We are always pleased to receive photographs of local businesses, especially shop interiors, which are good at giving detail on day-to-day life in our area. We have just been donated a set of photos of a Kogarah tailoring business, which are a good example of this. The business was begun in 1928 by Mr Chris Kelly, in premises at 308 Railway Parade, Carlton. He had previously been an apprentice tailor for Lowes and Grace Brothers. This photo shows the shop seven years later. Mr Kelly is in front of his shop window. The adjacent business was Albert J Flatman, painter and decorator, and presumably that is Mr Flatman in his shirt-sleeves. These shops were a couple of doors along from the Royal Hotel, across the road from Carlton Station. Today, Kelly’s shop is the ‘Wok and Roast BBQ Kitchen’. The building on the other side of Kelly’s at 310 Railway Parade was a branch of the Commercial Bank of Australia, and nowadays is the Carlton Newsagency.
In 1934, Chris married Ina Bostock at St Michael’s Church, Hurstville. They were to have three children. In 1935, having weathered the Depression years, the Kellys opened a second shop at 124 Railway Parade, Kogarah, retaining the Carlton premises mainly as a workshop. The advert below appeared in the St George Call newspaper advertising the opening of the new premises:
As you might expect of the children of a master tailor, Will, Chris and Alma were always very smartly dressed, walking adverts for the business. Here they are with their mother in the mid 1940s, possibly at Martin Place.
According to Alma Kelly, “Our father had the tailoring shop up until the early 1970s. The business was gradually fading out. He had to farm out a lot of the work as he got older, the cutting and sewing, because he got cataracts in his eyes. That’s why he eventually got out of the business and moved into liquor.” The tailor’s shop became the liquor shop ‘Kelly’s Cellar’, which Kogarah locals will remember well.
This photo shows a promotional visit to the liquor store by the beautiful Carlton and United Breweries shire horses. Quick, Ma, the shovel! These Clydesdales were a familiar sight around Sydney for many years before being put out to grass.
Nowadays the Kogarah shop is a greengrocer’s, ‘Kogarah’s Fresh’.
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