'Apostles of Cheapness': Fitzmaurice Street photo captures a Wagga institution in its heyday

It’s a stunningly candid glimpse into Wagga’s past: a frozen moment in time on a busy Fitzmaurice Street in the early 1900s.

The photographer looks down from the first floor of the Commercial Hotel (now Romanos) on Sturt Street towards the twin storefronts of David Copland & Co.

A large crowd of elegantly dressed women and suited men gathers outside the courthouse that sits out of frame on the left.

Everyone wears a hat – fedoras for the men, boaters for the boys and bold bonnets for the women. To appear bareheaded out of doors was to be seen in a state of undress.

Sulkies, carriages and carts are the only vehicles to be seen on the dirt streets.

A boater-hatted boy in his Sunday best rides a sulky with his mother; ahead of them a pair of men engage in a lively conversation.

A bearded bushman walks hunched between the carriages while a policeman stalks across the street towards him from under the iron-laced verandah of the Commercial Hotel.

When it comes to dating the image, the officer gives us a clue.

He is dressed in the uniform of the NSW Foot Police with its distinctive dark bell-shaped custodian helmet. This attire was only worn between 1901 and 1911.

The most prominent feature of the image is the imposing plate-glass storefront of David Copland & Co.

The grand, purpose-built facility is the new “completely modern” store that opened with much fanfare in 1910.

An article from the Sydney Mail and NSW Advertiser from 31 August 1910, describes the opening of the new store under the headline “An Enterprising Wagga Firm: David Copland & Co”.

“One of the strongest proofs of the stability and prosperity of a district is that of a businessman ready to expend thousands of pounds on new stores,” it reads.

“The new store was thronged with visitors during show week, and numerous comments were made on the enterprise of the proprietors in raising a structure so completely modern.”

It would be fair to speculate that this photograph, which so prominently features the new store, captures something of the 1910 “show week” and the crowds that thronged to take in this modern mercantile marvel.

David Copland was a well-known Scottish grazier, merchant and politician in the Riverina.

Born in 1842 in the town of Forfar in the North East of Scotland, he migrated to NSW with his family in the 1850s. He and his wife Elizabeth had six children and at one stage owned Pomingalarna Station.

In 1889 he was elected to parliament as the Protectionist Party member for Murrumbidgee and served until 1891.

He died in Wagga in 1920 and was described in his obituary as a “highly-cultured and keen businessman”.

The original store, Roberts and Copland’s “Hall of Commerce” was built in 1872 and an early photo shows men congregating on the veranda under a canvas sign proclaiming the goods on sale within.

“The cheapest house in town. For blankets, sheetings, flannels & calicoes, dresses, millinery, outfits, hats, ties, shirts, boots.”

An advertisement in The Temora Star in early 1882 suggests that Mr Copeland harboured a dramatic flair when it came to spruiking his wares.

 

Under the headlines “The New Dawn of Things” and “Apostles of Cheapness”, the lengthy stock-copy ad contains a militaristic declaration of war against “Monopoly”.

“We shall not remove our armour, or brush off our warpaint, until those gorgon-headed monsters, monopoly and fat-profit, are trampled underfoot and their inflated courses flung to the four winds of heaven,” it declares.

As the breathless tirade concludes with its warnings of dragons, vultures and rogues, it closes with an oath from our heroes, David Copland and Co, who “solemnly and sincerely assert, without fear of contradiction, that they sell grocery and drapery goods cheaper than any house out of Sydney by at least fifteen per cent”.

David Copland and Co continued to fight the good fight for low prices in Wagga well into the 20th Century before finally succumbing to the dreaded monopoly.

David Jones took over in 1954.