was golf, but he avoided applying for membership of the Royal Liverpool club in Hoylake because he disliked their snobbery and refusal to admit Jews." His subsequent membership of a less prestigious club won him contacts and grateful friends in the Jewish business community, especially the rag trade, at a time when textiles were made and clothing stitched in Lancashire's mill towns. Adored by his staff: the official history by the curator of the shop's memory, John Leston, relates the case of an employee being sent to the dentist to have a tooth removed and later, when ill, being taken on a boat trip to Llandudno with her fiance to recuperate at her employer's expense. Leston's history also recalls how on winter Saturdays, whenever Liverpool were playing at home, T.J and Duncan Norman would walk all the way to Anfield to watch the game from a vantage point immediately behind the goalkeeper. T.J the Kopite was, however, "not particularly interested in football, but went to the matches partly because he greatly admired Liverpool's full-back 'Parson' Jackson for the moral example he set the rest of his team". 

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Thomas worked 13-hour days and made all the decisions. He had "a natural flair for fashion and as a result, as well as one of the cheapest, he also had one of the most attractive shops in Liverpool", writes Leston. But in 1932, the official history continues, "Thomas began to feel the strains of his success … he faced a formidable task trying to keep track of everything single handedly. Consequently, his health began to suffer … so, on the 19th of February 1932, Thomas finally retired from his business. However he found it increasingly difficult to settle down to a life of retirement, especially as he was still only in his early forties. In 1933, over 20 years after establishing his first store, it appears Thomas J Hughes's mental health declined, with some speculation that it was not helped by the stress of overwork. Thomas who now lived at Essedale Meols-drive, West Kirby, was travelling to Belfast in the Belfast Steamship Company's motor vessel Ulster Queen." It was reported on the 14th of April, 1933, that while aboard a steamship travelling to Belfast, the businessman took his own life by climbing on a rail surrounding the ship's stern. He is then said to have shot himself before his body plunged into the Irish Sea, never to be found. The reporter went on to interview Mr Hughes' brother-in-law, Mr F Hughes, who said: “Twelve months ago his health was in such a precarious state through overwork that he was compelled to relinquish much of his responsibility in his business. Latterly a reaction had set in, and the strain he had undergone had made the comparative leisure of recent months insupportable, and a strangeness of manner had been apparent."

Thomas J Hughes left a widow and three daughters and his name is recorded on a family memorial in Liverpool’s Anfield Cemetery. Everyone on Merseyside knows T.J's as the best and most beloved bargain store in town and across England and for the people of Liverpool T.J.'s on London Road will always hold fond memories and remain a part of so many people lives.

The business was expanded by Owen Owen until being sold in the 1980s. 

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/07/a-liverpool-exemplar-dorothy-kuya.html