From Staffordshire Past Track, roadworks in Tamworth Street. Amy Palmer’s dress shop is on the left. If I’m viewing it right, that’s now the (closed) Julian Graves store opposite the Corn Exchange. Image from Staffordshire Past Track.
Amy Palmer seems to have been quite notable in Ye Olde City in the 1930s, at least. I think her store stood on the corner of Tamworth Street and Conduit Street, where the empty former Julian Graves store is today.
The only thing I could immediately locate was the image above, from Staffordshire Past Track, and the clipping below, from the Lichfield Mercury of Friday, 8th July 1932.
I’d love to know more about her. It looks more like an Emporium that a mere shop…
Lichfield Mercury, 8th July 1932. Such choice! Of course, back then, Walsall and Lichfield were only minutes apart by train for the conscientious bargain hunter with a few bob to spare…
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I am constantly surprised at the way that isolated historical facts often merge into a tapestry with other facts, creating a broader area of historical knowledge. I refer in this instance to Amy Palmer of Lichfield.
The first common conduit in Lichfield stood at the junction of Tamworth and Conduit Streets as long ago as the year 1280. Would that be near the shop?
The Trustees of the Conduit Trust often spent most of the disposable income on benevolent causes, the entry for 1730 includes, ’15/- to widow Palmer of Stowe Street, she having a large, sick family’ and later, ‘ Two guineas for cloathing Ben J Palmer, a poore natural.’ Wonder whether Amy can be traced back that far ? She is in excellent company, if so, for one entry which makes an
appeal is a grant to Mr. Michael Johnson, ‘a decayed tradesman’ in 1731 of ten guineas. It was in this year that Samuel had to leave Oxford, without taking his degree, and this entry explains the reason. An earlier entry of 1673 states that widow Johnson was paid £3.10s. for placing Michael
(Samuel’s father) as an apprentice Stationer in London, plus ‘Charges in his Jorny, 10/-‘
Had it not been for the the benevolent involvement of the Trust in caring for the Johnson family, it is quite certain that we should have been ineffably the poorer for want of that great personality, Samuel Johnson. Who knows? Amy Palmer’s family could have been helped in those dark times to survive and to move on to better times.
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