ABOUT WILDY & SONS

Wildy & Sons Ltd are law booksellers and publishers - and have been based at Lincoln's Inn Archway since 1830. We supply books, journals and subscriptions to law firms, chambers, government departments and academic institutions not only in the UK, but also all over the world. Our two bookshops in central London carry over 10,000 different titles and we are the only retail law booksellers in England and Wales. Our website www.wildy.com has become an industry standard and point of reference throughout the legal world. We are proud to have been winners of the BIALL Customer Service Initiative and Supplier of the Year awards on six occasions in recent years.

WILDY HISTORY

Although it has always been claimed the original Mr Wildy started the company in 1830, subsequent evidence in the form of books later discovered suggests that a Wildy was operating at ‘Lincoln's Inn Gate’ in the early 1820s. Suffice it to say, however, we are happy to accept 1830 as a starting point.

In those days, legal booksellers and publishers were often one entity and most operated out of Holborn, Chancery Lane and Fleet Street. The likes of Messrs Sweet, Stevens, Shaw, Wildy and latterly Maxwell operated in the area, not to mention of course a certain Mr Butterworth! All started life as booksellers, publishing when approached by a lawyer clutching a manuscript or commissioning a title where there was an obvious demand to be filled. Some might say that the sensible amongst these names went on to solely publish, whilst others continued as humble booksellers.

My grandfather, WW Sinkins joined the company in 1895 and my father, WE Sinkins in 1930. During that time the last male Wildy passed away which meant the last surviving family member was Miss LS Wildy, a spinster. At that time, it was not considered proper for a woman to be involved in ‘trade’ albeit one serving the legal profession, so management passed to the Sinkins family to run the company on her behalf. Miss Wildy enjoyed an income from the company but lived a reclusive, almost ‘Miss Havisham’ life in Torquay. When she passed away in the mid 1960s, the ownership transferred to the Sinkins family in recognition (at that time) of 90 years of combined service to the company.

It is little known that we also had a bookshop between the columns of ‘The Cloisters’, Temple, less than 200 yards away from where our Fleet Street Branch stands today. The Cloisters were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but on completion, the story goes, the Benchers of the Inn expressed concern that there were insufficient columns to support the chambers above safely. Incensed by this suggestion but needing to placate his client and receive payment for his work, Sir Christopher had four further columns installed. More than two hundred years later, my uncle KJ Sinkins placed a ladder against the columns and when he reached the top could see that four of the columns did not reach the roof above, so Sir Christopher it would seem, had the last laugh! Sadly, the Cloisters and our bookshop within were destroyed by enemy action during the blitz of 1941.

The following note was written by WW Sinkins, my grandfather, as an introduction to our first post-war catalogue in November 1946. During the war, in addition to running Wildy's, he was an ARP Warden and, as he described he witnessed the bombing of Temple in 1941:

Figure 1:

A Profitable Book.

To see tens of thousands of books, many irreplaceable, destroyed is sad, and the world, even enemy countries is the poorer. Another warehouse near Chancery Lane was bombed, but after many weeks of dangerous labour in the condemned premises we managed to salvage many lorry loads of books and placed them in the basement of 3 Stone Buildings, Lincolns Inn. Two days after we had finished, a bomb fell and destroyed the lot.

Figure 2:

Carey Street in the 1880s with Lincoln's Inn Archway.

Figure 3:

WJ Wildy. The last Wildy directly involved in running the shop.

Another cause of our near extinction was that owing to war service, at one time our staff consisted of EXACTLY ONE, and he (over sixty) was in the Home Guard. Fortunately, our HQ in Lincoln's Inn remained intact with the exception of losing all the glass several times.

Figure 4 features Wildy's second shop on Fleet Street, near Temple Church, and quite close to where the old shop in the Cloisters used to stand. In keeping with the historic legacy of the business this new shop is situated on a site that dates back to the 14th century.

Figure 4:

Wildy & Sons, The Cloisters, Temple.

Figure 5:

Wildy's second shop on Fleet Street.

Fleet Street has always been the haunt of printers, publishers and booksellers since Wynkyn de Worde set up in 1500. During the 17th and 18th centuries Jacob Tonson, William Pickering and many more booksellers including Bernard Lintot, publisher of Pope, Farquhar, Steele and Addison, were established in the street. Press cuttings dating from 1706 contain notices of Lintot with an address suggesting that he actually operated from No 16 Fleet Street, our current location. The site was also the location of one of the original coffee shops of the 18th century. These establishments were the predecessors to the modern commodity and trading exchanges.

