Hospitality

Night on the tiles: Slaters restaurants

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Slaters became one of the largest catering companies in the world.

Slaters
Thomas Slater (1794 – 1866) had established a butchers business on Kensington High Street by 1819.

The business received a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria from 1837. Soon, Slater supplied a large proportion of the Royal Family, and twelve of the leading gentlemen’s clubs in London.

The business was probably one of the largest and most prestigious butchers shops in Britain by 1845.

Thomas Slater died in 1866, and the business continued to be operated by his sons.

John Crowle acquires and expands Slaters
John Crowle (1841 – 1906) was the son of William Crowle, a butcher and farmer of 25 acres at Charlestown, Cornwall.

John Crowle worked at his father’s butchers shop in St Austell. He relocated to London in 1869 and operated a butchers shop. His brother Thomas Crowle (1826 – 1877) had already moved to London, and managed a butchers shop on Newington Green Road.

John Crowle partnered with Thomas Crowle and acquired Slaters from Alfred Slater (born 1830) in 1872. The business was substantial, with a turnover of £75,000 a year.

John Crowle bought out his brother’s stake in the business in 1873.

Through energy, enthusiasm and perseverance, John Crowle’s butcher’s shop prospered. He employed thirteen men at his shop by 1881. Crowle added a restaurant on the upper floor of the shop. Soon, further outlets were established across the West End of London.

Slaters became a limited company from 1889. Outlets were located around central London, with a flagship restaurant in Piccadilly. The restaurants targeted the upper middle and lower upper class markets.

Crowle was a staunch Wesleyan Methodist and temperance advocate, and as a result his restaurants did not serve alcohol. As diners did not linger over drinks, the restaurants enjoyed a faster turnover of customers, and a lunchtime table could be filled up to six times.

There were eleven Slaters outlets by 1900, mostly located in the City of London, but also in West London and the West End. The restaurants had elegant interiors with white tablecloths and napkins.

The loss-making ice cream business was sold to Carlo Gatti & Stevenson Ltd in 1901.

John Crowle died in 1906. His estate was valued at £448,696, half of which he gifted to the temperance movement in his will (he had lost his only son to typhoid fever during the Boer War). It was one of the largest bequests to date in Britain.

Slaters becomes one of the largest catering companies in the world
Slaters had 21 restaurants and sold 120,000 meals a week by 1907.

The company struggled in the period following the death of Crowle. After a massive decline in profits, the managing director, William Kirkland, was dismissed in 1911.

Alcohol licences had been introduced to at least some of the Slaters restaurants by 1912.

Slaters operated thirteen à la carte restaurants and nearly 40 grocery outlets, all located within London and its suburbs, by 1913. The company had capital of £355,000.

Slaters operated 60 outlets, and had an annual turnover of over £600,000 by 1916. This included the largest fishmonger business in Britain, and the largest poulterers business in London, which together had 26 branches and a turnover of nearly £200,000 a year. Fish was supplied to many leading hotels and restaurants throughout London.

The First World War saw the customer base eroded, and many of the restaurants became loss-making.

Slaters was one of the largest catering companies in the world by 1926. A freehold property on Oxford Street was acquired for £100,000 in 1928.

Slaters acquires Bodega
The authorised capital of Slaters was increased to £1 million in order to acquire Bodega, a restaurant company, in 1928. The merged company was known as Slaters & Bodega. The acquisition brought with it 30 outlets, and two hotels, one in Yarmouth and one in Eastbourne. The catering businesses were complementary, and it was anticipated that there would be efficiency savings across management and overheads.

The Slaters on Kensington High Street became a favourite restaurant of the Irish novelist James Joyce (1882 – 1941) in 1931.

Slaters & Bodega operated three provincial hotels, 29 Slater Restaurants and Beta Cafes, 37 shops, 25 Bodega wine bars and four Cope’s wine lodges by 1932.

War-time struggles, and acquisition by Charles Forte
The Second World War had a severe impact upon Slaters & Bodega. 92 out of 119 company outlets had been damaged or destroyed by enemy action by May 1941. War-time conditions also seriously impacted upon sales.

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Slaters & Bodega became the subject of takeover speculation, and was acquired by Charles Forte (1908 – 2007), an Italian entrepreneur with interests in catering and property, for £1.55 million in 1954. Financial backing from Ind Coope, a large brewer and owner of public houses, helped Forte to almost double the size of his catering empire.

