GLIMPSES OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN PORT OF SPAIN TRINIDAD IN THE 1940s

In 1918, a vis­i­tor to Port-of-Spain de­scribed the place thus: "The shop­ping dis­trict fair­ly teems with pedes­tri­ans and ve­hi­cles through­out the busi­ness hours, and Fred­er­ick Street, which is per­haps the busiest in the city, is a gay and in­ter­est­ing sight, kalei­do­scop­ic in colour, crowd­ed with life, and a very bee­hive of ac­tiv­i­ty.

"Here are stores, af­ter stores of every kind, many modeled on the plan of our own de­part­ment stores, and here one may find any­thing and every­thing the mar­kets of the world af­ford. Clerks crowd the shop en­trances. Goods heap the side­walks as at a Paris bazaar. A few blocks far­ther the crowd has thinned, and the shops are small­er and less pre­ten­tious."

One of the largest em­po­ri­ums was the Miller's Pub­lic Sup­ply Stores which be­gan life around 1835, when Irish­man John Miller broke with his em­ploy­ers at Wilsons (a large co­coa and sug­ar agent) and went in­to busi­ness on his own. Al­though he died in 1843, his store sur­vived and was ad­min­is­tered from Gat­e­ Church Street in Lon­don, by a rel­a­tive, James Miller Esq.

This photo taken in 1940s . Taken from Scott He Collection.