Entrepreneur. He was an American-born businessman, who founded the British department store "Selfridges." In 1909 Selfridge and Company, Ltd opened the doors of a 43,000-square-foot store, which would eventually double in size. His father owned a small dry-goods shop in Ripon, Wisconsin, but joined with the Union cavalry in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, attaining rank of Major, and never returning to his family. In 1879 at aged 21, he joined the retail firm of Field, Leiter and Company, working his way up the commercial ladder in a 25-year tenure. He married Rosalie Buckingham, who was from a wealthy Chicago family, but she died tragically in the influenza pandemic of 1918. The couple had five children. In 1908, he left America with a small fortune he had accumulated and traveled to London, England. Unimpressed with the quality of existing British stores, he decided to invest his capital in his own department store, Selfridges on Oxford Street. A pioneering marketer, he advertised a radical notion of shopping for pleasure rather than necessity. There were elegant restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms, and a silence room, with soft lights and deep chairs, all intended to keep the customers in the store for as long as possible. He is credited with the phrase, "the customer is always right." The business prospered well during World War I and through the mid-1930s, but, with expensive personal follies in the years before World War II, he over extended the capital from his company and was forced to resign by debtors in 1939 with the honorary title of president. In 1937 he became a British citizen. In 1951 Selfridges department store was purchased by another department store chain, Lewis's Ltd, of Liverpool. The fortunes of the "merchant prince" rose and fell within 30 years, perhaps reflecting the same way many of England's own fortunes were loss during this unstable financial environment. The Selfridges store building was demolished in 1973. He authored the "The Romance of Commerce," which was published in 1918. He died penniless in 1947 at Putney, in south-west London. He was buried next to his wife and his mother.