Forte immediately divested the Slaters fish and vegetable shops. The last remaining Slaters restaurant, at Throgmorton Street, was closed in the 1970s.

Footwear

A history of John White shoes

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John White was the largest shoemaking company in Britain.

John White enters the shoe trade
John White (1885 – 1974) was born into a strict Calvinist Baptist family. His ancestors had been engaged in the shoemaking trade since the mid-eighteenth century.

White was trained as a clicker, one who cuts the uppers of shoes and boots from leather. He cut the uppers of 650,000 pairs of shoes and boots before 1918.

White went into business for himself from 1918. He bought a small workshop in Rushden, Northamptonshire using savings of £200. He acquired a shoe press in 1919, and by the end of the year he had three employees.

White acquired small local factories during a trade slump. His business produced 100,000 pairs of boots and shoes by 1921.

The John White brand is introduced
John White launched his own brand of shoes in 1930. He promoted the new brand with national advertising.

John White was the largest shoemaking business in Britain by 1935. The Rushden factories employed 1,200 people, and 1.75 million pairs of shoes were manufactured each year.

White acquired a factory at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, from Owen Parker in 1936. Adjacent offices were constructed.

John White supplied both armies during the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939). Each side placed orders for 100,000 pairs of shoes.

White undercut his competitors by efficiently cutting costs and accepting low margins. He avoided trade union disruption by paying for piecework; payment for work completed, rather than basic wages.

White built a new factory on Lime Street, Rushden in 1939. It was designed by Albert Richardson (1880 -1964), a leading architect whose work included the Manchester Opera House.

John White had nine factories, a staff of nearly 2,000 and production of three million pairs of boots and shoes a year by 1941.

During the Second World War the business sold over eight million pairs of boots to the armed forces; one ninth of all footwear supplied to the troops.

White sells directly to retailers
Wholesalers were not marketing his product as effectively, so White began to sell directly to retailers after the Second World War. Profits mounted rapidly. The company employed 2,600 people by 1951.

John White was exporting 400,000 pairs of shoes a year to America by the 1950s, and the company accounted for 90 percent of British footwear exports. John White shoes were exported to 56 territories.

Expansion saw a factory opened in Corby, Northamptonshire in 1954.

White was a dynamic man, and had an obsession for efficiency. He invested heavily to ensure that he used the most modern shoe manufacturing equipment available.

John White retires; later history
John White retired in 1962. The company initially struggled in his absence, but had regained profitability by 1968.

George Ward of Leicester was acquired for £4 million in 1972. The name of the company was changed to Ward White Group.

G B Britton, a large footwear manufacturer, was acquired in 1973.

Ward White was the third largest footwear manufacturer in Britain in 1974. The company had 9,000 employees across nine countries.

The Ward White footwear business was subject to a management buyout, called UK Safety, in 1988.

The last remaining John White shoe factory closed in 1991.

The John White brand was revived in 2000.

Clothing & textiles

Crepe expectations: Grout & Co

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Grout & Co was the largest manufacturer of crepe in Britain.

Grout & Co is established
Joseph Grout (1781 – 1853) was born in Bocking, Essex. The family were apparently descended from Huguenot refugees from the Low Countries, and anglicized their name from Groot.

Joseph Grout became a saddle and harness maker. He began to manufacture “Norwich crepe”, a lower cost imitation of French crepe, at Patteson’s Yard, Magdalen Street, Norwich, from 1806.

Grout was the first person in Britain to produce crepe. He was soon joined in partnership by his brother George Grout (1781 – 1860).

Large mills were soon established at Lower Westwick Street, Norwich.

A silk factory was established at a former military barracks at St Nicholas Road, Great Yarmouth from 1815. The Yarmouth site was selected due to its lower labour costs.

An average of 3,908 people were directly employed in 1825. A large proportion of employees were young women aged 16 to 24.

A silk crepe factory had been established at Ponder’s End, Enfield, by 1829.

The capital invested by Grout & Co amounted to £143,546 in 1832. Around one third of raw silk came from Bengal, one third from China and one third from Italy.

The Great Yarmouth site was destroyed by fire in 1832, and had to be rebuilt.

