History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

On the 12 March 1910 Gordon Selfridge gave a talk to the boys of Kilburn Grammar School. Speaking on ‘Business as a Life’s Work’, he said that England was now in serious competition with the other great commercial nations of the world and they should be pushing in commerce as in any other form of activity. There were certain principles that young men going into business needed to know. These were energy, knowledge of the business, and absolute integrity. He urged the boys, ‘to be broadminded, to be splendid, to be big, and if they could not find an opening in any one place the whole world was open to them’. Gordon Selfridge, (Getty Images)   Gordon Selfridge had started as a stock boy in Marshall Field in Chicago. He worked his way up over 25 years to become a junior partner and a wealthy man. During his retirement, Gordon and his wife visited London in 1906, and he noticed that there was no shop to rival Marshal Fields or the great department stores of Paris. He decided to buil...