Thorntons - The Flagship Store

The Flagship Store

It was Joseph William’s intention to offer the nicest sweet shop in Sheffield. The walls inside the shop were covered in fashionable cream anaglypta wallpaper. There was a beautifully shaped glass case from which Kunzle cakes were served individually with tongs. Trays of Mackintosh's Toffee Deluxe were broken into pieces by assistants using toffee hammers and pincers and put into waxed bags on the brass weighing scales. Behind the counter there were mirrors from floor to ceiling, giving the shop a classy air and making it seem much bigger than it actually was, with glass shelves for the knock-stoppered jars of caramels and boiled sweets. Other now-unfamiliar products included Cachous, Violet Cachous, Sweet-Lips, Phul-Nanas and the descriptively-named Curiously Strong Mints.

Joseph couldn’t afford to give up his job at the Don Confectionery Company at the time and he prudently retained his job as a commercial traveller until 1913 to guarantee himself an income. Instead he decided to take his son Norman out of Abbeydale Secondary School when still only 14 to become manager of the shop when it opened. The other members of staff were two young ladies “of a very superior type” who doubtless gave the shop the necessary atmosphere of quality that Joseph sought. There must have been great relief in the family when the shop opened successfully; taking £20 a week, “quite a lot of money….in those days”. It was successful enough to persuade Joseph in 1913 finally to leave his job and risk opening another shop.'