Mills were established at Ditchingham, Norfolk, around 1833.

The largest manufacturer of crepe in Britain
The Grout brothers became extremely wealthy, and had entered into retirement by 1835. Management of the firm was taken over by William Martin (died 1849), a close relative.

The Great Yarmouth factory employed 1,100 workers in 1837. 970 people were employed at Norwich, and 560 were employed at Ditchingham.

Following the death of William Martin in 1849, the firm was managed by John Brown, a Mr Robison and a Mr Hall.

The Norwich, Yarmouth and Ditchingham mills regularly employed over 2,000 people by 1854. The predominant manufacture was gauze, which was then sent to the Ponder’s End factory to be converted into crepe for mourning purposes.

Grout & Co was the largest manufacturer of crepe in Britain by 1862. Over 3,000 workers were employed. The Norwich factory was the principal production site.

Grout & Co was the leading crepe manufacturer in Britain in 1887. There were warehouses in London, Manchester, Paris and New York, and factories at Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Ditchingham and Ponder’s End.

Crepe went out of fashion in Britain, and almost all production was exported to Latin countries by 1890. That year, manufacturing was centralised at Great Yarmouth, and all other factories were closed. The company also expanded into other textiles.

Grout & Co and Courtauld dominated English crepe manufacture by this time.

Grout & Co was registered as a company in 1894.

The Great Yarmouth factory employed around 1,000 workers in 1907.

Crepe bandages were manufactured from 1920.

Grout & Co produced silk parachutes during the Second World War.

Sale of the company and closure of the factory
Grout & Co was acquired by Carrington & Dewhurst, the largest manufacturer of filament fabrics in Europe, in 1962.

Carrington & Dewhurst merged with Viyella to form Carrington Viyella in 1970, one of the largest textile manufacturers in Europe.

The factory was relocated to Harfreys Industrial Estate, Great Yarmouth, from 1975. Grout & Co focused on the production of crepe bandages.

Smith & Nephew acquired the Great Yarmouth factory from Coats Viyella in 1994. The factory was closed in 1996.

Confectionery

Clarnico of Hackney Wick (1872 – 2019)

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Clarnico was the largest sugar confectionery manufacturer in Britain during the interwar period. The Clarnico Mint Cream continued to be produced until 2019.

Establishment of Clarnico
Clarke Nickolls & Co was established as a jam and marmalade manufacturer at Hackney Wick in East London in 1872. There was an initial workforce of ten people.

Robert Coombs (1836 – 1919) joined the business as a partner from 1875, and developed a sugar confectionery manufacturing subsidiary called Clarnico.

George Mathieson (1844 – 1940) and Alexander Horn (1851 – 1923) joined the business as partners soon afterwards, and were instrumental in its subsequent expansion. Mathieson and Horn both came from the village of Insch in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

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The growth of the sugar beet industry in Britain, with a consequent reduction in ingredients costs, allowed Clarnico to enter into rapid growth. Clarke, Nickolls & Coombs employed 300 people by 1881.

Clarke, Nickolls & Coombs is established as a public company; a profit-sharing scheme is introduced
Clarke, Nickolls & Coombs was incorporated as a public company with a share capital of £80,000 in 1887. It was one of the largest confectionery companies in Britain. Control of the business was in the hands of George Mathieson and Alexander Horn by this time, and Mathieson was appointed managing director.

Mathieson and Horn introduced a profit-sharing scheme for the workforce from 1890. After paying a six percent dividend, the company split the remaining profit equally between the shareholders and the workforce. 840 people shared a total of £1,700 in 1893. The scheme gave staff the incentive to work harder, and enhanced employee retention levels.

The business grew rapidly throughout the 1890s. 1,000 men were employed in 1891. Around 1,300 people were employed by 1892, around 1,500 in 1896, and 2,000 by 1899. The factory site covered five acres by 1896.

Clarnico becomes the largest sugar confectionery manufacturer in Britain
Clarnico Caramels became the best known product, and Clarnico was the largest producer of unwrapped caramels in Britain.

The Hackney Wick site had over ten acres of floorspace by 1908. Over 3,000 people were employed by 1911.

The Clarnico Mint Cream had been introduced by 1912.

