Who
hasn't heard of or been in a Marks & Spencer store? It was my mum's favourite
shop and she'd have bought petrol and oxygen from them had they sold
it. One wet Sunday afternoon rain was forecast but I didn't care and
thought Michael Marks - one of founders of Marks & Spencer - was worth
getting wet for. I almost didn't find the cemetery though. I knew Michael was
buried in a Jewish Cemetery but didn't think it would be so difficult to find.
My Sat-Nav announced, "You have arrived at your destination," but I
could not see any traces of a cemetery. Normally when looking for a grave I see
a church spire that guides me closer though Jews just seem to have cemeteries
only.
Twice I drove up and down the road in Crumpsall, a run-down area of Manchester
with the Sat-Nav lady telling me I had arrived. No signs said a cemetery lay
nearby. I had a coffee from my flask and waited for someone to pass by. An old
man said there weren't any cemeteries nearby and he'd lived there for twenty
years. I tried chatting to a man at a bus stop whose quizzical expression told
me there was no cemetery there before his tongue did.
For the third time I drove up and down the full length of the road in a
built-up area. I spotted a pair of gates that I looked like they might lead up
to scrap land or an industrial estate but then I saw the Star Of David symbols
on the metal. There were no signs to tell the visitor the gates were the
entrance to a cemetery. Later at home my dad said anti-Semitic vandals had
smashed up Jewish graves so the probably didn't advertise their location as
much now.
I walked up the track passing swamped foliage and a sign warning of guard dogs.
I'd read forty horse-drawn carriages hogged behind Michael's coffin when they
buried him early in 1908 (he died on New Year's Eve.). Had they come up this
track? The top of the slant suddenly revealed the destination - an old Jewish
cemetery that you would not guess was there.
Nobody about. Lots of graves. Darkness was not far off. Where to start? I
didn't have a photo, only a grave number that didn't match up. After about
an hour I was getting worried about being locked in. Thankfully the cemetery
was hemmed in by a housing estate and knew I could scale a wall and drop into
someone back garden if forced to.
There was a red brick tumbledown building which must give shelter to mourners
but it was locked. There was a ramshackle stretcher on wheels in there - for
people who fainted with grief? Or skint ones who couldn't afford a funeral and
the corpse was stretchered from the boot of a car to a yawning grave?
I put Mozart's Requiem on my mp3 player
to get funereal and after another twenty minutes had not found the grave. Most
of these cadavers hadn't received many visitors. No pebbles/stones left on
them, the Jewish custom to show a loved one had visited. I continued up and
down the lines of graves. I thought Michael Mark's tomb may be a mammoth thing
the size of a bulldozer and impeccably maintained by proud Jews.
I only found the headstone when my eyes locked
onto uncharacteristically gold-painted letters. It wasn't a spectacular
monument compared with its neighbours. I must admit I didn't even know Michael
was Jewish. A company like Marks & Spencer seems quintessentially English
and I won't buy underpants from any other shop (other makes don't seem to have
the same can-contain-two-curled-up-hedgehogs underpinning.)
This man had done well, a real rags-to-riches story. He was born in into a
Jewish family in Slonim, then part of the Russian Empire but now a town in
Poland. The family moved to Leeds which was the centre of the wool industry and
many hard-working immigrant Jewish tailors. He worked in a sweatshop mill but
was physically frail and not robust enough for the harsh, steamy conditions. He
became a hawker that travelled from town to town selling stuff from a tray.
In his twenties he met a business man called Isaac Dewhirst who owned a Leeds
warehouse. Michael agreed to buy goods from Dewhirst and sell them in nearby
villages. This allowed him to make enough money to open a stall in the open
market in Leeds. The market developed a section that was actually undercover
and Michael rented one. He was so embarrassed that he couldn't speak much
English with the haggling customers that he bundled up his wares in packages
and had a sign made that read, "Don't ask the price, it's a penny."
This is pricing originated; nowadays everything has a price on it but customer
had to ask what the prices were.
Over the next few years Michael opened similar stalls in markets across
Yorkshire and Lancashire. To grow he needed an investor. He asked his own chum
Isaac Dewhirst who suggested his cashier Thomas Spencer might be interested.
Spencer decided that the £300 (about 331k now) was a good deal an invested.
They were brill doubt act. Michael Marks ran the stalls and Spencer ran the
office. Soon they started opening store in about ten cities.
Sales soared astronomically: Spencer's original £300 investment was soon worth
£15,000 (now about £1.5 million) and he soon retired. Michael Marks should have
given up working too but he was still developing the business when he died when
aged 43 - 48 (the grave says he was 44 but nobody knows and there seems to be
only one photo of him.) He was living a happy life with his wife and son in
Salford when he died suddenly of a heart attack one New Year's Eve (must have
been some party.)
I sat by the grave and ate an apple. Who would have thought a Yiddish-speaking
Jew from a small town in Russia would have set going a company which now has
hundreds of stores across the world? Perhaps he felt he had to made his mark as
his mother had died giving birth to him (he brought up by his two older
sisters.) His dad must have been proud of him (and lived to 100, dying a year
after his son in 1908.)
I had been in the cemetery for quite a while. The light was fading (I had to
brighten up these photos) and I walked back down the track that many
grieving people had used over the decades. Some dogs were woofing in a garden
and I did some in return in a loud low-base tone, only stopping when I saw
a woman stood waiting to lock the gates. She looked at me strangely but I
didn't care - mission was accomplished - I'd found the grave I'd
gone to find. I'm a contributor to a global grave-hunting website and this
was one to add to the collection for other geeks to goggle at.
The cemetery was
up this road. Not one sign. I drove passed it three times. By luck I spotted
the Star Of David symbol on the gates.
Not sure where to start looking for Michael….I had a piece paper with a
grave number on it….
After 20 minutes
and I wasn’t making progress…
Initially
M&S would have had a stall outside Leeds Market…