The Hodson Shop.

In about 1920, Miss Edith Hodson set up a draper's and haberdasher's shop at the family home in front of her brother Edgar's lock factory in the Midlands town of Willenhall. This article explains how the author became involved with the shop's remaining stock and looks at some of the customers' experiences of it. It goes on to describe the collection of clothes and related items, mostly comprising working-class women's and children's garments and accessories from 1920 to the early 1960s. The collection includes Utility pieces, quantities of haberdashery, and costume jewellery and cosmetics of the 1950s. A large archive has also been preserved of the shop's paperwork (bills, invoices, bank statements, correspondence), warehouse catalogues, advertising pamphlets and women's magazines. The ownership of the collection was passed to Walsall Museum in February 1993. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]