Clarnico was the largest sugar confectionery company in Britain during the interwar period. Over 700 different varieties of sweets were produced. The Clarnico site was the largest sugar confectionery factory in Britain.

Clarnico formed a joint venture with R S Murray & Co to establish an Irish factory from 1926.

The Clarnico factory suffered significant bomb damage during the London Blitz in 1940.

An overhead view of the Clarnico Works in 1921. Image used with kind permission of Britain From Above.

Clarnico distributed £700,000 in profits to its workforce between 1890 and 1944, a figure beaten only by J T & J Taylor of Batley and Reckitt & Colman.

Clarnico Murray held around ten percent of the Irish confectionery market by 1969.

Clarnico is acquired by Trebor
The sugar confectionery market had become stagnant by the end of the 1960s. Competition was further hampered by the emergence of larger rivals. Clarnico became loss-making and was sold to its London-rival Trebor for £900,000 in 1969. The merged business was the fourth largest confectionery manufacturer in Britain.

The Clarnico factory in London was closed down in 1973. Clarnico products continued to be sold, including Mint Creams, fudge, Fruit Jellies and Chocolate Peppermint Creams.

The Irish manufacturing presence was closed down in 1974, and the market was thereafter served by imports from Britain.

Trebor was acquired by Cadbury for £120 million in 1989.

The product range was pared down until only the Clarnico Mint Cream remained. Manufacturing was relocated to France and the product was sold under the Maynards Bassetts brand. The sweet was discontinued in 2019, after over 100 years in production, thus ending the Clarnico link to confectionery.

 

Retail

Suite success: Maple & Co

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Maple & Co was the largest furniture retailer in the world.

John Maple establishes the business
John Maple (1815 – 1900) was born in Greenhurst, Sussex, the son of a small farmer. He served an apprenticeship at a general store.

Maple partnered with James Cook to form Maple & Cook, furnishers and drapers of Tottenham Court Road, London, with a capital of £500 in 1840.

Cook left the firm by mutual consent in 1847, and the business traded as John Maple & Co.

Maple managed the business on a low-margin principal. He claimed to have the largest furniture showroom in the world by 1850.

John Blundell Maple grows the business
John Blundell Maple (1845 – 1903) entered his father’s business from 1861. He was made a partner in 1867.

Hundreds of salesmen were employed at Tottenham Court Road by 1874.

John Blundell Maple had taken control of the business by 1880. A dapper, yet modest, kindly and genial man, the subsequent growth of the business was mainly to his credit. Maple had “unbounded energy, enterprise and commercial genius” according to the Leeds Mercury.  An obituary would later describe his “great shrewdness and energy, and capacity for acquiring a complete mastery of all the details of the business”.

John Blundell Maple in 1901

At J B Maple’s initiative, the firm furnished many of the great hotels and houses throughout the British Empire and Europe. One furnishing bill for a great London hotel amounted to £100,000.

Maple & Co was the largest furniture retailer in the world by 1885.

The Tottenham Court Road premises covered four acres by 1888. Maple & Co directly employed 2,051 people.

In order to meet demand, the vast majority of production was subcontracted. John Crossley & Sons, a carpet manufacturer, represented one of the largest suppliers.

Maple & Co furnished all the Courts of Europe. Most members of the British Royal Family had been supplied, including Queen Victoria.

Maple & Co becomes a limited liability company
Maple & Co was converted into a limited liability company with a capital of £2 million in 1891.

J B Maple paid for the reconstruction of University College Hospital at a cost of £120,000 in 1896.

John Maple died with an estate valued at £892,503 in 1900.

3,000 people were employed at the Tottenham Court Road premises by 1903. The Daily Mail commented that Maple goods furnished “half the palaces of Europe, and the bulk of the best modern mansions in Great Britain”.

John Blundell Maple died in 1903. He ranked as one of the richest British businessmen of his era, and his estate was valued at £2.2 million. Maple had been a generous philanthropist throughout his life. Clare Henry Regnart (1842 – 1932) became company president.

An Argentinian subsidiary was established in 1906.

Clare Henry Regnart retired in 1930 and was succeeded as company president by his son, Charles Clare Regnart.

Subsequent owners and demise
Maple & Co, with 20 British stores and five overseas, was acquired by Macowards of Cardiff for £14.4 million in 1972. That year the Tottenham Court Road head office and flagship store was closed for redevelopment. The resulting fiasco saw shares plummet to ten percent of their 1972 value by 1977.

