Burton on the Button…………..

Aha!! This was a very famous advert for Burton menswear shops.  I recently spent a few days in Wales and in Abergavenny I saw a Burtons store.  On the side was this magnificent old sign :-

I, like many others did not realise how important this firm was to Great Britain. When I returned home I carried out some research and discovered that the firm was started by a Lithuanian named Moshe Osinsky who came to England in 1900. In 1903 he started selling ready made suits from a wholesaler. When he got married he changed the name of the company to Burton and Burton. He then changed his name to Montague Maurice Burton and between 1913 and 1929 he increased his company from 5 tailoring shops to 400 shops, mills and factories. It is interesting to note that he made one quarter of all the uniforms for the British Army in World War ll and one third of all the demobilisation clothing. I can only imagine how busy his factories must have been and although I like to think that I am very busy, I am sure that Montague Burton could have told me what ‘Busy’ really meant.