Betsy Lobb
British businesswoman (1868-1956)
Betsy Lobb (15 November 1868 – 9 December 1956) was the British owner and managing director of John Lobb Bootmaker a royal warranted maker of bespoke boots and shoes in London and Paris.
Life
Lobb was born on Forder farm in South Brent in Devon in 1868. Her parents were John and Ellen (born Callard) Smerdon. She worked in a small hotel in London where she was the manager.
She married William Hunter Lobb who trained as a bootmaker. He was the heir and second son of John Lobb. William oversaw the expanding business that his father had started opening a shop in Paris in 1901 and a second unsuccessful premises in Regent Street in 1904. Betsy would run the shoe business after her husband died in 1916. The business was unusual as it had failed to mechanise and shoes were manufactured by hand. The clientele were rich and they enjoyed a royal warrant.
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This entry incorporates text from “Betsy Lobb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.