There were 45 British and two French stores in 1977.

Maple & Co was acquired by Waring & Gillow, a furniture retailer, for £9.7 million in 1980.

Waring & Gillow was acquired by Asda, a supermarket chain, in 1989. Maples was subject to a management buyout in 1993.

Maples entered into receivership in 1997, a result of high debts and poor trading. The company targeted the upper mass market, and had 24 stores including nine larger out-of-town sites, and a staff of 340.

The Tottenham Court Road location was acquired by Furniture Village. Eight stores were sold to Allders.

Spreads & sauces

Yeast resistance: Marmite

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Marmite is a thick, black yeast extract product. Around 25 million jars are sold every year.

The Marmite business is established
German scientist Justus von Liebig (1803 – 1873) discovered that spent brewers’ yeast was edible in the late nineteenth century. By adding vegetable extracts, it could be rendered as nutritious as meat extract.

The Marmite Food Extract Company was incorporated in 1902 to exploit the potential of the product. Company headquarters were based in London with a factory at Burton upon Trent. The company was headed by a retired Swiss sugar merchant called Frederick Wissler.

Marmite, as a vegetable and yeast extract, competed against the Bovril and Liebig meat extracts that were popular at the time. Marmite had the advantage of retailing for around half the price of its rivals.

marmite_-_Feb_2013

The business grew rapidly, and a second factory was established at a former brewery in Camberwell Green, London, from 1907.

Marmite enjoyed a growing reputation as a health product, and it was added to soldiers’ rations during the First World War as a Vitamin B1 deficiency preventative.

Following the death of the company’s first chairman, Marmite was acquired by Bovril in 1924.

The Camberwell factory was closed in 1927 and production relocated to a new site at Vauxhall.

Post-war developments
The Burton factory was relocated to Wellington Street from 1952.

The Vauxhall factory was closed in 1967.

A new £1 million factory was established at Burton upon Trent to produce both Bovril and Marmite from 1968. The factory employed 450 people.

Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company, acquired Marmite in 2000.

Marmite was launched in squeezy bottles in 2006.

The Burton factory produced 25 million jars of Marmite in 2015. Around 15 percent of the total is exported, mostly to former British colonies. Sri Lanka is a major market, where it is mixed into porridge.

A mixture of ale and lager yeasts are used to create Marmite. Much of the yeast is still sourced from the MolsonCoors (formerly Bass) and Marston’s breweries in Burton. The automated factory employs around 60 people. Marmite is matured for seven days before distribution.

Industrial

How Bryant & May met their match

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Bryant & May was the largest matchstick manufacturer in Britain. It remains a leading premium brand of matches.

Establishment
William Bryant (1804 – 1874) and Francis May (1803 -1885), two Quakers from Plymouth, entered into partnership to manufacture tallow and candles from 1844.

Bryant & May acquired the British rights to the safety match from Carl Lundstrom (1823 – 1917) of Sweden in 1855. The product proved so successful that Lundstrom struggled to meet demand. A factory was established at Fairfield Road, Bow, London, from 1861. As was usual for the time, a workforce consisting partly of children was employed.

Remnants of the Bow factory

Wilberforce Bryant (1837 – 1906), the son of William Bryant, joined the partnership. Francis May left the partnership in 1864.

About 1,500 people were employed by 1871. The Graphic commented that the workforce were “by no means the miserable, emaciated, half-starved creatures whom some of our readers might expect to see. On the contrary they were, as a rule, stout, ruddy and decently dressed, and the younger children especially seemed full of spirit”.

William Bryant died with a personal estate valued at under £160,000 in 1874.

Introduction of white phosphorus matches
Bryant & May began to manufacture “strike anywhere” matches, which used white (also called yellow) phosphorous, which could cause phosphorus necrosis among workers.

Bryant & May employed at least 5,000 people by 1876.

A visitor in 1881 commented in the New Monthly Magazine on the “cheerful labour” of the workforce, and denied the existence of cruel managers, fire risk and ill health caused by phosphorus.

Bryant & May had developed a considerable export trade by 1881. The Fairfield Works covered over six acres. Matchbox making and labelling employed 3,000 females within their own homes throughout the local neighbourhood.

