Battle of the Gregs

In the archives I also found the annual reports which state visitor figures. It seems that Mary’s collections did eventually garner more interest than her late husband’s. However the Thomas Greg room at Mosley Street was by far their most popular room in the early to mid twenties. He was overtaken by Mary’s collections at Heaton and Platt. I’ve made a spreadsheet of the figures which unfortunately won’t fit on the blog so I am emailing it around. I got a bit involved and made a few graphs too! I’ve only gone up to 1934 as the Greg room at Mosley Street was disbanded and I’m only up to 1930 in the letters so I’m not sure if Mary’s collections change location in the later years yet.

Ps. In 1932-3 over 300,000 people saw items from the Greg’s collections at Mosley Street, Heaton and Platt. The Greg name must have been prominent in Manchester for art as well as industry.

Melanie