Charles Morell

1898: Christmas at Charles Morell's [image info]

Charles Morell had a toy shop at 368 Oxford Street, London in the 1890s, and the name "Morell's" also turns up in association with toys at a different Oxford Street address, and at Burlington Arcade.

1898 text:

AT Christmas time Toyland is always at its best. One of the most noted places in Toyland is called "Morrell's". This place is inhabited by a great number of beautiful dolls and gallant soldiers and many queer animals, of which you shall hear more presently. The dolls live in most beautiful dolls' houses, handsomely furnished, and the most palatial of these residences are fitted with electric bells and lights. The soldiers are very striking figures, and look wonderfully attractive in their beautiful uniforms. At "Morrell's", in Toyland, there is a great and wonderful forest of Christmas trees, many of which are decked with electric lights, and in this forest live many queer animals. There are clockwork bears that do all sorts of tricks, and funny rabbits who take each other about in bath chairs, and pretty, gentle goats harnessed to dainty little carts, and if you look at our illustrations you will see just what they look like. When the dolls ride through the forest they travel in an old-fashioned stage coach drawn by four horses. The horses are not at all afraid of the bears, because in Toyland all animals are perfectly friendly. The shops and theatres at "Morell's" are just like the ones in London, and when the dollies are dull, or want to buy new frocks or joints of meat for dinner, they have only to get into the beautiful clockwork train, which runs on real lines and stops at real stations. If you look at the pictures that appear on page 11 and want to go to this delightful place you will find it at 368, Oxford Street, W.

— , -, , The Ladies Field, Supplement, , 3rd December 1898