Bryant & May was registered as a limited liability company in 1884. That year, Bell & Black, its Bow rival, was acquired to form the largest match manufacturer in Britain.

Gilbert Bartholomew (1852 – 1911), the secretary and manager of Bell & Black, was appointed managing director of Bryant & May.

Bryant & May produced around 300 million matches a day by 1886.

1,200 young women went on strike at the Bow factory in 1887.

1,400 young women went on strike at the Bow factory in 1888. Bryant & May management acquiesced to almost all of the strikers’ demands. An unpopular system of fines for misbehaviour was ended. It appeared that foremen had misrepresented the strikers’ position to the company directors, who subsequently requested that complaints be addressed directly to them in future, in order to avoid further misunderstandings.

Bryant & May employed around 2,000 workers in 1895, including around 1,200 to 1,500 women and girls.

Operations were established in Brazil from 1895.

Phosphorus necrosis cover-up
Bryant & May recorded 47 cases of phosphorus necrosis amongst its workforce between 1878 and 1898. A new law meant that every case of phosphorus poisoning had to be referred to the Government from 1893. However the company failed to report 17 cases, including six deaths. None of the deaths were attributed to necrosis poisoning, but the disease may have been a contributory factor.

Gilbert Bartholomew readily admitted the company’s guilt. He argued that matchmaking was a safer trade than many others such as brick-making or linen-weaving, and suggested that Bryant & May would support a ban on the sale of phosphorus matches, which had around 90 percent of the market.

Bryant & May were liberal employers for the period. The deaths went unreported due to a desire to maintain that strong public image.

Wilberforce Bryant subsequently announced that the company would abolish the use of white phosphorus from 1900.

Twentieth century and growth through acquisition
Bryant & May soon found keen competition in the match market. The Diamond Match Company used a Beecher match-making machine which could manufacture superior matches at half the cost of the Bryant & May product. Bryant & May acquired the Diamond Match Company for £480,000 in order to avoid a costly trade war in 1901. The acquisition gave Bryant & May the rights to the Swan Vesta brand of matches, and a large factory in Litherland, Liverpool.

A 34 percent stake in the Lion Match Co of South Africa was acquired in 1905.

An Australian factory was established in Melbourne in 1909.

Bryant & May had a productive capacity of over 90 billion matches and over 100,000 miles of wax vestas and tapers per annum by 1909. The Litherland factory employed around 1,000 people.

Moreland & Son of Gloucester, manufacturer of England’s Glory matches, was acquired in 1913.

The Moreland factory

The Bow and Litherland factories each covered seven acres by 1914.

Bryant & May employed 3,500 workers by 1921.

A factory was established in Glasgow from 1921. The Scottish Bluebell matchstick brand was introduced.

Bryant & May acquired the English interests of Maguire, Paterson & Palmer, match manufacturers of Garston in Liverpool, in 1922. With the acquisition of its last substantial British rival, Bryant & May would only contend with competition from imported matches from Sweden.

Bryant & May had an authorised share capital of £2 million by 1922. The company owned, or had large stakes in, factories in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and South America.

Bryant & May had the largest share of the Brazilian match market by 1926.

Merger with Swedish Match
Bryant & May merged with the British subsidiary of the Swedish Match Company to form the British Match Corporation in 1927. The company had a nominal capital of £6 million. Swedish Match held a stake of approximately one third of British Match.

British Match employed 1,000 people and produced 45 billion matches in 1934. British Match was the 35th largest company in Britain, with a market value of £8.1 million by 1935.

The Litherland factory was destroyed during the Blitz in 1941, and production was relocated to Garston.

The decline of matchmaking
Bryant & May held around 55 percent of the British match market in 1971. However the market was in decline, and factory closures were to prove inevitable. The Bow factory closed with the loss of 250 jobs in 1971. British Match entered into disposable lighter production as matchstick sales declined.

British Match employed 12,200 people in 1973, including 4,600 in the United Kingdom.

British Match was keen to diversify its product portfolio. It acquired Wilkinson Sword, with around half of the British shaving razor market, for £19 million in 1973. The company was renamed Wilkinson Match.

The Gloucester match factory was closed in 1975.

Swedish Match sold its shareholding in Wilkinson Match to Allegheny of Pittsburgh, a large American steel business, in 1978.

