13/01/2025
Earmarked for demolition in the not too distant future, this was once the largest single site factory in Europe.
Opened by HRH The Princess Royal in 1934, Montague Burton and Sons, A.K.A. Burton's, produced clothing for the UK and global export massmarkets for the next 90 or so years. This was until finally succumbing to the final nail in the coffin of a dying trade, with the Covid-19 epidemic and ensuing economic meltdown.
It closed in 2021, following years of gradual decline in the UK garment manufacturing industry, marking the end of an era for both British and Jewish history. The firm had been founded in 1903 by a Jewish immigrant to Manchester who later set up in Chesterfield.
This Lithuanian born entrepreneurial tailor was Meshe David Osinsky, later to morph into Sir Montague Burton. This great visionary came to England in 1900 to escape the pogroms of Russia, of which Lithuania was then part of.
And what's it's connection to the Jews of Bradford?
Well, Bradford Jewish a tailor nearly went into business with good old Monty Burton!
There is the story that internationally renowned natural healer Ruth Kaye's singer-songwriter son Daniel Cainer sings about. Ruth's grandfather Maurice Green was a friend of Montague Burton. According to Bradford born psychic healer Ruth, the story goes like this...
"They were both tailors together when they first came to Leeds as young men…must have been back in the last part of the last century and my grandfather missed the opportunity to go into partnership with him and then came to Bradford and had his own factory making suits and raincoats or whatever in Drewton St, I think it was called. They apparently fell out and my family moved to Bradford"...
I bet he kicked himself!
More on Ruth Kate and her family's story
http://bradfordjewish.org.uk/ruth-kaye-natural-healer