THE CARD CATALOGUE

In 1930 my father WEB Sinkins, concerned about the ever-increasing volume of legal titles being published, decided to start a card index system to catalogue new titles received. This index gradually grew and was expanded to include all the books published on English, Scottish and Irish law that crossed his lectern. This passion for cataloguing continued and eventually the only necessary criteria for inclusion was that the title should be written in English and be on the subject of law. WEB Sinkins continued his work on this for 65 years until he retired in 1995.

Figure 6:

A card from amongst the 65,000 compiled by WE Sinkins.

Some 65,000 catalogue cards were compiled by WE Sinkins. These cards are still used today as they are often the only record of early editions of old monographs.

During the 1970s, half a drawer of records a month was sent upon request to the Bodleian Law Library in Oxford, to assist in their cataloguing of early law books. WEB‘s legacy to the company was to leave a database that is unique: a card index system of 86 drawers, containing approximately 65,000 record cards, listing law books published from the year 1500 to 2000, when computerisation took over. Visitors to our Lincoln's Inn branch are welcome to view these records.

When I joined the company as the third generation of my family in 1968, Chancery Lane and the immediate area still boasted six legal bookshops or publishers’ showrooms and HMSO still had a large branch in High Holborn. This was run by a mysterious, and generally unhelpful group of staff, all identically dressed in brown dust coats and carrying seemingly important pieces of paper in their hands which appeared to be far more important to them than the waiting customers!

Today, only Wildy remains in legal London, with our bookshops in Fleet Street and Lincoln's Inn; and our online bookshop in cyberspace www.wildy.com.

Having worked at Wildy's during the summer after leaving school, I formerly joined the company in October 1968. My starting salary was £10 per week, £520 per annum, but to put this in context, a weekly train ticket was just over £1 and you could buy four pints of beer and 20 cigarettes for under ten shillings, just 50p!

It was all very different then. There were no required ‘qualifications’, you basically had to start as a junior and learn the trade as you went along. Most knowledge had to be retained in your head, until you had absorbed enough to be ‘useful’. Meantime you spent your days, doing hand deliveries around the Inns and unpacking and packing books. Under no circumstances was a junior allowed to speak with a customer until he/she was considered knowledgeable enough to do so.

Figure 7:

‘Wildy’ by Sallon 1989. Caricature of WE Sinkins.

There were no computers or mobile phones of course, indeed the entire company was connected to the outside world by two direct phone lines only and no extensions! Almost 50% of staff were typists/clerks and you could hear the clatter of typewriters wherever you went. The bookshop shelving was made up of reclaimed planks from the Second World War and bowed ominously under the weight of the books.

WAREHOUSE AND LINCOLN'S INN SHOP

Just after the war, the company purchased a disused chapel in Gypsy Hill, near Crystal Palace. This became an important part of the operation before computers and when sets of reports and periodicals were still in demand. At one point we had staff there working full time.

Early in the millennium, we were approached by several developers about the sale of Gypsy Hill. After a year or two this finally happened and we had the task of finding an alternative warehouse, then moving the huge amount of stock. The money raised from the sale allowed us to purchase a purpose-built warehouse and office complex in Leighton Buzzard and conduct a renovation of the Lincoln's Inn shop which was long overdue.

This became a once-in-a-generation project and took months of planning involving architects and a bespoke shelving and cabinet maker. English Heritage was also involved, as our building is several hundred years old. The renovation included the exposure and restoration of Adam fireplaces and coving, along with the installation of central air conditioning and heating. We also installed new IT and telecoms systems. The shop had to shut for two months and we managed to run the business out of our neighbouring offices and the goods-out department across the Archway from the main shop.

Figure 8:

Before and after the bookshop refurbishment.

Figure 9:

Gypsy Hill and Leighton Buzzard warehouses.

RECENT YEARS

As we entered the 21^st century, there was a sense of frustration that we were not moving forwards as much as we felt we should. My then General Manager, Steven Ross (now our MD), and I, along with others, genuinely believed that we needed to break out and ‘bang our drum’ more loudly! Why were we not always the supplier of choice, why weren't enough people aware of what we did and our high levels of service standards? The answer being that we were simply not being proactive enough. We were known within the Inns of Court and overseas but not in the City.

Our aim became to grow the business organically by recruiting experienced outsiders. First with Charlie Alpera as Bookshop Manager, then with Alden Bowers as our first Account Manager, along with Jonathan Sykes as our Online Sales Manager. Our turnover and market share began to increase and by 2005, we had won our first BIALL customer service award (the Customer Relations Initiative Award). By 2008 we boasted five Account Managers in London and the provinces and our bookshop staff had doubled in size. We also began to travel and exhibit overseas and began to regularly attend the IBA, CALL, AALL, CARALL and ALLA conferences. Our website www.wildy.com became the go-to source of information for law librarians, practitioners and even other suppliers. Our online Wildy Account Management System (WAMS) was developed to give instant access to account holders to be able to view the status of their account. Customers were now able to request statements, print invoices, view their subscriptions, standing orders and even place new orders, whenever they wanted to and wherever they might be.

