- Joe Mitty
Joseph Sidney Mitty MBE (
7 May 1919 –30 September 2007 ) was a British salesman and the man who turned the firstOxfam gift shop into a national retail network of shops selling second hand clothing and other goods. This network put Oxfam on the high street map and has contributed substantially to Oxfam's income as well as presence in the public eye over the years. It was also an inspiration for many charities to follow Oxfam's lead. cite news |first=|last=|title= Joe Mitty
url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/03/db0302.xml|work= The Telegraph |publisher=|date=2007-10-03 |accessdate=2007-10-07]Mitty, who worked for Oxfam for 33 years, earned the nickname of "salesman of the angels" and there are now, as of 2007, over 700 Oxfam shops throughout the UK.cite news |first=Olinka|last=Koster|title= Dead at 88, the man who sold us charity shops
url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=485197&in_page_id=1770|work=The Daily Mail |publisher=|date=2007-10-02 |accessdate=2007-10-07]Early life
Joe Mitty was born on May 7, 1919, in
Islington , northLondon . His father, an employee atRoyal Arsenal ,Woolwich , died when he was just 12 years old and he was raised by his mother. He attended a local council church school.Mitty became a
civil service clerk after leaving school. He joined the BritishTerritorial Army in 1938 before enlisting in the 7th BattalionRoyal Berkshire Regiment in March 1939. Mitty was admitted to theRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst for officer training in 1942, following which he was commissioned as asecond lieutenant in the Army'sHampshire Regiment and was sent toEast Asia .On his way toEast Asia , Mitty travelled throughIndia where he was personally moved by theextreme poverty which he witnessed in theslums ofCalcutta .In 1942, while still serving in the military, Mitty married Dorothy White. The couple had two sons and a daughter. Dorothy died in 1995.
Mitty left the Army in 1946 and moved to Oxford with his wife. He purchased a quarter acre plot of land at
Cumnor for£ 75, and built a house, which he and his wife would live in for the next 60 years. He initially worked for theMinistry of Aircraft Production . However, in 1949 he noticed an employment advertisement in theOxford Mail newspaper seeking an administrative assistant for theOxford Committee for Famine Relief , an organization which would later became known by its current name,Oxfam . Mitty decided to apply for this position.Oxfam and the Oxfam Charity Shop
The first permanent Oxfam gift shop had opened in February 1948 on the ground floor of 17 Broad Street, Oxford, a lease on which building had been taken by the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (later Oxfam). The building was to fulfil several purposes: headquarters of the committee, a collection point for clothing that had been collected for victims of the Second World War in Europe, and as a gift shop. This work was carried out by Robert Castle who had been employed as Oxfam's first paid Organiser in late 1946. Castle was hired on a part-time basis but worked full-time for 20 months. After he had left Oxfam to fulfill a business obligation, volunteers took over until Joe Mitty was hired to work on a full-time basis in November 1949. He received a starting salary of a little over £8 per week. This made Mitty Oxfam's first full-time paid employee. [ Oxford Committee for Famine Relief Council minutes, 1946-49, Oxfam Archive ]
Mitty's initial role at Oxfam was to oversee the distribution of donated
clothing to Europeans who had been left impoverished during World War II. However, Oxfam soon saw an untapped financial potential in selling the donated clothing rather than just sending the donations toEurope . This would allow Oxfam to "to become a shop that sold everything but bought nothing," to quote The Telegraph. Proceeds from the sales of the donated goods would be used to fund Oxfam's charitable goals.Mitty's motto for the first gift shop was "If you donate it, we can sell it." Some of the more unusual items that Mitty sold were used
false teeth and a livedonkey . The store only made £500 during its first year of operation, but by 1953, just four years after the shop had opened, it brought in a £10,000 a yearprofit .Mitty's success with the first Oxfam shop gave him the opportunity to oversee and open several more charity shops throughout Britain by the
early 1960s. His growing success at Oxfam allowed him to recruit a number of celebrities includingHarry Secombe who helped to draw attention to Oxfam's work. By 1971, Mitty's Oxfam charity shops were making over £1 million and had become the largest charity shop chain in the country.Joe Mitty officially retired from Oxfam in 1982, though he continued to work as an Oxfam
ambassador . In 2006, he appeared withVictoria Beckham at an Oxfam charity shop inNotting Hill where she presented him with an award and he sold her a black dress for £19.99 as part of a campaign to draw attention to Oxfam's work. He also worked with the 20,000volunteer s who run Britain's over 700 Oxfam charity shops.Mitty was awarded an
MBE in 2003 for his work with the Oxfam charity shops and service to Oxfam. In 2006, the then Prime MinisterTony Blair presented Mitty with a lifetime achievement award at theITV-Daily Mirror Pride of Britain event. Blair declared to the audience that if Mitty had worked in theprivate sector he would have been a multi-millionaire .Carol Vorderman , a Britishtelevision presenter , also called Mitty "the grandfather of British charity shops" at the same awards.Quotes
In a 2002 speech, Joe Mitty told a gathering of Oxfam charity shop
managers that: "I was a sort ofChristopher Columbus of the 1940s. I had no idea how toprice things and when. But I had two words -rage , and passion. Rage because of theinequality andinjustice in the world, and a passion to do something about it."Death
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