They were Pettigrew & Stephens a department store in Glasgow; Patrick Thomson Ltd a department store in Edinburgh; D M Brown Ltd a drapers in Dundee and Watt & Grant Ltd a drapers in Aberdeen.
[1] The idea was to increase the buying power and financial resources of the businesses, and were run by John Campbell, who had worked his way up through Pettigrew & Stephens.
These were: In 1952, House of Fraser purchased the Scottish Drapery Corporation (which two-thirds of the shares were then held by Debenhams, through its subsidiary the Drapery Trust)[4] merging the individually run businesses into the House of Fraser group.
To fund the purchase of the Corporation, House of Fraser sold all bar the two department stores property to Legal & General and leased them back at favourable rates.
[5] After the House of Fraser takeover, D M Brown continued to trade under this name until 1972 when it became Arnotts.