Muriel Barwell on Haddon's Children's Bookshop in London Court

 

I'd always had this dream, like so many other people, of opening a bookshop and - I had worked for five years at Terrace Arcade Bookshop and then I just suddenly thought I'd love to open a children's bookshop and this shop was available in London Court.  It had previously been owned by, or leased by Tony Barlow as its special trouser shop; they didn't sell anything but trousers and they had decided to close it down and, and go back up to Hay Street.  And so the shop was available and - it was tiny, as you know they're very tiny, so the shelving went right up to the ceiling and I had a ladder which hung on the back of the door and it was very cosy and it had a certain magic about it I think but that was the books.  And of course we had these funny little windows and ah they were a bit hard to um keep clean and do displays but they, it had some quality I think.

 

They're almost like two little - bay windows or bow windows and the wooden  door in the middle and so it wasn't a very big space and I had all these Perspex stands made so that you could get as much in as possible in the window so that people could see it. And the light was left on at night on a time switch and people wandering up and down London Court could look in and look at all these beautiful children's books with their glorious colours. 

 

I've always been a Beatrix Potter freak and Methuen [an independent British publisher] gave me on permanent loan a Jemima Puddleduck and a Peter Rabbit, so it was a very Beatrix Potter minded sort of shop. And they would send posters.  Publishers were wonderful in those days and especially the British publishers.  They really seemed to take an interest in people like me who'd started a new venture. I noticed the other day I had a letter from Hamish Hamilton [British publisher of literary books] from the children's book editor saying how excited she was that a children's bookshop [was opening] in Perth, and anything they could do, you know, you only had to ask.  

 

There were always tourists in London Court taking photographs.  I didn't sell a lot [to them].  I did keep a big selection of Australian books, - mainly paperbacks because hard covers were too heavy to carry. But I must admit that a lot of the tourists in London Court were looking for souvenirs rather than [books]. But there were quite a few who really wanted to take back an Australian book, and of course there weren't really all that many young children's Australian books in 1974. But then things like Possum Magic [author Mem Fox] and One Woolly Wombat [author Kerry Argent] and all those appeared, so I stocked as much Australian material as was possible and at Christmas time too people would want to send Australian books home to U.K. or America or somewhere. But there were lovely customers.

 

As a point of interest, and seeing this is Perth City, one of my first customers was Mr Chape who was Perth City Librarian, and he was a delightful little man.  He'd been a Battle of Britain pilot and apparently he was so small he had to wear about three pairs of socks to fit into his flying boots. And previously I think it - - - I'm not sure whether it was before the war or after the war, he had actually had a travelling library van, and he used to go around the Lake District with this; it was like a mobile library.  But he was lovely, and he was always full of little stories and he came in the shop at least two or three times a week.  He would walk across from Supreme Court Gardens where the library was then [Perth City Library was located in Council House] and come up London Court and pop in, and Perth City Library was the first account I ever opened. He actually took some books for the library and I charged them to him.

 

Librarians did actually go out and about more in those days - and actually, it wasn't  like how you send samples to the Library Board and librarians choose them and then the orders come in.  Librarians were actually visible sort of people in those days. They'd actually come in and have a look on the shelves and decide.  Maybe they'd have some money to spend and that was it.  I even remember Mr Hammond who was the Chief Assistant Librarian at the Alexander Library or Library Board as it was then, used to go out and buy books at Terrace Arcade.  He had resigned by the time I opened but I remember going out and feeding the meter in William Street while he was buying all these - they were adult books of course.  But you know, there was more intermingling and librarians were book minded.  Nowadays sometimes I think they're more computer minded but maybe I'm wrong there.  But there was that sort of - happy relationship between librarians, booksellers and books.  It was just a nice thing.  

 

Now, when I first went into London Court there were – a much wider variety of shops than there are now.  Next door to me there was a Mrs Gracie who had a hat shop and sold beautiful hats.  Across the way there was a Mrs Tindell who had a Royal Doulton shop.  And many years ago, before I actually went into London Court, there was a shop down near the St Georges Terrace end that made lampshades and then there was also The Stocking Shop. The Stocking Shop was just closing down about the time I moved in but it's hard to think of these days of a shop selling nothing but stockings.  Quite amazing!  And we also had this wonderful shirt shop.  I think his name was Jim Mounser and he had actually two shops; a double shop, and he sold shirts and pullovers and - that actually brought a lot of people into London Court, especially the legal profession and this sort of thing.  They'd run into Jim's shop and get their shirts and, I mean they were good quality, expensive shirts.

 

On quiet days we'd all stand outside our doors and have a little chat - especially the people immediately near you or opposite.  Oh, and I also forgot that of course there was the perfume shop; Mimi's The Perfume Shop [Mimi's Perfumery] which Marie Bolt had.  The stamp shop.  And then there were all the people upstairs. 

 

When I first arrived in Perth in 1951, I remember; I presume we'd been to the pictures or something and we walked down London Court and there were people living upstairs and there was a canary singing in the window and I thought, What a lovely place this is, not realising that twenty years on I'd be sort of there myself.  

 

The great thing in London Court was always the fear of fire because there's so much timber.  If you look at it there's all that timber work; the window boxes are timber, there's timber everywhere. I think originally the gates were there because it was like a Tudor street. They used to keep them open until after people came out of the pictures in case they wanted to walk down London Court, but then gradually there were graffiti artists and vandals and our dear caretaker Harry Lestor was actually beaten up and had a broken shoulder and - so as far as I know they're closed much earlier now because  well, if anybody wants to go from Hay Street to St Georges Terrace they'll just have to use Barrack Street.  But that was one of the reasons that the gates weren't closed until eleven or eleven fifteen so that theatre goers could walk down London Court.  

 

But - there really wasn't room to do anything in the shop really.  I mean you had the shop and two or three customers and that was almost a crowd. And I did spend a lot of time running up and down from the shop to Suite Ten, ‘cause I kept more non-fiction up there. Somebody would say, "Do you have a book on Greece?" and I'd say, "Certainly, I'll just run up the stairs and get it" and then I'd come back down and they'd say, "Would you have another copy?" and I'd say, "Right, okay".  Back up the stairs; so it kept me fit, very fit.

 

Muriel Barwell interviewed by Janet McNie, 2001

OH 200113 | City of Perth Cultural Collections