1939- 1952
1939
When circus elephants came off the train at Aberdeen,
they instinctively made for the station bookstall for a browse.
By the time World War II broke out, all the bookstall leases except those in Aberdeen had been arranged on a percentage basis. In that City Menzies took a twelve-year lease at £900 a year and profited handsomely, thanks to the extraordinary increases in turnover which the war brought about.
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1940
John F. Menzies, Col. Menzies' son and father of the present chairman, dies.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s a job with Menzies was an attractive prospect for a boy or girl in a provincial town. "A job with John Menzies," they used to say, "is a job for life."
Boys of sixteen started at 15/- a week (75p) and that had increased to £3 by the time they were twenty-six. Girls entered at 14/- (70p) and reached their maximum of £2 at the age of twenty-four. (These were about the same rates as those paid to young people in the local authority's service.)
Asked why girls earned less than boys for the same kind of job, the employer's short answer was that "the boy must save money in order to marry the girl".
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1941
Partick Bookstall and Greenock Branch are destroyed in air raids.
On 7th May 1941, the manager of the Greenock Branch, James Kyle, arrived to find his warehouse a smoking ruin from the raid of the previous night:
For the vast majority of Menzies shops, branches, bookstalls and kiosks it was, in the jargon of the times, `business as usual'. That slogan reappeared at Greenock one day when the authorities shut down Princes Pier, the place where the trains met the Clyde steamers. A newspaper photograph reproduces the sign:
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1943
Col. Charles Menzies dies and his widow, Helen Frances Menzies, is appointed chairman.
Helen Frances Menzies
Mrs Menzies was no figurehead, but a person of spirit, important to the firm. "Looking back," says an ex-director, "I always thought she was very brave to take us on."
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1948
John M. Menzies, son of John F. Menzies, joins the company. The same year sees the opening of the first airport bookstall at Edinburgh Turnhouse and the introduction of the first mobile bookstall.
Central station bookstall
From 1948 to 1951 John Maxwell Menzies, great grandson of the founder, was going through the departments, gaining experience. In 1951 he took over the chairmanship from his grandmother. His thirty-two years at the helm since that date have been a progressive realisation of the ambitious desires of his forebears, and more.
Over in Glasgow, at the Central station bookstall, an old man named Edward Murdoch moved towards his retirement. He had served the firm in that most demanding of jobs for more than half a century. When he went, the last physical link with pre-incorporation days (pre-1906) was broken.
An entirely new era was just beginning.
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1949
Sales reach £10 million.
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1951
John M. Menzies is appointed as chairman, succeeding his grandmother.
John M. Menzies
A Glasgow evening paper:
Another Glasgow paper welcomed the new-style Menzies bookstall when it was introduced at St Enoch's station in May 1950:
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1952
The company forms a club for long-serving employees. (In 1980 it became the 25 Club, for staff with 25 or more years' service.)
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