In 1884, T&T was a very different place from what it is today. Sugar prices, which were an economic mainstay, were plummeting and cocoa was king. Agitation and unrest among the Indian population would lead to a mass shooting in San Fernando and it was also the year a young Sephardic Jew from the little town on Barcelona, Venezuela, came ashore at Port-of-Spain.
For a while, Yldefonso De Lima lived at a boarding house and traded in gold coins. A year later he had accumulated sufficient capital to rent premises on Frederick Street, where he opened an emporium selling mainly furniture and other household goods. The store was Y De Lima and Co which would become one of the most successful business enterprises in local history.
De Lima married Josefita Diaz, the widow of his friend, who gave birth to a daughter, Zilah, in 1889. Around 1893 a fire swept the business district and De Lima purchased cheaply, large stocks of water-damaged goods with which he moved to Arima and then San Fernando where he sold them. In 1896 he and his family returned to Port-of-Spain where he purchased the building on Frederick Street, which still houses the main branch of his store.
Initially resident in a small cottage on Oxford Street, the family moved to Bromley House on St Vincent Street, which was later to become the site of the Clico headquarters. In 1906, Zilah, a wilful and lovely young woman, married a Venezuelan dentist Dr Carlos Behrens. She gave birth to a son a year later and died of a fever brought on by poor midwifery. The child, Alfonso, was adopted by his grandparents, who had a rift with the young father.
Eventually Y De Lima and Co left off selling household goods and went fully into the jewellery and pawnbroker trade. The firm pioneered the manufacturing of gold and silver 'cocoa headed' bangles which were much in vogue and still are manufactured today. A significant line of business was the making of gold coin 'haikals' for the wives of wealthy Indians. These consisted of $100 gold coins linked together and suspended from a band of woven cotton from the forehead. As a matter of business, Yldefonso was fluent in several languages, including the Bhojpuri dialect spoken by most local Indians.
This intrepid businessman was a pioneer in local motoring. As early as 1912, when cars were still very much a rarity, he imported cars made by the Studebaker Corporation, under the brands Flanders and EMF. At his home was a huge concrete reservoir filled with petrol, bought wholesale in drums from the United States and later from local oilfields. The cars were also available for rent at the princely sum of $20 for a trip to Mt St Benedict.
Yldefonso was a real gearhead though he himself never drove. Around 1920 he had dispensed with car sales and rentals and owned a massive Buick Phaeton and then later, a magnificent Pierce-Arrow which would have cost a staggering $20,000 in a time when such a sum could have bought a whole city street. His wife died in 1910 and Yldefonso married her young niece, Rosario, then aged 14. Rosario and Yldefonso had seven children, one dying young.
The family moved to a larger house on Jerningham Avenue in 1916, and Victoria Avenue four years later, eventually settling in a large house at Coblentz Avenue in St Ann's, in 1927. That was the year Yldefonso De Lima died after ailing for some time. His young widow, with the help of relatives, managed to carry on the business but not without a struggle. Arturo De Lima, a son, assisted his mother after his return from school in the United States.
The company opened a branch at High Street in San Fernando, in 1937. The years of WWII were lean ones and when the war ended in 1945 Y De Lima and Co was incorporated as a limited liability entity. Two years later, a store was opened in Barbados, becoming one of a chain that would eventually number 28 branches in Trinidad, Canada, New York and the wider Caribbean. In 1956, Rosario De Lima died from cancer and eleven years later, his grandson Alfonso also passed from the same ailment.
The descendants of Yldefonso De Lima continued his enterprise which this year, would have celebrated 130 years of existence. Though somewhat downsized and later faced with competition, Y De Lima and Co remains a byword for fine jewellery and is a household name in T&T.?
