From Yesterday’s Warminster by Danny Howell, published 1987:
Frank Moody, pictured circa 1910.
Frank Moody was born on 5th July 1858 in a small cottage at The Marsh, Warminster. He was the youngest son of market-gardener Richard Moody and he left school at Christ Church when he was eight years old, to work for his father’s horticultural business. He attended evening classes, instructed by Mr. Crispin, the Headmaster of the Church School, remembered for the way he administered punishment by rapping his knuckles on erring pupils’ heads.
When Frank was twelve he met with a nasty accident while playing a game of ‘duck’ with one of his brothers. A sharp stone badly gashed his head and Dr. R.L. Willcox, assistant to Dr. Grubb, said he had narrowly escaped death. When he was 16, he was pushed off a rick, with a pitchfork in his hand. The steel prong went through his thigh and came out of his knee. He fully recovered soon afterwards and left Warminster for South Wales, where he was apprenticed to a miller at Llandaff, near Cardiff. This only lasted three days because he was poorly fed and the mill was plagued with rats. He soon returned to Cardiff where he found a job as a wholesale salesman in the fruit and vegetable trade.
Six months later Frank came back to Warminster, as a fish salesman at Stephen Francis’ shop at 28 East Street. Frank’s future wife was the manageress of the shop, which later became Mills and Son’s; they married in 1877. Frank Moody then took a small shop at 7 Fore Street, Warminster Common, which only had one little window, and he began with a single box of bloaters, soon expanding to a wide range of groceries.
Although he had no practical experience he saw the need for a small bakery and he added one to the shop, later securing the contract for supplying bread to the Warminster Union. The bakery was in operation for a few years until he closed it down, and heeding his life-long motto ‘Look ahead for progress, he bought for resale six chairs from Mr. Thorne, a chairmaker at Horningsham. Conditions were so cramped in Frank’s shop, he had to keep the chairs behind the door, but he soon sold them to Charles Eacott, a sand merchant who lived at The Willows, 39 South Street, Warminster Common. Frank then bought some more chairs, and that’s how Frank Moody’s furniture department began.
Butchery had begun at the shop in a small way too, with the selling of one pig a week in small joints.
Being thrifty, Frank and his wife saved enough money to buy four cottages adjoining the shop, and in 1900 he converted these to shops, which included a showroom 60 feet long and 12 feet wide. Using the pattern of a shop at Castle Street, Bristol, he carried out all the work with direct labour. A large plate glass window was installed and this met with a great deal of ridicule. Groceries, coal and furniture were sold from the new premises, with the business growing year by year, and a bicycle and pram department and more offices were soon added.
Advertisement for
Frank Moody’s furniture department,
from the Warminster Town Guide 1907.
Frank Moody also dealt in pig meat and henges which are the heart, liver and lights of a pig still attached to its windpipe, hung on a rail for all to see. Most customers bought three penn’orth of pork cuttings or backbone at a time. Pigs’ snouts and trotters were other specialities and some folk thought nothing of asking for a pig’s tail to eek out an extra meal.
Seeing an opening in the wholesale market for pork, bacon and hams, Frank Moody appointed a Mr. Marsh as his agent at Cardiff. Mr. Marsh acted for him for 14 years and built up a wholesale trade throughout South Wales.
Then Frank Moody built a bacon factory at Fore Street in 1921. As he had done with his shops, he designed the building himself and erected it by direct labour, and it was soon classed as ‘the finest modern small bacon factory in the west of England’. In 1922 the output was 70 fat pigs a week and the number of hams cured for the wholesale trade ran into thousands. At the Fore Street factory, slaughtered pigs were weighed and moved automatically through the various departments to the curing cellars and the refrigerator plant. Frank Moody had wanted to install an oil-powered singeing machine, at a cost of £400, but this met with opposition from his clients when he consulted them about the idea. They preferred the straw-burnt bacon because of its delightful flavour and the mild-cured Wiltshire bacon had no rival. When he was asked to what he attributed the rapid and successful growth of his business, Frank Moody said: “I always make a point of paying spot cash, thereby securing discounts.”
An illustration from the
Warminster Town Guide 1924,
showing Frank Moody’s bacon factory,
cycle shop, house-furnishing and furniture
department at Fore Street,
Warminster Common.
Frank Moody died on 8th September 1930, shortly after from returning from a holiday at Brighton. His last words were: “I am ready to go,” and his death was felt not only at Newtown (Warminster Common) but throughout Warminster, because he had taken a prominent and active role in the public life of the town. He had been dubbed the ‘father’ of the Warminster Urban District Council, to which he was first elected in 1893, when Frank Morgan was Chairman. Frank Moody served for over 30 years on the Council and was Chairman twice.
Frank Moody was also a magistrate for Wiltshire; a Commissioner of Income Tax; a member of the Joint Isolation Hospital Committee; a member of the Warminster Cottage Hospital Committee; the founder and Chairman of the Warminster Hospital League; Chairman of the Managers of Newtown Day School; a Governor of the Warminster Secondary School; a Deacon and Trustee of the Congregational Chapel at Common Close, Warminster; Chairman of the Warminster Town Band Committee; Chairman of the Warminster Nursing Association; Vice-President of the Warminster Town Football Club; and a Superintendent of the Warminster Salvation Army Sunday School for over 20 years. He had started the school with 12 scholars and there were 145 when he resigned.