Salmon and Gluckstein

One of the great benefits in being retired is that I no longer feel obligated to re-read the books that I assigned to my students and I don’t have to read the newest publications in any field…. In short, I don’t have to read anything I don’t want to.  Having said this, I still read just about anything put in front of me, but I no longer feel guilty about it.

The wonderful people at Penzler Publishers (the publishing company started by Otto Penzler and the Mysterious Bookshop) have been reprinting quality hardbacks of great mysteries long out of print.  Unfortunately, this series does NOT include any of the works of Rex Stout, one of my favorite authors, because Bantam Books holds the rights to all of the author’s works and stubbornly refuses to reprint any of them except in cheap paperback editions.  Otto Penzler once assured me that if Bantam ever relinquishes the rights, he will reprint the entire Nero Wolfe series.

One of the books currently being offered by Penzler Press is Vincent Starrett’s Murder on “B” Deck, a book that has been out of print for almost a century.  Starrett was a prolific American writer who might be better known for having been one of the foremost authorities on all matters related to Sherlock Holmes as well being known as a newspaperman who wrote a weekly column on books for a Chicago newspaper for over 25 years.  Since Starrett was born in an apartment over a bookstore, perhaps his occupation was in his DNA.  When he passed away in 1974, his Chicago gravestone was carved in the shape of an open book.

While I regularly purchase “new” Penzler books, I also found a first edition of Murder on “B” Deck from a London bookseller at a reasonable price.  (I receive a lot of books from England and occasionally one arrives in a distinctive bag bearing the imprint of the Royal Mail Service, something my postman enjoys as much as I do.).  The book arrived in good condition, but the book’s flyleaves bear an interesting inscription:

This book is the property of 
SALMON & GLUCKSTEIN LTD,
And is loaned at the rate of twopence
Per period of seven days or part
Thereof counting from date of issue.
If lost, will finder kindly return it to
any S. & G. BRANCH
BRANCHES EVERYWHERE

Salmon Gluckstein sounds like a like a Kosher brand of lox.  And if they have branches everywhere, why have I never heard of them?  And a tuppence a week sounds like a bargain to rent a book.  Obviously, I needed to do a little more research.

The story starts with Samuel Gluckstein, a cigar maker who left Prussia and moved to London sometime in 1841.  By 1855, he had opened his own company that made and sold cigars, helped by his four sons.   In 1873, the company was incorporated as Salmon and Gluckstein after Samuel took in Barnett Salmon, who had married one of Gluckstein’s seven daughters.  Over the next century, the company would change, spin off new companies, and branch out in ways never imagined by the founder, but would remain a family business with leadership remaining with either a Salmon or a Gluckstein.

The two families established an unusual form of partnership wherein every member received the same salary, a home, and (eventually) a car, but the rest of the profits were plowed back into the company, enabling a remarkable amount of growth.  Almost immediately, the company expanded its production from cigars to cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, as well as producing its own line of briar pipes.  Eventually, there were over 120 S. & G. tobacco stores across England.  If you are wondering about the picture, Navy Cut refers to a specific cut of tobacco used by the British Royal Navy where instead of an entire leaf of tobacco being cut, the leaves were pressed into blocks that were then cut across the grain into chips, making tobacco that was easier to pack and store in humid environments.  The lifeboat image was to inspire confidence.  

Shortly after the turn of the century, the stores added a lending library service, providing books for patrons to read for a fee so small that it is obvious that the books themselves were not a source of profit and someone in the business understood human nature.  While a burning cigar smells to everyone but the person smoking it like it was not hand rolled by a skilled tobacconist, but collected from the fetid field of grazing sheep, the aroma of a fully stocked cigar store is all but heavenly.  I don’t smoke, but whenever I visit a good tobacco shop, I am tempted to start.  Obviously, the customer who rented and later returned this book bought enough cigars to make the whole program profitable.  

Even as S. & G. tobacco shops merged with other companies, merged again, and then shut down the little shops as they expanded their sales worldwide, the Salmon and Gluckstein families spun off another “small” business, the J. Lyon tea shops and cafeterias, that spread across England roughly around the turn of the century.  One of the things that made the tea shops so popular was that the waitresses, called “Nippies”, wore distinctive uniforms and acted as chaperones to the fashionable young ladies of High Street who met there.  

By the middle of the twentieth century, there were over 200 such tea shops and the company had branched out into making cakes, teas, and various sweets.  By the early 1950’s, the company was selling the first business computers and had a large string of restaurants under a variety of names and franchises.  The company eventually sold its computer division to Fujitsu.  While the tobacco shops and little tea shops have all closed, the company continues on.  I wonder what Samuel Gluckstein would think of it all.

So, I can now sit down and enjoy Murder on “B” Deck without worrying to whom I should pay my tuppence.  I really wish I could know more about the people who read this book before me.  Most likely most of the readers were men, since—though it might just be my imagination—my book smells ever so faintly of cigars.