The Drapery Trust began in 1925 as the Drapery & General Investment Trust, an ambitious attempt to consolidate Britain’s family-owned department stores into a powerful national retail group. Financier Clarence Hatry backed the scheme after making money speculating in oil stocks, while Ronald Glaze of Marshalls became managing director. By 1927, the trust controlled or had acquired interests in 65 stores, employed approximately 11,000 people, and reported annual sales exceeding £18 million. Its grandest acquisition was the Piccadilly department-store business of Swan & Edgar, purchased from Charterhouse Investment Trust for £1,250,000. That same year, Debenhams acquired 75 percent of the Drapery Trust for £2,350,000, with Hatry’s Austin Friars Trust helping finance the transaction through a large purchase of Debenhams shares.
The expansion concealed a financial fraud. In 1929, while trying to raise money for his attempted purchase of United Steel, Hatry forged £478,100 worth of Drapery Trust shares. He confessed in September 1929, helping trigger the collapse of his financial empire and badly damaging confidence in the retail conglomerate associated with him. Lloyds Bank began recovery proceedings in 1931 over £493,100 secured against property, while the Drapery Trust’s finances deteriorated: it could not pay Debenhams a dividend in 1932, after paying £75,000 the previous year, and profits fell from £102,767 in 1933 to £61,921 in 1934. Maurice Wright subsequently carried out a capital restructuring that reduced issued capital from £15.1 million to £6 million. The scandal left the trust burdened by debt and reputational damage, prompting further asset sales, including the disposal of Drages to Great Universal Stores in 1937. In the 1970s, the surviving businesses were absorbed into the Debenhams name or closed, leaving Hatry’s grand retail-consolidation experiment as an early warning about speculative finance and opaque corporate expansion in British fashion retail.
