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Times were hard for many during the recession of the 1930s and the breadwinner in the family often had to use their initiative to make ends meet. Ray Whitehurst recalls here how his father turned his eye for a bargain into a thriving business.

My father, Herbert, always had an eye for a bargain and that was why he became a dealer. His mother before him was also that way inclined, so I suppose he inherited that trait.

He had been a dealer in the 1920s but then fate dealt him an unfair hand and by the time I was born, in 1934, he was then one of the thousands who were on the means-tested dole.

I was to be the last born into the family, comprising nine other living siblings. Others had been born and left home before my birth. I later understood what a hardship it was because, like most families at that time, we lived on or just below the breadline. Dad was in and out of jobs until Mam passed away in 1941.

The younger Whitehurst brothers

Following Mam's death Dad decided to resume his old occupation as a dealer. He used what was left of Mam's insurance and proceeded to set up a second-hand shop on Osmaston Road, dealing in furniture and other items, anything except clothing.

The war had just started and furniture and fittings were scarce. Most people were still living on the breadline and it was the days before the likes of hire-purchase, credit sales or even the Welfare State were even heard of. If you wanted something, you saved up for it and paid cash. Occasionally, he would allow certain people to pay a deposit and finally pay up by the end of the month.

The business started slowly but, as he became known, people would come at all hours to trade. Some would be selling goods to obtain some quick cash and others to fund a purchase which had caught their eye.

Eventually, he made a rule that business would only be transacted during shop hours. He also decided that items not paid for and not collected in 28 days would be re-sold and no deposits would be returned to prevent customers changing their minds.

Dad would buy and sell anything from a wardrobe to a brass candlestick but he wouldn't buy rubbish and he was wary of unknowingly buying stolen goods.

The local copper was often in the shop to inform him and check for stolen items.

The second-hand shop in Osmaston Road

Unfortunately, Dad would have no recompense for stolen items that he had purchased. Luckily, he didn't have too many problems in that respect.

As the business became established, Dad would obtain the majority of his goods through the job-lot purchase of household contents from the relatives or executors of deceased people.

These purchases would mean that Dad and my siblings would be involved in sieving through all the items. Firstly, all the rubbish and badly damaged items would be burned or disposed of. We were never short of fire-wood in those days. Repairable items would be mended, where possible, and then all the saleable goods would be cleaned up and put into the shop, sold through an auction or stored in a lock-up warehouse for future sale.

I sometimes wince now when watching the Antiques Road Show programme on TV, remembering some of the goods which we scrapped because they were damaged or not in fashion. Some of them would be worth a fortune today.

One of my memories, as a teenager of about 13, was that I had to deliver a sofa that a lady had purchased from the shop. She had no transport to take the sofa away but my father volunteered the use of myself to deliver it for her.

She said she would treat me on delivery. The mode of transportation was a large hand-cart and the journey was from the shop on Osmaston Road to an old Army hut in the disused Army camp on Stenson Moor.

This involved pushing the loaded hand-cart up Grove Street, on to Normanton Road, then up Church Street and on to Upperdale Road. Arriving at the Cavendish, I then proceeded up on to Stenson Road, venturing down it, until I crossed the railway bridge at Stenson Moor, finally arriving at the camp.

Off-loading the sofa at the destination, I was given the princely sum of one shilling (5p) by the lady concerned. I then had to return home quickly as it was getting dark and I had no lights on the hand-cart.

My journey had started at around 2pm on an October afternoon and it was around 7pm before I arrived home. Thankfully, it didn't rain and in the late 1940s there was very little traffic on the roads. I cannot imagine that any youngsters today would even consider such an adventure.

Dad continued in the business for 14 years until the day he died and the business folded up, as neither I nor my siblings wished to carry on his legacy.

Some items that had remained in the shop for most of the time were six decorative glass balls, all about six inches in diameter and of different colours. They had hung on the wall in a corner of the shop and had gradually faded in colour and become dusty. These balls had been purchased from a man in the early days of the business.

The transaction had taken place in our house out of shop hours and the man was desperate to sell them. My father was at first reluctant to buy them but did so when the man stated that he would "eat his hat" if my father could not re-sell them.

Listening to the conversation, we children had visions of him having to carry out the task using a knife and fork just like Charlie Chaplin did in the film, The Gold Rush. I sometimes smile to myself and wonder if that man ever kept to his word?

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County:  Derbyshire

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