Michael Marks

Marks was a Jewish refugee from the Russian Empire who arrived in north-east England in the early 1880s with little English. A Leeds wholesaler, Isaac Dewhirst, lent him five pounds of stock to peddle, and in 1884 he opened a market stall under the sign "Don't ask the price, it's a penny." Ten years later he took Dewhirst's cashier Thomas Spencer as partner, and Marks & Spencer has been on British high streets ever since.