Then and Now: Grantham blouse maker was successful but short lived company

Oswald and Co, blouse manufacturers were a very successful, but short lived company, writes Ruth Crook of Grantham Civic Society.

The owner Sandford Oswald Barnsdale, born in 1877, was one of ten children of wealthy cigar manufacturer Oswald Barnsdale of Nottingham. Oswald Barnsdale was a partner in the company Robinson and Barnsdale, which had premises in both Nottingham and London.

Sandford married in 1900 in Nottingham, to Jane Alice Mellers, also born in 1877, who had grown up in a house on Standard Hill, Nottingham, to her lace manufacturer father, and the couple went to live in Barrowby. Their blouse manufactory business in a shop on Grantham Market Place was very successful and they regularly applied for 20 or 25 more girls to be trained to operate the machinery and work in the business.

Jane Sandford became increasingly unwell during the early years of their marriage and spent long periods of time in bed. Dr Frier was regularly called to see her. In 1909, at the age of 32, she was found dead in her bedroom and an inquest was called, which recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Sandford moved back to Nottingham to live with his now widowed mother, three single sisters and two servants. He married again in 1919 in Scarborough to Maud Sophia Simmons, born in 1897, and went to live in Pontefract. He died in 1942 in Bromsgrove.