A small side street near Victoria contains a mosaic that people will tell you is an old advert for the Victor Talking Machine Company. They are wrong.
It certainly spells out Victor, and the Victor Talking Machine Company was a very well known gramphone and music company. However, no matter how many references I found supporting the claim that the mosaic was related to the gramphone company, it felt wrong.
In part thanks to the fact that Victor is far better known by its logo which is today quite famous. Looks familiar?
Yes, HMV records is the latest incarnation of the Victor Talking Machine Company — but, despite various claims, this mosaic is not related to the phonograph company.
After all, why would a company famous for the dog have a logo in London that’s so very different?
To be fair, the planning application that is seeking to demolish the building next door does say the mosaic is “thought to be” for the company, but plenty of other sources state it as a fact.
If you look at the logo though, it looks 1920s in style, and felt more likely to be mototoring than musical. The claims just felt wrong.
And, just as I was about to give up researching and reluctantly accept the musical origins, I found it.
The advert is for a company that used to have its head office next to the mosaic, at 15 Carteret Street, and it was the Victor Tyre Company.
It seems to have been a very short lived tyre manufacturer, starting life as the Reinforced Inner Tube Co, then later the merged with another company to form Challenge Reinforced Tyre Co Ltd in 1910, and adopting the Victor name in 1913.
The company also had a long-running dispute with the RAC, judging by adverts they were placing in the press for a while claiming that the RAC were trying to suppress trials which showed its tyres were the best of the market.
However, the company lost a serious lawsuit in 1915 when it ended up in dispute with a French supplier in Liege, and was accused of “trading with the enemy”, as the city was part of German occupied France.
Although the firm seems to have carried on trading, in November 1920 it was announced that the company’s Managing Director had resigned over a year earlier, and was now living in Monte Carlo citing ill health.
In 1921 the company was wound-up, and the formal liquidation took place in May 1925.
So, some 90 years after the sign was put up, and its origins seemingly lost, here’s a recovered little known piece of the UK’s motoring history hidden in plain sight.
Maybe the developers of the building that’s being planned can be encouraged to put up a plaque explaining the mosaic’s heritage.
from IanVisits http://bit.ly/2H1N62y
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