FiloFax

So far Bleistift’s Stationery Factlets have covered stationery and a woman. No man yet. We wouldn’t want to change that on International Women’s Day, would we – so today’s factlet is about Grace Scurr (1894 – 1987).

She started working for Normal & Hill in 1921 as a temp / typist. Norman & Hill became what is now known as Filofax. The idea for the name Filofax, from ‘file of facts,’ came from Grace Scurr and she is also the one who saved the company after Norman & Hill’s offices were destroyed in the war: she had all supplier and customer data written down in her Filofax, which she took home every day ^[1]Depending how the data is organised this kind of behaviour might get you into trouble when the GDPR comes into effect in May 2018..

When she left the company in 1955 she was president and shareholder in the company.

There are more stories to tell about Filofax, but I’d like to keep the focus on Grace Scurr, so am stopping here.

Photo from Filomaniac, copyright unknown, possibly expired. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.