[1] Having served as an apprentice to a local draper from the age of fourteen, he moved to London to become a silk buyer in the capital, working in Peter Robinson's Department Store at Oxford Circus by the time he was 20.

[1][2] It is said that in 1905 John Lewis walked from Oxford Street to Sloane Square with twenty £1000 notes in his pocket and bought Peter Jones.

Lewis engaged in a protracted legal dispute with the ground landlord of his Holles Street premises, Lord Howard de Walden.

At one point he was sent to Brixton Jail for contempt of court, and Howard de Walden sued him for libel following his erection of placards at his stores.

[1][5][6] In 1884 John Lewis married Eliza Baker, a schoolmistress from a family of West Country drapers and alumna of Girton College, Cambridge (1873–1877).