page_title: Marks & Spencer
section_title: Establishment
hierarchical_section_title: Marks & Spencer / History / Establishment
caption_attribution_description: English: Marks &amp; Spencer on Briggate following a recent refurbishment and an external facelift. The branch on Briggate is the largest in Leeds, the city where the chain was founded. Taken on the afternoon of Tuesday 15th September 2009.
context_page_description: Marks and Spencer Group plc is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in London, England, that specialises in selling clothing, home products and food products, mostly of its own label. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, having previously been in the FTSE 100 Index from its creation until 2019.
  M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. M&S currently has 959 stores across the U.K. including 615 that only sell food products, and through its television advertising, asserts the exclusive nature and luxury of its food and beverages; it also offers an online food delivery service.
  In 1998, the company became the first British retailer to make a pre-tax profit of over £1 billion, although subsequently it went into a sudden slump, which took the company and its stakeholders by surprise. In November 2009, it was announced that Marc Bolland, formerly of Morrisons, would take over as chief executive from executive chairman Sir Stuart Rose in early 2010; Rose remained executive chairman until July 2010 and then chairman until January 2011, when he was replaced by Robert Swannell.
context_section_description: The company was founded by a partnership between Michael Marks, a Polish Jew born in Słonim (then in the Russian Partition of Poland, now in Belarus), who had migrated to Leeds, England in the early 1880s, and Thomas Spencer, a cashier from the English market town of Skipton in North Yorkshire. On his arrival in England, Marks worked for a company in Leeds called Barran, which employed Jewish migrants (see Sir John Barran, 1st Baronet). In 1884 he met Isaac Jowitt Dewhirst while looking for work. Dewhirst lent Marks £5 (equivalent to £536 in 2016), which he used to establish his Penny Bazaar on Kirkgate Market, in Leeds. Dewhirst also taught him a little English. Dewhirst's cashier was Thomas Spencer, a bookkeeper, whose second wife, Agnes, helped improve Marks's English. In 1894, when Marks acquired a permanent stall in the Leeds covered market, he invited Spencer to become his partner.
  In 1901 Marks moved to the Birkenhead open market, where he amalgamated his business with Spencer. In 1903 the pair were allocated stall numbers 11 & 12 in the centre aisle, and there they opened the famous Penny Bazaar.  The company left Birkenhead Market on 24 February 1923.
  The next few years saw Michael Marks and Tom Spencer move the original Leeds Penny Bazaar to 20, Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, and they also opened market stalls in many locations around the North West of England.
caption: Marks and Spencer on Briggate, not far from its original branch in Leeds.
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK EASYSHARE Z1012 IS Digital Camera", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "480", "Image YResolution": "480", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:15 14:57:35", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Rating": "0", "Image ExifOffset": "2304", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "17880", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6214", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:15 14:57:35", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:09:15 14:57:35", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "20/3", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "1", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "117/20", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "84", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3648", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2736", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "17740", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "64", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "33", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "3768"}