Yes they do!

A couple of days ago we asked if anyone knew anything about this label. Thanks to Keith and Geoff, we do. We reprint the excerpt from the Pall Mall Gazette 1897 below.

From the Pall Mall Gazette. 12 May 1897

……”The question has been asked why Mr James Bailey and the other two directors of Harrods Stores, who are promoting The Auxiliary Stores (Limited), secured the well-known business until recently belonging to Messrs. Richard Grice and Son, of High-street, Clapham, S.W., and did not secure at the same time the much older established grocery and wine business at 15, Gloucester-road, South Kensington, S.W., of Mr Richard Grice, the senior partner in the Clapham firm. The large price of £42,500, plus £6,390 for stock-in-trade, to be paid by the company for the Clapham business might, it is thought, have included also the Gloucester-road business and yet has left something for the promoters, “who are selling at a profit.” As matters stand, if the hopes of the promoters as expressed in the prospectus are fulfilled, there will be a friendly working arrangement between Richard Grice and Son, of Clapham, and Harrod’s Stores, while between Harrod’s Stores in the Brompton-road and Mr Richard Grice of Gloucester-road, Brompton, there will be, as hitherto, active competition. It may, perhaps, be the case that Mr Grice, who took much interest in Mr Bailey’s hotel when it was started, was not disposed to sell his Gloucester-road business to directors of Harrod’s Stores or, more probably, Mr Bailey, as a director of Spiers and Pond (Limited), to which company he sold his hotel, did not think it well to set up a branch store in alliance with Harrod’s Stores so close to the hotel and its wine business belonging to Spiers and Pond.”

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