Liffey Street commemorative plaque to Hector Grey, unveiled in1988.
Passing through Upper Liffey Street recently, I was surprised to see the transformation of the street, with the demolition of a row of buildings that included the site of one of Hector Grey’s Dublin shops. This is to accommodate the construction of another hotel in Dublin, this time a 310 room budget hotel.
Born Alexander Scott in 1904, the name Hector Grey was borrowed from an Australian jockey,an interesting character in his own right who had been banned from horse racing on more than one occasion. Having married Annabelle, a Dubliner from the dockside, he moved to Dublin in the hungry 1920s. Any Dublin memoir from the second half of the twentieth century which fails to mention Hector is incomplete. Journalist Gene Kerrigan captures him best:
He was a big, heavy man, balding, glasses, a strong Scots accent after decades in Ireland, a distinct voice honed on years of street selling. “I’m not asking for three pounds or two pounds! I’m not even asking for a pound!” and we knew he was going to bring the asking price down to ten shillings and the adults considered the wisdom of making a purchase. Yes, it was reasonable value at ten shillings, but did they really need it?
While Hector’s former shop is no more, a small plaque on Liffey Street by the Ha’penny Bridge marks the location where he began trading. Grey’s empire would expand in time to include shops in Liffey Street, Mary Street and the Crumlin Shopping Centre. At the time of his death, an obituary noted that “even when he was a millionaire he came back to this bank of the Liffey to sell from a box anything from Korean umbrellas to Penang penknives.”
Evening Herald, November 1976.
Beside the Ha’penny Bridge, Hector ran a sort of auction, offering the goods to those willing to pay the highest price. The key to Grey’s success was exploring foreign markets for materials to sell here, as “by exploring the cheap markets of the East he brought many consumer goods to within the reach of the underprivileged.” The form of selling shifted when Hector opened his stores, which became a sort of Aladdin’s Cave offering just about everything you could imagine at knockdown prices. The empire grew to employ more than a hundred people,from John Kearney and Ernie Fields who helped Hector at the Ha’penny Bridge to Joe Flaherty, who became the retail manager of a growing empire. In 1977, the Irish Press noted Grey sold something in the region of a million pounds worth of toys each Christmas.
Recently ,I asked on Twitter for any recollections of Grey and his empire of shops. The thread produced some excellent and personal responses. From Mary Buckley, on the magic of the place:
Kids’ paradise. Crammed with small metal toys in bright colours with movable parts. No computer chips or screens for us then. A clockwork train was the stuff of dreams. Hector made xmas for families with little money that wanted to give their kids nice gifts
Historian Terry Fagan recounted:
Lots of memories of Hector Grey. I remember my father worked on the docks, the boat that came into Dublin Port at Christmas time loaded with toys for Hector Grey & other shops was called “The Blue Funnel” my father & other Dockers got toy’s for their children
Hector died in 1985, and the fact a plaque was unveiled only three years later in his honour says something about his standing in Dublin, a ‘street character’ in his own lifetime. The family continued the business into subsequent years. Long after closing, the name of Hector Grey remained on Liffey Street, as documented by the brilliant builtdublin.com.
Image credit: http://www.builtdublin.com
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