It is all but impossible to run a modern high-street shop without a set of huge, structural glass windows that showcase what the business has to offer and catch as many eyes as reasonably possible.

It is so ubiquitous and window shopping is such a vital part of the retail experience that it can be difficult to imagine a world without huge windows, but as with any innovation, there has to be an innovative pioneer who shows the potential for the concept.

For the modern shopfront, that person is Francis Place, a Charing Cross tailor who was a radical in every sense of the word.

He is far more famous as a social reformer and radical politician, but between his first acts of activism and his contributions to removing anti-trade union laws, Mr Place was a very successful tailor, setting up his own business at 16 Charing Cross in the process.

It was an immediate hit, and immediately controversial, for his then-unusual approach to advertising; rather than having a lattice of small glass windows as other Charing Cross shops did, he installed huge glass panes that prominently displayed his tailored works and goods for sale.

At the time, this was condemned as a “reckless extravagance”, but it evidently worked, as the store was extremely successful almost immediately, something that was magnified when he also housed a library of radical reading material in the back.

In response to criticisms of his methods, Mr Place noted in his memoirs that he sold more goods from the window, which in turn helped to pay the wages of the journeymen he employed as tailors as well as the expenses of maintaining his shop and his home.

This popularity allowed the shop to become a meeting point for various radical thinkers, and he would be a pivotal figure in the drafting of the People’s Charter, the central document of Chartism that would ultimately shape British democracy by the end of the 19th century.