J G Swart - Optician

Photo of the shop front in the 1970s - colour! By Dave Overton with wife Teresa in the doorway.

1934 advert

1930s Art Deco design shop front taken in the 1960s.

	J G Swart first traded in Rushden from 9 High Street, in the mid 1930s, moved into number 104, from where he traded until about 1980. A new style shop front of J G Swart - Art Deco was much out-of-character for our High Street. It was designed to represent spectacles with the door as the nose on which they perched. The design really took people's attention.
The shop and its clock were a High Street landmark in its day, but sadly not preserved.

Further research by Richard Hall, 2025:

J.G.SWART, Optician - at 104 High Street from the 1930s.

John Gabriel Swart came to Rushden from Hackney, in London with his parents, William and Rose, first trading from No. 9 High Street, before moving into his Art Deco premises at 104 High Street, later in the decade where he and his family also lived. William was also an optician so presumably helped his son in the business.

It appears that he and his parents moved to Rushden on the death of his grandmother in 1929.  Perhaps they were inspired to move to Rushden by the opening of Birch Bros coach service from London to Rushden?

In the 1939 Register John is listed as optician on own account, father William is listed as an optician ophthalmic and dispensing and mother Rose as receptionist to optician.

John died at Bedford on 23rd May 1989, William died in 1955 and Rose died at Tonbridge in Kent in 1962.

In 1921 John’s father, William Wolff Smart lived in Hackney with Rose his wife, at 248 Victoria Park Road. Also living there was the rest of the family, Elizabeth Swart, his grandmother plus three sons, John Gabriel, Stanley & Harold and two daughters, Hattie and Elizabeth. William’s occupation is shown as a leather case maker and he worked for the North London Optical Case Co. Ltd and John is shown as a leather case maker learner at the same firm.

Ten years earlier, in 1911, the family lived at 77 Lauriston Road in South Hackney and William was then in business on his own account as a leather case maker but in 1919 he was bankrupt so presumably had to start working for someone else i.e. The North London Optical Case Co. Ltd.

In 1901 on census night there were only three of the family at the Lauriston Road address, Esther Jacobs, William Swart her grandson and Etty Swart, William’s sister, and even then William was a leather case maker.

The early history of the family is rather confusing as 1891 census records show William Swart as living with his grandmother, Esther Jacobs, aged 60, who was a widow by the time that William was born. She was evidently not poor, her late husband was a fish merchant, and in the census documents she is shown as living on her own means. She must have been William's maternal grandmother as in the 1911 census his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Swart, was living with the family. The confusion arises because there is also an Elizabeth Jacobs living there, described as wife but she is also a widow aged 32 and possibly daughter of Esther. Even more confusing is that there is a Clara Woolf aged 23 there and two Woolf grandchildren, presumably grandchildren of Esther.

There is a strange reference in shipping records of 1883 of an Eliza Swart taking a 9 month old Wolff Smart to America on the SS Cephalonia as steerage passengers for a protracted visit.