THESE are staff of pet suppliers Bob Martin Ltd at their annual dinner and dance in July 1938.
The location was The Palace Hotel in Birkdale – demolished in 1969 – and the photograph was sent in by Daphne Young of Dorset.
It was given to Mrs Young following the death of her uncle, Norman Stanley Lister, who worked at the Bob Martin office in Southport during his teens.
Mrs Young, who was close to her uncle and lived with him for some years, remembered attending a Bob Martin Dramatics Society performance as a child, and laughed as she told us her uncle took one of the principal parts.
Mr Lister went on to serve in the Royal Army Service Corps throughout World War II.
“I remember my grandmother waiting anxiously for news from Dunkirk,� said Mrs Young.
Mr Lister later progressed to Porter Master Sergeant with the Eighth Army in North Africa.
Upon his return to England, he worked at a number of small businesses, and had strong connections with Formby Cricket Club.
He attended St Peter’s Church in Formby, and although he never married, he was surrounded by close family members when he died after a long life.
Mrs Young remembered walking along Lord Street with her uncle. “He took me to a street around the corner to show me where the old Bob Martin factory used to be. I think those were happy days.�
Elsewhere in the edition of the Southport Visiter that featured this photograph, there was concern in our leader column about the impact of growing car use on visitor trends in the resort.
We said: “The Publicity Committee should guard against itself against being rushed into such things as the opening of Pleasureland on Sunday, or the Marine Lake on Sunday, which would tend in the direction of attracting the short-date visitor, and possibly defeat the object of attracting the long-date visitor.
“Southport has always prided itself on a quiet Sunday, and if Pleasureland or the Marine Lake, or other places of similar character, are opened on Sunday it means that more and more Sunday visitors will be coming.
“Apart from the question of religious observance, there was about the Sunday of 10 or 20 years ago an attraction in Southport’s quietude.
“It certainly encouraged very large numbers of people to come to Southport and take up
The 1938 dinner and dance of Bob Martin Ltd at the Palace Hotel. A young Norman Stanley Lister is seated seventh from left on the front row
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