The Shields business boss who worked until he was 95 and was known as 'the trader with the human touch'

If ever there was a contender for the most dedicated business boss in South Tyneside - Sidney Coston was it.

He said goodbye to the world in 1970 doing the job he loved. The businessman-cum-humanitarian had collapsed and died at the age of 95 in the place where he’d spent much of his life – his office in Bath Street.

The self-confessed workaholic was chairman of the town’s wholesale grocery giant, Sico Ltd. Born in Worcestershire, he began selling yeast and cooked meats from a pony and trap when he was just 12.

He came to South Shields two years later, and launched one of the biggest firms of wholesale grocers in the region.

A Shields Gazette report told his story in 1970, the year he passed away, and described him as ‘the trader with the human touch’.

It added: “Mr Coston was often thought of as the champion of the small trader.” It also described him as ‘considerate and understanding’.

He believed in ‘independence and honesty in the service he provided’ and the Gazette added: “In conversation, he was still as perceptive and articulate as a man half his age’.

But money-making was not his prime objection. All through his life he worked for charitable organisations and had a proud reputation for voluntary work.

A very religious man, hung around his office walls were quotations from the Bible, by which he lived his long life.

Much-loved by his staff – who he referred to as “his bairns” – he fought campaigns for the small trader against the emerging supermarket chains.

Once, in his annual Christmas newsletter, he said: “The pernicious habit of introducing loss leaders may appear to be a good advertising stunt, but it is despicable and unclean.”

Speaking a short time before his death, he told the Gazette: “The little man is being crushed out”.

He truly was an ambassador for South Tyneside and the borough’s small traders, and we would love to hear from anyone who knew him.

To give you more of an indication of life in 1970 in South Tyneside, all this was in the news;

Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy were a one-off pairing in The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, showing at the ABC in South Shields.

Get in touch and tell us more about the man who cared for his staff and called them his ‘bairns’ Share your recollections by emailing [email protected]