The Tales of Sammy Fox

Sammy Fox always did the right thing.

Sammy Fox was a Victorian Grocer who lived in Nottingham. His shop was always busy because Sammy was a Quaker and this meant he could be trusted and his prices would be fair.

Sammy loved books and even sold them in his shop, but many grown ups in those days couldn’t read or write.

So in 1798, aged just 17 years, Sammy helped Mr William Singleton set up the first ever School for Adults.

When there was a problem Sammy helped.

During the famine in the 1840’s people were starving, so Sammy bought huge quantities of American maize flour and sold it from his shop for less than he’d paid for it. This ensured that even the poorest people in Nottingham could afford to eat.

Sammy treated everybody equally.

The queues for the maize flour were very long and one day a rich lady pushed to the front, because she thought she was more important than everyone else, but Sammy told her…

“Thee get back and take thy place at the end, else thou wilt get no flour.”

If someone was having bad luck, Sammy helped.

When a market trader’s barrow collapsed in front of Sammy’s shop, and everything fell out into the mud, Sammy went outside and bought all the ruined produce from him so he would still earn his money.

Where there was a problem, Sammy found a solution.

In 1832, a disease called ‘Cholera’ infected over 800 people in the city, over 300 died and there wasn’t enough room to bury everyone.

The situation was desperate, so Sammy donated land so that a new cemetery could be built.

Some people in the city were living in appalling conditions. So in 1849, Sammy set up the Nottingham Building Society to help people buy better places to live.

The Nottingham School for the Blind was cramped and overcrowded, so Sammy bought them some land so that they could build a bigger and better school.

In 1868 Sammy died, at the age of 86. Huge crowds of people went to his funeral, and the local newspapers said that, “no man was better known in Nottingham” or “more generally respected” and that he had left an, “impression on many hearts.”

Sammy Fox always did the right thing.

With thanks to Nottingham Local Studies Library