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I went to work at Price's Music Shop in Handel House in 1926, straight from school, remembers Peggy Hancock, and stayed for fourteen years until I got married. Selling records and music was what I did for most of the time but later on I took on the book-keeping and sending out the bills.
We used to send out bills for tuning; five shillings a time or a pound for five times a year. The number of bad debts you got at that rate was terrific! I used to stick little labels on them saying 'unless...', and I knew when I sent some of them out that it was going to be a dead loss and that I might just as well have torn them up straight away.
We had several full-time tuners, Walt Ellis was the head tuner who eventually went off to work on his own. Jim Gillett was another one of our tuners. We had a full-time polisher, Bill Smith, who French polished the pianos, he was very good at his job and lived in Bromham. 
Price & Sons music shop in Handel House in the 1930's. Peggy Oliver (later Hancock) stands behind the counter with Walt Ellis (piano tuner) and Hilda Bond.
Price and Sons was a big company, based in Bournemouth. Dennis Price used to come up every Thursday or so and everyone would be on their best behaviour! They had shops in Bournemouth, Boscombe, Amesbury and Yeovil.
In those days everyone had a piano and we didn't have much competition in the town, there was only John Nott in the High Street, who did some tuning. We sold mostly pianos, the gallery was full of them and they were all carried there up the back stairs.
We also sold a lot of sheet music and the piano teachers came to us. Molly Brown (Trumper) was one and Mrs Bourne, who was a cello teacher who lived in Trafalgar Buildings. Sheet music cost sixpence a copy before the war and we sold more of that than recorded music, although we did sell quite a lot of records, both classical and popular.
We used to get the gypsies, or didikois as we call them, in the shop when there was a fair on the Green. They used to come and ask to hear Irish music. They would bring their babies with them and sit and breast-feed them in the shop while they were listening. They didn't very often buy the music.
It was my job to decorate the windows, I enjoyed that. I dressed a window once with a stuffed lion borrowed from Billy Dickenson the bookmaker and grandfather of Keith, now at the Bear. The lion had a record in its mouth and a sign saying 'Music soothes the savage beast'. 
A window display at Price's music shop in Handel House in the 1930's. Peggy Oliver won awards for windows like this one)
 | From:
Devizes Voices compiled by David Buxton
Tempus Publishing
ISBN 0 7524 0661 2
£9.99
For a complete list of local history books published by Tempus Publishing visit: www.tempus-publishing.com |
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