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Bristol Street Motors

C

clarkie

Exiled Brummie
I've noted a reference to the above on a couple of posts in the last few years. BSMs website states that the company began in the early 1900s. It has been noted in previous posts that Harry & Maurice Cresswell started the business and that is not in dispute. (I have a loose Cresswell connection)

The problem is I cannot find any information to confirm that. For instance, no appropriate BMD, no census returns?

Clarkie
 
Many thanks Bob. The info. came from my cousin an Aston Villa supporter but the answer is in the name Harry Cressman.

My cousin & previous posts used the name Cresswell.

I googled Maurice & Harry Cresswell. This plus the date is why I could not make the link.

Clarkie
 
2670B278-ABF0-42D6-A4B3-004245D56EE8.jpeg There is a recently posted picture on the Thread Bristol Street of BSM by Vivienne, around 1955...

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/bristol-street.48418/#post-607648

Looking at the modern Bristol Street Motors site it states that the Company would be nearly 100 years old. This would mean the early 1900s. But the Mail article says...”Mr Cressman, who founded Bristol Street Motors in the late 1940s, passed away at home in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday...”

This cannot be correct. I have included an ad from the earliest mention of BSM, and it is from 1925. Now Harry Cressman was 81 in 2008, and therefore born 1927
 
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There seems to be a confusion of names here? Harry G Cressman died in 2008 at the age of 81, and according to clips associated with BSM he was American and ran the firm with his brother. He is very outspoken on business maters from the early 1950s.

There are many ads for BSM during the 1940s but no mention of Cressman, and no Political statements.

I will stick my neck out and say I believe that the American Cressmans took over the firm, say in the later 1940s, and oversaw a massive expansion! As to who actually founded the firm I can’t find, but I suppose it could have been a Creswell ?
 
The Cressman brothers tried to overturn the Sunday trading rules, they sold cars on Sundays which was forbidden by law, Brum trading standards took them to court and they were fined, they defied the court and were fined again with a warning from the judge that if they came before him again he would fine them £50,000, they had to give in. All academic now as that law has long gone.
This from my old memory so might not be completely accurate.
 
That would fit in with the impression I get by reading some of the comments that Harry G Cressman made. A typical American business man who wanted to bring American tactics to the UK. There was a question, I think in the 1960s, as to the salesmen earning enormous wages...his attitude seemed to be that he did not care how they did it as long as they sold cars on commission.

It is interesting that Jessie Eden, who is now featured in Peaky Blinders, led her female workers out on strike at Lucas against the introduction of the American “Bedaux” system of piecework. She had been timed as she was the quickest worker in the factory.
 
I noticed last night in their television advert that they have used the Black Country Museum in the background. The view is from the bridge towrds the "Bottle and Glass". Only a very quick glimpse!
rosie.
 
Just seen a Bristol Street Motors advert on Yesterday, Channel 27 for Bristol Street Motors with old images of Brum. Viv.
 
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