05/10/2026
History Monday. The remarkable story of William Whiteley of Featherstone.
In George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion adapted later as the musical 'My Fair Lady' Professor Henry Higgins says he wants to transform the flower seller Eliza Dolittle into a Duchess. He announces ‘Take her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whiteley for new ones and wrap her in brown paper until they come.’ As bizarre as it sounds, the Whiteley he was referring to was a real man, the owner of the world’s first department store and he came from Featherstone. The man in question was William Whiteley and thanks to a book written by Linda Stratmann, the scholar of Victorian England, we know a good amount about his life.
One of the oldest houses in South Featherstone is on Whiteley Street, it used to be called Featherstone Cottage, nowadays it is called Whiteley House. This humble little abode was once the boyhood home of one of the world’s wealthiest men. The census returns for 1841 show that the occupier of this cottage was John Rowlandson a farmer, with his wife Mary, a servant girl and a ten-year-old boy called William Whiteley. John and Mary had no children of their own so had adopted young William from John Rowlandson’s sister Elizabeth who lived at Wakefield with her husband Joseph Whiteley. William Whiteley (1831-1907) lived in the cottage just off Station Lane until 1848. He went to school first at Ackworth, then to William Jefferson’s Academy on Horsefair at Pontefract. For a short time after leaving school, he worked on the family farm and was taken under the wing of the renowned countryman and bare-knuckle boxing champion John Gully. Gully taught him how to ride, box and shoot.
At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a draper at Wakefield and in 1851 he visited the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace. He marvelled at the treasures and goods he saw on display and had the idea that if you could assemble such things in one place, you might also be able to sell them. He later travelled back to London with ten pounds of savings in his pocket and opened a fancy goods shop. Over time he developed and expanded his business and eventually opened the world's first department store, where he boasted you could buy everything from a pin to an elephant and dubbed himself 'the universal provider.'
In 1882 Whiteley entertained Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus to lunch at his department store during his visit to London. In Cetshwayo’s entourage were many commanders who had seen action at the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift.
By 1890 he employed in his store more than 6,000 staff and it was said to be the biggest shop in the world. He owned farms, food processing factories and housed his workers in dormitories. Whiteleys was renowned worldwide. Whiteley lived by a series of maxims; one was ‘Pay as you go. If you cannot pay, do not go.
It didn’t end well for Whiteley. He was shot dead in the fur coat department of his store by a man who claimed to be his illegitimate son. He left more than a million pounds in his will. He is buried in Kensall Green cemetery, where he shares ground with Marc Isambard Brunel, the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and the writers Wilkie Collins and William Makepiece Thackeray. His sons later sold the family business to their rivals Selfridges. In the TV series Mr Selfridge, Whiteley gets a mention. Quite a journey for a Featherstone lad.
