Mr Emerson's ghost sign in Stockport and the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood

The Emerson sign, 2014

I am back with that ghost sign in Market Place, Stockport.

It is a fine example of a street advert that has survived long after the business has gone.

I fell across it purely by chance a few months ago and it has intrigued me ever since.

And I am not alone, my friend Sally has written about it and it regularly evokes comment from people I talk to from Stockport.

I know the firm was there by about 1905 but had never gone much deeper by crawling over the street directories, and then by chance I discovered an advert for Mr Emerson from 1895 and my interest has been set off again.

The Emerson advert, 1895

But today it was the book from which the advert came that set me off because it was a copy of the 1895 Heaton Mersey PSA Magazine.

And as you do

Now I had come across the P.S.A,or to give them the full name, the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood back in the 1970s in Ashton Under Lyne.

They were what they said they were an organization designed to provide a pleasant afternoon with a Christian slant on a Sunday.

The first seem to have sprung up in the mid 1870s and their first national conference was in London in 1906.

Now this is another of those areas I want to dig deep into.  There was a political dimension  “The long standing relationship between political Liberalism and Nonconformity brought active Liberals into the movement. 

Market Place, 1905

In the early twentieth century key Labour and Trade Union leaders became actively involved in the PSA/Brotherhood Movement. Labour MPs Arthur Henderson and Will Crooks, and the Liberal MP Theodore C. Taylor were all present at the founding of the National Association of Brotherhoods, PSAs etc in London in 1906. 

Keir Hardie, was also actively involved, he was a main speaker for a Brotherhood Crusade in Lille in 1910. Arthur Henderson MP was elected National President in 1914. The National Adult School Union’s ‘One and All’ journal reported 7 out 9 ‘adult school men’ who stood for parliament were successful in 1910.”*

And there appears to be a Temperance aspect so there is a lot to play for and find out.

The Emerson shop and sign 1895

I had not thought they had a presence in the south of the city but they were here in Chorlton.
Harry Kemp’s Chorlton Alamack for 1910 listed  “The P.S.A. (Men’s Meeting),  Macfayden Memorial Church.  Sundays, 3 p.m. William S Bradshaw, 4, Beechwood Avenue. & P.S.A. (Men’s  and Women Meeting), Wesleyan Mission Hall. Sundays, 3 p.m, Secy., E.H. Astle, 34 Reynard Road.”

And now I find them in Heaton Mersey which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise, and along with Mr Emerson give me more research opportunities.

Picture; Parish Church and Market, from the series Town & City, by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/  the ghost sign of J. Emerson from the collection of Andrew Simpson and advert for Emerson’s Tailoring from the P.S.A., Magazine, 1895 courtesy of David Harrop

** The Early Adult School and Brotherhood Movements in the West Midlands: Adult Education, Evangelism or Social Activism?, European Social Science History Conference, Glasgow, April 14 2012