The marketing and administration departments at Bow were transferred to the Wilkinson Sword headquarters at High Wycombe in 1980.

Allegheny acquired full control of Wilkinson Match in 1980.

The Glasgow factory was closed in 1981.

The Garston site had been largely automated by 1986. It was the last remaining match factory in Britain. It employed 317 people, and had a productive capacity of 35 billion matches per annum.

Allegheny sold Wilkinson Match to Swedish Match in 1987. This resulting in Swedish Match holding over 80 percent of the British match market, and nearly half of the disposable lighter market.

The Garston factory was closed with the loss of 96 jobs in 1994. It marked the end of match manufacturing in Britain. Sales had declined due to the decline of smoking and open fires, as well as the removal of excise duty from disposable lighters. Production was relocated to Sweden.

Biscuits & cakes

Cracking the market: a history of Jacob’s

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Over a billion Jacob’s Cream Crackers were consumed in 2013.

W & R Jacob is established
W&R Jacob was founded by two Quaker brothers, William and Robert Jacob, in Waterford, Ireland in 1851. Shortly afterwards the business relocated to Peter’s Row, Dublin.

A fire completely destroyed their factory in 1880. W&R Jacob completely rebuilt and extended the site, and installed new machinery.

W&R Jacob had introduced “American Crackers” by 1881.

W&R Jacob introduced the cream cracker in 1885. It was so-called because it had extra fat “creamed” into the flour. The new product was to quickly prove a great success.

Jacob’s establishes a British factory
W&R Jacob acquired ten acres of land at Aintree, adjacent to Hartley’s jam factory, in 1912. It was intended to improve the firm’s market share in Liverpool. Manufacture began on the site from 1914.

During the First World War the armed forces were supplied with Jacob’s biscuits.

Following the end of the First World War, Jacob’s rehired every employee who had fought during the war, and also found work for a large number of men who had been injured during the conflict.

The Club chocolate biscuit was introduced from 1919.

The foundation of the Irish Free State saw the English subsidiary established as an independent company in 1922.

Jacob’s was one of the largest biscuit manufacturers in Britain by 1929.

The Aintree factory covered 30 spacious acres by 1932. The firm employed over 3,000 people. Over 300 different varieties of biscuit were manufactured.

The Yorkshire market was entered in earnest from 1932, with the construction of a large depot in Leeds.

Jacob’s held seven percent of the British biscuit market by volume by 1939.

Approximately 1,500 employees were engaged in manufacturing in 1949; 75 percent of them were women.

A new depot was established at Plympton in 1959, due to increasing sales in the Devon and Cornwall region. It had a capacity to handle six million lbs (2.7 million kg) of biscuits each year.

Jacob’s is acquired by Associated Biscuits
Jacob’s was the third largest biscuit manufacturer in Britain when it was acquired by Associated Biscuits in 1960. Family members, who controlled 70 percent of voting shares, approved the sale.

The Jacob’s Cream Cracker was the third highest-selling biscuit in Britain by 1969.

Associated Biscuits dedicated the vast majority of its advertising expenditure to the strong Jacob’s brand from 1972.

The Jacob’s sweet biscuit product lines, other than the Club, were phased out in favour of the Huntley & Palmers brand in the 1980s.

The Aintree site employed 2,800 people by 1983.

The Aintree site was modernised at a cost of £25 million in 1986. Its leading lines were the Jacob’s Cream Cracker and the Jacob’s Club biscuit.

Voluntary redundancies and natural wastage had seen the staff reduced to 1,800, with a further 400 temporary staff during the Christmas period, by 1988.

Nabisco continued to invest heavily in the Aintree plant, which absorbed much of the production from the Bermondsey site, which was closed in 1989.

The Huntley & Palmer name was discontinued in 1990, and all products were relabelled under the Jacob’s brand.

Jacob’s is acquired by United Biscuits
United Biscuits acquired Associated Biscuits for £200 million in 2004.

United Biscuits rebranded all of its savoury biscuits under the Jacob’s name from 2014. Jacob’s gained the Mini Cheddars product, but lines such as Club, Fig Rolls, BN and Iced Gems were rebranded as McVitie’s.

The Aintree site produced over 55,000 tonnes of products in 2014. 900 people were employed at the factory.