Figure 10:

Wildy catalogue from the 1940s alongside the Wildy Book News.

The seed of our plan planted in 2000 has flourished beyond our wildest dreams and expectations, thanks to many of these actions. The company has grown dramatically since then both in terms of business and continuing to recruit qualified professional staff to maintain our levels of service. However, none of this remarkable growth would have been possible without the continued support of our customers.

PRESENT DAY

The biggest event at Wildy this year has of course been our acquisition of Hammicks Legal Information Services. This was finally completed at the end of January after months of negotiations. Former customers of HLIS, their standing orders, subscriptions and journals were successfully transferred across to our system and we were pleasantly surprised that there were few if any glitches. This was largely brought about by a lot of hard work behind the scenes, particularly with data processing and IT integration leading up to the acquisition itself.

I am pleased to report that most of the former Hammicks staff that wanted to join Wildy in central London were able to do so and have settled in quickly. Many of their names will be familiar to you and their knowledge and experience has enhanced the larger company in ways that have proven invaluable.

It may surprise you to learn that this is not the first acquisition by Wildy in recent years, a fact probably not recognised until now. Indeed, the company has previously merged with, or acquired four other entities within our industry as follows:

WILDY BOOK NEWS

In January 1996 we published the first of our monthly Book News magazines. In the beginning they were black and white and xeroxed. We soon found that they served a purpose for our customers. They provided up to date information on the books and subscriptions published in any given month along with other bits of news and pictures. In a way this was a continuation of WE Sinkins’ card catalogue and became another service for the legal profession.

The monthly magazine is now in its 24th year. As well as the print version there is an increasingly popular pdf version which can be downloaded from our website.

WILDY, SIMMONDS & HILL PUBLISHING

Publishing has always been a small part of Wildy's business since the beginning of the company. The earliest book we know about is dated 1827. The shop at that time was located at the entrance to the Inn in Chancery Lane. Throughout the nineteenth century Wildy's continued to publish the odd volume, either of English law or that of the then Empire. Titles included:

There were probably more but they were lost over the years and the above are all we have now on our shelves.

In the mid-20^th century Wildy's became more involved in reprints of books for which we knew there was a demand such as O'Malley's Election Cases and Wright's Law of Criminal Conspiracies text.

2001 saw the merger of the list of Simmonds & Hill Publishing Ltd, with the Wildy list of publications. Since then there has been a steady stream of publishing. This includes books of international commercial and academic interest along with books for English practitioners. In addition, we also have a selection of books of memoirs and legal humour. Our backlist includes around 250 titles in print and we add about 20 new titles per year.

TO SUM UP: OUR STAFF AND SERVICES TODAY

OUR VALUES

For us, this is probably the easiest question to answer. We always aim to give sound and professional advice to our customers based on many years of experience and accumulated knowledge. We always seek to attain service levels above and beyond what might normally be expected. For items held in stock, customers in central London can expect to receive their order within hours of placing it and for all other UK customers we aim to deliver next day. Anywhere else in the world, 3-7 days.

OUR PLACE IN THE MARKET

We are the leading third-party supplier of legal material in the country, able to offer a ‘one stop shop’ service to customers, quickly and efficiently. This brings with it the added advantage of only having to deal with one supplier for journal subscriptions and books, thus saving time and money.

As previously mentioned, in 2005 the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians recognised this by awarding Wildy's the first BIALL Customer Service Award and in 2010 we were given the BIALL Supplier of the Year award. We then went on to win the BIALL award in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018. We are immensely proud of this honour.

OUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE?

We try to never be complacent. We are always alert to industry changes and try to move swiftly when these occur. We hope to continue to be customer-facing and to offer the highest possible levels of service that we can. We seek to react rapidly should a mistake occur and, most importantly, to seek to resolve it quickly and to the customer's satisfaction. We will continue to serve the legal profession, not only within the UK, but throughout the world!

Wildy & Sons has occupied Lincoln's Inn Archway since 1830 and it has always been a family business, although the last Wildy died more than 50 years ago. The Sinkins family have been partners in the business for over a century and John Sinkins, the current proprietor, is still maintaining the traditions and standards that have endeared Wildy's to many generations of legal practitioners. Abbie Sinkins, the fourth generation of the family joined the company in 2011 and is now a Director adding youth and continuity to the business.