John Little (department store)
defunct chain of department stores in Singapore
John Little was a former chain of department stores in Singapore. Established in 1845, John Little was the oldest department store in Singapore. The John Little chain was acquired and owned by Robinson & Co. Limited in 1955.
History
In 1842, John Martin Little worked for his uncle Francis S. Martin who started a retail business at Commercial Square (now Raffles Place). In 1845, Francis S. Martin sold his business to Little and Cursetjee Frommurze, a well-known Parsee merchant, to form Little, Cursetjee & Co..
On 30 August 1845, Little and Frommurze started their business as auctioneers and commission agents, and offered services in retail as well as auction of properties such as spice plantations and valuable household furniture. Shoppers could buy tickets to plays, musicals and other performances. Little, Cursetjee & Co. became a popular hangout for locals to hold meetings, and functioned like the modern-day equivalent of a central box office.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6244972. VIAF identifies the subject as 4732169442787725340001. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1845, 1955 and 1842.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Little (department store)” 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.