Business: Calile Malouf Store

Story

In 1896, Calile Malouf is listed in the Queensland Post Office Directory as a fancy goods dealer, Stanley Street, South Brisbane. In 1897 and 1898, he is still in Stanley Street but now also a draper. According to his daughter, Minnie, Calile had seized the opportunity provided by the 1893 floods and started a business at 150 Stanley Street, South Brisbane: ‘…it was an old bank, and they scrubbed the walls from the top to the bottom because they were all mildewed…and we lived up on top and…we had this shop underneath. Mum had a couple of dressmakers. They made aprons and we’d put the aprons in the shop, for selling’.

Calile imported fancy and novelty goods and sold to hawkers as well as to the public and continued in business in South Brisbane for the next decade.

In 1899, Calile Malouf of 50 Stanley Street, South Brisbane advertised for ‘two good reliable Girls (machinists)’ and the following year, he advertised for ‘three smart Girls for all round machine work’. Still in business six years later, in July 1906, he advertised for two female machinists to do general sewing, confirming his daughter’s recollection that her mother had ‘a couple of dressmakers’ who made items such as aprons to sell in the shop.

The business was definitely a family affair. Calile and his sons, Slaman and Michael, went hawking while Ada, his wife, ran the shop and supervised the ‘two dressmakers’. For a time, they had a store at Wynnum. A young Michael would ‘go and open the shop and come back on the train…with the money they took for the day’. They also opened Malouf & Co. at Beaudesert. Seeking better opportunities, they went further west and opened a store in Charleville subsequently closing the Beaudesert store in February 1909.

References

Beaudesert Times, 12 February 1909, p. 2, viewed 14 March 2021, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article216125855.

Calile Malouf interview with Anne Monsour, Brisbane, 2019.

Minnie Jacobson, interview with Anne Monsour, Brisbane, 1991.

Queensland Post Office Directories to 1949.

Telegraph (Brisbane), 17 April, 1899, p. 7, viewed 12 July 2019, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173364244.

Telegraph (Brisbane), 23 August 1900, p. 6, viewed 12 July 2019, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174126966.

Telegraph (Brisbane), 11 July 1906, p. 8, viewed 14 July 2019, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175092733.