Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

A Harris
Glasgow

A bit of a strange one this, Shoor-Flite golf balls were certainly sold by A Harris as the photograph of the box shows and I suspect the Shoor-Flite clubs marked A Dunlop were too. Who made the balls and clubs I do not know but almost certainly not A Harris Ltd.

Abraham Harris was the son of a Jewish immigrant, a wholesale watchmaker who had been a founder of the Garnethill synagogue. Abraham, born in Hutchesontown in 1858, built a tobacco business, making cigarettes and importing cigars. In 1921 his business became a joint stock company with Ł25,000 capital. The 1925 Post Office directory lists the headquarters at 88 Dunlop Street with 15 retail outlets throughout the city (all but the one in Govan north of the river) and additional stores in Falkirk, Hamilton, Motherwell and Ayr.

If golf balls and golf clubs were an odd thing to sell in a tobacconists it became odder still. After Abraham’s death in 1932, by then he was living in Kelvinside and left a personal estate of Ł16,726 (about Ł1.5m today), his three sons, Joseph, Ernest and Walter continued the business. Joseph took his two brothers to court over the decision to open libraries in the tobacconist shops and pay themselves a 30% share of the company’s profits for managing these. The judge took the view that it was for the shareholders to decide and none of his business and, so, dismissed the case. Their decision to pay themselves a fixed allowance of Ł250 expenses to be spent in the cinemas, dance halls and restaurants of the company’s customers clearly raised the judicial eyebrows but his lordship again felt it was for the company to decide.

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