Not the Antique Roadshow

An indoor day for us so we started looking at this strange little object, having no idea what it was or even how to get into it.  We'd picked it up on a trip to England some time ago (my great grandad's?) and it had sat on a shelf ever since. Now we decided to really look. We quickly decided it used to hold matches, because there was a serrated area on the side that would make a perfect striker. Then we found this writing, far less obvious in its uncleaned state than here in the photo. So, an advert for a tailor, but what does a habit maker do? Surely nuns don't use tailors? And how does it open? Was it gummed up with dirt?
As I scraped at a seam with a fingernail it suddenly opened. I closed it and opened it a couple of times to make sure I had the trick. The trick was to press down on the opposite side to that "BEAR DOWN..." text. Small dents over that text showed us we weren't the only ones to have had problems figuring that out.
And so onto Internet...
Harry Hall was a tailor who specialised in riding clothes for men and women, hence the "habit" was for riding habit, which apparently is what ladies' riding outfits were called. (The make still exists!)
Finally, we found a very similar box pictured on an auction site - it was a Vesta Safe. Gentlemen carried their matches (Vestas) in a metal box, partly to keep them dry and partly because the matches could self-ignite in one's pocket, hence the "safe"! Antique roadshows always finish with value and going from that one auction site this is worth around £25 but if you want one, check the auction sites because we aren't selling.
(Backblip - today's, 19 Oct, blip will be arriving soon.)