Huntley & Palmers Baked Them

I was very interested to see Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys last night. Mr Portillo visited Reading, the former home of the huge Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory, and Whitchurch silk mill. Huntley and Palmer was a famous British brand, and Captain Scott took some of their biscuits on his ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

The first Huntley & Palmer factory was built by the Kennet and Avon Canal, and canal boats were used to transport the biscuits to Bath and Bristol.  A later factory was sited near the Great Western Railway, and the company built its own sidings to link to the railway.

When writer Archibald Williams visited the factory early in the twentieth century, about 6000 people were employed there. The factory workforce was mostly men, women and small boys.
Factory Inspector Robert Baker (Reports, 31 Oct 1869), said that he had often heard complaints from Reading people that the Huntley & Palmer factory was not yet covered by the factory acts, because they claimed that ‘boys have often been employed for 20 hours at a stretch, and have been carried out, owing to the heat’. Baker had not been able to visit the factory, as it was outside his remit. Joseph Huntley and George Palmer were Quakers, however, and were said to look after their workforce. Baker commented: ‘I cannot vouch for the truth of these statements, and I should think that Messrs. Palmer treat their staff with consideration’.

Images: Taking biscuits from the oven. Packing biscuits into boxes. Packing boxes of biscuits into tins at the Huntley & Palmer’s factory. Their sturdy tins were much-loved by the British public. How It’s Made, Thomas Nelson & Sons, c.1910. Author’s collection.

Health and Safety ‘Gone Mad’?

My latest feature for Discover My Past is on the factory inspectorate - it has tips on finding records relating to the factory acts which can help shed light on your ancestors' lives.
‘Health and safety’ legislation is sometimes satirised today for excessive caution – the ‘nanny state’. But early factories were dirty and ill-ventilated. Unguarded machinery killed and injured thousands of workers, young and old. The first factory inspectors fought mill-owners’ hostility and public apathy to make factories safer and ensure children were not over-worked.
Mill-owners used women and children as cheap labour. Working hours were incredibly long (fourteen hours or more in Yorkshire). Children did not have time to go to day school.
The Factory Act of 1833, an educational measure, set a minimum age of nine years. It limited hours for children and young people in textile mills (with some exceptions). Night work was banned, and children must have two hours’ schooling per day. Inspectors were appointed to enforce the legislation.
But many industries were left unregulated for decades, despite calls for reform by Lord Shaftesbury and other reformers. Children and teenagers endured miserable conditions in brick-making, straw-plaiting, the metals industries, and so on.
Why did it take so long for change to come? These children’s needs were ignored or forgotten by society – the nation’s prosperity was considered too important to trifle with.
You can find out more about the bitter battle for change fought by Lord Shaftesbury, the factory inspectors, and other reformers in The Children History Forgot.

Images:

India Mill, Darwen. Cotton spinning factory built in the mid-1860s. © Sue and Nigel Wilkes.

Edward Bryon’s proposed guard (lower diagram) for steam-presses following horrific accidents in the sanitary pipe industry. Steam presses used a steam-powered piston to press out sections of earthenware pipe. Boys fed each machine with clay using a shovel or their hands. Twenty workers were injured at Ruabon between 1870-5; some workers lost a hand, including Thomas Griffiths and John George at Plas Kynaston Tile-works. They were only fourteen years old. Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the Half-Year ending 31 October 1875 (1876).