It was announced that the Aintree site would receive an investment of £10 million in 2015. The site is the centre of United Biscuits savoury snack production, and brands manufactured include Twiglets, Mini Cheddars and Club, as well as Jacob’s.

Jacob’s held 25 percent of the British savoury biscuit market in 2015.

Reports emerged in 2018 that Jacob’s could be sold in a deal that valued the business at £100 million. Potential buyers included Mondelez and Burton Biscuits.

Iron & steel

Steely resolve: Consett Iron Company

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The Consett Iron Company was the largest steel manufacturer in the world.

The Derwent Iron Works were established Consett, County Durham, in 1840. The works were the largest in England by 1860, with eleven blast furnaces on a site of over 70 acres and a workforce of nearly 4,000 men and boys.

A view of the Consett steel works in 1979 (Credit to Wayne Phillips)

Despite its scale, the company was notoriously unprofitable. When the Northumberland and Durham District Bank failed, the Derwent Iron Works owed the bank £960,000.

The works were acquired by the newly-formed Consett Iron Company for £295,318 in 1864. Capital was £400,000. The company was controlled by John Henderson (1807 – 1884), and two Quakers, Joseph Whitwell Pease (1828 – 1903) and David Dale (1829 – 1906). The company had 18 blast furnaces, only seven of which were in use.

The Consett Iron Co employed 4,000 to 5,000 men in 1865.

William Jenkins (1825 – 1895), a Welshman, was appointed general manager from 1869, having previously managed the works of John Guest. Jenkins was largely credited with the turnaround of the Consett works.

A political Liberal, and a staunch churchgoer, Jenkins was a humane and kind man, and generally retained his workforce, even during slack trading periods. He had a keen commercial mind and was a strong judge of character.

45,038 tons of iron were produced in 1869. Company share capital amounted to £352,732.

The Consett Iron Co operated the largest iron plate works in the world by 1875. The company employed 5,000 people by 1878.

The Consett Iron Co manufactured 1,600 tons of iron plate every week by 1880. 132,085 tons of iron and steel were produced in 1890, and the company had a share capital of £736,000.

The Consett Iron Co was the largest steel manufacturer in the world by 1894. The company was remarkably profitable, a testament to its strong management.

The Consett Iron Co had a share capital of £3.5 million in 1922.

The Consett Iron Co established a steelworks at Jarrow, Tyneside from 1940.

The company’s seven collieries were nationalised in 1947.

The Consett Iron Co had an authorised capital of £19 million in 1955. 6,300 people were employed at the Consett and Jarrow sites.

The Consett Iron Co employed 7,337 people in 1965.

The Consett Iron Co was nationalised in 1967 and became a part of British Steel.

The Consett steel works were closed due to overcapacity in the industry in 1980. Almost 4,000 jobs were lost.

Spreads & sauces

Playing ketchup: Geo Watkins

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Geo Watkins is the only remaining national producer of mushroom ketchup in Britain.

George Watkins founded his grocery business in 1830. The Watkins family were Quakers.

A George William Watkins is described as an oilman/Italian warehouseman of 308 Oxford Street, London in 1843.

The firm of George Watkins was based at Kentish Town by 1850.

The grocers and Italian warehousemen partnership of George Watkins, Alfred Robinson and George William Watkins of 4 Portland Place, St John’s Wood, was dissolved in 1857.

The firm was best known for its Winchester Sauce in the 1860s.

The firm was based at 116 Bayham Street, Camden Town by 1867.

Crosse & Blackwell distributed the firm’s products in export markets by 1870.

Digestive Relish, a pickle, was their best known product from the 1870s. Digestive Relish was still being advertised as late as 1923.

Presumably, the firm entered into receivership around 1923, in what was a difficult time for food manufacturers.

G Costa & Co of Aylesford, Kent, best known for Blue Dragon oriental sauces, relaunched the Geo Watkins brand in 1985, as a range of traditional English sauces.

A Geo Watkins piccalilli was available until 1996. A Geo Watkins brown sauce was discontinued in the 2000s.

G Costa was acquired by Associated British Foods, owner of Patak’s and Levi Roots ethnic sauces, in 2003.

Two products are manufactured under the Geo Watkins brand as of 2016; mushroom ketchup and anchovy sauce.

 

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