ANDREW HISLOP
PETTIGREW
THE President of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Retail
Drapers' Association is a native of New Lanark, and was educated in that
community made famous as an educational centre by Robert Owen. After serving as
an apprentice to the drapery trade in Lanark, he came to Glasgow, and was
successively in the employment of Messrs. Daly & Co., Messrs. Copland & Lye, and
the Polytechnic, before he entered into partnership with the late Mr. Stephens
in 1890, and began the business in Sauchiehall Street, now known as Pettigrew &
Stephens, Limited. On the death of Mr. Stephens in 1896 he became sole
proprietor. The business increased rapidly under his energetic management, till
it is now one of the largest undertakings of the kind in Scotland, and employs
six hundred "hands." In 1904 it was converted into a limited company with a
capital of £170,000. Part of the premises occupied by the firm is the fine
architectural building, formerly the home of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the
Fine arts. In 1908 Mr. Pettigrew accepted an invitation to become managing
director also of the business of Stewart & Macdonald on Mr. Keddie's
resignation.
As Deacon of the Incorporation of Bonnetmakers, Mr. Pettigrew
rendered worthy service to the Trades' House, and in 1907, on the retiral of
Bailie Gray, he, at the unanimous request of the Ward Committee, contested the
Cowcaddens Ward for the Town Council, and was elected after an exciting fight by
a huge majority. At the Drapers' Association dinner a few months afterwards, Sir
William Bilsland, the Lord Provost, suggested that "even the highest civic
honours might yet be in store for Councillor Pettigrew." The calls of business,
however, forced him to retire from the Council in 1908. His chief interests
outside business and Council work are social work and politics, and his chief
recreation is motoring.