Black Country Living Museum are looking for memories from the 1940s – 1960s of Burgin’s Newsagent, Dudley. As part of its ambitious new development project BCLM: Forging Ahead, the Museum will be replicating Burgin’s newsagent’s shop from 167 Wolverhampton Street, Dudley, which until its closure in 2016, was one of the longest running family newsagents in the country.
The shop was founded by John Burgin (1831-1887), a travelling bookseller from Kidderminster, in 1868. It was an old building, built around 1795 and previously a fishmonger, but it served the family well as a place of business and a family home for John and Mary Burgin, and their eight children. The youngest, Alfred Burgin (1880-1951) took over the shop from his father and ran it until his death in 1951, when his widow Jane took over. Son of Alfred and Jane, John Burgin, married Cynthia Perry in 1954, who began to help her mother-in-law with the running of the shop, later taking over completely until her own retirement in 2016.
Customers visiting the shop ranged from workmen in local factories (such as Lenny Henry’s father, who cycled there to buy cigarettes) to doctors at the Guest Hospital (including Dr Messiter, who arrived by chauffeured car). The comedian and entertainer Billy Dainty was a childhood friend of John Burgin’s, and visited whenever he came back to Dudley; and before the war Duncan Edwards – who went to Wolverhampton Street School, just behind the shop – visited regularly with his father.
Burgin’s employed six or seven paper boys from the surrounding area, usually including some from the children’s home in St James’ Road. They covered a wide delivery area stretching from the Priory Estate to Russell’s Hall, including delivering to the council, Dudley College, the Library reading room, and the Guest, Burton Road, and Rosemary Ednam hospitals.
To help us to recreate this long serving newsagent, we would love to talk to anyone with memories of the shop. Did you buy your newspapers or sweets at Burgin’s newsagents? Were you a paperboy for Burgins? Can you tell us what it was like inside the shop or the home? Do you have any photographs of the shop in the post-war decades?
Please get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or call 0121 557 9643.
For more information about BCLM: Forging Ahead, please visit www.bclm.com/forgingahead
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